St John the Evangelist

HARVEST THANKSGIVING
6^TH OCTOBER 2024

OPENING SENTENCE
Give thanks to the Lord and call upon his name

HYMN

GREETING

Grace and peace to you from God our Father

and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

COLLECT FOR PURITY

Almighty God

to whom all hearts be open

all desires known

and from whom no secrets are hidden;

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts

by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit,

that we may perfectly love you

and worthily magnify your holy name

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

SUMMARY OF THE LAW

Our Lord Jesus Christ said: The first commandment is this: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is the only Lord. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.”

The second is this: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these. Amen. Lord, have mercy.

CONFESSION

God is love and we are God’s children.

There is no room for fear in love.

We love because God loved us first.

Let us confess our sins in penitence and faith.

God our Father, we confess to you

and to our fellow members in the Body of Christ

that we have sinned in thought, word and deed,

and in what we have failed to do.

We are truly sorry.

Forgive us our sins,

and deliver us from the power of evil,

for the sake of your Son who died for us, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

ABSOLUTION

May the God of love and power

forgive you and free you from your sins,

heal and strengthen you by his Spirit

and raise you to new life in Christ our Lord. Amen.

GLORIA
sung by Sue Turner

COLLECT

Creator of the fruitful earth,

you made us stewards of all things.

Give us grateful hearts for all your goodness,

and steadfast wills to use your bounty well,

that the whole human family, today

and in generations to come,

may with us give thanks

for the riches of your creation:

through Jesus Christ, our Lord

who lives and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and forever. Amen

FIRST READING
Deuteronomy 8:7-18
read by Amie Byers

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you.

Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes, which I am commanding you today. When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock, and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good. Do not say to yourself, “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.” But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today.

SECOND READING
Philippians 4:4-9
read by Kay Solaja

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

HYMN

GOSPEL READING
Matthew 6: 25-33
read by Rev Ann Wren

Hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to St Matthew chapter 6 beginning at verse 25

Glory to Christ our Saviour.

Do Not Worry

“Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore, do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the gentiles who seek all these things, and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Give thanks to the Lord for his glorious gospel

Praise to Christ our Lord

SERMON

“Don’t worry!” “Don’t be anxious about anything?” Two direct quotes from our scripture readings today. At first sight, you might think such commands are unrealistic and rather idealistic. ‘Do not worry’, he says, ‘about your life – what you eat or what you drink or what you wear’. And yet, it seems hard for us to banish worry and anxiety. Most of us, I suspect, do at times become anxious about life, about our income, about the cost- of- living crisis, about our gas and electricity prices, about debt, and certainly about health and ageing, both for ourselves and for those we love. And none of us lives in a bubble – we are caught up in bigger issues of world economics, fluctuating markets, long-term financial sustainability, uncertainties about Ukraine, Russia and the Middle East- what it will mean, for example for our farming communities and the rural economy? And we know that millions of people in God’s world have every right to worry about food and clothes and shelter because they are the victims of great poverty. Not only are we called not to worry but we are urged to rejoice in every situation.

Rejoice always, and again I say rejoice.  Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. Did we hear right is God really saying that we are to rejoice in every situation. Is it actually possible to rejoice in every situation? I don’t think God is saying through Paul here that we are to be grateful for every situation that comes our way but rather in every situation, there is always something we can give thanks for. God wants to cultivate in us hearts of gratitude. Indeed, God wants us to have gratitude as a lifestyle.

When we choose gratitude as a life- style, we are less prone to worry and anxiety. What we do discover, when we choose thanksgiving as a lifestyle, is that our confidence and trust in God grows. We learn that God is the one true constant in our lives, that we can totally trust and depend upon him. God never fails us. After all, God’s gift to you and me is our life and our gift of thanksgiving to God is what we do with our lives.

We are told in Psalm 50: The sacrifice that honours me is a thankful heart. Thankfulness is what we as Christians are all about and harvest is a specific time in the year where our thankfulness is more focussed.

Why should we be grateful to God in the first instance? We are thankful to God for who he is. God is great and worthy of our praise. He is holy, unblemished, untainted, pure and yes perfect, there is no one like him. No one can compare to God. He is unique in his holiness. It is interesting in Scripture that they refer to God as holy, holy, holy, but never is this three-fold naming used for any other attribute of God. God’s holiness refers to his absolute moral purity. What an amazing attribute and this holy God has contact with us mere mortals! God wants, indeed longs, to have communion with us.

