Harvest 11
What do you think of when you
hear the word Afghanistan?
Probably you think of
soldiers, bombs, the Taliban, ruined buildings, dust and barrenness, noise and
conflict. What you probably don’t think of is gardening. That’s why one
of the projects which will benefit from the Diocesan Poverty and Hope appeal
really caught my attention. Some of the money we donate today will go to a
project which helps Afghan women to plant gardens – what could be more
appropriate for Harvest?
It’s a project which is run
by one of Christian Aid’s partner organisations locally, which particularly
focuses on working with Afghan women – last year’s harvest appeal went partly
to work they were doing teaching women to read and write. Under the Taliban
education for girls was banned, so many women are illiterate. This year,
though, it is the garden project that is the focus. STARS, the partner
organisation, has helped women set up kitchen gardens, to grow food for their
families. It provides them with seeds
and equipment, and most importantly with training and encouragement. Seven
million Afghans – a quarter of the population are still dependent on food aid,
simply because of the effects of decades of conflict. People have been
displaced, their homes destroyed. Life has been so insecure that no one has
known what is round the next corner – everything has been hand-to-mouth. That’s
no good. If Afghanistan is to have a secure future, people have to be able to
feel they can provide for themselves.
One of the beneficiaries of
the project, Maynour Sultani has been able, with the help of STARS to establish
her own garden, growing food for her family of eight – like all of us who grow
things, she sometimes finds she has too much all at once, so, again like us,
she is able to share that excess with her community – rather like those bags of
apples and beans and so on that have been appearing by magic in the church
porch over the last couple of months! It’s not just been about the food for
Maynour, though. It is also about self-respect and independence, the sense
that, for the first time she and the other women of her community, have a bit
of their own power to help themselves and their families. She said this.
“From the beginning, the women have done it all ourselves. We learned how to
grow the plants, we watered and weeded them and we pick the vegetables for our
families. The men are away from home working all day- labouring in the fields
or helping with the harvest. The situation in the village now is getting better
than it was. In the past we faced many difficult times and experiences, and
these days are more peaceful and plentiful.”
As the quote from her
daughter which I included in the service sheet reminds us, this project also
helps the next generation to grow up healthy – I’m sure many parents here wish
all children sounded as enthusiastic about vegetables. She knows what she has
missed and the variety of tastes, the sheer sense of plenty is clearly a
delight to her.
What struck me about this
project is how diverse and how deep are the effects of something as simple as
growing some plants. Who’d have thought that putting some seeds in the ground –
one of the simplest things we can do – could be so important?
Of course to those of us who
are enthusiastic gardeners this shouldn’t come as any real surprise. We know
why we enjoy it. We know the thrill of seeing that first little shoot come up
from the ground, the first buds appearing on the fruit trees. We know the sense
of fulfilment when you get to pick and eat your own food from your own patch.
It may not be as perfect to look at as something cling wrapped from
Sainsbury’s, but the sense of satisfaction, of connection with the earth is
unbeatable. It usually tastes better too.
Of course there are also the
plants that fail. Every gardener knows that for every seed that germinates and
makes it through to maturity there will be many more which don’t. Pests and
diseases, high temperatures, low temperatures, drought and flood – the number
of threats that little seedling faces is huge. It can be hugely frustrating
when a plant you’ve nurtured turns up its roots and dies. But we still carry
on. We keep trying.
There’s a traditional saying
that “those who plant a garden, plant hope”, and it’s perfectly true. Putting
that seed in the ground, knowing all the obstacles it will face, is a profoundly
optimistic statement. It’s not that you think that everything will go your way,
but that you believe it is worth the risk. It’s worth taking a chance on some of
your efforts failing, because the rewards when they succeed are infinitely
precious. “Those who plant a garden, plant hope”. Gardening is a commitment to
the future – it requires an attitude of hope, hope which is strong enough to
sustain you as you wait, because in gardening nothing happens instantly.
