Worship - 13 September 2026

Summary Of This Week's Theme

It’s appropriate that, at Harvest Thanksgiving, we should remember the recent death, at 92, of one of America’s most distinctive voices, the agrarian poet, novelist and essayist Wendell Berry.

In 1984, he wrote an essay called The Two Economies. He described the “little economy” as an economy of scarcity: it includes certain people, buys certain things, and operates for a limited time. It is the economy in which there is never quite enough, and which encourages us to build bigger barns for our possessions, whatever the cost.

Wendell Berry contrasted it with the “great economy”: an economy for everybody, which gives what money cannot buy and never runs out. It is an economy of abundance, whose currency comes from the divine Creator. The little economy can distribute and preserve things, he argued, but it cannot create their true value. That belongs to the great economy.

That seems particularly appropriate at Harvest, because so much of what we celebrate today belongs to that greater economy: things that cannot ultimately be bought, stored or owned.

Abraham Maslow famously described human needs as moving from the basic necessities of life and security towards love, esteem and fulfilment. But there is something missing from his hierarchy: grace.  Grace cannot be fitted neatly onto a ladder of needs, because it surrounds them all. It is the free and unearned generosity of God.

And we can find grace surprisingly difficult to receive. As Desmond Tutu observed, those accustomed to achievement and self-sufficiency can find it hard to accept the sheer gift of grace. We are so accustomed to putting a price on things that generosity without a price can make us uncomfortable.

I remember travelling by boat to Gambier Island in British Columbia, looking back at the forested mountains rising from the sea, and praying that I would never take such beauty for granted. I have much the same prayer for Menorca.

Harvest reminds us that we live not by what we can accumulate, but by what we have been given. God’s great economy is an economy of abundance: grace freely given, love freely offered, a world entrusted to our care.

So perhaps our Harvest prayer should be simple: “Thank you, God, for all that we have received. Keep us from taking it for granted. And help us to sow generously what you have given us.” For what we do with God’s gifts becomes the harvest of our lives.