We are grateful for this communion for as the psalmist said “What is man that you are mindful of him! God longs to have a relationship with us, for he loves us. God is love. His love is unfailing, unchanging, unconditional. His love for us is amazing, nothing can stop God loving us. He accepts us as we are, although God seeks to help us grow, but his love for us is constant and sure. Where else today would you find such love? It is a holy love, a love that never abandons nor forsakes us, a love that enfolds and carries us in the joys and storms of life. It is a love that is patient and kind. We are thankful to God for his unfailing love to us. This love is for all, no- one is excluded; we are all held in his enduring love.

We are thankful to God for his holiness -he is a just God. He is unprejudiced, unbiased, fair and good. God is not fickle or dishonest… he is just. Such a quality of being just, unprejudiced, unbiased, of being fair is a rare gift in our society today. We take heart that despite all that is wicked and evil in the world, God is just and good.

The final aspect of God that I want to highlight for our thankfulness is his compassion and mercy. God has a heart for us. He made us, he knows us intimately, the psalmist says that “even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.” God knows us, and because of our human frailty and vulnerability God, God recognises our weaknesses and sin and yet he abounds in mercy towards us. His mercies to us are new every morning. God is generous in his mercy towards us. We are told again by the Psalmist “God is slow to anger and rich in mercy.” The psalmist also says “God is compassionate.” How reassuring to know that we matter and that we are of prime concern to God for he cares for us. We are told in the psalms that God hems us in, behind and before and lays his hand upon us. Such knowledge is too wonderful for us; it is high; we cannot attain it.

How many times have we been worried and anxious about something or someone, and when we look back on our lives, we realise that God has not failed us but has been there all along with us as our strength and help in those trying days. You will be familiar with the footprint story but in case you are not or need reminding, it goes like this:

As I was walking along the beach with my Lord. Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, one belonging to me and one to my Lord. After the last scene of my life flashed before me, I looked back at the footprints in the sand. I noticed that at many times along the path of my life, especially at the very lowest and saddest times, there was only one set of footprints. This really troubled me, so I asked the Lord about it. “Lord, you said once I decided to follow you, you’d walk with me all the way. But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life, there was only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why, when I needed you the most, you would leave me.” He whispered, “My precious child, I love you and will never leave you. Never, ever, during your trials and testing. When you saw only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”

The more we remember God’s hand in our lives, the deeper our trust in God becomes and the less we fear or worry. As it says in Scripture “perfect love casts out fear.” God has for us that perfect love, and so we need not fear or worry, but rather we are to turn our eyes to heaven, focus on God and trust in him completely for he alone has our best interests at heart. When we look heavenwards, we are filled with wonder, perspective, peace and thanksgiving. As our eyes are fixed on God, we begin to adopt a lifestyle of thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is central to our lives and pivotal in our harvest thanksgiving services. So often at harvest, we focus on all the blessings God gives us but sometimes we forget the Creator, the Sustainer, and the Provider of all these blessings and gifts- God himself and so today especially we come to offer God our thanks for who he is.

How do we offer God our thanks? We have been doing it throughout our service. We offer God our praise through singing, singing from the heart. When we sing, we mean what we are singing. It is genuine thanks to God offered through song. As the psalmist said “It is good to praise the LORD and make music to your name, O Most High” God delights in our praise, even if we think we are not great singers. Music from the heart is what God is looking for. He welcomes too our thanks through prayer.

We offered our thanks through prayer as our epistle reading reminding us, we thank him for all that he has done. One of the things I do at the end of each day is to thank God for five things that have stood out particularly in my day. There is so much to give God thanks for. God created us in his image and we are unique. God saved us from the death of sin through Christ’s death on the cross. God offers us forgiveness and new opportunities. I was speaking with a nun last week in the Rectory and she spoke of how the cross was the place of healing. We thank God for his healing touch in our lives.

We offer God thanks in the Eucharist. Holy Communion is an expression to God of our thanks. Our word Eucharist means (from the Greek Eucharistia) thanksgiving. In the Eucharist we celebrate what God in Christ has done for us.

We also show our thanks to God by telling others of God’s love and by our giving. Thanks, and giving go together, hence the word thanksgiving. We thank God by using the gifts and abilities he has given us in his service. We thank God by our unselfish service- fulfilling tasks and offering hospitality with no sense of duty or reward. We extend our thanks to God by being generous to those who are struggling in life, thinking particularly of the people in the Middle East, and their desperate need for basic resources. We show our gratitude to God by our financial giving to the church and to other charities. Our thanks to God is seen in our calendars and bank statements, for both highlight where our true treasure lies, and how deep our gratitude truly is.

