Plough Sunday

 One of my parishes tends to observe Plough Sunday on the second Sunday in January. 

I have often been off for the first Sunday in January, so it might be my attempt at New Year in church. It is a kind of Back To Work Sunday. The Baptism of Christ also connects up to the idea of the beginning of a great work and to vocation. 

We ask God to bless our agricultural and other work. 

There are many Bible passages one could choose which have something to do with farming or growing. 

One way to preach is:

(1) Our Work - the hard working farmer, the necessity of sowing etc. 

(2) God's Work - the power of the seed which grows in secret whether the farmer wakes or sleeps he knows not how and produces a crop 30, 60 or 100 times what is sown

These lessons relate both to our material and spiritual life. We work for both, but both are utterly dependent on God's work. We cannot make ourselves live for another second and neither can we make the spiritually dead live.