Harvest Gratitude

      This is the time of year, leading up to Thanksgiving, when we in the mainstream northeast culture tend to get really nostalgic about our agrarian roots… at least decoratively.  Glorious piles of pumpkins and squashes and vegetables and different colored ears of maize tumbling from cornucopias perch perfectly on straw, perhaps with a few cornstalks in the background.  Makes us feel like the pilgrims at their first harvest celebration.

      Of course, what we really pick up in Tops or Wegmans is more prosaic, wrapped in plastic, generally.  And unless you live around really old-school Mennonites who sometimes do stack shocks of corn after handcutting it on smaller, more uneven patches, most of the corn is sucked up by big green John Deere harvesters and loaded in bulk transport trailers.  Even most of the Mennonites around Dundee use mechanical harvesters; the only difference is that they have steel lug wheels like their big green tractors.  So even agriculture is a lot different from the Thanksgiving season pictures.

      Supporting the work of the church has changed a lot from the images of the favorite thanksgiving and harvest hymns we sing.  The Biblical images of supporting the temple are based on hand- and animal-based agriculture which in the ancient near east was mostly year round, and the faithful brought foodstuffs and offerings to the temple or sent money with which the needs of the temple staff could be purchased in Jerusalem.  People brought a portion off the top to the temple, the “first fruits.”  There were alms taken for the poor, as well.  In the middle ages, and in more northern Europe, churches and abbeys and such owned land which was farmed and the produce stored, as well as monetary offerings, but a significant portion of church income came in late fall at the harvest, when farmers sold their crops or brought bags of grain or whatever to the church warehouses.  For much of church history, in fact, most income (cash or goods) arrived in the fall, and the church used that through the year.

      In the “new” world, without the establishment of church properties but with a by then very well developed currency and banking system, most churches in the American colonies were using offering plates passed during worship for mission and support of the poor and for paying clergy.  Building upkeep was typically paid by pew rentals.  And most congregations got their influx of giving with the first fruits of harvest, less in kind and more in coin, and still mostly in autumn.

      Lots changed with the industrial revolution.  For purposes of a history of church giving, the biggest was that more people were receiving weekly paychecks than getting seasonal farm income.  So instead of getting several hundred dollars in October from the landowners, things shifted to weekly donations from many workers.  Pew rents began to fall out of favor around the U.S. Civil War.  Personally, I think that had to do with central heating in sanctuaries in the northeast that got us away from box pews to the auditorium style seating of churches built since the Second Great Awakening.  Predictable paychecks meant predictable offerings and tithes through the year.

      In the 20th century, churches became more “businesslike” in their operation, and the managerial types wanted to be able to prepare annual budgets, and it helped to get indications from church members about how much they might contribute for the year.  With predictable family income, members could make annual pledges, and “cash flow” in general for most churches evened out, and we ended up with the system now familiar to us.

      So that’s the long way around to why we have a fall stewardship push and pledge cards!

      The thing to remember, however industrialized our giving has become since the Plymouth colony, is that our human, spiritual impulse remains the same: sharing with others and God part of what we earn so that the gospel of God’s love and human justice and compassion are spread to others.
We share because we are grateful for what God has done for us and our families and our world.  That has not changed, no matter how we get those symbols of our thanksgiving to the front of our sanctuary.

      Be generous as God has been generous to us!

                                                                          In Christ,
                                                                          
                                                                                    David

      A quick reminder: on the 17th, we will be doing the U.S. Congregational Life Survey at the end of worship.  Please make an effort to attend on November 17 to contribute.  We can make special arrangements for you if you cannot attend that day, but even the blank surveys must be returned, so we have to make sure they are accounted for.   Call the office at 607-257-6033, and we will work something out for you.  In one of the surveys there is hidden a “Golden Ticket” for a chocolate bar from the Equal Exchange project the Youth Ministry Team is doing to support the Heifer Project.  How’s that for an extra incentive!?!


Texts For Sunday Worship:

      From the Hebrew Bible     Haggai 2:1-9
      From the Epistles             2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
      From the Gospels             Luke 20:27-38