May 30, 2010 Des Moines

Galatians 1:1-12

Whom to Please

 

Home Grown Tomatoes by Guy Clark

There's nothin' in the world that I like better than

Bacon, lettuce and home grown tomatoes

Up in the morning and out in the garden

Pick you a ripe one, don't get a hard 'un

Plant 'em in the springtime eat 'em in the summer

All winter without 'em's a culinary bummer

I forget all about the sweatin' and the diggin'

Every time I go out and pick me a big'un

 

{Refrain}

Home grown tomatoes, home grown tomatoes

What'd life be without home grown tomatoes

There's only two things that money can't buy

That's true love and home grown tomatoes

 

You can go out and eat 'em, that's for sure

But there's nothin' a home grown tomato won't cure

You can put 'em in a salad, put 'em in a stew

You can make your own, very own tomato juice

You can eat 'em with eggs, you can eat 'em with gravy

You can eat 'em with beans, pinto or navy

Put em on the side, put em on the middle

Home grown tomatoes on a hot cake griddle

 

{Refrain}

 

If I could change this life I lead

You could call me Johnny Tomato Seed

I know what this country needs

It's home grown tomatoes in every yard you see

When I die don't bury me

In a box in a cold dark cemetery

Out in the garden would be much better

Where I could be pushin' up home grown tomatoes

 

                Because admit it:  there is a kind of “Emperor’s New Clothes” delusion when it comes to the tomatoes we more routinely consume.  We can convince ourselves that those hydroponically grown tomatoes in January actually taste good, but the self-delusion only lasts until summer when the real thing reappears in our gardens – or in the brown paper sacks handed to us by friends who have gardens.  This, we know, is what a tomato really tastes like.  And they are almost, once again, upon us.  As is the venue where they will be otherwise routinely available:  the Drake Neighborhood Farmer’s Market, which opens for its 14th season this Wednesday.

                 I have a sort of odd attachment to the Farmer's Market.  I no longer recall the nature of the group, nor the reason for its meeting, but I remember like it was yesterday the moment when the idea was first given voice.  I remember the room we were in; the time of day; I even remember in which chair I was sitting when Ginny Gieseke, in a fit of brainstorming enthusiasm, said something to the effect of, “I think we should create a farmer’s market in the church parking lot.”  I don’t remember anyone else’s response, at least in part because I was so pre-occupied with my own, voiced mercifully  only to myself into the echoing chambers of my empty head – “that’s the stupidest idea I have ever heard.  Why in the world would we want to do that?”  I am, after all, a programming genius. 

                Thankfully, my private assessment remained unspoken, and like all those greens and peppers and ears and apples and bunches that now routinely get featured on tables each Wednesday throughout the summer months, Ginny’s idea found fertile soil, grew, and produced rich fruit.  And along the way in these past 14 years, I have learned a thing or two not only about keeping my mouth shut, but about “why in the world we would want to do” something like host a farmer’s market. 

                One of the reasons I might list, looking back, is nutritional.  You might recall that at about that same time the Hy-Vee store on Ingersoll was closing, Tait’s Grocery Store down University was shortly to close, and this was well before the 36-hours or so that the Top Value Food Store was open near Mercy Hospital.  Which is simply to say that food – particularly fresh food – was not all that available around here.  A Farmer’s Market in our parking lot certainly doesn’t solve that shortage, but it helps.

                But beyond nutrition, there is a missional purpose woven through all those tents and tables and chairs and games.  Back in the germinating days of the market, food wasn’t always the only thing in short supply around here.  Basic safety frequently had a short shelf life, as did basic life expectancy.  There weren’t many places in this general neighborhood where a person could go with a reasonable assurance of not getting shot.  For more reasons than one, we were afraid of each other.  It wasn’t just the look of our neighborhood that was changing; our neighbors were looking pretty different, too.  And sounding, what with all the unfamiliar languages you could hear spoken along our blocks.  Surrounding us were Sudanese, Rwandans, Salvadorans and Mexicans, Indonesians and Vietnamese and perhaps the largest concentration of Bosnian refugees in the country. 

