“…the living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them…has not left himself without a witness in doing good – giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filling you with food and your hearts with joy” (NRSV, Acts 14:15,17)
Paul, accompanied by Barnabas, was on his first missionary expedition, around 17 years after Our Lord’s Crucifixion and Resurrection. He had set sail from a port in northern Syria and after landing in Cyprus and traversing the length of the island, had embarked again and sailed across to the southern coast of what is now Turkey. The two missionaries quickly pushed into the interior and after a series of adventures found themselves in a town called Lystra.
The people in that part of the world were Celts who had originally come from the Danube lands. The only claims to civilisation which Lystra had were that it was a Roman colony with a garrison of Roman troops, and that it possessed an ancient Greek temple dedicated to Zeus the King of the gods.
At the outer gates of this temple a beggar was sitting, a man crippled from birth. When St Paul suddenly and dramatically healed him, the local inhabitants were so impressed and astonished that they concluded that Barnabas was none other than Zeus himself, and that Paul was Hermes, the eloquent messenger of the gods. And the temple priest himself appeared and prepared to offer sacrifice to them.
It was then that St Paul in haste and horror proclaimed to them the living God for whose existence and goodness he appealed to Nature’s bounty. “...he has not left himself without a witness in doing good – giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filling you with food and your hearts with joy” (NRSV, Acts 14:17).
And that message of the harvest is the same for us today as it was when St Paul spoke those words to the people of Lystra. It proclaims to us the goodness and the generosity of God.
Year by year the world’s supply of food is replaced by his life-giving power as quickly as it is used up. It is a shocking truth that one in eight people in the world go to bed hungry every night, (1) but we cannot lay responsibility for that at God’s door.
If the thousands of millions of pounds, which developed nations are able to spend on maintaining a high standard of living and on manufacturing sophisticated weapons of destruction, were devoted instead to helping eradicate global hunger, the world would be a very different place.
As it is, despite there being enough food to feed all the people in the world, many people cannot afford to buy it. Tax dodgers deprive poor countries of resources to ensure the right to food for their people. Small-scale farmers often get forced off the land they need to grow food and see that land taken over by companies who use it to grow biofuel crops. Crops burnt as biofuels in the UK alone are enough to feed 10 million people every year. (2)
We have only to look at an ear of wheat, and mark how the original seed has been increased, perhaps 50 times over, to see the generosity and goodness of God, so different from the greed and malice of humankind.
But in order to understand the true nature of God, the message of the harvest has to be completed by the message of the life and death of Our Blessed Lord, of God himself made man. For while God’s universal goodwill is shown by his generosity in the harvest, his universal love is revealed by his self-sacrifice upon the Cross for all humankind.
For the essence of all love, whether human or divine, is a generosity that costs the giver: and when we look at a crucifix and remember that God willingly went through all that, not for his own sake but for ours – then we see how, in his surpassing love, his generosity cost him all he had. Thus in the Crucifixion God’s generosity and sacrifice merged together in one sublime action, in the costly gift of his whole self.
And those two elements of sacrifice and generosity are also united in the Eucharist, that unique act of worship which sums up and comprehends the whole Christian religion.
For in the Eucharist our Crucified and Risen Saviour presents us with himself to his Father as his own people for whom he gave his life; and then in Communion he goes on to give to us himself, so that, made one with him, we may become as he is. So in the Eucharist he transforms his gift of our daily bread into the gift of himself in order that he may thereby transform us into the likeness of himself.
Thus the two threads are drawn together in a single pattern: his generosity in the harvest which declares his goodwill, and his dying on the Cross which reveals his love are together united in the holy Bread of eternal life which enshrines his Body once crucified, but now risen and ascended and for ever glorified.
But that love is all bestowed in vain if there is no answering love from us; and love means, not a mere sentimentality, not just tender emotions which come and which go, but an adoration of the heart that inspires in our daily life the glad self-sacrifice of our will to the will of God. For in the end both religion and morality are a matter of the heart.
So our love for God should be shown, first, by the constancy of our worship in his House; that is, by the offering in adoration and thankfulness of ourselves and our lives to him, for him to possess as his own and to use as he pleases.
And then, when that offering by the Christian is genuine, he or she will live the life of a person who truly belongs to God, gladly and resolutely seeking to please him by thinking and speaking and acting as one who rejoices to be for ever in his Presence.
For the Christian religion as a religion of joy because in it we give our all to God; and that joy is itself a reflection of the joy which is in the Heart of God who has given his all for us.
Reference
1. and 2. IF Campaign (2013) Enough food for everyone. The need for UK action on global hunger, IF Policy Report. Available from http://www.christianaid.org.uk/images/if-campaign-policy-report.pdf (Accessed 23 August 2013)(Internet).