Harvest Festival 2007
Ralph DiBiasio-Snyder
September 30, 2007

The great doxology of the church that is at the heart of our worship Sunday by Sunday is found in that phrase, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow!"

"Doxology" comes from the Greek doxa - "glory" - and logos - "word" - and so "doxology" is a word of glory - speaking, singing, shouting, or whispering deep within the glory that is God.

But "glory" is another word that we don't use very much, outside of church, isn't it! Just what is the "glory of God?" I like to think of it as the reflection of God in the world - "seeing" what God is like not by looking directly at God, but at the wonders and beauties and mysteries that are the reflection of God in the world. God's character reflected - glorified - into the world.

We all know that we dare not look directly at the sun; and that even if we did, the sun is far too brilliant - too powerful -- to be seen, really. You can't see the sun, directly. But we see sunlight all around us. I hope that you saw, for example, the full moon that graced us this week. It was truly "glorious." Glorious because it was reflecting the light of the sun in ways that were awe-inspiring and beautiful, lovely and mysterious. The moon was glorifying the sun.

So when we sing the Doxology, Praise God from whom all blessings flow, we reflect back to our world the presence, the love, the power, the grace that we have "seen," experienced in God. We "glorify" God.

And so too does all this before us today. Signs of grace - that what these are: signs of God's continuing, creating provision for the earth, and for the creatures of the earth, for us.

Truly today we have a visual Doxology, a feast for the eye that reflects - glorifies - God into the world so that we can say with growing faith, "Truly the One who creates all things - who created this harvest, these people - truly the Creator revels in diversity, in artistry, in faithful care, in gracious love for the creation."

Quaker author and educator, Parker Palmer, who makes his home in Madison, has written of the seasons, beginning with the season of Autumn. And he notes that while Autumn "is a season of great beauty," we most often think of Autumn as the season of decline: "the days grow shorter, the light is suffused, and summer's abundance decays toward winter's death."

And of course that is true. The bright, fresh greens of summer are softening now to browns - with the notable, startling exceptions of yellows and orange, golds and red shouting protests perhaps, exclaiming that death will not have the final word in the matter. But in the fall the flowers and crops that you planted last spring are in decline. And the cycle of the seasons reflects our lives, doesn't it, from our birth to youth to maturity - and to death which comes to us all, as much as we try not to think about it.

But, says Palmer, Autumn is not merely decline into winter. "Faced with inevitable winter, what does nature do in Autumn? She scatters seeds that will bring new growth in the spring - and she scatters them with amazing abandon."

What are these fruits and produce and flowers before us, but seeds - glorious, beautiful seeds for our enjoyment, for our nourishment, but also for new life - continued life after the cold of winter.

And nature surely does scatter its seed "with amazing abandon!" The maple tree in my front yard is heavy with its "helicoptor" seedpods eager to flutter to the earth, to begin again. And the hickory trees in the back yard have littered the grass "with amazing abandon" equal only to the abandon of the squirrels collecting them and distributing many - but not all - of the nuts around the neighborhood.

Fall is a time of seeding . . . of planning . . . of planting; a season therefore of hope - hope that while the created world appears to be merely shutting down, resting for a season, it is also preparing for renewal, in due time.

For, as Palmer says, "living is hidden within dying." And the colors of fall, of the harvest seem to tell us that. "What artist would ever have painted a season of dying with such a vivid palatte if nature had not done it first?"

Christian faith does not pretend that there is no decline in the fall of the year, the fall of our years. Nor do we deny that winter does come - for our world, and for us too. But our faith tells us, as nature itself does, that even in the Autumn of life God is sowing seeds of new life - and not just a few here and there, but many everywhere - millions, billions, uncountable seeds of hope are sown in the fall, so that in the spring life that slumbers through the winter will burst again into the world.

And so today we celebrate the blessing of the harvest - the end of a year, the prelude to winter. But we today also by faith celebrate the hope that is sown "with amazing abandon" with the harvest. Seeds of hope for a world that we will learn new ways of interdependence, new ways of respectful care for one another, new ways of reverent care for the earth; hope that - perhaps not in our lifetime, but in the lifetime of our children or their children, or theirs - nations will at last learn that violence will always, always breed more violence, and that unless we are all secure none of us is secure, and peace will come at long last to our world.