READING: Psalm 65: 1-2; 9-13
Lammas, which actually falls on 1st August, is the oldest Christian festival, at least in England, which gives thanks for the harvest. It dates from Anglo-Saxon times and was celebrated through the Middle Ages, until it fell out of favour at the Reformation. Although the secular festivities of Harvest Home continued, it was not until the 19th century that Harvest Festival services were introduced in churches, and not until well on in the 20th that the celebration of Lammas reappeared. But Psalm 65, with its hymn of praise and thanksgiving for the beauty and bounty of the earth, shows that a profound spiritual appreciation of nature and of human husbandry in harmony with it, have been fundamental to our faith traditions for thousands of years. Psalm 65 reminds us of our dependence on the natural cycle and on the human skill and labour necessary to harvest its riches, along with the need to celebrate its beauty in worship and praise. In this way we preserve our humility and counter the selfish arrogance which exploits and destroys the earth, and spells disaster for our own future and that of our successors on this miracle planet. The Psalm is a human response to what makes our life on earth possible, but it also says that the earth itself celebrates its own abundance so that, with “shouts of joy,” hills “wreathed in happiness” and “valleys decked with grain”, “break into song.”
READING: Exodus 23: 10-15a, 16-17
Within the Old Testament’s books of the Law, we find instructions about how and when the bounty of the land is to be celebrated. Here we find the scriptural foundation for Lammas as thanksgiving for the first-fruits of the harvest: “You are to celebrate the pilgrim feast of Harvest with the first-fruits of your work in sowing the land.” In Anglo-Saxon England loaves made with the first grain to be harvested was brought to church for Lammas-tide celebration and thanksgiving. But besides stipulating the religious practices associated with the agricultural cycle, the books of the Law also contain instructions relating to ethical matters. Some of these, it must be said, read strangely and unacceptably today, but others – even if they don’t seem relevant to us in their details – uphold principles that are universal and timeless. For example, the stipulation to let land lie fallow every seventh year is not only intended to preserve its fertility, it is also includes issues of justice and care for the natural world. Although not cultivated, that fallow land will still bear fruit, of which the Law states: “Let it provide food for the poor of your people, and what they leave the wild animals may eat.” Other stipulations require times of rest, not only for labourers, but also for farm animals, beasts of burden. The introduction of such concerns combined ethics with good sense – and as such were seen as the instructions of a God who, as the prophet Hosea tells us, “will come to us like rain, like spring rains that water the earth”, a God who requires “loyalty not sacrifice” – commitment to the author of bounty and justice rather than to mere empty ritual. This is the God of ancient Israel, belief in whom foreshadowed the ethical monotheism of Judaism and Christianity. But ethical monotheism was by no means the only version of religion in the ancient world.
READING: Virgil, ‘The Georgics’, Book One, lines 338-350 (pp. 67-68)
On the face of it, at least, most religion in the ancient world, other than Judaism, was polytheistic, and this was true of Roman religion until the 4th century, at least. And the diverse and multi-faceted religious environment of the Roman Empire, provided the backdrop for the rise of the Christianity which eventually replaced it. Today we often call this amalgam of beliefs and practices “paganism”, but this is a woefully vague and inaccurate catch-all term which actually tells us very little, other than that it was neither Judaism nor Christianity. But Roman religion was generally more concerned with gaining the favour of the gods for some personal benefit than with ethics. Proper respect for the gods of the natural world was very much part of this, although this didn’t necessarily translate into what we would regard as respect for the natural world itself! However, the Roman poet Virgil gives us a picture, in his poem, ‘The Georgics’ of how religion, nature and agriculture were intertwined in belief and practice. At the heart of the poem, and presumably of Virgil’s own beliefs, was the goddess Ceres, from whom we get the word ‘cereal’. An important member of the Roman pantheon, she was responsible for growth and agriculture – the head of a ‘department’ of deities who shared her duties. Thus Virgil writes,
“Above all, worship the gods, and to great Ceres
Pay yearly ritual after sacrifice
On the pleasant grass, when winter is vanishing
At last…”
He describes the required ritual, when the animal that is to be sacrificed is led around the young crops. “escorted by the band of celebrants” . And no-one is to “put the sickle to the ripened corn” come harvest time before all the required rituals in honour of Ceres have been completed. Performing the correct rituals to please the goddess is what is required to bring success, and ethical concerns are not mentioned. Later in the poem (in Book 2), Virgil describes what success means:
“The seasons teem with fruits, the young of flocks,
Or sheaves of Ceres’ corn; they load the furrows
And burst the barns with produce.”