                The genius of Ginny’s idea – utterly lost, that evening, on me – was that here could be a place – a safe and non-threatening place – where people nervously different from each other could come and mill around the vendor stalls and, without suspicion or aggravation, rub shoulders with one another and occupy a common space; and just maybe, along the way, decide that we all weren't so scary after all.  Oh, and yes, take home something good to eat.  And listen to some music.  And hear the sound of children laughing.  And just perhaps, if they cocked their ear just right, catch the echo of the forgotten sound of their own laughter, against their better judgment, leaking out.   Here could be the nexus of neighborhood mingling – the untilled soil of new community.  And we could break the sod and plant at least a handful of seeds. 

                It has become for us one of the ways that we have demonstrated commitment to this corner – a way for us as a people of faith to be visible to our neighbors; to say with our labors moreso than our voices, “We are here and we care about the life that goes on around here.” 

                Along the way some good things have happened. 

·         On any given Wednesday you are likely to see children playing a game or getting their face painted.  But if you look more carefully you will see the almost thirsty way those kids are soaking up the attention – as if it might just be that some of them don’t always get enough of that sort of contact. 

·         On any given Wednesday you might bump into the woman who comes every week with her pre-school-aged son just to walk around and enjoy the sights and sounds.  It’s free entertainment and “free” is all she can afford.  She doesn’t buy anything – it rather appears that she can’t.  She and her son simply walk, and absorb.  And smile.

·         You might get to see the chest scar of the man who first proudly displayed it in gratitude just a few short weeks after he had stopped by the health tent to get his blood pressure checked.  They alerted him that it was dangerously high and that he should get to a doctor, post haste.  He took them at their word and almost before he knew it he was being rolled into an operating room for a heart surgery that saved his life. 

·         And you might just see a vegetable that you’ve never had and feel an almost giddy urge to try.

There are, as it turns out, lots of reasons to host and visit a farmer’s market – among them the fact that there you automatically eat food that is in season, picked ripe when it is tastiest and most nutritious, and as best-selling author Michael Pollan puts it, you can enjoy the satisfying but also useful pleasure of literally “shaking the hand that feeds you” (In Defense of Food, pp. 159-160).

                But why are we – a church – doing it?  All of those other reasons are important and part of it, but shouldn’t there be something…I don’t know…”religious” about it?  Absolutely.  So, consider this.  Mahatma Gandhi once observed that, “To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves.”  There is something profoundly authentic – deep and real – about retaining our connectedness with the earth.  We are, after all, dirt.  We came from it and we will return to it.  And in the meantime it is through the soil’s largesse that we stay alive.  We lose something essential when we lose touch of our kinship with the soil. 

                During my clergy group’s recent visit to Stone Barn Center for Sustainable Agriculture in Tarrytown, New York we laughed when our guide first repeated to us the question asked last summer by a touring school kid:  “Why did you stick your carrots in dirt?”  But our laughter masked our deeper sense of grief.  When our kids no longer have any awareness that carrots grow in the ground long before they magically appear washed and rubber-banded in the produce bins at the store, we have indeed forgotten something of ourselves.

                In his often testy relationship with the Galatian Christians, Paul noticed how easily such distractions can occur. 

6I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.

            How astonishing it is, in other words, for us to lose track of what is core – to get so enamored by the glittering, the whirling, the fancy packaging and the “new and improved” promises that we forget what is real; solid; true.  In his list of “Food Rules,” Michael Pollan suggests that a helpful rule-of-thumb is that it’s best not to eat anything incapable of rotting.  Think about it.

                Think, as well, about the myriad claims on television ads and product packaging when you hear the Apostle Paul ask,

810Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? If I were just trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.1

                Some things are more important than attractiveness or packaging or convenience.  Who are we trying to please?  And whose efforts do we find pleasing?  Isn’t there, deep down, a hunger to connect with that which is solid, real, reliably authentic?

                There is more than that at the Farmer’s Market, but there is rarely less.  There are good things happening there – real, authentic, and nourishing things that find us doing something holy and also deeply human when we are about them.  I hope to see you there – helping to set up tents and tables, painting a face, passing out a coupon, shopping, introducing yourself to someone you hadn’t met, shaking the hand of the farmer who feeds you; and grounding yourself, allowing the Christ in you to quite  possibly discover the Christ in another. 

                And who knows?  You might just pick up for yourself a home grown tomato.