Philippians 4.4-9 Harvest 2025
It’s obvious isn’t it? The reason we are given the reading from Philippians chapter 4 on this Harvest Festival morning is the word ‘thanksgiving’ that appears in verse 6. Harvest Festival = thanksgiving: job done! ‘Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God’. So we gather week by week to do just that: our Harvest thanksgiving adds a particular flavour to something we do every week: we give thanks. End of sermon: but you are crying out for more…I can tell.
Thanksgiving is important. I’m put in mind of the song school at Hereford Cathedral ‘back in the day’ when I was a chorister. A grand piano positioned between the two lines of choristers, box files with music in them lining the walls, leaded glass in the windows along one side of the room and up above the door on the way out into the cloisters an old framed sign with the motto ‘Manners maketh Man’ – a quote (AI tells me) from William of Wykeham, the founder of New College Oxford. Saying thankyou is simply part of being well mannered: it’s part of being human. The ability to put thanks into speech is part of our priestly calling as those made in the image of God. We can voice our thanks and praise: the rest of creation cannot. Parents and grandparents try to inculcate thankfulness into their children and grandchildren: our ps and qs are important. ‘Say thankyou’ mum says to her toddler. At school, teachers take up the work; ‘what do we say to our visitors this morning?’ ‘Thankyou’ chant the class in response.
The Chief Rabbi Jonanthan Saks wrote of how we was once asked to say grace at a reception in No 10, Downing Street. He had been given due notice, had agreed to do so and then, as the assembled dignitaries waited upon his prayer of thanks he realised that there was actually no food in the room. This was a problem for him. ‘Christians give thanks in hope’ he later joked (‘For what we are about to receive’) ‘but years of experience for Jews has taught us to give thanks only for what we actually ‘have’ received.’ In his tradition He could only pray if he actually had some food in front of him. As he paused disaster was averted by him spotting a gold ornament in the middle of the dining table that had been dressed with a bunch of grapes. And so his prayer included giving thanks for grapes and ended with him popping one in his mouth.
When you think about it the opposite of thankfulness is being unthankful, being ungrateful. ‘Ingratitude’ is distressing, it is insulting to the giver. When you come up against ingratitude it is unpleasant. Perhaps you can think of times when your gift has been unappreciated, overlooked: it’s not a great feeling is it? Scale that feeling up to how we relate to the Almighty and He could very well feel aggrieved at our collective failure to be grateful for His loving kindness and generosity. But here, in the life of the church we can assume too much, we can take one another for granted and forget that a ‘thankyou’ goes a long way. I know I am guilty of this: I am sorry. Gratitude must be learned and practiced to become second nature. ‘Second nature’ gives the game away in that sentence: it is not automatic, it has to be taught.
I heard of an exercise where, to challenge someone’s negative thinking, a counsellor presented their client with a sheet of white paper. It was blank other than for a small pencil mark towards the bottom of the page. ‘What do you see?’’ asked the counsellor. ‘A black mark’ came the response. That exchange opened up for them a conversation about the human tendency to see fault, to focus on what is wrong, rather than to see what is positive or good. We’ve now had over 100 years of ad men and women telling us that we’re not eating the right food (if you only bought this your gut would be better), we’re not driving the right car, we don’t wear the right clothes, our detergent doesn’t wash clean enough, our cleaning products don’t kill enough germs and, if we only drank the right coffee out of the right coffee pods we would be up for marrying the most handsome of men or marrying the most beautiful of women. (Kim is away!)
Despite being amongst the wealthiest people in the world we have convinced ourselves that we don’t have enough. ‘If only we had this…if only we had that…?’, all would be so much better. And we don’t just complain about ‘stuff’: we focus on the lack in ourselves and in others. What we don’t have in terms of gifts and ability rather than what we do. We pray ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ but we don’t want bread – we want cream cake, and we don’t want just enough for today we want a store-load of it: we want more than enough, just in case. How have we allowed this to happen? What an ungrateful bunch we are! As we pray for daily bread we are meant to be reminded of the people of God in the wilderness who asked God for food and then complained when he gave them the brad of heaven, manna from above. ‘What is this?’ they moaned. And when they realised this was all that was on offer they tried to stash it away – only to find that God’s gifts, unused, go to waste.
Take those thoughts and apply them to what you have in your cupboards. Take those thoughts and apply them to the gifts we have here in church – yes, the harvest offerings and flowers – but also the gifts of loving and caring, of good neighbourliness and kindness. Gifts offered through music making or banking the collection and accounting for the church’s money; gifts unseen that clean this place and ensure that it is safe for us all. Indeed, were I to ask you simply to look around you, you would find so many gifts sat alongside you: a friendly face, a faithful example, a wise counsellor, a smile that is infectious. The apostle Paul tells us to ‘be thankful.’
Gratitude and thanksgiving require us to step back and look again to recognise a ‘giver’, someone to thank, and this asks us to see the world differently, to look out for the presence of God in and through all things, in and through all people. As with any other habit, once we start it’s hard to stop: there is so much for which we can give thanks. Creation is full of God’s glory, overflowing with generosity and life. How many seeds are there in an apple or a tomato? How many people can be fed from a field of corn? There is a superabundance in God’s world: more than enough. How many people’s skills and abilities have put the food on my table today? That person on the other side of church – did you know that they have raised thousands of pounds for charity? That lady (whose name I don’t know): she has held her family together against the odds. That young man winds the church clock. That young woman holds down a challenging job with some of the community’s most troubled folk. All around us people give. Our giving reflects the nature of the great Giver. Time and energy, skills hard won – they are all part of a movement of generosity for which we can give thanks.
Stepping back and recognising that God has offered Himself to us through His creation, through His presence in the people around us puts us in a right relationship with Him. If the whole world revolves around me and my needs to whom do I give thanks? To those who have served me or my community, I would hope so. But sending our thanksgiving heavenward is a recognition of our creatureliness and dependence and it is a recognition of His loving kindness and care. Sometimes we may feel overwhelming gratitude: o these occasions it is perhaps easy to pray. But most of the time we are distracted, forgetful, less grateful than we might be. Using other people’s words helps – just as we do today. A psalm a hymn, a prayer from a book are better than dumb ungrateful silence. Week in and week out they discipline our thoughts and focus our praise, they shape our responses so that the muscle memory of our souls can learn gratitude. So hear again the old, old words
He only is the maker of all things near and far…All good gifts around us are sent from heaven above, so thank the Lord, thank the Lord for all His love.