Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost-Rev Melanie Lemburg
23rd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 28C
November 13, 2022
“Anyone unwilling to work should not
eat.” I couldn’t help but think of this
line from our epistle reading today—the 2nd letter to the Thessalonians--as
I sat at a stoplight about to turn onto the Truman from Montgomery
Crossroads. I was looking out the window
at a man holding a small sign—saying he was a veteran and asking for any sort
of assistance. I was thankful that I had
one of our blessing bags in the back seat, so I rolled down my window and
handed it to him. Then I watched as my
husband, who was in the car in front of me, rolled down his window and handed
him some money. It’s one of the things
that I admire about my husband and his priestly ministry. He takes to heart another scriptural
admonishment, that we heard Jesus say in last week’s gospel: “give to everyone
who begs of you.” And I wondered what
we’re supposed to do with these two seemingly contradictory scriptures from one
week to the next?
There’s a whole history around this
quote from 2 Thessalonians. It has been
quoted by leaders across the centuries—John Smith to the colonists at
Jamestown; Vladimir Lenin as a foundation of socialism, the first phase of
communism. The original hearers of this
line, the Christian community of Thessolonika, received this admonition from
the letter writer (who may or may not have been Paul) in a specific
context. They were worried about the
eschaton, the end times. They thought it
was going to happen any day now, that Jesus was going to return and pass
judgement on this world, and they would be released from their trials and
tribulations to go live as the faithful in Jesus’s eternal kingdom. If you think the end of this world is going
to happen any day now, then what does it matter how you earn your living or
contribute to the community? But the
writer of 2nd Thessalonians is telling that community that it does
matter. What they do every day between
now and the end of this world, how they function together in community
continues to matter. No matter what is
happening, our contributions to our community matter; how we care for each
other matters.
So, I started wondering about different
ways to think about contributions to community and how we take care of each
other from this particular scripture.
How do we get at the heart of it—that our contributions matter, that how
we take care of each other matters—while maybe leaving behind the very
individualistic and punitive nature of it?
My little family is getting ready to go
visit my extended family in Northeast Mississippi next weekend. Most of you know that my parents decided to
buy a farm in the last few years, and together with my youngest brother and his
wife and their twins, they all farm, growing their own organic food—fruit and
produce—and sharing that with their community by selling it at a local farmer’s
market and through C.S.A. shares (which
stands for community supported agriculture).
It’s a huge undertaking for four adults and there’s always something to
do. They joke now about how they often
save big projects for when they know my other (California) brother and I are
coming with our families. They call us
their migrant workers. And if the
weather cooperates, we help do these projects; and my mom cooks and cooks and
cooks and feeds us all. We don’t help
out to earn our food. My mom would still
feed us even if we didn’t help with the work.
We help out because we’re family, and the farm is important to them, so
it’s also important to us, and we want to support it. (It’s why we go to sporting events for our
children and grandchildren, right? Why
we sign up to bring food to church events or volunteer. We are a part of these
families, these communities, and we value what they value and so we support it
and them.)
But what if the gospel calls us to think
bigger? Bigger than helping out in our
own families? Bigger than helping out in
our own church?
I’ve been reading the book Braiding Sweetgrass:
Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Kimmerer is
a mother and a scientist and also a Native American. In her chapter titled The Council of
Pecans, she recounts one of the stories of her family of origin—how her
grandfather and his brother go out fishing for their supper but catch nothing. They are hesitant to go home empty handed and
face a supper of only biscuits and red-eye gravy yet again. When one of the boys stubs his toe on
something, they are delighted to discover nuts, so many he can hardly walk
through them all. They decide to take
them home and stuff as many as they can in their pockets, but they long to
bring more home to mamma to see them through the coming days, and they can only
carry so many in their small hands. Kimmerer
concludes the story writing, “The heat eases a little as the sun sinks low and
evening air settles in the bottomland, cool enough for them to run home for
supper. Mamma hollers for them and the
boys come running, their skinny legs pumping and their underpants flashing
white in the fading light. It looks like
they’re each carrying a big, forked log, hung like a yoke over their
shoulders. They throw them down at her
feet with grins of triumph: two pairs of
worn-out pants, tied shut with twine at the ankles and bulging with nuts.”[i]
Over the course of the chapter, Kimmerer
writes beautifully about what pecan (and other nut trees) can teach us. She writes about how pecan trees don’t
produce every year but rather at unpredictable intervals that scientists
speculate are brought about because of environmental stimuli or factors. And in the years that the nut trees mast or
produce, the environment around them flourishes. The squirrels eat more and become more
abundant, and then the hawks eat more and become more abundant. And the next year, when the nut trees don’t
mast, the squirrel and hawk populations drop as well.
Because
the thing about pecan trees is that they don’t just decide as individuals if
they’re going to produce nuts in a given year.
They all work together and all the trees produce or don’t. She writes, “If one tree fruits, they all
fruit—there are no soloists. Not one
tree in a grove, but the whole grove; not one grove in the forest, but every
grove; all across the county and all across the state. The trees act not as individuals, but somehow
as a collective. Exactly how they do
this, we don’t yet know. But what we see
is the power of unity. What happens to
one happens to us all. We can starve together
or feast together. All flourishing is
mutual.”[ii]
All flourishing is mutual. What you do matters to the greater
community. What if each of us moved from
a more individualistic mentality (the one of he who does not work shall not
eat) toward a more communal mentality—that all flourishing is mutual? What might we as a church, as a society learn
from the pecan trees about how to live and how to take care of each other and
the world around us? What might we
consider changing in our lives or in the life of this place to support the
flourishing of all?
Comments
Post a Comment