Deacon Reflection: A Ministry for Justice in Agriculture

By The Rev. Harrel Johnson

---

Almighty God, We thank you for making the earth fruitful, so that it might produce what is needed for life; Bless those who work in the fields; give us seasonable weather; and grant that we may all share the fruits of the earth, rejoicing in your goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

- Book of Common Prayer, “Prayer for Agriculture,” page 824

 

I want to break tradition by returning to tradition. During this month of May we used to celebrate a Sunday as Rogation Sunday, a feast that appears to be forgotten.

Rogation Sunday is a time of celebration and prayer. It is a time set aside to appreciate and recognize our dependence upon the land for our food and, most importantly, upon our dependence of God for the miracles of sprouting seeds, growing plants and maturing harvest: a time for farm advocacy.

My wife Amy is a bibliophile. A person who loves books, I am glad of it and I know she loves me, too, because sometimes she buys a book for me. Not too long ago, I was recruited by the then-bishop suffragan  to serve on the Bishop’s Committee on Justice in Agriculture. Amy bought me a book written by Samuel R. Guard.

Samuel R. Guard, a lay Episcopalian and at one time the owner and editor of “Breeder’s Gazette,” a journal for farmers and cattlemen established in 1881, wrote a book of prayers entitled A Farmer Gives Thanks. In the preface of this book, Guard writes “[t]he farmer is a believer.  Naturally a believer. He plows in faith; he sows in hope; he reaps in charity. From the morning milking to midnight farrow the farmer witnesses personally: ‘All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee.’”

As a people of faith, we have always been bound by God to care for his creation. God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and gave them dominion over all that was within; Moses led Israel out of Egypt and into the land of milk and honey.

The prophets and the psalmist offer up images of peaceful pastoral scenes like the green pastures and still waters in the 23rd psalm and offer God praise for the bounty of the earth.

Our Lord teaches using parables that offer images of sowing, harvest and of caring for vineyards, or tending flocks of sheep.

God’s creation also includes the hungry. Jesus, when confronted with the need to feed the five thousand, tells Andrew “you feed them” and then again after repeatedly testing Peter’s love for him, Jesus tells Peter to “feed my sheep.”

PRAY WITH YOUR FEET

There is an African proverb that says “Pray with your feet,” which speaks a truth about prayer and faith that is often overlooked. Many of us often only see faith as a noun, which makes it an object you can put on a shelf and then take down and dust off occasionally. Actually, faith and prayer are verbs to be acted out, in and through the lives of those who profess them. It is the same as doing theology. It is not enough to believe; you must also act on those beliefs. In a previous article written and published a few years ago in the Disciple,  the Rev. Marty Stebbins  states that, “People of faith are paying more attention to their food these days,” and they should as evidenced by many of today’s news headlines about contaminated milk, peanut butter, eggs and produce.

Organically grown food is increasing in popularity. Consumers are searching to find markets for locally grown produce and meat, and some of us are becoming involved in environmental issues that also include agricultural practices.

Our faith would tell us that every time we sit at a table or place our order at a restaurant, we are inescapably connected to the earth, the fields, the crops, the farms and the farmers. We are indebted to the men and women and their families whose labor helps sustain life.

Our Church, the Episcopal Church in North Carolina, has developed an image of being a mostly urban church, even though there are still many of our churches in small towns and rural areas of our diocese.

Still, the majority of our membership is located in urban areas and thus is somewhat disconnected from thinking about agriculture. But many Episcopalians are farmers, plowing the land, growing crops and raising animals. They are the keepers of the land for future generations, all while feeding and clothing the present one.

They, the farmers, know and understand their connectedness to God’s creation and that they are called by God to care for that creation and their call is to feed the hungry. They, the farmers, pray with their feet!  Do you?

In 2008, the diocese formed the Bishop’s Justice in Agriculture Episcopal Committee. This committee grew out of a justice ministry with which now-retired Bishop Gary Gloster was involved in the 1990s. This work not only calls us as people of faith to live into our Baptismal Covenant to "respect the dignity of every human being," it also allows us as citizens and consumers to advocate for those who help supply our food.

The focus of this ministry is to support North Carolina farmers by giving voice to their justice concerns about their changing market systems.

This is truly the work of the church, the work we are all called to do.

 

KNOW YOUR FARMER

The work of the Diocese of North Carolina’s Justice in Agriculture Episcopal Committee is not over, in spite of what seems like recent victories in agricultural law reform.

There are hungry people who still need to be fed with nutritious, fresh produce grown in church-based gardens. Urban sprawl, with its hunger for building space, forces small family farms out of business every day, especially here in North Carolina.

There are farms that could survive the onslaught of this pressure, if only they had dependable local markets and customers to help level the playing field between them and the mega supermarkets so many of us are accustomed to shopping at these days.

Their survival depends on farmer’s markets and meat-buying clubs. Farms whose sustainability is often dependent on a source of labor that offers opportunity to others, many of who are named Jose, Maria or Jesus, who are also in need and have a hunger that needs to be fed.

During a past diocesean convention our bishop, now Presiding Bishop, invited us to travel with Jesus on the road to Galilee, so let us rise up and go. The road is long and the workers are few but the harvest can be great, because there are a lot of farms on the road between here and “Galilee.”

Jesus says “ Follow me” and know your farmer.