HomeGLEANINGS: Leftovers: Gleaning is the practice of taking what others leave behind. This can be strengthened connections, memories from the good and learnings from the negative.
READING
Lev 19:9, 10
9 When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the LORD your God.
Lev 23:22
22 When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the alien: I am the LORD your God.
Dt 24: 21, 22
21 When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow. 22Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to do this.
A STORY: Soup of the Soup
Once upon a time in the town of Isfahan there was a merchant who invited his neighbor to dinner. He served a banquet that featured a delicious chicken. The neighbor was so delighted with the chicken that the next day he told everyone how wonderful the chicken was, “Like no other chicken you have ever tasted!”.
That evening, just as the merchant was about to eat his supper, there was a knock on the door. There stood a man who said, “I am the best friend of your neighbor, and he so lavishly praised the chicken you served him last night, I was wondering…” The merchant, being bound by the requirements of hospitality, invited him in and served him the leftovers of the previous night’s dinner.
The best friend of the neighbor was so pleased with the dinner that the next day he told everyone he knew about it.
That evening, just as the merchant was about to eat his supper, there was a knock on the door. There stood a man who said, “I am the cousin of the best friend of your neighbor, and he so lavishly praised the chicken you served him last night, I was wondering…” The merchant, being bound by the requirements of hospitality, invited him in and served him a soup made of the leftovers of the previous night’s dinner.
The cousin of the best friend of the neighbor was so pleased with the dinner that the next day he told everyone he knew about it.
That evening, just as the merchant was about to eat his supper, there was a knock on the door. There stood a man who said, “I am the co-worker of the cousin of the best friend of your neighbor, and he so lavishly praised the chicken you served him last night, I was wondering…” The merchant, being bound by the requirements of hospitality, invited him in. The soup was almost gone, so the merchant had to add water to it to bring it to an amount worth serving. He did so and served soup of the soup of the leftovers of the previous night’s dinner.
The co-worker of the cousin of the best friend of the neighbor was only moderately pleased with the dinner, but still the next day he told everyone he knew about it.
That evening, just as the merchant was about to eat his supper, there was a knock on the door. There stood a man who said, “I am the nephew of the co-worker of the cousin of the best friend of your neighbor, and he so lavishly praised the chicken you served him last night, I was wondering…” The merchant, being bound by the requirements of hospitality, invited him in. There remained now only a small portion of the already watered down soup. To this the merchant added still more water and served the soup of the soup of the soup of the leftovers of the previous night’s dinner.
The nephew of the co-worker of the cousin of the best friend of the neighbor of the merchant ate the dinner, thanked the merchant, and left. Having done so, he said to himself, “that really was not a very good dinner; I wonder what everyone thought was so wonderful.”
SERMON
Good Morning!
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, that all of your gatherings and celebrations were uplifting and joyful. Or that at least the good outweighed the bad.
Gleaning is the process of taking what remains in the field following the harvest. It is picking the leftovers of the harvest, if you will. The Biblical injunction to leave something of your crops in your fields is to guarantee that the poor also get food. Keep in mind that the ancient Israelite farmer also had to give the first fruits to God, that is, to the Temple, in the form of a sacrifice.
The first reading from Leviticus came from Chapter 19 which is a section in the so-called Priestly texts which describe a life of holiness. It begins with a call to holiness, it then describes a holy relationship to God, and then, beginning with verse 9, it describes a holy relationship with other people. And that begins with the call to leave enough food in the fields after the harvest so that the poor can eat. So the first consideration in human relations, which comes before business dealings or even the proper functioning of the law courts, is a consideration of the poor, the economically left out.
Gleaning is both an ancient and a modern practice. In 1996, the United States Department of Agriculture sponsored a “Summer of Gleaning” in which eighty eight AmeriCorps volunteers were sent into twenty two communities across the country to establish methods of food recovery. Food recovery is the overall title for any project or process that gathers food that would otherwise be thrown away and provides it instead to the poor. This can include gleanings from fields, leftover prepared foods from wholesalers, retailers and restaurants.
It is interesting that one of the primary obstacles to food recovery is the concern on the part of those with the food that if they donate their leftovers and someone becomes sick from eating them, the donator could be sued and held liable for damages. To avoid that, back in 1996 the federal government passed the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act that protects donors from most damages.
But gleaning is a process or attitude that can be applied to many different aspects of life.
While thinking about gleaning, the process of taking that which is left after the harvest, I began thinking about spiritual and religious things.
Sacred texts are the gleanings of great teachers—they themselves, the teachers, the full harvest, the best fruits of the harvest, are gone; the written record is what is left afterwards.
