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Sunday 4th October                                                                                      Matthew 21.33-end, NIV

33 “Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. 34 When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.

35 “The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. 36 Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. 37 Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.

38 “But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ 39 So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

40 “Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

41 “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.”

42 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:

“‘The stone the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,
    and it is marvelous in our eyes’?

43 “Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. 44 Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”

45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them. 46 They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the  people held that he was a prophet.

Sunday 11th October                                            Matthew 22. 1-14, NIV      

1Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: 2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.

4 “Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have  prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’

5 “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. 6 The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

8 “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9 So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ 10 So the  servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.

11 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12 He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.

13 “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

14 “For many are invited, but few are chosen.” 

I love our traditional annual services of Harvest Thanksgiving – when we gather in church to thank God for the beauty and bounty of Creation. But in these days in which humanity is facing unprecedented disaster caused directly by our carelessness towards God’s Creation, we surely, alongside that thanksgiving, have to take due account of what’s going on around us and to think about what our attitude as Christians should be towards the alarming new realities our world is facing today. Of course, that takes a bit of doing because there isn’t really anywhere in the Bible where God says to his people in so many words.

“Thou shalt look after the lovely world I made for thee and thou shalt not make a total mess of it.”

But there are certain principles in the Scriptures that we can, and, I believe, should, bring to bear on our Harvest thoughts…

In the Creation Story in Genesis 1, we find a God who is not only supremely  creative by nature, but who also delights in every aspect of creation. We are made in God’s image, we have the       divine creative spark within us, we share God’s delight in the created order. We should be using that God-like creativity not to destroy our world but to help conserve it. We should be giving      expression to the delight in the created order we share with our Creator by looking after it, caring for it, valuing it, protecting it.

In the Old Testament book Deuteronomy, Moses commands his people to give thanks to God for the bounty of their harvest and to offer back to him the first fruits as a heartfelt expression of their gratitude. We are to offer the very best back to God - not whatever’s left when we’ve done our worst to our fields and forests and oceans. Besides, how genuine can our gratitude be if we abuse, misuse, waste, neglect and carelessly damage the most precious gift our God has given us? Surely, if you’re truly grateful for a gift, you don’t wreck it, you treasure it.

And in Jesus’ Parable of the Rich Fool he warns a successful but selfish farmer against greed,   certainly, but also against complacency – against taking it for granted that he will be able to      continue enjoying the fruits of his harvest tomorrow, next month, next year – against taking wealth, comfort, security and, above all, life, for granted. Complacency in the matter of how we treat our good earth and how much we depend upon it is a luxury we can’t afford.

At Harvest Time, it’s so important that as we thank God for our Harvest, we prove our gratitude by caring more for our world – in word and in sometimes costly action… and stop taking our world – its beauty, its bounty, its wonder – for granted – believing that it will somehow always be there for us no matter how badly we treat it.

 Stephen