COUNTRYSIDE ENCOUNTERS
As I drive between places and parishes I frequently encounter tractors and trailers and usually these days they’re being piloted by younger farm workers. Piloted is I hope the right word because ‘driven’ suggests pushing your way through, but often our younger people are having to thread big rigs through narrow lanes past often uncomprehending and even hostile drivers. I’ve never yet seen one of them mouth insults or look and sound angry. Those who are hostile are one group of people who have entered into another’s world, that of the farm business and agriculture.

Our annual Harvest thanksgiving must surely encompass the whole context of our gratitude for the food we need: the people who produce it, the way they live and work, the product itself of course and also our acknowledgement that we all belong to each other, even when we might not quite understand another’s way of life.

HOW WE ENGAGE WITH EACH OTHER
Perhaps a consequence of the recent pandemic and the societal pressures that have come to the fore as a result is the creation of ever more clearly defined silos within even geographically small areas: the old versus the young, the well and motivated against the exhausted and ill, city versus rural, the incomers versus the established groups.

We each enter another’s world when we choose to engage rather than confront. I wonder if we ever ask what the tone of Christ’s address was. Did he speak quietly and did his audience have to engage intently to hear? Sometimes the gospel writers give us a clue although not in today’s reading, though we read later in this chapter of John’s Gospel that many ‘no longer walked with him’, so perhaps they were taking the trouble to listen. Yet once challenged, many rejected Jesus. They had little interest in entering into the world that the One through whom the world had been created, was pointing them towards.

OUR DISTANCE FROM THE GROWING OF THE FOOD WE EAT
Few these days engage in agriculture yet all consume its produce. Our act of Harvest thanksgiving is the start of a journey into a world many of us are unfamiliar with. Yet the touching of the unfamiliar, if embraced, perhaps prompts us just enough to accept that if we want to find what really matters in our lives, some things will have to shift.

The challenge Jesus offered to his hearers 2000 years ago did not come from a place of power or from wanting to score points, but out of love. Jesus offers this journey into others’ lives, to see things from another’s point of view, because he loves us; he wants to meet us there.

Consider our reading once again. Jesus was not trying to be confrontational even though many of those present plainly felt deeply offended. Jesus knows that human wisdom and intellect aren’t enough to see the changes in each of us that our world needs. Even as many of his hearers were slipping away, he asks his own disciples if they are going as well. Their answer is so telling because it shows they didn’t understand what he had been saying either, but only knew Jesus loved them. They were prepared to put their own understanding to one side for the prize of knowing Jesus and seeing Him in each other. This is indeed the challenge to us as well: are we prepared to depend on God and his wisdom, to share our life with others, rather than our own point of view?

SEEING JESUS IN EACH OTHER
Today as much as culture seems to want to drive us apart, we are more dependent than ever on each other, not least on those in agriculture for our food. Our Harvest celebration is truly about our togetherness: we are, no matter our differences and various ways of life, called to see Christ in each other, to ‘burn our bridges’ for each other: those who eat the food, those who grow our food, and those to whom we give food if they can’t provide for themselves. Harvest presents a ripe opportunity to step away from the familiar to encounter those living lives different to ours. Perhaps as we move to engage with each other we will in our increased openness and vulnerability, meet Jesus on our journey.