Example: we cannot meet Buddha face to face in this life plane, we cannot hear his voice, see his smile, hear his laugh, watch the movements of his hand and body as he speaks or listens to others, but we can read much of what he said, or of what others say he said.
The same holds true for other great teachers: Moses, Isaiah, Jesus, Muhammad, Confucius or Lao-tse.
But we do have their sayings, their writings or writings about them.
But, consider this: A teacher speaks with his disciples; that is the original banquet. The disciples relate verbally all that they saw and heard; that is the leftover dinner. As the original disciples begin to die off, their followers of each disciple write down what the disciple reported; that is the soup. Later someone gathers all of the written reports of the different disciples and puts them down in a single document; that is the soup of the soup. Still later, someone translates those documents into a language you and I can read; that it the soup of the soup of the soup.
That is the process that took place with Jesus and Buddha, but even when there are not so many steps—as when Muhammad’s words were written down during his lifetime, still, we do not have the same experience as those at the original banquet.
As we read the texts, then, we must try to realize that we are gathering only some small leftovers of the real harvest. To have a sense of the fullness of the original message, we must read beyond what is there—which we really cannot do. But that very knowledge—the knowledge of our inability to know the original—frees us, in a way, from the text. We can read it to find whatever in it serves us and our needs. I begin that by trying to read what the text actually states, but then I discard what does not fit for me and hold onto what for me are the edible portions, so to speak.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon was a great Baptist preacher in England in 1800’s, who did not like Unitarians. Still, in a sermon he wrote entitled Spiritual Gleanings, he stated that gathering spiritual gleanings, just like gathering the gleanings following the regular harvest, still leaves the individual with much work to do. Having picked the wheat—or the corn or the barley--the individual still must separate the wheat from the chaff, still must find the edible parts of the crop. This is true also for religious texts. Take what for you is edible, take what you can digest, if you will, take what you want and leave the rest behind.
That is true in the events of life as well; even the bad events in life. Often there is deep learning to be had in negative experiences, if we can rise above our anger and disappointments to seek it.
Example: For some of us, Thanksgiving dinners are not celebratory and joyful; for some there is often tension and simmering anger or conflict that comes forward at Thanksgiving or at other times when family joins together. But well handled, that kind of event can be cathartic, or can be something we learn about ourselves from.
It even is true of a bad sermon! If there is a sermon that seems dry and meaningless, still one can thresh the stalk and find some kernels of truth or meaning.
As a minister, I hate to say that, but taking that approach to readings or writings for myself means I must grant it to others as well. Just as I read a sacred text and choose not to believe in every word of it but to pull out from it some universal truth, so some may hear my sermons and say, well, that’s really pretty bad, but there is this one thing I can take away with me from it. They may also choose to take something from me and use it in a different way than I meant; or intended; or like. But that is the process of gleaning.
But there is something more about the sacred texts that it is important to remind ourselves of.
Despite what I implied earlier, the Disciples of Jesus and Buddha, of Muhammad and Lao-tse, were not in attendance at the original banquet. The great teachers of religion had some experience or insight that they shared with those disciples, and it was that original experience or insight that was the banquet. The disciples were merely the first people to hear about the banquet.
Something happened for Jesus and for Buddha, something that they attempted to express in words but that is probably inexpressible.
Like Paul on the road to Damascus struck speechless by his religious moment; like Lao-tse who said “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao”; like Buddha who dismisses words even though he uses words to express himself; the great teachers recognize that they are merely pointing towards something, not providing it directly. To read these texts as literally true is to miss that deeper point. To dismiss them because they cannot be literally true is to miss that same point.
The great teachers used words because words, paradoxically, are the best means we have to express deep meaning even though words are meaningless when applied to these things.
What is that something to which the teachers direct our attention? Is it an intelligent being like a God, as Moses, Jesus and Muhammad said? Perhaps, but that is not what Buddha and Lao-tse were indicating. For them there was some non-intelligence, some non-personality at the core of meaning.
From these sources I surmise that there is something they experienced or saw, some thing or some insight, which stunned and filled them, which changed their lives. Their words point to it but cannot define it. It is for us to approach and experience for ourselves. It is something that is approached by or draws in or engages the fullness of ourselves and makes of us or gives to us a singular wholeness.
And here is my belief—each and every one of us has had some experience that touches upon that nameless something. For me it relates to connection, connection to the All, connection to myself in wholeness, connection of my wholeness with the All. And those words may have no meaning for you. The task for each of us is to experience for ourselves and come to our own understanding of that experience.
Words do not define it or describe it; to use words is to limit our understanding of it. Call it God, call it a force, call it the All, call it a state of being and you proscribe it too much.
Transcend words, as Lao-tse indicates, and you begin to approach whatever it is.
May I find in moments of silence that I begin to near that great mystery.
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