Thanks for life!

And so we enter the month of October, and a busy time in the life of the Church. At the beginning of the month we are into the All Saints' ArtsFest – a celebration of creativity, art and design for all the community. Then we have our Harvest Festivals in Church and the Harvest Supper at St. Peter's – after all the hard work a chance for some fellowship over a hearty meal. A lot of hard work has gone into these events, and we have a lot to be thankful for.

I hadn’t realised that our Harvest Festival is a comparatively recent church service. Less than 200 years ago, harvest was not formally ‘celebrated’ in church, but in the taverns and on village greens of the countryside, with wild drinking and eating before the harshness of winter set in.

Then in 1834 an eccentric clergyman called the Rev Robert Stephen Hawker arrived in Morwenstowe, a tiny hamlet of a few farms perched high on the windswept cliffs of the north Cornish coast.

Rural life in those days was harsh, and Hawker soon realised the sheer effort needed to survive in those parts. Harvest was the only thing that got people through the winter: a poor one meant starvation. Each bad year Hawker buried some of his congregation.

But the summer of 1843 was perfect, and the harvest that year was exceptionally bountiful. The people of Morwenstowe were getting set to celebrate with their usual abandon, when Hawker stepped in. Who, he asked, did they think had given them the harvest? Were they not going to even say ‘thank you’ to Him?

Abashed, the people came to church, and Hawker led them in giving thanks to God for his rich blessing upon them. The ‘Christian’ Harvest Festival had arrived – in Morwenstowe.

Nowadays Harvest Festivals are enjoyed by both regular church-goers and visitors, making it one of the most popular services in the church year – even in the middle of industrial Crewe. Maybe people appreciate something that re-connects us with a simpler way of life, and with the basic stuff of our existence – food.

Of course, in the Bible Jesus reminded us that we cannot live just on bread alone – we need more than this to be truly alive – we need God in our lives. Jesus called himself the ‘bread of heaven’ – the one that brings us life and sustains us all. So while we celebrate all these good things this month, let us not forget that to be fully alive we need Jesus, and all we now have comes from him.