A harvest not our own

AT this time of year, farmers are saving the harvest, the food that will feed us, and others, during the months to come. It’s also a time when we are conscious of the value of food and all that we take for granted and the places in the world where the harvest has failed, as in drought-stricken East Africa.

Nearer home, for most of us who do not depend directly on the land, it might be a time to pick wild fruit, as we and the birds stock up for winter. It is also a time of new work, new schooling, new skills and matters that will give us personally a new harvest.
As the days grow shorter, we get new energy from the inner life, often with others. It can also be a time of reflection and celebration. We are looking at ways to do that within our own church tradition. Sometimes it is worth looking back and seeing that good has been done, perhaps even unintentionally, that has outlived the less engaging aspects of the past.
One of the remarkable matters is discovering how harmonious relations sometimes were between the different church traditions in earlier times.
The Methodists grew in the 18th century from within the Anglican tradition, led by the gifted organiser, John Wesley, whose brother, Charles was a talented hymn-writer, many of whose works are used across the churches today.
Wesley never intended to found a separate denomination but to revitalise faith and make holiness possible for ordinary people. He carried out his mission with passion and vigour throughout a long life, which included thousands of miles of journeying by horseback, often reading at the same time.
He was often difficult to live with but he was also remarkably ahead of his time in pleading for religious tolerance, urging people to live graciously with those who had different views, recognising the goodness in them and the way they lived their lives.
Wesley was not the first revivalist preacher to visit County Clare. George Whitefield arrived unintentionally in November 1738, when his ship was storm-driven into the Shannon Estuary. Whitefield, a man of his time, was not always open to the opinions of others but in his journal he recognised the kindness of the strangers who took him in at Carrigaholt and arranged for him to travel overland through Clare and on to Limerick.
Wesley himself came to Clare five times. The first Methodist sermon was preached in his time, in Sixmilebridge and in Irish by a County Limerick man, Thomas Walsh. Wesley’s English preaching was less well received in Ennis but another Irish-language speaker, Gideon Ousley was later to preach at Ennistymon and, meanwhile, the Moravian group near Corofin also worked with the Methodists. The tradition central to Wesley’s thought, of  ‘friends of all, enemies of none’ seems to have prevailed most of the time, though as in all human relationships, it sometimes may have fallen short.
We have received the fruits of their work but also an unexpected harvest from elsewhere. For most of the minority churches, a great boost has been given in recent years by the arrival of people from other parts of the world, especially Africa. While many worship in new churches, there are aspects of the common heritage, especially the singing.
These are more mellow ecumenical times and we in Shannon are particularly grateful to the Catholic community, which hosted our worship after our church suffered fire damage. It is also good to remember with gratitude the gracious acts, perhaps made at some cost, of past times when the divisions were sometimes fierce.
Without the desire to compete today, the smaller church groupings have the opportunity to give without always growing, to recognise that what we have and what we can give is the result of service by others long before us. We believe too, that the work done now, in whatever expression of the Christian faith we follow, will bear fruit somewhere in a harvest not our own.
We’re meeting together for an evening of worship and song, reflecting both the traditions of faith and our current multi-cultural life, with the president of the Methodist Church in Ireland on October 16 in Ennis Cathedral and we welcome everyone who would like to join us.
As John Wesley said in his letter to a Roman Catholic (1749), “Then, if we cannot as yet think alike in all things, at least we may love alike” and in a sermon the following year, “If… thy heart is right, as my heart is with thy heart.. give me your hand’.

Rosemary Power is minister on behalf of the Methodist Church in Clare.