“Leave a Little” based on Deuteronomy 24:17-21 and Luke 12:22-34

Our essay today started with a quote from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I want you to hear it again, it is very important:

“The church must reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”1

Some of us, these days, are struggling a little bit with “the state” and both how it is in present and how it may be in the future. Dr. King reminds us of our role. Guide, critic, conscience, prophet. Dear ones, things are not as we nor God want them to be, and it is possible they’re going to get worse before they get better. Still, called to be guide, critic, conscience, prophet. In some ways we have little power. Doesn’t matter. The world won’t get better if we stop dreaming God’s dreams and sharing them. In these roles, we are people called to speak to the power of nonviolent, peaceful change.

We are to be a lovelight to the world. That lovelight shines out hope into the world, reminds people of the love in which we were all formed, directs us to peace – AND that lovelight illuminates injustice and brings attention to places love is needed, that lovelight doesn’t become complicit with harming the vulnerable, it seeks the common good, it shows us all the way when we fear there isn’t a way.

Our passages today remind us of God’s visions and what the lovelight is meant to illuminate. Deuteronomy tells the people how things should be, and that includes careful care of those who are struggling. Everyone is told to only go through their crops once to harvest, and whatever is dropped or forgotten should be left for those who are hungry. The people are told, as well, to be careful with widows, to offer justice to the ones without legal standing – the immigrants and the orphans. Those who had once been without power are told to treat those without power well.

Dear ones, we can’t create that world by sheer willpower, but we can love on it until it softens and moves in that direction. And our own actions can matter along the way – however it is that we practice “leaving our fields for the poor to be able to glean.” These are the means of peace.

In Luke we hear Jesus speaking – and I am reminded that he is speaking mostly to people who are vulnerable. Where in Deuteronomy the vulnerable were those without standing and without power – the widows, orphans, and immigrants, by the time of Jesus the Roman Empire had ensured a much larger portion of the population was struggling. Jesus mostly spoke to, for, and about those who were poor.

And he tells them not to worry. Which doesn’t really make sense. Hungry people worry about food. Those without clothes worry about clothes. But Jesus says, “don’t worry.” Jesus reminds them that God’s wish is for them to be well fed, well clothed, and unafraid. It is, I think, a retelling of Deuteronomy – God’s way is for everyone to have enough. Live your lives so those who have less than you do will still have enough. Leave a little, and everyone will get a little. God is interested in a society that cares for those who are the worst off, God judges society by how they care for their most vulnerable.

So, dear ones, that’s how we focus our interest and how we judge societies too. That guides where we shine our lovelight, and how long we hold it where people need to see.

The fields left for the poor to glean is a hard thing for me to wrap my head around – maybe it was for Jesus’s followers too. I think about lawsuits I’ve heard about where gigantic seed companies sue small farmers for growing crops without buying their seeds – when the seeds could well have been carried by the wind. I think about no trespassing signs, and gated communities, and even ancient Roman compounds presided over by a patriarch, and all of it sounds so different from an assumption that you should leave a little bit in your field, and let anyone who needs it come and gather it.

In the book of Ruth one of the plot points centers around this gleaning. Ruth and her mother-in-law were widows and had no one to advocate for them in the legal system of their day. Ruth went out to glean in Boaz’s fields and Boaz was unusually generous. He instructed water to be share with her, he asked the field workers to drop more than they needed to. He fed her lunch, he told the workers not to bother her even if she gleaned first. All very generous, all – we’re told – a form of courting. But nevertheless, the assumption in the story is that Ruth had the right go into the field in broad daylight and gather whatever she could, and take it home to feed herself and her kin. The gleaning wasn’t done in secret, or under the light of the moon, or under the threat of violence. The fields were left for those who needed them, and those who needed were WELCOME to come gather what they needed. Without fear. Without accusation. Without having to hide. Maybe even without shame. Just – able to get what they needed from anywhere they could find it.

Meanwhile, in our society, our Supreme Court ruled that it is ok to arrest people for sleeping outside – even when they are homeless and have no place to sleep inside. We made it ILLEGAL to be a person who has to sleep. Pretty much the poplar opposite of this Deuteronomy passage and the society it sought to create, huh?

Friends, things are not now as they should be. Things may get worse. The very purpose of a society – to care for the vulnerable – may continue to get lost in the shuffle.

What we can do is remain steadfast. Listen to God’s dreams, and let them soak in. Shine our love-lights. We can see and name what isn’t write, see and name how things should be. We can support each other in our dreaming. We can keep on listening for God’s nudges in our lives. We can soak in peace, hope, and love so we have them to share, we can seek out joy so we can keep on keeping on.

Gleaning is an old, old concept, but it is a beautiful one. It is one that maybe we can play with, work with, consider how it might be lived out today. Gleaning can give us hope about other ways to form society, about remembering that God’s dreams are reachable.

We can give each other hope. We can be peace.

We can give the world hope. We can be peaceable.

And the best part is that God’s dreams are available to us in the Bible, through each other, in nature, and through modern prophets. God’s goodness is everywhere, God’s love knows no ends.

The world may say there isn’t enough, but we say there is so much that even the gleanings are enough for those in need.

We can be people of abundance even in a world that believes in scarcity. We can be people of peace, no matter what the world brings.

We can be a lovelight. Let’s keep on shining. Amen

1Claire Chadwich “A Harvest for All People” in We Cry Justice (Minneapolis, 2021), p. 33.