A week ago, I got a new mobile phone. When I saw that I could get an up-to-date model on a cheaper contract than I had been paying, it was a no-brainer. Save money, get newer model with extra whizzy features: easy decision.
To save money, I had to change to a different phone network, and it took a few days to move my number from EE to Vodafone. However, when I then tried to make a phone call once that had all been done, I kept getting the message ‘Call failed.’
The nice AI robot I spoke to at Vodafone told me that what I needed to do was restart the phone. Then I should be sorted.
And a restart is what we have in our passage from Genesis. God reboots creation after the Flood. You can tell that from the way these verses restate things from the original creation stories. For example, the humans and the animals are to ‘multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it’ (verse 16), just as it said in Genesis 1.
So what do we learn when we apply this notion of the restart (or reboot) to the words we read about harvest? Here they are again from verse 22:
‘As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.’
The rhythms of the world that we mark at a time like harvest remind us of God’s original good intentions for his creation. When seeds are planted and they ripen at the right time, this is a sign that what God built into his creation is working. The same goes, says the writer, for the rhythms of day and night, and of cold and heat – although as a true Brit I really don’t like it when the days get shorter, and I would happily settle for a climate that had no extremes of cold and heat.
God’s intention was always to build a reliable rhythm into his creation. It fits with the notion of there being scientific laws that tell us how the universe behaves. A certainty and a reliability in how something behaves or operates is good and helpful. And because God has not simply created but continues to uphold the universe by the word of his power, as the Letter to the Hebrews says, one preacher was confident to say that scientific laws are a description of God’s habits.
Miracles, by the way, then become those occasional times when God in his sovereign will chooses to change his habits temporarily.
Therefore, one of the things we celebrate at a festival such as harvest is this rhythm and reliability that God has built into his creation. It is out of his goodness that he has built a predictability into our world. This is what he does as a good and benevolent Creator. Hence, the first thing we are doing at harvest is lifting our voices in praise to a trustworthy God who has made his creation reflect that nature of his character.
But when I say this, some of you have questions in your mind. Some of you are saying an inward ‘No’ or at the very least a ‘Yes, but.’ You are probably protesting, ‘But it isn’t always as good and as nice as that.’ We need to observe a second attribute of God when we consider harvest and creation.
Allow me to talk about my new phone again. Part of the process of setting it up involved restoring all my apps, text messages, photos, and so on to the new device so that when I wiped the old one I didn’t lose them. Thankfully, there is a simple way of doing this. Since I was moving from one iPhone to another, I logged into my Apple account on the new phone, and it began a process of downloading everything I needed to my shiny new model. I had always kept the old one backed up, so it went smoothly – although it did take time, and I still have to log into apps again when I first use them.
Why tell you this? Because the God we praise at Harvest is the God who restores. We are used to talking about God restoring broken people through the Cross of Christ, when he heals and forgives broken sinners, bringing us into that knowledge that he loved us before we ever considered him. We may also talk about a God who restores broken relationships, as he teaches us to forgive one another, just as God in Christ forgave us.
But when we celebrate Harvest, we mark a God who also longs to restore his creation. He put things back together after the Flood, and I therefore believe he also wants to see the healing of creation in our day.
That’s why denominations and church leaders increasingly say that creation care is a Christian duty. We don’t do this out of fear that the world is about to burn, as many do, but out of trust in a God whose desire is to restore. It is an urgent task, but Christians can be hopeful about it.
Those decisions we make when shopping for small things or when considering large purchases like what kind of car we will buy are not just private financial matters. They are questions of discipleship. Do we truly believe in a God whose desire is to restore creation?
It is also our Christian duty to call out those who are banging the drum for policies that will blatantly damage God’s good creation. This week, we have witnessed what one environmental expert dubbed ‘The stupidest speech in UN history’. I am, of course, talking about President Trump’s address, where he falsely claimed that clean energy sources don’t work and are too expensive, and advocated a return to coal (or ‘clean, beautiful coal’ as he has mandated it be called in the White House) and North Sea oil.
Now you may so there is little chance of Mr Trump taking heed, and sadly I think that is right. But it is still our responsibility to declare God’s truth. That way, he – and his acolytes in this country and around the world – will be without excuse on the Day of Judgment.
For most of us, though, we won’t be operating in the political sphere. It will be about standing up for truth when friends pass on misinformation on social media or from extreme political parties.
Finally, there’s a third element I want to bring into this, and it requires us to interpret Genesis in the light of the New Testament.
I want to pick up on the words, ‘As long as the earth endures.’ The Old Testament doesn’t have much to say about the life of the world to come. There are a few glimpses, but for most of what the Bible says about that, we have to go to the New Testament.
The New Testament talks about the destruction of the earth in 2 Peter 3, which is what environmentalists worry about, and which climate-sceptic Christians take as a reason not to worry about the earth’s future.
But what both miss is the greater promise of the New Testament that God is making all things new, that there will be a new creation, with new heavens and a new earth. God is the God of resurrection, and resurrection is bodily and material. Our eternal destiny is not to be disembodied spirits, but to be raised with a new body, just as Jesus was.
And therefore, our eternal home is also physical and material. Could it be that there will be harvests too in the life to come? I don’t see why not. John’s vision of the New Jerusalem in Revelation includes trees, and while Revelation is more symbolic than literal, it indicates to me a physical place.
What does that mean for us now? Given that, as Paul tells us, our ‘labour in the Lord is not in vain’ (1 Corinthians 15:58), can we assume that God takes what we do for his kingdom in this world and mysteriously builds it into his coming kingdom? Can it be that nothing we do for God’s creation is ever in vain?
If so, then this reinforces why as Christians we approach harvest and creation with a sense of hope. Yes, there are serious and dangerous issues to face in the world. Harvests do not always happen at their proper time. They do not always yield all that we need. And much of this is down to the way the human race has damaged the planet.
Let us not lose heart when we see the dreadful effects of climate change on our world, with its extreme temperatures, storms, and shortages. It’s not a case of just piously saying, everything is going to be all right and abdicating our responsibility, we still need to take these things seriously and act appropriately. But when we do so, and when we do so in faith that God in Jesus is making all things new, we know that we contribute will count, because God will make it so.
When we make that lifestyle change – it’s worth it. When we raise funds for people suffering in the developing world – it’s worth it. When we write to our MP about government policy – it’s worth it. When we refuse to be taken in by the conspiracy theories our friends are spreading – it’s worth it.
I invite you to ask yourself a question that I see posed in a Christian Facebook group every Friday: what have you been working on this week to help make the world a little more beautiful?
Isn’t that a fitting thing to do? After all, we have a trustworthy God who has made a good creation. He is worthy of our praise, both in gathered worship and in making what is good in the world ourselves.
Not only that, but our God is also a God who restores what is broken, and therefore we can sing his praise for his restoring work and show it by the beauty we create in the world.
And finally, he is a God whose restoring work extends into the life to come, and so it is worthwhile praising him now in anticipation of that new world, and in crafting things that are valuable and praiseworthy.
Let us rejoice in the harvest and build for God’s kingdom.
Big Circumstance 