THE Harvest Festival service at Crediton Methodist Church on September 29 was led by Andy Jerrard, the South West Peninsula’s Agricultural Chaplain.

Andy said God’s instructions are pretty clear. Eat pretty well anything that has been made. And the Old Testament focuses a lot on food,food security and the risks of famine - Joseph made a living from that.

Many of the minor prophets use lack of food as a spur to rejoice, equally many of the Mosaic laws focus on what you can do and what you shouldn’t do both with producing food and providing for others - not least the laws on gleaning and leaving some in the field for the poor and hungry to pick up.

Even from the beginning Adam was instructed to care for the garden of Eden. There was also the promise when they were sent out from the garden that there would always be a struggle to produce enough food.

Why focus on this today? Two reasons:

1 The Israelites had several harvests at different times of the year, where they could focus on specific harvest. We lump everything into one. Particularly in this part of the world where we have a lot of livestock, harvest is not one event and is less easy to celebrate as an occasion.

For dairy farmers it is twice, three times a day or with a robot milker even more, for sheep farmers it might be in the spring at lambing, or in the autumn when the prime lambs are sold.

Similarly for beef farmers it might be when the animals reach their final destination, which can be spread across the year. Although understandably the cereal harvest is very visible, other harvests take place throughout the year and so we round them into one.

Even for arable farmers the sugar beet, carrot and potato harvests are far from finished (or possibly hardly started).

2 There are people with particular agendas who wish not to see livestock in our land. Sadly there are those within the church who seem to be following what is deemed fashionable and going as far as to try and use the Bible as justification for this line of argument. It seems to me that Genesis (and plenty of others, including Peter’s experience in Acts 10) rather refute that position.

I mention all of this because, as you can imagine, some of the public noise around this is severely hurting many of the folk I work with and they deserve better, which is where today offers opportunity to thank them publicly as we celebrate with them.

People often say the bible is not a textbook (usually when they want to explain away a story - but it was written on behalf of a God who set down the laws of physicsand we have in Genesis the perfect order for creation and the food chain and the pattern for that rather wonderful thing photosynthesis.

To have authority over the animals in the same way that God has authority over the earth and gives us charge of the day to day running of it. Creation is a symbol of man and God in harmony.

There is also the suggestion that humans were originally meant to only eat fruit and nuts and that eating animals came after the flood. Certainly, there is a change of emphasis between the two readings whilst allowing that there may be those whose eating habits stop at plants.

Another observation is that the reason for human beings being given responsibility for looking after all animals (tame and wild) is because the animals are unable to keep themselves in order (they have a habit of eating one another).

The bit to remember is the sense that a harvest festival is a time for immeasurable joy. The word festival should conjure up the image of exuberant celebrations.

In my mind it conjures up images of hayfield teas or harvest suppers in the farmhouse kitchen where all the workers gathered after the last sheaves were safely in the rick, last bales in the tallet, and again in the winter when the last sheaves had been threshed and all was really safely gathered in.

I particularly want to highlightPsalms 65 and 67. Unlike many of the Psalms, these two are full of joy and thanksgiving for God’s bounty and bring praise for his providing of our daily bread.

You might say they are an invitation to come to a harvest festival and sing –certainly with joy and thanksgiving not just in our hearts but with our voices. There is the sense of all creation joining in joyful song. In some texts Psalm 65 is specifically referred to as the Harvest Psalm.

In Psalm 65 God blesses the promised land with all good things in answer to the nation’s prayer. It is also referred to as a Psalm sung at the end of a drought - hence the multiple references to water.

You might wonder at the importance of God sending the rain. It was because the neighbouring country worshipped Baal and believed he provided the rain or bale. Rivers of delight - as often is the case other pictures in other parts of the bible – rivers of life in Revelation.

Paul talks about creation groaning, waiting for Christ’s return, here the Psalmist talks about the corn shouting for joy and the valleys singing. Psalm 67 may have originally been sung at worship services during the harvest season.

Many farmers see times when creation shouts for joy; when young lambs set off to race across the field, the joyful, contented grunt from pigs when you scratch their ears, the curiosity of cows out in the field when they come to say hello.

The Bible has as many references to Food as it does to Follow. In the Lord’s prayer we have “Give us today our daily bread”. It Incorporates the physical and spiritual.

Teresa of Avila; Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands or feet but yours. We celebrate God’s part in creating wonderful things and allowing us to benefit from and enjoy them, but to make use of God’s bounty we need someone’s hands feet and mind to convey them to us.

Psalm 65 is very much a Psalm of praise and it focuses on God’s exuberant abundance - it honours God the creator in that which he has created. The Jews believed that God’s care of nature was a sign of his love for them and his providing for them.

This psalm highlights Gods abundant mercy, his overflowing grace by reference in verse 11 to; “the cart overflowing” as it is described in some versions - not just enough but enough and to spare.

We saw a picture of the cross –this pictureis the ultimate symbol of God’s goodness.His abundance of mercy to us.

The spiritual generosity to go with the physical generosity. He sent his son to share our worldand then he gave himself for us all.

The picture also represents man’s hard work and skills in quarrying the stone and chiselling and polishing it to the shape of the cross.

You may also have noticed that the slide which has come up most frequently has the cross at its centre, the reminder of God’s bounty in feeding us with the help of his final act of creation – mankind, and then giving us his gift of the cross.Bronwyn Nott