And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?” He said to them, “An enemy has done this.” So the servants said to him, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” But he said, “No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, ‘Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’” [Matthew 13:27-30 (ESV)]
Come, ye thankful people, come, raise the song of harvest home;
all is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin. [Henry Alford]
Because the pastor’s sermon was about being thankful, she’d selected “Come, Ye Thankful People, Come” as the evening’s opening hymn. Henry Alford wrote this hymn in 1844 for village harvest festivals in England called Harvest Home. Rural churches would celebrate the harvest by decorating with pumpkins and autumn leaves, collecting the harvest bounty, and then distributing it to the needy. Because of its seasonal harvest imagery, we usually sing this hymn in November at Thanksgiving but this was mid-July! Reading the hymn’s words out of their traditional Thanksgiving context, I understood their meaning in an entirely different way.
While the literal meaning of “harvest” is the gathering in of crops, when Jesus spoke of the harvest, He used it as a metaphor for the gathering of souls into the kingdom. With its references to Jesus’ words about the harvest, Alford’s hymn is more than a song celebrating a bountiful crop of wheat, barley, oats, and potatoes; it is a metaphor for the final judgment and Christ’s return! The first verse, with its call for people to come to the harvest, alludes to Jesus’ words about the coming harvest being great but the workers being few. It reminded me that we all are called to be workers in His field!
The second verse’s, “All the world is God’s own field, fruit as praise to God we yield; wheat and tares together sown are to joy or sorrow grown,” combines imagery from Jesus’ parable of the growing seed in which the harvest comes through God’s provision and His parable of the wheat and tares. The wheat seeds symbolize the true believers sown by Jesus and the tares or weeds the bad seeds sown by Satan. While both the grain and weeds grow side by side, only the wheat will grow to joy while the tares will grow to sorrow! Alford concludes the second stanza with the simple prayer: “Lord of harvest, grant that we wholesome grain and pure may be.”
The apocalyptic theme of the hymn becomes clear in the third and fourth verses: “For the Lord our God shall come, and shall take the harvest home.” Repeating imagery from Matthew 13, Alford continues: “Giving angels charge at last, in the fire the tares to cast; but the fruitful ears to store in the garner evermore.” Both wheat and tares will receive their reward; the wheat (the righteous) will be stored in the barn and enter into the Kingdom but the tares (false believers) will be gathered and burned in Hell.
How can a hymn about the final judgment be so joyful and filled with thanksgiving? Because, for a believer, the message of the gospel is one of hope. There will be no tares in heaven. As Alford says, it will be “free from sorrow, free from sin.” The hymn concludes with a prayer that Jesus would soon return for the harvest: “Even so, Lord, quickly come, bring thy final harvest home … come, with all thine angels, come, raise the glorious harvest home.”
As believers, we can be thankful because we’ve read the last chapter. We know our story won’t end with “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Instead, we will “shine like the sun in the kingdom” of our Father!
Lord of harvest, grant that we wholesome grain and pure may be. [Henry Alford]
I was married fifty-seven years ago today. When I promised to love, comfort, honor, cherish, forsake all others, and to have and to hold my husband “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health” until we parted at death, I had no idea just how bad “for worse” could get, how little money “for poorer” might be, or that sickness could mean much more than a case of the flu. I certainly never pictured us growing old with wrinkles, white hair, hearing aids, bifocals, arthritis, and the limitations that come advanced years.
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” [John 21:15 (ESV)]
Because most of the disciples hailed from Galilee where fishing was fundamental to the area’s economy, Jesus’ parable comparing the Kingdom of Heaven to a fishing net gave them a beautiful visual image of the Kingdom when the final judgment occurs. Since we’re not Galilean fishermen, however, our picture of a fishing net might be like the hand-held ones used for trout or bass fishing. Jesus, however, used the word sagéné, meaning dragnet; its English equivalent is seine.
Jesus offered fishing advice to the disciples twice after they’d spent a night of fishing with absolutely nothing to show for it and, twice, after doing as He directed, they ended up with a miraculous catch of fish. The first time, their catch was so heavy that their nets began to tear and the two boats hauling it in nearly sunk from the weight! The second time, unable to pull the net into their boat, the men had to get out and drag it into shore!
After using Peter’s boat as a preaching platform, Jesus told him to take the boat out to deeper water and let down his nets. Fishing was a way of life in Galilee and Peter, Andrew, James, and John probably started fishing with their fathers when they were just youngsters. Can you imagine their reaction to this inexperienced carpenter’s son from Nazareth telling them how to fish? Didn’t the rabbi know that net fishing was done at night when the fish were more active and less likely to see the linen nets? Having fished all night, the men were tired. By that time, they’d cleaned their nets and hung them to dry; they were ready to go home, eat, and get some sleep. Experience told them that if they’d caught nothing that night, they certainly weren’t going to catch anything in the light of day! Nevertheless, even though Peter balked at Jesus’ unusual command, he and his partners reloaded their gear, took out their boats, and let down their nets.
Devotions of the Heart 