The harvest festival of Pentecost.

Hey there.  Welcome.  Pull up a chair, and get comfy.

If you were paying any kind of attention on Sunday, what you may have learned is that Pentecost did not begin life as a Christian festival celebrating the arrival of the Holy Spirit.  It began life at a Hebrew harvest festival.  Now, if you know that, what I'm going to say next should come as no great surprise:  There is an awful lot of harvest imagery in the Scriptures. Jesus himself was not shy about talking on the subject, and for good reason.  This was a resource based economy, quite unlike the Roman empire, which was more of a legionary based economy.  But in agrarian Israel, known as the fertile crescent, a land overflowing with milk and honey, that could actually be planted and harvested.  Unlike the wilderness that the Israelites spent a whole bunch of time wandering around in the Pentateuch, the promised land, formerly Caanan, was fertile, was plantable, was a space in which you could harvest grain.  And lost of stuff was harvested and planted in that area.   dates and figs and leeks and onions and grain and all that was planted and harvested in Israel.  And as you saw in the story of Genesis and Exodus, if there was a famine in your land, it didn't matter what kind of life you'd built up for yourself there, you had to go.  You had to go where there was food.  Now, for us, we're never out of food.  Sure, there may be a time when kiwis are a little cheaper, but we're never out of food.  But the good people of Israel could run out of food.  They habitually did.  And it didn't matter if you were a farmer or a merchant, if your area was out of food, if the harvest failed, you had to go. So the people of Israel were keenly aware of the harvest, and of the role that God had to play in the harvest.

Way back, people knew that whatever other plans they'd made, they couldn't influence the weather.  You could plant your crop as vigorously as you wanted, but for goodness' sake, you had very little control over whether or not the crops actually grew.  That was up to God.  Knowing how reliant they were on God for good weather, for an abundance of crops, they understood how important it was to celebrate days like Pentecost, the harvest festival.

Perhaps that's why Jesus used the illustration that he did. Think for a moment of his parable of the sower of the seed, and how that went.

On the same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the sea. ² And great multitudes were gathered to Him, so that He got into a boat and sat down; and the whole multitude stood on the shore.

³ Then He spoke many things to them in parables, saying: “Behold, a sower went out to sow. ⁴ And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds came and devoured them. ⁵ Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. ⁶ But when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away. ⁷ And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them. ⁸ But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. ⁹ He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

                                                                                                -Matthew 13:1-9

Jesus told this parable for a reason.  He told this parable because people understood that the harvest, the crops, were important.  They understood that there were seeds that were scattered, and some would grow, and others not.  And Jesus is informing them that there will be growth, there will be an increase, there will be a harvest.  Which seeds will grow?  

¹⁸ Therefore, hear the parable of the sower: ¹⁹ When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by the wayside. ²⁰ But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; ²¹ yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles. ²² Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful, ²³ But he who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.”

Jesus says this, knowing that the people should get it.  But they will resist.  Who are those who hear the word and understand it?  Maybe not the people who thought they would.  The people listening, did they see themselves as the ones who were growing amongst thorns?  Did they see themselves as those growing up and getting snatched by birds?  Probably not.  But when the time comes for the Holy Spirit to come, who does it come to?  It comes to those who will hear it and understand it.  That's the whole point of Pentecost, that people can hear God's word for them, maybe for the first time.  And hearing, they can understand it.  

This is the harvest of the parable writ large.  The word of God actually being scattered far and wide, to all sorts of people.  You see the word of God being sown abroad, and you get to see the reaction that the people have to the word being preached.  Some mock, some are befuddled and confused, and others, well, others hear the word, and respond to it joyfully.  And as the disciples go on their way, as Pentecost people, that harvest continues, the harvest of the last of the grain to ripen. The harvest of the final flowers.  The gentiles, those who were hungry for God and his word.  That is who the harvest is now.

He who has ears, let him hear.