Fruits and Stew

Today is the last day of September and even here in droughty Northern California the temperatures, the length of the days and the unraked leaves covering the front lawn are all undeniable signs that our side of the planet is well-tilting away from the sun. This cosmic path we trace through the universe is, like much of the rest of my life, a bit wobbly. I suspect all of our lives are more than a bit wobbly however much we might desire a decent and good order but there it is. 

This morning’s reading (9/30) from the Daily Lectionary included two food references. Matthew 7:13-21 speaks of gates narrow and wide, false prophets in sheep’s clothing and fruits. Fruits are a key sign of goodness or not-goodness. Jesus is also very clear about what happens to trees that grow bad fruit - they are cut down and burned. This isn’t the warm and fuzzy Jesus, this is the Jesus who might just turn a bit hard-of-hearing when the Kingdom of God arrives. Take warning. 

1 Corinthians 8:1-13 is about eating food that was sacrificed to idols first. This is about free meat which is pretty much the only meat that the poor folk ever saw. Its free because its part of a festival that the rich threw for the good of the order. The festival would be to keep both the idols and the hungry people appeased. Eating together then, much like it is now, meant that the diners were friends. No, not just friends, eating together meant the guests were as if they were family. So if we could get the gods to come over for dinner, then we’d be cool together and the crops wouldn’t get nailed by hail or bugs sent by some grumpy god left out of the party. The feasts were sponsored by the rich, in part because they had the meat and in part because they could display their wealth and their status by conspicuously sponsoring the great meals. Given that we hadn’t yet invented Rolax watches, gigantic yachts, personal jet planes and so on, this was pretty much the only way to flash the cash. Plus it kept the riots down to a minimum.

I find myself wondering what shape would our world be in if the uber-rich went back to sponsoring great feasts or its equivalent rather than buying the fifth multi-million dollar little cabin in Aspen. What would our world look like if the slogan wasn’t “Whoever dies with the most toys wins” but instead “Share the good fruits?”  Of course its easy for me to criticize the uber-rich because I’m not one of them but I’m still living very large compared to the other five billion human beings. But this isn’t about me or you or any single one of us. Its about our society, our community, our peeps. We want to make the Gospel message about individuals but its not - at least not restrictively. Its about each of us and all of us. Which is one of the reasons I’m a big fan of collective advocacy for the poor. We can run all the food banks we want but who is going to go speak to Power about why people are hungry? 

Now I like meat. I especially like a good rich stew that is started right around dusk on a cool, fall Sunday and is first put out on the table only after darkness has completed hidden the outside world. The kitchen is full of warmth, light, and stew smell. The glass is filled with a bold red wine which is the summer’s sun and water and earth transformed. I like it most of all when my family or friends or all of the above are sitting down to table with me. But my meat comes from someplace and while I don’t have to worry about ideological confusion of whither or not I’m affirming the existence of the local god of Northern California by digging into the bowl I do need to worry if I am affirming the more global god of corporate quarterly reports. 

I know that when my meat comes from large corporate operations, I am participating in a system that reduces the people who tend the cows, pigs, chickens, and sheep, the ones who bring it to slaughter and who divide the meat into consumable, plastic wrapped units, the ones who deliver those units to market and the ones who prepare the food for my final consumption to the lowest, poverty line wages possible. A life of high workplace injury and low health care to heal those injuries. I know that I also put myself and the ones who come to my table at risk of serious illnesses. Huge, multi-state meat recalls are among the fruits of the lowest cost possible economic god.  

I try to seek out Community Supported Agriculture sources where both the animals and the humans have some standing as beloved creatures of God worthy of care and respect - but I am not consistent. I sometimes shop at grocery stores and eat at restaurants (even fast-food when the options are very limited) where I’m pretty sure the meat came by way of some vast feed lot somewhere else. It happens. I know I could refuse to eat meat unless I know its complete biography but not only is that impractical, it also breaks table fellowship when I am invited to another person’s home  - another issue that was much at play in the early church - purity of individual action over participating in community. Jesus did tend to show up at the most impure tables in pursuit of a larger mission. 

Besides, its not about me and the purity of my own participating in a broken system - its about the system. What good have I done opting out of a broken system if it continues to injur both its employees and its customers? I may think I have saved myself but the Gospels are not about any one person, any one member of a community but the whole community. In Matthew Jesus reminds us that trees that do not bear good fruit get cut down and burned in a fire. In the sociological context within which the Gospels was written persons were less an individual then a member of a family or tribe. It is closer to the intended meaning to imagine that I am not so much a tree, but more of a branch on a larger tree that is my community. I have to be working with the the other branches, the roots and the trunk, who also need to be working with me. 

This is why we need to be involved with political processes. Our witness, our advocacy for fair pay, decent health care, safe food, and environmental policies that tend the creation for generations to follow is important. It is part of our life together, not just our lives as we live them today but the lives still to come. If all of this world belongs to God then we are to care about all of this world, not just the parts that are already “our kind,” and leave the rest to fend for themselves. We need to participate, to advocate, to help heal that which is broken. 

Corporations are not in and of themselves evil any more than non-profits are good or denominations are great. Its instead about the idols we keep making up and trying to serve because sometimes God’s apparently silent trust in our ability to figure a few things out together seems disastrously much too optimistic. While our idols may no longer have had first crack at the meat in our stew bowls, we certainly still keep giving them first claim on our lives in too many other ways. 

Paul was worried about brand new converts in a brand new faith that was just starting to set the boundaries between “of God” and “not of God.”  Not surprisingly, we find we are still worried about those boundaries all these centuries later, especially if it turns out we’ll be facing grumpy Jesus’ examination of our fruits at the end of all this. Look, we are all of one tree and if we are to be judged by our fruit its going to be a great big bonfire. 

Well, at least there remains the truth of what Paul writes in verse 8, “Food will not bring us close to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat and no better off if we do.” If we are going to be judged by our fruits, it is Jesus and only Jesus who will be running the fruit inspection and he’s already made the call. I can’t imagine a fruit worse than a broken human body hanging from Calvary’s tree but it is exactly this fruit that God transforms into a gift of life for every one of us. There is no fruit so bad that God can not make use of it for good. This particular fruit is called Grace and it is freely given and never earned. 

I am deeply grateful for that gift as I live my wobbly life on this wobbly world. Fall is coming, time for good stew and time to share it with others. 

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Anitra Kitts lives and writes and occasionally preaches in Northern California. Bonus video below: