Harvest Thanksgiving - Sunday 18th October 2020

Harvest Thanksgiving

Sunday 18th October 2020

BURTON JOYCE COMMUNITY CHURCH

A short service for use at home 

Sunday 18th October 2020 

Prepared for Burton Joyce Community Church by Phil Colbourn. 

Prayers adapted from the Trussell Trust. 

Spend a short time with God as we share together this time of worship.

WELCOME: it’s our HARVEST THANKSGIVING!

Churches in the village celebrate harvest this Sunday. As Churches Together, we encourage you to mark it with banners, flags, bunting etc. all around the village. Make yourself your own harvest table at home with fruit, flowers, vegetables, agricultural & wild, and then perhaps photograph it and post the photo online.

We begin with a familiar harvest hymn

HYMN: Songs of Fellowship 585. 

We plough the fields and scatter

PRAYER AND PRAISE

Loving God, we praise & thank you for the many ways in which you provide for us: food, family, friendship, housing, health, happiness and ways to use time & talents. We lift to you the ways in which we remain in need of these things. 

God of generosity: May your kingdom come. 

CONFESSION

We lament the suffering in our society at this time: people losing loved ones, health, jobs, & businesses; families struggling to make ends meet. 

Forgive.

We mourn injustices & inequalities, made evident by the pandemic, with which communities & individuals have been burdened for many years. 

Father, forgive.

HYMN: (JMC Crum, 1928)

Hymns & Psalms; Singing the Faith; Rejoice & Sing

Now the green blade rises from the buried grain,
Wheat that in the dark earth many years has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

In the grave they laid Him, Love Whom we had slain,
Thinking that He’d never wake to life again,
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

Up He sprang at Easter, like the risen grain,
He that for three days in the grave had lain;
Up from the dead my risen Lord is seen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

When our hearts are saddened, grieving or in pain,
By Your touch You call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

READING: DEUTERONOMY 16, 9-17 

Festival

REFLECTION: 

By Your touch You call us back to life again

Harvest is about gratitude. 

Harvest is about food & drink. 

Harvest is about the planet. 

Harvest Thanksgiving is traditionally a time for people to come together to celebrate everything the good earth has given. It is not in fact about thanking farmers although, of course, we are grateful to everyone who works to put food on our tables. 

Traditionally, it is the farmers who are giving thanks, grateful and perhaps relieved that the crops have grown and that the fruit of their labours is now safely stored away for the winter.

Harvest is about being grateful for what we have received, what we can now enjoy and what we hope to be able to draw on throughout the coming months. It is the good earth that has provided. It is all gift. 

Like rain, food is a free good. Yes, we do pay to have it delivered, it is not without cost, but all food and drink contains, & is mostly, free gift. Air, sun, soil, rain & photosynthesis are all given. We forget this at our peril but we do forget. 

This is a time to pause and take a breath and remember. 

Our economic systems encourage us to destroy and abuse the natural world, and the atmosphere, but this has to stop. Now.

As Christians we thank God for this good earth, for a harvest safely gathered in. It is a miracle of grace. Everything we have is God’s gift. 

Be thankful.

HYMN: Songs of Fellowship 1234. 

For the fruits of his creation

INTERCESSORY PRAYERS 

We pray for people in our community & beyond who face unemployment, ill-health, isolation & money worries, especially those unable to afford enough to eat. We pray for supportive relationships, practical provision and real hope. 

God of compassion: May your kingdom come.

We say The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father …

HYMN: Songs of Fellowship 75. 

Come, ye thankful people, come

CLOSING PRAYERS 

May the blessing of God, Father, Son & Holy Spirit, who gives good without reserve to all, be with us & those we love, now, today and for ever. Amen.