BY REV. SANDRA NIXON
WE LIVE IN ANXIOUS TIMES
Well we have made it to the final Sunday in our Season of Creation, and to Thanksgiving: a time of gathering in, both gathering in the harvest and gathering in with family and community. It feels like the first official “pause” after the adventures of the summer and the hustle/bustle of the transition to fall.
My winter wardrobe is ready, my pickles are made, my thoughts have turned to creating coziness in my home, and planning for gatherings and celebrations ahead - those comforting and life-giving parts of life that help sustain me through the more challenging things: the chill of the wind and rain and the first windstorm; the days that go sideways without warning; the worry and prayer for all the injustices and insanities going on in the world, and for people I know who are having a hard go right of it right now. Or we ourselves might be having a hard go.
These are anxious times; fraught times; busy times full of distraction and a never-ending news cycle.
And speaking into this, today, we have two texts:
The first is from the Hebrew testament, from the Book of Joel. The essential message: Do not fear, O soil, for God will provide
For Joel, writing after a time of ecological disaster, when a locust infestation had consumed Israel’s food supply, a message of hope was needed. Of course, back in Joel’s day, natural disasters such as plagues of locusts and droughts wiping out harvests, etc were thought to be God’s punishment on a people for their sins.
So Joel’s message was one of reassurance - that as the people turned back to God and God’s ways, God would bless them with abundant harvests again.
Then we have the New Testament reading from the Gospel of Matthew: Do not worry about what you will eat or drink.
In Matthew’s day, new converts were wrestling with life in the early christian communities, which were very communitarian. The new Christians in many of the early Jesus communities gave up their wealth and possessions, selling what they owned to contribute to the common good and common wealth of the community.
And it seems as though the community Matthew is writing for might have been having some difficulty with adopting this “way” of being community together, which involved a fair amount of personal sacrifice.
So what we hear - from both Joel and Matthew is a similar message: Do not fear, do not worry, God will provide you with what you need.
It's a call to stay the course; to stay present to and grounded in what was essentially the message of Jesus, which is to live in the love of God and practice love of neighbour - with the assurance that blessings of care and connection would come from that; and that one would be sustained and taken care of as part of the beloved community.
A good message, and a reassurance, for sure. But… it can ring hollow for us.
After all:
Joel could not have foreseen how natural disasters would dramatically increase in frequency, intensity and destructive capability due to climate change, which we know is being caused by human activity.
And Matthew could not know that many Jesus followers would end up in individualistic and capitalism-centred societies without strong community support or social safety nets. And how those societies would end up controlling and ravaging the resources of the earth so that both the earth and many of its people would end up in a state of deprivation.
Our anxiety - about climate change and its effects on people and planet and livelihoods and quality of life - that anxiety is real and it is justified.
GOD'S INTENTIONS
YET - if we look a little deeper, we can see that both Joel and Matthew may be talking to their people not so much about what they “should” do or feel, but more so, they are talking about - they are testifying to - God’s intention for our lives and for the world.
With Joel, if we listen closely, what comes cross in Joel’s writing is God’s desire and intention towards restoration of the land and the people
And in Matthew we hear that it’s God’s intention for us to be grounded in the divine love of God, the response to which is practice of love of neighbour (God in our neighbour). And through that, the creation of beloved community that nurtures and sustains its members.
That of course starts small, as many things organically do - it starts with small communities of followers of this way, which also become pockets of loving resistance to the forces that alienate us from love of God and neighbour - so that all may someday know the peaceable kin-dom.
And one of the things that characterizes these communities and these followers, and works towards growing the peaceable kin-dom - is that people recognize that not only are all people our neighbours, but that the land and all beings are as well. In Joel we hear that affirmation as well, of the intimate connection - physical and spiritual - between the land and the people, and their experience of God in their midst.
+ + +
I wanted to take us back to Robin Wall Kimmerer and her book “Braiding Sweetgrass”. In the book, as I noted at the beginning of this Season of Creation, back at the beginning of September - she talks passionately about us needing to reclaim this connection, where for much of the developed world, the discoveries (advance) of science, rather than informing and enhancing our spirituality, have tended to alienate us from the spiritual dimension.
And for Kimmerer, the key is story - and how it can help weave back together these two media for understanding the world, helping us gain a more cohesive, more wholistic view of reality.
Back again at the beginning of September, we explored the story of Skywoman Falling, including both the truths embedded in it as well as the commentary it offers on how the dualism undergirding much of western Christianity has served to separate and alienate us from the land and from our physical bodies and in doing so, has impoverished our spirituality, which must be tied to both, if God is indeed in all things.
THE HONOURABLE HARVEST
Further into her book, Robin Wall Kimmerer has a chapter entitled “The Honorable Harvest” in which she describes the guidelines or rules - not written down or codified, but which are “reinforced in small acts of daily life” (p.183) in the culture of her people, the first nations of the Great Lakes area.
And if you were to list those rules, they would include things like:
Never take the first… or the last
Ask permission before taking (and abide by the answer)
Take only that which is given and only what you need
Harvest in a way that minimizes harm
Use respectfully - and never waste, that which is given
Share
Leave some for others
Give thanks for what you have been given, and what you have taken
Know the ways of the ones who take care of you. Sustain them and the earth will last forever
Now these, like all rules, are subject to interpretation and the temptation to read our own agendas into them. But they offer another “way”, if you will. A way not unlike the way of the one we follow. A way especially related to our reclaiming the integratedness of the physical and the spiritual, especially when we consider, as Kimmerer suggests, that these guidelines are based on accountability to both the physical and the metaphysical worlds, and the recognition that all creation, all non-human beings, are invested with awareness, intelligence and spirit.
RESTORATION & RE-STORYATION
This is an example of what she calls the “re-storyation” needed in our day, for the healing and “restoration” I believe we in Christ’s name are called to participate in, to help heal the world which is nothing less than Godself.
So the work continues: our work as individuals and in community, with the guidance of the spirit - framed today and in this harvest season by this invitation to reflect on God’s intention for us to restore a wholistic view of our relationship with the land and each other via practicing the “Honorable Harvest”.
So I will leave us with these questions:
What does harvesting honourably look like in our lives?
What does it look like in the choices we make as consumers?
What does it look like in our relationships - with the non-human rest of the world,
but also in our human relationships? (For the principles undoubtedly include all our relations).
PRAYER
Holy God, Creator and animator of all,
In this season of thanksgiving,
You call us to the practices of honourable harvest
and right relations.
Help us to see all Creation as kin,
For this is your story.
Help us to hear it, reclaim it,
and find our place within it,
In Christ’s name. Amen.
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