Bounty for all - A Harvest Thanksgiving sermon based on Luke 16: 19 -31

There are few occasions when our churches look more inviting than at Harvest Thanksgiving. Displays of food and flowers remind us of our good fortune in living the good life. And so today is a day when it is right to express a hearty "Thank You!"

After all God has been good to us and the promise given to Noah has been fulfilled once again.

So why have I subverted this time of gratitude with a discomforting story told by Jesus?

Well the reason for so doing is based upon a conviction that for Harvest Thanksgiving to be meaningful we need for our gratitude to be linked to justice in our world. After all did not the Old Testmament prophets continually remind the people of Israel that religious observation which blots our the cries of the needy and the urgent call of justice, is worthless in the sight of God. As Micah reminds us what God wants is for us;

"To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God."


In the story of the rich man and Lazarus, Jesus paints a picture of great extremes. The rich man is incredibly wealthy. we are told that he dresses in "purple and fine linen." For clothes to be purple a special dye would need to have been used, a dye that was quite seriously expensive. Likewise fine linen required a special process which also was seriously costly. And this was not a sunday best for our rich man but a daily occurence. Likewise, the rich man feasted sumptuously every day. And all of this goes on at a home through which access is gained via a gate, a sign in that time of a substantial estate.

Those listening to Jesus would feel no real empathy for such a man. After all this was an age in which most people were peasants struggling to eke out a subsistence existence. And in all their struggles their lives were made harder by the wealthy class to whom this man belonged, a wealthy class that ensured that the odds were in their favour at the expense of those at the bottom of the pile.

On the other hand there is Lazarus. Just as the rich man is a sign of the greatest extremity of opulence, so is Lazarus a sign of the greatest extremity of life denying poverty. Chucked at the gate, Lazarus is left to beg for his existence. And as is so often the case today with poverty comes poor health so that he is so covered in sores that his only relief is from the dogs licking those sores. And at this description we need to be rescued from sentimentality. For these dogs would not be the pet dogs which we know of today but ferocious snarling giard dogs kept so that the likes of Lazarus would not be able to invade the rich man's paradise. Yet the spittle of these dogs would have brought some comfort to the open sores of Lazarus.

Yes, this story offers us a picture of the greatest and most repulsive extremes of wealth and poverty living just a few yards apart. And is there not a touch of irony in the name of the beggar for Lazarus means "God has helped" - oh really?

And yet the story has a twist. The two men die. And now in an astonishing role reversal we find Lazarus carried up to heaven whilst the rich man is condemned to Hell. And at this the protests would begin. After all many would argue that the rich man's material wealth was a sign of God's approval and blessings whilst the sufferings of Lazarus were a sign of judgement and wrath. Deuteronomic theology that was so much a part of religious orthodoxy is now itself under judgement.

For here is the evidence that God's blessings are not for us to wallow in. Far from it, they are to be used to help the poor. You see, we are not told that the rich man was a particularly bad man. According to most people he may well have been a virtual paragon of virtue. But his downfall is an indifference to the sufferings of the poor. The poor Lazarus longed even for the crumbs of the rich man's table. But the rich man though not a jot of Lazarus' needs to do anything about it. Even in the dialogue with Abraham, the rich man sees Lazarus as one who is lesser than him, one to be used to spare the brothers of the rich man from ending up in the same mess as him. Even at this late moment the rich man is breathtakingly indifferent to the wellbeing of Lazarus.

And this is where we return to Harvest Thanksgiving. Being grateful for our blessings is a necessity. But we are not alone in the world. We are in relationship with others. And this means being on the side of the have nots. Justice means that we cannot be indifferent to the sufferings of others or to their being denied the good life that we take for granted.

As a country we navigate some difficult waters. Gamblers in pinstripes who rather than be grateful at their blessings wanted more, have left our country and others in difficult waters. As we enter austerity it is all too possible that those whose lives are most changed will be the unemployed and underemployed, the poorly housed, those for whom every pound matters desperately. In finding a way forwards we will need to protect these who are already blocked out of the good life.

And that which is for the affairs of our nation is also global. After all globally we are the rich man. Indeed as Canon Garth Hewitt puts it in song;

"The rich world makes its living through the poor world on its knees."

