23rd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 28C

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? i. Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed editions, 2013. p 11 ii. Ibid. p 15