All the churches in the Team have recently held Harvest Thanksgiving Services.

We did so as a result of a Vicar of a Cornish fishing village who, in 1843 held a special thanksgiving service for the harvest of the sea. As with many good ideas it was imitated by others and very soon, special thanksgiving services were held for the Corn Harvest and so the custom spread.

One of the main reasons that it did so was that Queen Victoria decided that it was a good thing and so she ‘suggested’ to the Church authorities that a day should be set aside each year for a general thanksgiving for the blessings of harvest.

Queen Victoria was not used to being disobeyed and was probably the last monarch to wield both influence and power. Her ‘suggestion’ was much more in the nature of a command. So, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York took the view that ‘to hear is to obey’ and Harvest Thanksgiving became a widespread.

One, of course, that continues to this day especially in rural areas. In my previous two rural parishes Harvest was a bigger festival than Easter with almost the whole community turning up to give thanks to God and celebrate the blessings of Harvest in a way that would have warmed Queen Victoria’s heart.

Generally, however, such Thanksgiving is more muted, especially in non-rural areas.

I do not think that today a Cornish Vicar inventing a Festival of the Sea would have such an influence on the Church and on a monarch.

The reason for this is probably two-fold.

The first is that agriculture and fishing are occupations in decline and the problems that beset both are not natural grounds for thanksgiving. Farming today is very hard.  Perhaps too, most people are far removed from the food chain and assume that the great provider of sustenance for the table are not farmers and fishermen but supermarkets.

The second reason that a Harvest thanksgiving might not have found much favour is that, generally speaking, we do not naturally give thanks in the way we did in the past.

We live in a Society which is much more concerned with personal ‘rights’ and with self-interest. The growth in the litigation culture, for example, shows that people are much more concerned to blame others for any infringement of their perceived ‘rights’ than they are to accept any responsibility for being part of a society. To my mind this is a direct result of the philosophy which gripped us in the 1980’s of ‘individualism’. At the time when this grew up as a political and social philosophy I thought that one day Society would pay a heavy price for the loss of community and the growth in self-seeking.

I have seen very little in modern life which makes me change my mind and when Historians of the future pass judgement on the decline of our Society and community life they might well see the root cause as the growth in individualism.

At the heart of this decline I would point to something  which Queen Victoria sought to change – that of Thanksgiving for blessings on life or rather the lack of it.  Today’s Gospel drives this home very forcibly.

At the immediate level this is a healing miracle; ten lepers approached Jesus as he made his way to Jerusalem.  They kept their distance because they knew that they were outcasts. Leprosy then, as indeed now, is an isolating disease. Those who suffered from it were unclean. They were forced to live beyond the margins of society, partly out of fear that they might pass their disease on to others and partly because, as today, we tend to shunt undesirables away from polite society. Add to that the prevailing view that illness was a visitation for sin and you have a recipe for total abandonment by others and a lack of concern for their plight.  When the 10 lepers cried to Jesus to have mercy on them they were shouting from the heart.  Not only where they suffering from a dreadful illness but they were completely cut off and abandoned.

With characteristic compassion, Jesus healed them and told them to do what the Law required – they were to go to the priests to show that they were cleansed and so receive the certificate of approval that they could now be accepted back into normal social and community life.

The approach to Jesus was an act of sheer faith. When all else had failed them they turned to one whom they saw had the power of God in him to restore them to both health and normality.  That faith was further demonstrated when they obeyed our Lord’s command to seek out the priests, rejoicing that they were made clean.

But then, the story has a new twist and, in fact, takes us to the heart of why Luke, alone of the 4 Gospel writers, gave us this story.  One of them turned back and with a loud voice, expressed gratitude to God for the great thing God had done in Jesus.

Before we condemn the other nine for their ingratitude we need to know that as a Samaritan, the one who turned back would not have been welcomed had he visited the priests. Jews and Samaritans were like oil and water – they didn’t mix. As a Samaritan he was a double outcast. So he hadn’t anywhere to go to have his healing certified. It was therefore natural for him to return to Jesus to express his gratitude.

However, Luke glosses over that because it doesn’t suit his purpose which is to tell us that the heart of this story isn’t so much the healing as the expression of thanks to God.  This is a story about Gratitude.  It reminds us that faith is incomplete if it is not accompanied by thanksgiving.  It is expressed best when we recognise that the object of our faith – God – is also the source of blessing.

The antidote to an uncaring, self-seeking society is to develop a culture of thanksgiving for the many blessings of God which we call grace – the free outpouring of God’s love into our lives which is nothing less that the outpouring of the generosity which comes from the very heart of God.

I remember some years ago stumbling on a Diocesan celebration in Oban Cathedral in the Diocese of Argyll and the Isles. The preacher, an old boy from the island of Lewis, preached a rather rambling sermon that took us, over the course of 50 minutes, through a tortuous journey of church history and social commentary as well as a canter through much of Old Testament theology.

Years later I met the Bishop of Argyll and the Isles in another context and we mused on the sermon. The Bishop, then a heavy smoker, confessed that he had been tempted to nip out of the Cathedral at several moments during the sermon to smoke a cigarette.

But we both agreed that the final words of the sermon were the most important – for the preacher told us that the ills that beset Society could be summed up in one thing – we had stopped saying grace before meals.

On the surface that seemed, at the time, a strange conclusion to a rambling sermon but it expressed a great truth. Society without gratitude for the blessings of God is a society which has lost its way.

 One of the joys I have is to be able to send little cards of thanksgiving to those who have done some service in Church life or to me personally. It may seem a small thing but what it says, I hope, is that I not only value the thing done but, more importantly, the one doing it.

Equally, I am always thrilled when I receive such notes of thanksgiving – not because I want people to say thanks to me personally, but because it is a sign that gratitude for the little blessings of life is not dead.

Sometimes, on the prayer board at St. Johns, or when people send the Church a little gift there is an expression of thanks to God for some kindness people have received.  It transforms Church life. Indeed, it transforms human life!

One of the titles we call this service – the one most often used – is Eucharist – which comes from a Greek word meaning Thanksgiving.

Sunday by Sunday we gather to give thanks to God for his blessings and goodness towards us.

The Sacrament itself  carries us to the heart of God’s self-giving love as shown in Jesus Christ. When we receive the blessed bread and wine we are receiving the sign of God’s continuous outpouring of love as Christ continually gives himself and God’s blessing to us.

We, in our turn, by being here, are Thanking God for this great gift of love – the gift of Jesus Christ who IS love. At this sacred meal we are saying ‘grace’.

In a Society which is rapidly turning its back on God and on thanksgiving to Him, we , by being here, are making a powerful statement. We not only come from personal need which is to express our faith with thanksgiving but we are also saying something quite radical to the world in which we live. We are refusing to be dragged down by self-seeking indifference to anyone outside ourselves. We are turning society round towards God.

It may not seem like that nor may it have crossed our mind – but every act of gratitude, acknowledges our inter-dependence on each other and especially on God.  By being here this morning, we are, in effect saying:

Thank you God for our life and for your blessing on that life. Thank you for your love which is more powerful than anything else in all the world.

Thank you for Jesus Christ who is at the heart of our faith and our thanksgiving.

When we recognise that is what we are doing we might also recognise that God is doing something tremendous too. As with the Leper who turned back and gave thanks – we might recognise that what Jesus is saying to us is – Go on your way – your faith has made you whole – because your faith is based on Thanksgiving.