Look Again: Living in God’s Abundance
Deuteronomy 8:7-18 NRSVA Luke 12:16-30 NRSVA
I love this time of year, as summer slowly gives way to autumn.
Harvest Sunday always takes me back to the harvest festivals of my childhood.
Back in the day then, my family, like many families in those post-war years, kept an allotment.
Throughout the spring and summer, we planted various fruit and vegetables.
When the school Harvest Festival came round, my mother would choose some of the best produce, often including the largest marrow, for us children to take to the service.
It wasn’t abundance in the modern sense, and we were just the average 1950s family with only basic means.
But the crop was ours, and we gave a portion as a gift to those with less than we had, as we had been asked to.
But looking back, I realise something important.
What we took to school was not simply home-grown fruit and vegetables.
It was a sign that God had been providing for us.
Not extravagantly or abundantly by modern-day standards. But sufficiently.
And Harvest invites us to pause and notice that kind of provision.
To look again at our lives and recognise what is already there.
Because one of the greatest temptations of human nature is to focus not on what we have, but on what we think we lack.
And that is precisely what lies behind the readings in Deuteronomy and St Luke.
The Danger of Forgetting
In Deuteronomy, Moses speaks to the people of Israel just before they enter the Promised Land.
For many years, they had wandered through the wilderness.
Now they stood on the threshold of a rich and fertile country.
Moses describes it almost like an advertisement for the wonders of harvest.
A land of streams and springs.
Of wheat and barley.
Vines and fig trees.
Olives and honey.
A land where they will lack nothing.
But then Moses gives them a warning.
When they have settled into this abundance, when their houses are built, and their lives are comfortable, they must not forget where it all came from.
They must not start saying:
“My power and the might of my own hand have gained me this wealth”
In other words, they must not mistake God’s gifts for their own achievement.
They must not allow prosperity to blind them to their dependence upon God.
Because Moses understood how gratitude can easily fade.
When we become accustomed to our blessings, what once felt like a gift can start to feel like an entitlement.
And before long, we can stop noticing it altogether.
The Rich Man Who Thought He Needed More
That same danger appears in Jesus’ parable of the rich fool.
A farmer enjoyed an exceptionally good harvest.
So successful, in fact, that he ran out of room to store it all.
This sounds a bit like a modern-day success story. A man whose hard work has finally paid off.
But Jesus invites us to listen carefully to the conversation taking place inside the man’s head.
Notice how many times he says my.
“My barns.”
“My goods.”
There is no gratitude. and no acknowledgment of God.
No thought of anyone else, only of himself.
And although his harvest is amazingly abundant, he still carries on as though he does not have enough.
His solution is not to generously share his good fortune with the less fortunate.
His solution is to build bigger barns and store more.
And all the time he is doing this, he assumes he is controlling his future.
And that is the tragedy because he died that night, and all his planning counted for nothing.
He had believed his security was guaranteed in his possessions.
But true security never comes from material assets.
Because they can be lost, and circumstances can change.
This is why Jesus called him a fool; not because he was rich, but because he trusted in wealth to provide what only God can provide.
Scarcity in the Midst of Abundance
What strikes me in both readings is that they reveal a very familiar human tendency.
To be surrounded by abundance and still live with a mindset of scarcity.
The Israelites were about to enter a land where they would lack for nothing, and the rich farmer had barns overflowing.
Yet beneath both stories lay the same temptation.
The fear that there would not be enough.
The feeling that they must make themselves safe.
The anxiety that told them we need just a little bit more.
And it’s not difficult to recognise this today, in the modern world.
We live in a culture that constantly reminds us of what we do not yet possess.
We are encouraged to compare ourselves with others and to measure our lives by what is missing.
Yet Harvest asks us a different question.
Not, “What don’t I have?”
But, “What has God already given me?”
Jesus’ Invitation
After telling the parable, Jesus turned to his disciples and gave one of his most comforting sermons, starting;
“Do not worry about your life.”
He points to the ravens that neither sow nor reap and to the lilies clothed with astonishing beauty.
And he reminds us that the God who cares for birds and flowers is also caring for us.
This doesn’t mean life is always easy – and doesn’t deny the very real struggles many of us face.
But Jesus invites us to look beyond our fears and remember God’s faithfulness.
To see that our lives are held within a larger reality than our anxieties. And to trust that the God who has sustained us this far – will continue to walk with us.
Harvest is A Season of Seeing Clearly
That’s its true purpose.
It’s not a celebration of our achievements.
Or a celebration of successful farming.
Harvest is a season of simply seeing our lives clearly.
A time to recognise the God-given gifts that we have stopped noticing.
The food on our tables.
The roof over our heads.
The people who love us.
The communities to which we belong.
The strength that has carried us through difficult times.
And the grace that has sustained us when we thought we could carry on no longer…
A Final Thought
As I think again about the fruit and veg from our old allotment, I can see things more clearly.
I see that Harvest goes even deeper than offering what we have for those who do not have.
The season also asks us to consider whether we are living like the rich fool, always focused on what we do not yet have.
As Moses instructed the Israelites, are we able to recognise the gifts God has already placed in our lives?
Because the Christian life begins not with accumulation, but with gratitude.
Not with anxiety, but with trust.
Not with scarcity, but with the recognition that, in countless ways, God has already blessed us abundantly.
This is why once we truly see that abundance,
gratitude becomes the only natural response.
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