Juicy Fruit...

 “Juicy Fruit”

 

Deuteronomy 26:1-11
26:1 When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it,

26:2 you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for the name of God.

26:3 You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, "Today I declare to the LORD your God that I have come into the land that the LORD swore to our ancestors to give us."

26:4 When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the LORD your God,

26:5 you shall make this response before the LORD your God: "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.

26:6 When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us,

26:7 we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.

26:8 The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders;

26:9 and God brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

26:10 So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me." You shall set it down before the LORD your God and bow down before the LORD your God.

26:11 Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house.

 

 

Dara and I were married in the Spring of 1977. Our first apartment was a tiny, third-floor one with an external stairwell, one bedroom, and a living room that wouldn’t even accommodate a full-size sofa. Our landlord lived in the first two floors of the house, and each year, he planted a fairly sizable garden out back. He and his wife were members of our church, a church on which I served as a part-time staff member, working with children, youth, and a weekly radio ministry. I think they were happy to “host” us as renters, and the landlord offered to plow up an extra plot of his backyard for us to plant a vegetable garden, too. My wife loved the idea of growing our own vegetables, and went to work planning our “farm.” I, on the other hand, knew about as much about growing things as I did skiing the Swiss Alps, so I was most certainly the most ambivalent of us. But plant a garden we did, and since we both worked, we shared in its upkeep after hours. 

 

Typically, I returned home first each day, and would survey the garden in my work clothes, which was usually a dress shirt, coat, and tie. When the weeds began to emerge, I would often grab a hoe and begin to weed the garden, dressed as listed. After all, I would have to climb three floors of stairs to change clothes. My after-work habit among the rows soon had the neighbors referring to me as “Oliver Wendell Douglas,” Eddie Albert’s character in a popular TV sitcom of that era, “Green Acres,” who worked his farm in a vested, three-piece suit. I always hoped that our little acre would have more growing luck than the fictional dry gulch known as the “Douglas Farm,” located outside of Hooterville. My prayers were answered, especially when it came to Zucchini.

 

We grew some nice tomatoes, a few carrots, a handful of successful peppers, and leaf lettuce, but our bumper crop was Zucchini, a vegetable I don’t even like to eat. I remember planting it in “hills,” as the seed instructions suggested, and when they said to put three seeds into each hill, I made the executive decision that that just wasn’t enough. Seven seemed like a good number. For your information, Zucchini was apparently a weed in its former life. At least it grows like one. When the vines appeared, they rather exploded like some kind of plant plague, and when the buds and fruit popped up, we were overrun with the long, green relatives of the squash family. As I once documented in a long-past sermon dedicated to the Zucchini, they grow so fast that if you hang out in the garden at night, you can hear the “rustling” as they grow, and if you want a small, succulent one to put in a salad or to use in a cooked dish, you have to pick it around 2:00AM. Otherwise it will be a foot long and five-inches around, by morning.

 

Of course, as good “farmers,” we shared our bounty with family and church friends, as we grew far more than we could eat ourselves, especially given that Yours Truly isn’t particularly a “vegetable” person. I suppose sharing the produce we produced with our church friends was the closest we got to what we read in today’s passage. Our church did not take vegetables as a substitute for a monetary offering. 

 

Israel was given a great land to “possess” and in which to settle in. Of course they would farm the land, and God asked them for the best and first fruits. The juiciest fruits, indeed. They were to be taken to “the place the Lord your God will chose as a dwelling.” Later, they will call this “dwelling” the temple, where first fruits will feed the priests and the temple staff. Did you ever wonder why God asks for the juicy, first fruits?

 

Regardless of whether you view this requirement as Divinely requested or just a human prioritizing of resources (God should get the first offering of what the land produces), that the first fruits go to God (or the temple) is a statement of both faith and gratitude. Recently, a series of studies by academics have turned up evidence that people who live life with generosity and gratitude are happier and even medically healthier. Being stingy with one’s resources and even worse, giving in to a sense of entitlement, tends to lead to a bitter and ungrateful disposition, which may adversely affect health and enjoyment of life. Giving of one’s “first fruits” is a kind of behavior modification or training that may head off the entitled, selfish life and spur generosity and thankfulness. Again, as we have seen so many times, God’s “laws” are designed more to help US than to give God a case of the jollies. A majority of the commands of God to God’s people provoke us to a mutually beneficial life in community. Some, like the “first fruits” command, though, have the result of culturing us as generous, thankful people, and therefore happier people, possibly with even more days of life in this world. The true “juicy fruits” are not those given to the temple (or the church), but the outcome of healthier priorities and generosity, overcoming tight-fistedness that may be borne of our “sin nature.”