Finally, we thank God for the promises he gives us and keeps. He promises to take care of all our needs. He promises to be with us always. He promises that he will never abandon us. He promises his unfailing love to us. He promises to prepare a place in heaven with him forever.

So, this year in harvest, we delight in who God is and we rejoice in the Lord for his goodness and faithfulness to us. Rejoice in the Lord and again I say rejoice. Rejoicing and being thankful are ways to combat worry or anxiety, for it widens our understanding and appreciation of who God is and reminds us that nothing is too hard for God. God wants us to have an attitude of gratitude in our daily lives. Thanksgiving is a lifestyle. God’s gift to us is our life and what we do with our life is our gift of thanksgiving to God. Amen

NICENE CREED

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty maker of heaven and earth,

of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,

the only Son of God,

eternally begotten of the Father,

God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made,

of one substance with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation

he came down from heaven;

by the power of the Holy Spirit

he became incarnate of the Virgin Mary,

and was made man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;

he suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again

in accordance with the Scriptures;

he ascended into heaven

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory

to judge the living and the dead,

and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit,

the Lord, the giver of life,

who proceeds from the Father.

With the Father and the Son,

he is worshipped and glorified.

He has spoken through the Prophets.

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

We acknowledge one baptism

for the forgiveness of sins.

We look for the resurrection of the dead,

and the life of the world to come. Amen.

PRAYERS

Creator God,

we pray with gratitude for those

to whom we owe our harvest,

all whose labour and dedication enables us

to share in the abundance of this world’s resources.

Lord of the harvest,

in your mercy hear us.

Creator God,

we pray for farmers at this time of difficulty.

It is a time of so much change and

a time filled with so many complex issues,

linking to carbon emissions and climate change.

In often isolating work we pray for farmers’ safety,

protection and for guidance for their future.

Lord of the harvest,

in your mercy hear us.

Creator God,

we pray for farmers in other lands,

who are denied the resources they need,

to cultivate the land.

We think especially of those farmers

whose land has been destroyed

by earthquakes, drought or flooding.

We remember those who struggle to work the land

because of oppressive regimes,

or economic systems loaded against them.

Grant them all hope, help and justice.

Lord of the harvest,

in your mercy hear us.

Creator God,

we pray for those

who bring in the harvest of earth and sea,

minerals and fish,

a harvest that often involves danger.

Grant them skill, courage and safety.

Lord of the harvest,

in your mercy hear us.

Creator God,

we pray for those

who make possible the harvest of technology.

We think of our scientists, technicians,

computer programmers and engineers,

and give you praise for their gifts and skills

that have opened up new worlds and unknown horizons to us.

Grant them wisdom, ingenuity and care in all they undertake.

Lord of the harvest,

in your mercy hear us.

Creator God,

we pray for medical researchers and their teams,

as they seek to understand disease and illness,

in the hope of preventing ill health through various vaccines and drugs.

We are grateful this year for the coronavirus vaccines

and for the booster vaccines that are currently being rolled out.

Continue to inspire these researchers with your intellect and wisdom.

Lord of the harvest,

in your mercy hear us.

Creator God,

we pray for those

who help to reap the harvest of minds.

We pray for teachers, scholars, writers, and artists

whose desire is to expand our knowledge

and increase our understanding.

Grant them patience, dedication and integrity.

Lord of the harvest,

in your mercy hear us.

Creator God, for your many blessings to us,

family and friends,

health and medical support,

education and technology,

homes, food and water,

we lift our hearts with thanksgiving and praise.

Where there is illness and suffering,

draw near with your healing touch.

Where there is anxiety and stress,

come with your peace.

Where there are tears and despair

come with your comfort and grace.

May your creative and sustaining hand

enfold all in need in your love.

Merciful Father accept these prayers

for the sake of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord,

who taught us to pray together..

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come,

your will be done,

on earth as in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins

as we forgive those

who sin against us.

Do not bring us to the time of trial

but deliver us from evil.

For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours, now and for ever. Amen.

HYMN

BLESSING

The peace of God,

which passes all understanding,

keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God,

and of his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord:

and the blessing of God the Father,

the Son and Holy Spirit,

be among you and remain with you always. Amen

DISMISSAL

Go or stay in peace to love and serve the Lord.

In the name of Christ.