Harvest

December 1, 2019

Although today is the first Sunday of Advent, I want to finish out my trifecta of Thanksgiving hymns. It may seem that I’m complaining about modern worship music and praise songs, but I really do like many, if not most, of them. There is some really good music and lyrics being penned today, just as in days gone by. And just because a hymn is old doesn’t mean it’s any good. Charles Wesley, the great Methodist hymn writer who gave us “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing,” “And Can it Be That I Should Gain,” and “Hark, the Herald, Angels Sing,” also wrote some pretty awful doggerel. I am blessed however, to have had the privilege of straddling both worlds of traditional and contemporary music. 

Tonight’s hymn is “Come, Ye Thankful People, Come.” It was written in 1844 by Henry Alford, Anglican preacher and scholar, whose critical edition of the Greek New Testament continues to be a standard text today. It is a celebration of the harvest that morphs into the harvest of souls at the end of the age, based on the parable of the wheat and tares, and the prophecies of the glorious second Advent of Christ.

1. Come, ye thankful people, come, 

Raise the song of harvest home! 

All is safely gathered in, 

Ere the winter storms begin; 

God, our Maker, doth provide 

For our wants to be supplied; 

Come to God's own temple, come; 

Raise the song of harvest home!

2. We ourselves are God's own field, 

Fruit unto his praise to yield; 

Wheat and tares together sown 

Unto joy or sorrow grown; 

First the blade and then the ear, 

Then the full corn shall appear; 

Grant, O harvest Lord, that we 

Wholesome grain and pure may be.

3. For the Lord our God shall come,

And shall take the harvest home; 

From His field shall in that day 

All offenses purge away, 

Giving angels charge at last 

In the fire the tares to cast; 

But the fruitful ears to store 

In the garner evermore.

4. Then, thou Church triumphant come,

Raise the song of harvest home! 

All be safely gathered in, 

Free from sorrow, free from sin, 

There, forever purified, 

In God's garner to abide; 

Come, ten thousand angels, come, 

Raise the glorious harvest home!

We have recently come through the harvest season, and have much for which to give thanks. Alford’s poetry urges us to lift our eyes from the cycle of earthly harvests to that coming day when God gathers his people to himself in great glory. When I was growing up, sermons about the Second Coming of Christ were common. We were urged to prepare, to make sure we were ready for that day when he shall come “like a thief in the night.” Sadly, I don’t hear that kind of preaching much anymore. We seem to be much more focused on the day to day concerns of life instead of the “pie in the sky bye and bye” kind of preaching. Oddly enough, it is those who have their eyes fixed on the horizon who do best in finding their way through life’s maze. The older I get, the more interested I am in that coming day. Maybe it’s because I’m getting closer to it, but I am thankful tonight for this old hymn that connects ordinary events of this life to the extraordinary event that will usher in the next.