Equinox

 

A Homily for Harvest Home

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Oh, what a catastrophe for man when he cut himself off from the rhythm of the year, from his unison with the sun and the earth. Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and setting of the sun and cut off from the magic connection of solstice and the equinox!

This is what is the matter with us. We are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.

—D.H. Lawrence

The festival of Harvest Home marks the Church’s celebration of the autumnal equinox, when day and night, light and dark, stand in perfect balance, an elegant symmetry.

Growing up amongst the Pennsylvania Germans, this was the time of year when folks would bring in samples from field and garden alike, often the results of their jarring and canning, preparing their cellars for the long winter ahead. We would pile up a table in the narthex with such gifts—with ears of corn and jars of salsa, fruit preserves and berry jams—as a sort of thank-offering to the Lord, to be blessed and brought back home for the nourishment of body and soul.

If Lammas marks the firstfruits of the field for our daily bread in August, Harvest Home represents the full yield of the earth, the bounty and the beauty of Creation. In earlier generations this would be the moment of truth, when it became clear whether or not a given family would have sufficient supplies to make it through to spring. Either way, for praise or for protection, prayer would be most earnestly invoked.

The harvest is also a metaphor, of course, used by Christ Himself, for our final homecoming at the end of the age, when God shall send out angels as His reapers, gathering the good fruit into His granary, and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

It is an image of judgment, yes, but more than that it is the sure promise of our future hope. Nothing good is ever truly lost in God. And nothing evil will endure to plague us beyond its limited scope here below. Sin, death, hell—cancer, pandemic, war—mourning and grieving and wounding and loss, all shall pass away, all shall be consumed in the furnace of God’s love and evaporate as smoke upon the breeze, like a bonfire on a crisp, cool autumn night.

The harvest was important to our Israelite forebears as well. Indeed, not one but three of the holidays attested in the Old Covenant are harvest festivals: Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot; also known as Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. And these correspond to the Israelite harvests of barley, wheat, and grapes.

Of course, some crops are easier to harvest than others. To prepare barley, one has merely to toss it up into the air and the wind itself shall winnow the grain, gently blowing away the shell to reveal the kernel within. Wheat proves a bit more troublesome, as it must first be threshed—beaten with a rod—to crack the stubborn shell and save the seed inside. And then grapes, well, grapes must be smashed and stamped and tread upon to crush out the wine within.

This too is an image of salvation. Christ is the firstfruits of our harvest, lifted high by the Holy Spirit, that our sins might simply sublimate away, evaporating upon the breeze like the chaff from off the barley. He is Himself our foretaste of the feast to come; His Resurrection promises our own.

Wheat, however, must first be broken by the rod, shattered in our pride, leavened with the Holy Spirit and passed through the furnace of affliction before we too may rise. And the grapes must be utterly crushed, utterly bled, utterly squashed flat before they give up at the last the rich, dark sweetness of their wine. Yet this final stubborn offering may prove the sweetest of them all.

The point of this little parable is that all three—barley, wheat, and grapes—ultimately find themselves brought unto the table, with a place of honor at the feast: some gently, some through struggle, some by death and resurrection. God does not force His salvation upon us, but neither shall His will for us be denied. He will never abandon us to these hells of our own making. He will outlast us; He will outlive us; He will outlove us.

This world was made in love, and is remade in love again. Finally, all are brought unto the wedding feast of God. Finally, all may celebrate the blessed Harvest Home.

Until that day, my brothers and sisters, we must live ever in thanksgiving, rejoicing in the bounties of the earth, marveling at the symmetries of the heavens, welcoming the seasons as they come—light and dark, night and day, death and resurrection—knowing that we are called to live as Christ to one another, trusting in God’s own will to gather all His harvest home.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.