Sometimes it can take a very long time indeed to see the fruits of your
labours. Sometimes you know that you will never see them at all – but the work
you do will bring blessings to those who come after you. Another gardening
proverb says that "A society grows great when old men plant trees whose
shade they know they will never sit in."
Gardens and growing things
teaches us a lot about ourselves, so it’s not surprising that in the Bible they
are often used as ways of helping us think about life and God. In today’s Old
Testament reading we heard a beautiful, but sad elegy to God’s love for his
people. They are like a vineyard that he planted. He put in endless labour, but
the vines yielded wild grapes, small and sour. All his work seemed to have come
to nothing.
The people who first heard
these words would have thought about God rescuing them from slavery in Egypt,
bringing them through the desert to the Promised Land. Truly God had been with
them, had chosen them, had planted them. But now everything was going wrong. They
had been conquered by the Babylonians. Jerusalem had been destroyed and the
people taken into exile thousands of miles from home. The image of the overgrown,
ruined vineyard would have been a vivid reminder of the reality of their
experience. Rather like the images of Afghanistan we have been so used to from
the TV news, everything seemed to have been devastated. Isaiah links the
physical devastation to the moral disintegration he sees around him. “God expected justice, but saw bloodshed;
righteousness, but heard a cry!”
God mourns profoundly for his
people here, and if all we had was this passage, then we would be entitled to
feel rather hopeless. If even God can’t make the world work right, then what
hope is there for us? But the good news
is that this is just one snapshot of one moment. Later on in his prophecies, Isaiah
speaks of a time when the people will be once again planted in their land, and
that is exactly what happened. All seems bleak now, but this is not the end of
the story.
It is not the end, because
God is a gardener, the original gardener, who planted that garden in Eden. Like
all true gardeners he just can’t help hoping, trying, re-planting, pruning,
weeding, coming back for another go. However ready he sounds to give up on his
people, actually he doesn’t.
The Gospel story echoes
Isaiah’s words. Again there is a vineyard which is heading for disaster. Those
who are supposed to look after it for its owner refuse to share its produce.
They have come to believe that it is theirs to do with what they like. They
beat the owner’s slaves and kill his son. But the truth is that the vineyard
does not belong to them; ultimately the
owner has control. He will take it away from them, says Jesus, and give to
those who will look after it properly.
The Christians for whom
Matthew is writing would have heard this parable as a message of reassurance.
Many of them were originally Jewish, but were gradually finding themselves cut
off from their community of origin, accused of betraying their inheritance by
following this man whom Jewish leaders had crucified with the help of the
Romans. Others were Gentiles – they had come from pagan backgrounds and were
vulnerable to the accusation that they weren’t really entitled to be counted as
children of God. What right did they have to share in the inheritance of his
love? Jesus’ words told them, though, that it wasn’t your tribal identity, your
historic sense of belonging that mattered – the fact that you had been on this
land since time immemorial - it was how you treated the gifts that you were
given.
Our circumstances are
different, of course, and we need to be careful not to use this story as an
excuse for anti-Semitism. It isn’t a case of Jews, bad, Christians, good. If we
think that we simply repeat the same failing that the parable highlights, of
believing that God’s kingdom is ours to own and to control. But however we
apply it today, this story still contains a powerful message of reassurance. It
tells us that God is not defeated by human sin and failure. Even when the
slaves have been beaten and the son is killed, the future still belongs to the
owner of the vineyard, not the tenants. We don’t have the last word – and
that’s a very good thing. This parable, grim as it seems on the surface, is
about hope. What you see now is not necessarily what you get it tells us. The
wreckage of selfishness and greed and violence which we are often so aware of
is not the end of the story.
The women of Afghanistan, as
they plant the seeds that your offerings will fund, are living demonstrations
of that hope. In a land wracked by decades of trouble, where hope must often
seem absurd, they believe enough in their future, in the support of God, in the
love of others, to sow a new beginning. As we give what we can to help them we
are privileged to share in that hope, and maybe to find some for ourselves too when
the fields of our lives seem barren and bare.
Amen
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