Tomorrow morning at 8:30 about 150 people will gather at Sycamore Spring Orchard in Lebanon, PA to glean apples. Mr. Hess, the orchard owner, has been very generous over the years, inviting us to come and pick his apples and give them to local food banks, kitchens, and shelters. We will pick several hundred bushels of apples in a few hours. This is food that would otherwise go to waste in the field. Following the biblical principle of gleaning that comes from Deuteronomy is a way of creating a sustainable economy in a village culture in which some have more than others. It creates a kind of redistribution of wealth, but through work. The poor are allowed access to food by picking from a reserve area of a field. Food is not wasted, the farmer is not looted or robbed by people who are unjustly treated, and the least are given access to food. It is a win-win situation established by God in the Israelite's post-slavery experience as they evolve from a nomadic, tribal,wilderness refugee experience to a settled, rooted culture in a particular ancestral land. The book of Ruth has an example of gleaning when Boas invites Ruth, a gentile, to pick grains in the field on behalf of her jewish mother-in-law, Naomi. We are, like Ruth, those who pick on behalf of others. It is also a great time, unless it's raining. Then it sucks. but even in the rain, you feel like you're taking part in a new economy, where the abundant harvest is really shared, freely given. It is an economy of grace where justice is tempered bby mercy. Are there other ways we might glean, offering a portion of what we have for others? Is this a new, old way of building a sustainable economy?
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