I'd never been to a rushbearing, so was thrilled to be there. I was covering as the local priest, Father Ian, had COVID. There is no Church of England authorised set of words for a rushbearing so I had to do my own research and soon discovered that this was a tradition that spoke to our contemporary crises.
It seems that the rushes were cut down and brought to church each year for two reasons: to provide insulation for cold churches and to protect the knees of the faithful on hard floors. This was long before central heating or pews. Care of people and grateful use of natural resources came together in the rushbearing. The local landowners would give the rushes, and presumably paid the workers for the cutting and carrying on a cart. But this was a community tradition; driven by many coming together for the common good.
The rushbearing chimed powerfully with the recent Insulate Britain campaign when the insulation of homes and the well being of the people came together in a campaign of civil resistance.
Later in the park I was part of a Just Stop Oil stall, and reached out to people about the destruction caused by oil and our resolve to engage in nonviolent civil resistance.
Rushbearing and these two recent expressions of people resisting the self interest of the fossil fuel industry were in mind that Sunday morning as I led the service of Holy Communion at Holy Trinity in Littleborough. Nature is bountiful and God provides, the people must be protected and those with wealth and land must provide for the people. We do well to see the blessings abounding and the lack of justice in our time.
In the Sunday readings Martha is not a good host to Jesus because she is anxious and distracted. (Luke 10.38) The Rushbearing nudges us to be attentive to the needs of the poor (whatever you did for one of these you did for me, said Jesus in Matthew 10.40) and to remember that "in him all things in heaven and on earth were created" (Colossians 1.16).