Take a look at the website "Global Rich List." This afternoon I put the stipend of a Methodist minister in and found that we are globally in the richest 4%. And many of those below us live precarious lives that are ill befitting the much loved children of God. Thankfully the UK government to its credit continues to be committed aiming to fulfil the UN target of 0.7% of GDP to go in international aid. But already far too many countries are bailing out of such commitments. And empty bellies, dirty water, inadequate shelter, poor healthcare and denial of educational opportunities are the result.

At Harvest we give God thanks for the bounty. But for that thanks to be worth more than a pitch of spit, we also have to empathise with and be in solidarity with all for whom the door of the good life is firmly shut in the face. For people being chucked at the gate is most certainly not consistent with true thanksgiving this day.

From Thanksgiving to Justice - A sermon for Harvest Supper based on Psalm 8

As has been the case for many years this church is delightfully decorated for our harvest thanksgiving.

Around me I see a range of foods and flowers. These remind us that our God is a God of bountiful provision. Our God meets our needs and then adds those things that delight us, those things which take us from merely existing into the joys of abundant living.

It is right and proper that on an occasion such as this we should be expressing gratitude. That is gratitude to the people whose skills and labour enable our needs to be so well met. It is also gratitude to the God who out of love has granted us the use of a world that is rich in resources and teeming with wonderful possibilities.

And yet there is a BUT! That BUT is that being a follower of Christ should never be a reason to opt out of the real world. And in the real world we find that there are many for whom our harvest celebration might well ring a little hollow. At the extreme end there are those who can only dream of a square meal, clean water and shelter. Here we find our attention particularly focused on the developing world. But missing out on the bounty is hardly confined to far off lands. Closer to home are many missing out on the good life who are even fearful that their deprivations are about to get even worse. The poor are certainly a reality and a rebuke to our easy accomodation with injustice.

Our Psalm speaks to us of humanity being given a creative role in God's world. This creativity is expressed through work which is the means to which we are enabled to contribute to the material and cultural wellbeing of society. In recent times we have heard much about our duty to work. I sort of agree with this but it becomes but cruel mockery when it is not linked to the other side of the coin which is the right to work. Much needs to be done for the common good yet we have a rising unemployment in this country and in that we are certainly not alone. No wonder economics is sometimes called the "dismal science." Let me use one example. In my six years in this circuit I have seen some abysmal housing and have met people desperate for decent affordable and secure housing. Meanwhile builders languish on the unemployment registers despite their longing to work. The needs could be met! In so many fields life could be enhanced by developing skills and putting them to use. But instead the clever people at international summits tell us that this is just not possible. People experience instead the penury and frustration of not being allowed to develop and use creative skills and the practice of biblical stewardship is thereby strangled. No wonder when I listen to international captains of finance, I find myself singing that old Fun Boy 3 song,

"The lunatics have taken over the asylum."


Indeed the madness can be seen in the distribution of the bounty. Only today on the news we have heard of an agency designed to reduce 3rd World poverty indulging in lavish entertainment of its directors whilst failing the poor of the world. Only today we have learnt that the crazy bonus culture is back to something like before the banking crisis whilst destitution is on the streets. And we know that despite efforts of Make Poverty History and other such groups there is so much still to do regarding extreme poverty.

And still we know that too often human creative capacity is used less for life enhancing purposes than for naked destruction.

Many years go a man said these words;

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed."

Words from anti war campaigner Brian Haw? No! Words from a disaffected radical? Hardly! Those are words from General Dwight Eisenhower soon after the ending of his 8year term as President of the USA. And those are words that ring true today!

And those words bring us to the Harvest of the Spirit about which we sing in our final hymn. This is not a harvest about putting bottoms on pews. it is a harvest about seeking the will of God above all things. It is about being touched by the extravagant love of God and being so transformed by it as to find our vision of the world reorientated.

Through this harvest we meet the God who is the author of life and love, the God who grants value to all peoples. This means working for a society in which all are able to contribute to the welfare of others, a society in which all find dignity and a just reward for labour. It is a society in which as individuals we are bound through God to one another. So different from the stale, tired orthodoxies with which we are bombarded, here is a vision in which exciting possibilities can become wonderful realities. For it is in seeking the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed that we can both contribute to and experience the good life that god desires for all his creation.