 

Of course, as religion became more institutional—from the temple to the synagogue, to the church—the giving of first-fruits also had the practical benefit of “funding” the household of faith. In our day, the Christian church, the mosque, or the Jewish shul have often had to justify their people’s giving by offering exceptional programs or missional outreach. Less and less folk are willing to give generously to their house of faith just because “God says they should,” or to keep it in business, unless they perceive a personal benefit. While it is not a bad thing that religious organizations have “adapted” to this attitude and offer outstanding ministries, it does move us away from the training in generosity the command to give of “first fruits” offers, and more in the retrograde direction of giving for selfish reasons. 

 

Last week, as I introduced the giving of tithes and offerings in the church I was preaching at, I talked briefly about what was the core stewardship message of my 36 years in ministry, which is basically “first fruits” giving. We give NOT to a budget, or because our church needs the money, but because we are the people of God, we give of our “juiciest fruits,” and we give out of gratitude for all God has done for us in Jesus Christ. Generosity is religious virtue, indeed, and for the Christian, giving generously is an essential part of discipleship. In my first four appointments, I would regularly remind my congregations that even if a wealthy benefactor were to drop several million dollars on the church such that if it were then invested, the proceeds could pay the FULL budget of that church, the people would STILL need to give generously, as an act of faith and discipleship. Of course that never happened…until my fifth appointment! The fifth church I served had pretty much had this happen, albeit many years before I got there. The investments of that church, as well as proceeds of several trusts dedicated to them, could really cover most of their operating budget. How did this affect the giving of that congregation? Fact is, they were one of the highest per-capita giving congregations in the Annual Conference! Chalk it up to a combination of many decades of good pastoral leadership, sound Christian teaching, and the commitment of those people, but they truly “walked the talk.” It meant that they could support myriad of local and global missions, give to a great variety of important causes, and pay their church staff pretty generously, compared to many other churches. 

 

Summary: “juicy fruit” giving is one of the most important and “fruitful” (sorry) of all of our religious teachings extracted from the Bible. I think we would be shocked to see what the outcome would be for the church, its mission, and the world, if believers were to put it fully into practice, and we would never believe the personal “fruits” of it, as well. As today’s text clearly states, Israel’s “fruit” was that they inherited a “land flowing with milk and honey,” which is a symbolic phrase meaning a high-yielding and heavily resourced geography, AND they were the beneficiaries of God’s agency, God’s blessing, and God’s multiple demonstrations of power. The New Testament—especially the teachings of Jesus and Paul—is rife with the blessings of “first fruit” living and discipleship. Luke 6:38 says, “Give and it will be given unto you, pressed down, shaken together, and running out all over.” And "Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion and through us your generosity will result  in thanksgiving to God."  (Corinthians 9:10-11)

 

All this said, during this Lenten season—a time when, as Christians, we are called to examine the level of commitment we have to our walk of faith—we must not miss the final verse in today’s pericope: 26:11 “Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house.” One of the highest commands Israel had from God was that of hospitality, or “welcoming the stranger” in their midst, because God reminded them, regularly, that they were once strangers in a strange land, themselves (Egypt). It has forever been a major tenet of Judaism that the immigrant, the refuge, or the “foreigner” is to be treated like a citizen of Israel. This tenet is adopted by the early Christians, as well. Unfortunately, in our time, selfish politics has caused this command of God to fall on rough times. WAY too many people who call themselves Christ-followers hold to a political view that promotes rejecting the “foreigners,” regulating refugees, and building walls to keep the “sojourners” out. These views are enflamed with fears that “they” will take our jobs, get “handouts” from our tax dollars, and vote illegally in our elections, none of which is true on any measurable scale. One wonders what blessings God would enrich our nation with if we were to shun these selfish views and fully observe the hospitality commandment. Unfortunately, even modern-day political Israel is guilty of the same disregard of this commandment, and even worse—grabbing lands legally owned and occupied by Palestinians, tearing down their homes, and building Israeli settlements on the West Bank. 

 

Let me close with this thought: If we freely give of our “juicy fruits” to God and obey the hospitality code to welcome the sojourner, we will be rewarded by God’s favor, witness acts of God’s power, and be the beneficiaries of Gods “mighty, outstretched hand,” as the text promises. If we choose, instead, to build our own wealth by withholding our generosity, and stoke fear of the alien, we will forever live in this fear that someone will take “our cookie.” Our giving, if it exists at all, will be out of obligation and “duty,” and not out of joy and thanksgiving to God. In this Lenten season, may we passionately investigate our prejudices, selfish impulses, and the false notion that we can be “self-made” and successful on our own. Where we find them, may we call upon the Spirit of God to exorcise them, and may the Grace of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, cleanse us from the unrighteousness they breed in us. Amen!