One of the popular service projects my college campus ministry group participated in was Saturday morning gleaning. Gleaning – with a G, not cleaning with a C. I’m not sure I know any college students excited about cleaning on a Saturday morning. But when we organized gleaning trips, we could always get a good crowd. It was while gleaning one Saturday morning in my freshman year that I think I first heard the passage that we heard from Deuteronomy this morning. It was the piece of scripture that was read at the start of every shift in the farm fields outside Williamsburg, Virginia. “When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow…. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.”
These were the words we heard before we put on our sun hats, pulled on our work gloves, and stepped into what looked to my very untrained eye like a field that had already been harvested, completely picked over. We stepped into a tomato field on my first trip, and as I looked down the rows, I didn’t see enough pops of red on the plants among the green-turning-brown leaves to even warrant our presence. There were smushy burgundy messes in the dirt! The fruit that had fallen from the vine and was now covered with bugs getting what they could. The plant on the edge of row where I would start had a few on the vine that were overly swollen, even burst open with white mold growing on the cracks. This didn’t seem like it was going to be very productive. But clearly I was new here.
I paired up with a veteran gleaner who graciously showed me the ropes – this Space Coast Florida kid who never had more experience in the dirt than dropping marigold seeds in rows with my father, or digging a few holes in the mulched garden for the trays of petunias my mother brought home from the nursery. Getting low to the ground, pushing the leaves out of the way to see what was underneath, walking slowly and looking carefully, eventually I found tomatoes, plenty of tomatoes that had been left behind by the conventional harvest in this field. For several hours my partner from the Episcopal church and I, the other college students I came with, and representatives from food banks and emergency pantries, moved slowly and methodically through the field, gleaning the bright, nourishing food from among the end-of-season leaves, gathering crops that wouldn’t be added to the bins for profit, but would be shared with those who couldn’t pay, but still needed to eat – maybe the widows and orphans, possible resident aliens and strangers, likely seniors on fixed incomes and single moms trying to make ends meet.
Don’t pick the fields clean, Scripture says. Don’t shake every branch until every last olive falls out and gets gathered for your bins. It’s not all for you. It’s not for you alone.
Jesus’ words to his disciples and, I imagine, anyone within ear shot weren’t all that different. This short story of Jesus drawing the children close to him, takes place sometime between the transfiguration on the mountain top, during which Jesus’ divinity was revealed to three of the disciples, and his entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey ahead of his crucifixion. It comes after Jesus has answered an argument among the disciples about who is greatest with the declaration that those who become like children are those who will enter the kingdom of heaven, those who will be greatest. It comes after questions and answers about how much is enough forgiveness to offer. It comes after disciples and Pharisees and crowds have been pushing at him, finding the boundaries of his law of love, trying to discover who is in, what it takes to get to the top – like children, testing the limits to see how much is enough.
Perfect timing, right? Some in the crowd start to bring children to Jesus – actual children, not childish adults. Some start to bring children to Jesus, and the disciples try to prevent them. Many of us have been told this is because children were worthless in ancient times. That was probably an overstatement. Story after story from the Hebrew tradition, even the infancy narratives of the gospel according to Luke, tell us about how desired children were. The psalmists sing of their blessing. They weren’t worthless, but they were vulnerable. When Jesus speaks of children or to or about them, he is, as New Testament scholar Amy Jill Levine puts it, “speaking of the vulnerable, the dependent, those who cannot speak for themselves, those who cannot survive on their own.”
It’s not all for you, Jesus is saying. It’s not for you alone.
The grace you receive, the forgiveness you enjoy, the love in which you delight…
The food in the fields, the fruit on the tree, the welcome in your land…
The security you seek, the belonging you crave, the dignity you long for…
It’s not all for you, the landowner, the vinekeeper, the stewards of the field.
It’s not for you alone, the adults, the educated, the gatekeepers.
In the words of the Belhar Confession, “God, in a world full of injustice and enmity, is in a special way the God of the destitute, the poor and the wronged.”
The hungry and lonely, the parentless and the stranger, the vulnerable and voiceless. God is, in a special way, their God, and to be children of this God, followers of this Jesus, our attention must be focused in a special way toward them. The work of church must be turned toward these. As Anglican archbishop William Temple said in the early 20th century “The Church is the only society on earth that exists for the benefit of non- members.”
It’s not all for us – this beloved community, this spirit-filled worship, these blessings we receive, this love we know, the care we count on, this protection we hope for. It’s not for us alone, this grace we celebrate, these resources we share, this faith we claim, this faith that claims us. It’s not for us to cling to and hold away from the world, to collect and store away. Instead our call to do the exact opposite – it’s a call to open the storehouses, open the doors, open our hearts, open our homes to all.
It’s an interesting idea to ponder right now in the life of our church – How dies and will our land and building get used to serve not just our own needs, but the needs and hungers of those who are disenfranchised, for the justice and welcome of the most vulnerable? Where do we and how will we care for those who are not just our children by familial relationships, but by the Spirit of God who draws us together? What will help us makes decisions that put those who God cares for in a special way in the center of our life and work?
Friends, this spiritual food on which we feed, along with the food that strengthens our body, the fruit of the spirit that nourishes our souls, along with the fruit that gives nutrients to our systems, this welcome and love and grace that fills our lives, along with the stability that grounds us through security of resources—it’s not all for us. It’s not for us alone. Instead it is what sends us out as disciples of Jesus to serve the vulnerable. How will we share it with all whom God cares?
Who are the vulnerable people groups in our community and church? What acts of protection and care do they need?