Interestingly, although Virgil talks about “the gods” and praises Ceres, one of the most important of them, later (in Book 4) he strikes a different note with a distinctly monotheistic tone, reflecting the influence of Stoic philosophy. He writes (in Book 4), long before the coming of Christianity,
“For God, they say, pervades the whole creation,
Lands and the sea’s expanse and the depths of the sky.
Thence flocks and herds and men and all the beasts
Of the wild derive, each in his hour of birth,
The subtle breath of life…”
But for another perspective on both Roman polytheism and its application to agriculture I turn to one of the most influential of Christian theologians, namely St. Augustine of Hippo. He lived in the latter days of the western Roman Empire, by which time it was officially Christian. A prolific author, perhaps his greatest work was his ‘City of God’, written early in the 5th century.
READING: St. Augustine of Hippo, ‘City of God’, from, Book IV, chapter 9.
Augustine was a great scholar and his account of the multifarious Roman deities responsible for agriculture is no doubt based on accurate knowledge. He was hardly impartial, though, and his purpose was to point out the absurdities of late Roman polytheism, which he did very effectively, and to further the cause of what he called “the one true God”. Augustine did not actually deny the existence of the ‘pagan’ gods but he said they were ‘demons’. He believed the creation to be the work of God alone and thus essentially good, but it had been blighted by beings who had rebelled against God, including the first human beings. But that way lies much theology and I won’t get into all that now! Of God and the created order Augustine wrote:
“He has given, to good men and bad alike, the existence they share with stones; he has given man reproductive life which he shares with plants; the life of the senses, which he shares with animals, and the life of the intellect, shared only with angels. From him derives every mode of being… He is the source of all that exists in nature, whatever its kind, whatever its value, and of the seeds of forms, and the forms of seeds, and the motions of seeds and forms.”
The creation is wholly God’s work and so reflects his goodness. The only problem, for Augustine, is humanity, “the kingdoms of men, their dominations and their servitudes”.
READING: ‘The Letters of Pelagius: Celtic Soul Friend’, no. 71, ‘To an elderly friend’.
The British theologian, Pelagius, was a contemporary of Augustine, but had a very different approach, and this was reflected in several ways, not least in his view of nature: this is not just God’s creation; it is pervaded by the Spirit of God at every level and in every thing. And he included in this “even your crops”, which adds a further and more profound dimension to harvest: God’s Spirit is in the things we grow, the food we eat, meaning we should treat them with reverence and eat them as a sacrament. And we should share them and distribute them with love and with generosity, with justice and respect. For anyone to go hungry through the effects of so-called natural disasters is a tragedy, but for people to go hungry, to starve to death because of war and malice is unforgivable. “There is no creature on earth in whom God is absent”, wrote Pelagius,
READING: Mark 2: 23-27
The story of Jesus and his disciples walking through cornfields at harvest time, when the ears of corn are ripe, is an important one. What it says is that the harvest is for the people who need it regardless of any rules and regulations, however sanctified, which might prevent them from accessing it. And the saying added to the story expands the idea: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” The message is clear: religion and its doctrines and customs are there to serve human beings in their need, not to rule them, oppress them, or to stand in the way of justice, mercy and love. In our own time, as in the time of Jesus, religion is too often turned to evil, hardening hearts, promoting terrorism and war, standing in the way of compassion, and reducing faith to narrow-minded bigotry. In a world where we see needless suffering and deprivation, where children starve in the arms of their desperate and hungry parents, where cruel and arrogant men unleash violence and war on the neighbours they are called to love – in such a world the message of all communities of true faith, must be that of Jesus at harvest time: religion was made for man, not man for religion.
Cliff Reed
30th July 2025 (CMR300725)
Ipswich Unitarian Meeting House 