Sunday 29th September – Service of Harvest Celebration led by Tony Alderman
Linking a harvest celebration to the reading from Genesis 3, the Garden of Eden story of Human disobedience, was going to be a challenge, but Tony’s focus was on the apple (He did later admit that his wife’s name was Eve) so we were invited to use our imaginations.
We were in an English orchard. Could we smell the apples? Could we see them? And there followed a string of names of our favourite apples care of an article from The Times. We told to beware in the case of the Granny Smith – not to be harvested before October. It might land on our heads ……….and there followed a few notes from the William Tell overture on the organ.
The aim of the service was to thank God for the creation and for all the good things that we get from the earth and from the sea, but not just that, not just the typical harvest, but for the skills of the carers, the nurses, the doctors, all who made our lives better.
After a short presentation from Charlotte of the Herts & Essex Air Ambulance our attention was drawn to this week’s tie. It was 53 years old, the tie he had worn to his wedding. If we looked closely, we’d see one was well-worn the other worn well.
Returning to the harvest theme, Tony was concerned that his grandchildren were not so familiar with farms and gardens. His dad had had an allotment and they regularly visited a smallholding, so Tony had first-hand experience of mucking out, loading manure, plucking capons and boiling pig swill – the foul smell of which was still in his nostril to this day judging by his expression!
Did we have a favourite Bible verse or passage that celebrated the wonder of God’s creation? How connected did we feel to the rest of creation. And were there ways in which we could do more intentionally about caring for that creation?
Tony summed up the Garden of Eden story as follows: “The man listened to the woman, and he got into trouble”. Then looking at the overwhelming number of ladies present, he decided that on that point, discretion was indeed the better part of valour. The URC daily devotions the previous Monday from Genesis 3 had concluded that man is neither biologically nor behaviourally as God intended him to be. The fall from grace had been swift and precipitous, and human suffering arose because our bodies were mortal and frail, and because of humanity’s continuing failure to follow Christ’s teachings.
Human frailty was illustrated by the fact that the man who wrote those devotions had Motor Neurone Disease and Tony shared some personal experiences of a good friend who suffered from it, charting the decline of a big physical football player to someone who no longer had the strength to lift up a mobile phone. (we did have a slight digression on to Tony having successfully marked Johan Cruyff on the football field – not necessarily the reason Johan had later punched a referee).
So it was not going to be a normal sort of harvest celebration – much more wide ranging – and so he moved on to thinking about skills (he noted that singing was a skill and a wonderful blessing!). He’d been involved in further education for about 30 years and had suggested that Blair’s “Education, education, education” should have been “Skills, skills, Skills” – lamenting the decline of technical further education.
He delighted us with the story about the doctor who phones his plumber up in the middle of the night and says, “The cistern isn’t working well. Can you come out?”. The plumber says, “No, no. Go to the medicine cupboard, get 2 aspirins, put it in the bowl and flush the system”. The doctor says, “What would that do?” To which the plumber replies, “If I phoned you in the middle of the night, that’s what you would have told me to do”.
We knew we needed skills – electrician, plumber, plasterer, bricklayer – the products of technical further education. Tony had 3 children, two of whom went to state schools then on to universities. But his youngest, now 37, was “special needs”. And that took us to horticulture (also linked to Harvest) and to Capel Manor, where his daughter had received her training in a special course for those with SEN needs. (He talked about Capel Manor teaching “good husbandry” and then remembered about being outnumbered by ladies and saying the wrong things).
He’d been following other churches electronically and come across James – thought to have been Jesus’s brother. James talked about some very practical things, including the tongue. What a dangerous thing he suggested the tongue could be, but also that if the tongue was used wisely, people could stand up for injustice. And then Tony talked about his pet hates of the moment – the Grenfell report, and the missing out on installing sprinklers, and the disposal of mountains of supposedly surplus PPE just before Covid had arrived on the scene.
So we should use the tongue to speak out for good things, like the Air Ambulance.
And he finished with a compliment to Stephen Jones and Simon Worley (organ) and the choir, “If music be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it”. Amen
This was the first of a number of planned events where the Aeolian Singers will join us for worship. And for those members of our church choir who joined them, we can say it was a really enjoyable and fun experience to be a part of a larger choir. As Stephen said, ”Nice to hear a strong tenor sound for a change”. Amen to that too!
Potters Bar United Reformed Church 