This week we are celebrating Harvest Festival in two of our seven churches. Harvest is one of the highlights of the year, a chance to get together and celebrate; to give thanks for all the things we have grown and achieved (literally and metaphorically!) these past months. Being in a rural area, we’ve watched the crops grow and be harvested, and those of us blessed with apple trees are still wondering how to get rid of them all!!
The readings this Sunday seem to have a theme of teamwork running through them. In Genesis, God says it is not good for Adam to be alone, and creates Eve as a companion and partner for him. In Psalm 8, we are reminded that God designed us to be stewards of the creation, and to look after it. Translations often use the word “dominion” but there is also clearly an intent of care, not merely mastery, in the original text. And then in Mark’s gospel, Jesus gives his remarkably challenging teaching on divorce.
I find it interesting and significant that Jesus reminds us that “a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife…”. If he was merely explaining a practical reality of most patriarchal cultures, it should read “a woman leaves her family and is joined to her husband.” But it is clearly the other way around. So why? It seems that the point is that once he is married, a man’s first commitment and priority is to his wife – his partner, his helper – and not to his parents. It is now his wife that commands his first loyalty. They are a team. They have committed and sworn to work together, to support and help each other, no matter what life throws at them, until death parts them.
The reality of Jesus’ day was far harsher. A man could divorce his wife for doing anything which displeased him, no matter how trivial, and send her back to her family in disgrace. Jesus is forbidding this, and in so doing he is trying to protect women, rather than chaining them. In effect he is saying, you made a commitment, you’re a team, so now work together!
Which brings us back to teamwork and harvest. We can indeed work alone, and live alone, and many of us do. But most of us also have friends and family around to support and help us. Few people are truly, utterly, alone. Even monks and nuns live in communities! Whatever we do, our actions interweave and impact one another, on micro and macro levels. The harvest of our work and of our lives comes about not solely because of our own solitary labours, but because of the myriad people whose work joins with ours and makes the whole possible.
It’s like ripples on a pond. Our lives, and our work, is joined in this incredibly intricate and beautiful tapestry, stretching across the world and throughout time itself. What an incredible team we are part of, and what an incredible harvest!
Revd. Talisker
Photo by Anna Samoylova on Unsplash