As a child, I was awakened to the beauties of nature by walks in the Yorkshire Dales. Later I discovered that I had literally been following in the footsteps of an important philosopher and theologian, William Paley. Paley’s father was the headmaster of a Yorkshire grammar school in the middle years of the 18th century.
Paley’s best-known argument for the existence of God begins with him inviting us to imagine walking across the moors and stumbling upon a watch. Surely, he argues, the complexity of the watch and its ability to tell the time accurately are convincing evidence of the existence of a watchmaker. In the same way, the complexity of the natural world cannot be the result of chance. Rather it points to the existence of a creator, to the existence of God. Even the young Charles Darwin was impressed by this line of argument, though he later famously abandoned it.
The watchmaker analogy makes me uneasy because it might encourage us to think of the universe as a mechanism, and of God as a mechanic who sets the whole thing in motion and then steps back. Such a view of God isn’t Christian and doesn’t offer the right grounds for today’s Harvest Festival celebrations.
Our reading from the prophet Joel suggests that we are part of a creation that is abundant and generous and is an expression of the love of God. The prophet celebrates this in fine, poetic style.
O children of Zion, be glad
and rejoice in the LORD your God;
for he has given the early rain for your vindication,
he has poured down for you abundant rain,
the early and the later rain, as before.
The threshing floors shall be full of grain,
the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.
And there’s a verse which rang a particular bell with me, partly because it challenges the belief that nature is a mechanism, and partly because it points to some important trends in philosophy and theology.
Do not fear, O soil;
be glad and rejoice,
for the LORD has done great things!
But surely, you’re thinking, soil isn’t capable of rejoicing, soil doesn’t feel emotion. That’s just poetic fancy.
That’s what the mechanistic, materialist view of creation has for a couple of centuries taught that we should think, but now some philosophers such are suggesting that every particle of matter contains a minute amount of consciousness and purpose and some theologians are reminding us of an ancient Christian tradition, most fully preserved in the Orthodox Church, of viewing the whole of creation as charged with the presence of God and therefore with the love of God. From that perspective, everything is sacred and so everyone is sacred too.
This notion of Creation as a living thing, every particle of which is charged with the presence and the love of God, brings with it three important vocations which we are called to follow.
The first is a vocation to celebration and gratitude, to the thankful rejoicing of which Joel speaks.
Rejoice in the Lord your God
And our harvest hymns strike that note of gratitude:
All good gifts around us
are sent from heaven above;
then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord
for all his love.
The second is a vocation to trust, and this is emphasised by Jesus in today’s Gospel.
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
And the basis of our trust is the fundamental goodness and fruitfulness of a creation which is alive and has the capacity to be self-sustaining.
Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Jesus is telling his disciples and us to trust in God, but he isn’t inviting us passively to accept God’s creative love and generosity. Trust has, of course, more than one meaning.
We can trust in God’s creation to sustain us but we also hold that creation in trust. The Creation story in Genesis makes that clear:
The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.
We are called to be active users of creation – to till it – but also to look after it, to keep it, to conserve it. So our third vocation is a vocation to stewardship. If, as some philosophers and theologians are now suggesting, the whole of creation is in some sense conscious, purposive and divine, then looking after it isn’t just a matter of self-preservation. Rather, we are called to look after the natural world just as we are called to care for one another, a calling to which you have responded today by your gifts to the foodbank run by St Salvador’s.
This vocation to the stewardship of creation may involve us in some careful thinking about our lifestyles. Today’s Epistle encourages us to be content with food and clothing and a part of what Timothy writes has a distinct and disturbing contemporary ring to it:
But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.
That reminds us of the uncomfortable but important truth that our levels of energy use and consumption are creating problems for people much poorer than ourselves as temperatures and sea levels rise and weather becomes more extreme. It’s not the place of a preacher to make concrete suggestions as to how individuals should respond to the calling to stewardship, for we all have different needs and challenges. That we have a vocation to the stewardship of creation is an important part of our Christian faith.
So this Harvest Festival is an opportunity to reflect on the three vocations to which the overflowing love and generosity of the Creator calls us. We are called to celebrate and be grateful. We are called to trust in God and we are called to care for a creation shot through with that overflowing love and generosity.