Across many of our churches and communities, the weeks of late September and October are marked by harvest and creation celebrations – occasions that remind us, as Christian people, to be thankful. Thankful for the blessing of the earth and its abundance, and for our part within it as men, women, and children created in God’s image. We are all charged to care for it, to tend to it, and to safeguard it.
Creation is the setting for our salvation, within which Jesus is born and lives, dies, and rises from the dead; where God sends the gift of the spirit on us and gives the Church as a gift to us in which to belong, to be fed and nurtured, and to grow in the fullness of life.
These annual celebrations help us to maintain a proper perspective as we live through turbulent times – in a world where fear and scarcity have become common currency, infecting so much of our life and leading us to turn inward, to close our hearts and our hands to ‘others’ who we think are not like us.
Our response, knowing we are blessed by God and if we are faithful to God who gives us this gift, must be to bless others in God’s name. Thankful for God’s blessing, we are not to keep it to ourselves. God scatters abroad, he gives to the poor, his righteousness endures forever. As a consequence we are called also to be generous people. Generous people because of God’s generosity to us, generous in a way that drives out fear.
Some might say that in the face of such global trends, what we do in our parishes and communities fades to insignificance. But let us not underestimate it. Our gatherings, our harvest festivals, our keeping of Creationtide is a marker that says we will not give in to the infection of fear. As thankful people, we will be generous in opening our minds and or hearts to the other. Why? Because this is what Jesus teaches us, this is the way of a disciple of Jesus Christ.
We have been called by Jesus to a life that drives out fear. As thankful people, we know that we are loved by God, that God provides for us in a manner that we may care for others. In letting go of self, in generous self-offering we are blessed, and we find life. This is the gift God gives us, to share with the world in this season, a gift of hope and confidence, to hold firm to in the face of darkness. This is the gift of life itself for which our world longs so deeply, in our homes, in places of fear and of conflict.
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