Celebrating Harvest and Remembering Famine

Harvest Sunday was celebrated in early October this year; were it not for the unseasonably warm fall temperatures, we might have had to buy imported vegetables to decorate the church. Instead, though, most of the women brought a sack of goods from their gardens (the last of this year's harvest – the rest having been either consumed, canned, or stored away) to bring color and to share with one another.

Harvest Sunday has always been a day when I've taken the opportunity to talk about the bounty of creation, about the wide variety of reasons we have for giving thanks, and about the importance of the stewardship of that which we have been given.

This year, though, the sermon text¹ for the day pushed me in another direction. The reading, from the prophet Isaiah, started like this:

Share your food with the hungry and open your homes to the homeless poor. Give clothes to those who have nothing to wear, and do not refuse to help your own relatives.²

On the one hand, this text speaks clearly to the people in the congregation, since they are all too familiar with most of the the social ills that were facing the chosen people at the time of their return from Babylonian exile. On the other hand, what was I to say to the congregation when they themselves have very few resources? Could I really encourage them toward more generosity when, in fact, this particular congregation shows an already impressive level of stewardship when compared with other congregations in our church?

Yet, the text kept challenging me:

If you put an end to oppression, to every gesture of contempt, and to every evil word; if you give food to the hungry and satisfy those who are in need, then the darkness around you will turn to the brightness of noon. And I will always guide you and satisfy you with good things. I will keep you strong and well. You will be like a garden that has plenty of water, like a spring of water that never goes dry.³

And so, I tried to use the opportunity to counter the popularly held notion here that “no good deed goes unpunished,” and I asked those gathered to think realistically about the ways they could extend their care to those around them, to apply their faith in a practical manner to the problems of society.

I used an example that my son, Matvey, suggested. Last year as we traveled around St. Petersburg, he would ask me about the people we would see sleeping on the street or begging for money. He wanted to help them, and we discussed how we might do that. Giving money might not be the best thing, I said, since those who beg here are frequently not allowed to keep the money themselves, but are instead being misused by others. Matvey thought that it might be a good idea to give them food instead, and our experience was that he was right. Instead of taking one apple or pastry with us when we left home, then, we'd take two – one for Matvey and the other for someone begging on the street. I thought that we could do the same thing in the congregation that day – we'd share the fruits on the table with one another, but we'd also take some as we left church – we would distribute it to those in need that we'd meet on the way home (and since all of us take public transport, all of us would see the needy).

I left a bag of fruit out in the prayer house courtyard, then, for folks to take. I didn't know how they would respond, though, until I saw that all the fruit was gone even before everyone had left.

I was surprised and happy that the experiment had worked out so well. Yet, as frequently happens here, I found that there was more to the story.

I got a hint of that on my way back home. On the bus I stood next to one of the older (yet also one of the feistier) members of the congregation, Sister Valentina. She told me that Harvest festival was always important to her, since she knew what it was like to go hungry. She had very vivid memories of that day in the fall of 1941 when, as a little girl of 7, her family was told that they would have 2 hours to pack, that they would were being deported. Valentina was the oldest of 4 children, and her efforts were key to the family's survival in the next years, especially since her father was exiled to another, still harsher climate than the Siberian steppe that was home for Valentina, her mom and siblings. She told me that she never learned to read because she was immediately engaged in helping to feed the family. At that age, that meant searching for whatever might be edible - berries, mushrooms, roots. No less important was going through the fields after harvest time, giving her a personal understanding of the Old Testament's command that “when you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings.”⁴

As a result of the deportation from the Volga River region in 1941, 200,000-300,000 German Russians met their deaths. Valentina, despite the suffering she has gone through, survived and helped others to survive. With many similar stories among the elderly women in the congregation, it is no surprise that they are willing to feed the hungry, having once been hungry themselves.

Can a small, poor, and mostly elderly congregation solve Russia's social problems? Certainly not. But I pray that God will give us year-round the thankful and generous hearts he gave us at Harvest, so that we might know the joy of having a connection between our faith and our living, and that we might feel that we truly are “like a garden that has plenty of water, like a spring of water that never goes dry.”

1 The lectionary here is based on a German system; there are two readings (one Gospel and the other from elsewhere in Scripture) for every Sunday in addition to a sermon text. While the two readings remain the same from year to year, the sermon texts are based on a 6 year cycle. I must admit that in my years here I've really missed our Revised Common Lectionary for a number of reasons: 1. there is always both and OT and a NT reading 2. there is flexibility when it comes to choosing which of the 3 texts works best for the sermon on a given Sunday (meaning I can't even wiggle out of preaching on Lamentations this coming Sunday!). 3. there is such a wealth of resources for those using the RCL for preaching. 

2 Isa. 58.7. Good News translation; used here since in this case the text most closely parallels the Russian translation.

3 Isa. 58.9b-11. GNT.

4 Deut. 24.19 NRSV.