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Feast of Lammas
Offering us a lesson in stewardship
“The choicest of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord our God.” Ex. 23:19
One of the traditional feasts of the English church is Lammas, August 1. It is one of the oldest medieval Christian feast days. The term Lammas is probably a contraction of the Anglo-Saxon phrase hlāfmæsse or “Loaf Mass.” At the Mass celebrating Lammas, each household in a village presented for consecration a loaf of bread made of the first of the newly harvested wheat. They were literally giving of their “first fruits.” Indeed, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (written in the 9th and 10th centuries) recognizes Lammas as the “feast of the first fruits.”
As with many Christian feasts, Lammas had its origins in pagan religions. It corresponded to the much older Celtic harvest celebration of Lughnasad, honoring Lugh, known also as John Barleycorn. It also marks the “cross-quarter” day, the mid-point between the solstice and equinox, as do All Saints and All Souls days and Candlemas.
Few of us at Grace depend literally on the harvest of crops, but we can still incorporate the exhortation from Exodus in our lives. Whether we are considering our gifts of time, talent, or treasure, we can commit ourselves to give the first fruits. With money, it is easy to see how to do this: simply make our offering to God first each “harvest day,” whether we get paid weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. We know if we wait to give from “what’s left” at the end of the month, there might not be much there.
It is more difficult to see how this principle might sensibly apply to offering our time and talent. We know when it doesn’t happen: when we are “just too tired” to help at the Samaritan Center, or attend a Saturday church clean-up day; when our schedules are “just too busy” to get our children to Sunday School or a youth event; when we really “just need” a mindless night in front of the television instead of attending that church committee meeting. However, just as we rightly make time for our children or our job a priority, we can make time for the work of God’s kingdom a priority. We can make the time to bake that loaf of bread to offer God. It just needs to be important to us to do it.