Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot for the Wiltshire Countryside Club annual service
Leviticus 23. 9-14; Matthew 15. 32-39
“You shall eat no bread … until you have brought the offering of your God.”
For many people in this country, the wisdom and awareness of human nature that used to be provided by Christianity are now sought for in self-help literature, counselling, and the psychology of the Sunday supplement and the social media meme. It is therefore interesting when these modern forms of religion share the same perspective as the Old Faith. One thing Christianity and pop-psychology agree on is the importance of gratitude, and the benefits that flow from being grateful for what we have. No less a source than the Harvard Medical School’s in-house magazine – I googled it – tells me that when we are grateful, we improve our health, deal better with adversity, and build strong relationships.
Taking in the harvest at Stanton St Bernard in Wiltshire’s picturesque Vale of Pewsey, 3 September 2024 © Gerry Lynch
Lammas is all about remembering with thanks that it is God who us gives us all that we have. It is God who gives the miracle of natural growth – and it is a miracle, much as familiarity tends to blind us to that. It is God who gives the sun, and the rain, and the seasons that govern our production of food. And it is God who gives us the skills to work with the fruits of nature to sustain ourselves and our nature—not just the skills of the farmer, but of everyone else who makes a living from the countryside, from the man who repairs the combine harvester to the woman who organises the transport of the food to the supermarket. For as much as He is the provider of the bounty of nature, God is also the source of us, and of our skill and diligence. God does not only all this for us, but also gives us the beauty of the natural world, including so many of our agricultural landscapes, which sustain and nurture our souls.
On the face of it, offering of a loaf to God is a pretty limp thank you present for so much. But the loaf symbolises the deep gratitude of our hearts and our souls, and it is appropriate that we offer this symbol of our gratitude now, when the harvest is still ongoing.
The idea of making an offering to God of the first products of the year’s harvest goes back into deep history – hence our reading from Leviticus, which probably reflects practice in Jewish communities around 2,5000 years ago, although it may be even a few hundred years older. The Festival of First Fruits was one of the six great festivals of the ancient Jewish year recorded in Leviticus. People were supposed to refrain from consuming anything from that year’s harvest until God had had His share. As well as offering God a sheaf of wheat, people were supposed to offer a whole lamb as a burnt offering, and some oil, flour, and grain too. Oh, and also ‘a fourth of a hin’ of wine, which is almost exactly equivalent to two bottles’ worth. I rather suspect that, in practice, the priests got the fruits of this offering and I heartily commend its restoration in the modern Church.
Fast forward to Anglo-Saxon England, and the wine offering had disappeared, presumably in response to local climactic conditions, and the wheat-sheaf had been replaced by a loaf. This loaf would be used by the priest in the celebration of Holy Communion on that day, in the first days of August, a service that was a true loaf mass.
At the heart of celebrating Lammas is our recognition that humanity can only flourish when we co-operate with God. The loaf that we will offer is both fruit of the earth and work of human hands. It is when we forget that our flourishing depends on God that we get into trouble. We get things out of balance. We become blind to our own limitations.
Technology, in particular, can blind us to those limitations. Technology amplifies our power but doesn’t make us any more wise. When we remember that technology is a tool, we can use it for the greater good; but when we allow ourselves to become the tool of technology, or to see technology as a good in and of itself, that we get into trouble. The greater our technological power, the more inclined we are to forget that we are a part of the interconnected system of God-given creation. As with many other aspects of human endeavour, some of the darkest chapters in the history of agriculture have been as a result of technology being used in inappropriate ways that made us forget our limitations and were ultimately dehumanising.
Yet God’s generosity to us does not depend on our getting everything right.In our other Bible reading, Jesus feeds 4,000 people who have followed Him into a remote place without preparing themselves properly. He does so from just seven loaves and a few small fish, and produces so much that there are seven full baskets of scraps left over, a testimonial to the extravagant generosity that is at the heart of God’s nature.
It is in gratitude for this divine generosity that we will offer the loaf to God in a moment, repeating an action carried out by millions of people in radically different cultures across more than two thousand years, a symbol of how we are enmeshed in a web of relationships that connect us to God, to one another, and to the whole of creation.
Now glory and honour be to the Holy and Undivided Trinity, the Father who made us, the Son who redeemed us, the Spirit who sustains us, this day and forevermore. Amen.
Top image—Tan Hill from Allington, Wiltshire, 10 June 2024 © Gerry Lynch
