Laboring in the Soil

It is an odd image in this week’s text: uprooting a tree (already challenging) and planting it into a body of salty water (impossible). But it is not surprising to talk of agriculture in terms of challenges and impossibilities—as an act of faith.

In downtown Montréal, Innovation Youth has spent several years developing expertise in urban agriculture. IY “greens the city” by planting vegetable gardens and hiring unemployed teens to maintain them in odd spots: churchyards, forgotten plots of land next to condominiums, back alleyways. They’ve even worked North America’s oldest standing urban garden, next to the famous Notre Dame Basilica (yes, the one where Celine Dion got married).

The Notre Dame garden, owned by the Sulpician order, had suffered nearly 30 years of neglect and a century of mismanagement by the time Innovation Youth moved in. The French design was unfavourable to the Canadian climate. Old maple and chestnut trees drained the soil of its nutrients and overshadowed the flower beds, making growth difficult. The vegetable plots, which once fed a community of 1000 priests, nuns, parishioners and their families, were in such disarray that it took an entire summer to weed and replenish the soil. Staff, interns, and young people had frequent moments of doubt, fatigue, and frustration.

The tree planted in the salty sea. This is how gardening in an urban context sometimes feels.

 

Invisible Gardeners on Stolen Land

Then Jesus brings up the topic of slaves, a stinging description—with little commentary—of their role in the agricultural industry. This image should convict us; the Sulpician garden is on unceded Indigenous lands, on the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka. 

Many nations built their riches on exporting items grown at the hands of cheap or slave labour. Those who toiled to produce those goods are often forgotten. 

This may be an exegetical rabbit hole, but I cannot help hearing a hint of sarcasm in Jesus’ question, “Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded?” He knows full well that, in First Century Galilee, no slave would ever be thanked. The toil is hard, the work is thankless. In this parable, it is implied that the worker has no place at the master’s table.

 

Working the Soil

What does this digression have to do with faith?

“Increase our faith!” the disciples ask. Jesus brings up the image of a mustard seed, contrasting its smallness with the greatness it can accomplish. Working the land at the Sulpician garden was indeed an act of faith – no skills, planning, or experience could have prepared us for the task ahead. But the mustard seed is so small . . . Can this not be a comfort to us? We don’t need the knowledge, the resources, the expertise of genius farmers (or of missiologists, strategists, urban planners, for that matter). “Bring me your smallness,” Jesus says. “I can work with that.”

In our case, our “smallness” was showing up and faithfully working the land. Working much as the slave does in the parable: no thanks expected, no rewards given. We poured ourselves into restoring and healing the gardens, with no guarantee they would produce fruit. We acted, we toiled, and little by little, our faith in God’s plan for this ministry grew.

The slave is unthanked, and does not dine with the slave owner. This is the image in the parable, and this is how it is for much of humanity today. The kids IY works with, the very ones who worked the Notre Dame gardens, are mostly “uninvited” to many “tables” in the city. They do not feel welcome in places of power and status.

Jesus describes this situation in his parable, but his posture is so very different in his own ministry. The slave, the forgotten, and the oppressed do indeed have a place at his table. He invites them and serves them: “Take, eat…” The bread, made from grain that was grown with the hands of the worker, is broken, blessed, and given to the servant by the Master.