New Testament Scripture Reading-Luke 8: 4-15
More than 25 years ago, a couple of gringos landed in Vicente Guerrero, a rural village in Tlaxcala, Mexico. The village consisted principally of peasant farmers who depended on small plots of land for their survival. The land unfortunately was not in a giving mood. Under a thin layer of topsoil, the ground was like “brick.”[i] With a sprinkle of chemical fertilizer and lots of pesticide, the farmers worked hard to bring forth whatever low yields they could.
In the midst of the squalor of village life, the gringos initiated a “model” farm that was quite unlike the peasant farms of their neighbors. The gringo farm had “rabbits, goats, ducks, a solar shower, a composting toilet, and a lush biointensive garden.” To the amusement of the locals, the composting toilet seemed little more than a barrel, a seemingly odd receptacle for human waste.
Neighborhood gossip and entertainment were perhaps among the better results of the project. Most everything else ended in dismal failure: “the neighbors’ dogs ate [the] rabbits, the milk goats came down with mastitis, and the ducks mysteriously died off one by one.” Meanwhile, “villagers politely ignored…suggestions for composting, crop rotations, organic farming, and reforesting.” So it was that as the two-year stint of the gringos nearly came to an end, they had little to show for their efforts. It was at this point that one of the gringos was advised to contact Marcos Orozco, a retired agronomist from Guatemala. The idea was that Marcos would come to Vicente Guerrero with a group of indigenous Guatemalan peasant farmers to teach a six-day course on soil and water conservation.
Eric Holt-Gimenez, the gringo in charge, picked the Guatemalans up at the airport in Mexico City and drove them to the village. Along the way, he “assured them” that “a sizable group would be waiting.” Eric had roped twenty of the local farmers into signing up for the course. When the Guatemalans arrived, however, only two of the farmers showed. Eric went from house to house trying to round up the others, but it was to no avail as he confronted one excuse after another. In the past, these same farmers had attended courses taught by government officials, but in these instances it was likely in the hope that they might receive a favor of some sort in the form materials, supplies, or credit.
Devastated by the low turnout, Eric at first suggested that the whole course be canceled. Marcos, however, replied that as long as there was one person interested, they would stay and share what little they knew. When Eric protested that there were more teachers than students, one of the Guatemalan farmers disagreed insisting that they were all students. And, so the course proceeded. Unlike previous courses experienced by the villagers, this one was unique in many ways. Whereas in the past the farmers “listened to recipe after unworkable recipe of expensive seed, fertilizer, and pesticide packages,” this course was practical. Whereas in the past the farmers had sat at small school room desks for hours listening “to boring dense monologues,” this course was largely outdoors and hands-on. On sloping, square meter plots, the Guatemalans demonstrated what worked and what didn’t. Leaving one plot bare, on another plot they built small terraces using pebbles. On this plot, they also placed a leafy cover over the soil. When they then poured water over the two plots, one could see the difference in erosion.
Beyond this practical pedagogy, the course was also unique in the manner in which it was conveyed. Whereas the previous government instructors, were “haughty” and gave “long harangues criticizing the backwardness of peasant agriculture,” the Guatemalans were “humble and respectful.” Moreover, they knew how to relate to their Mexican counterparts. They spoke from experience and connected with the peasant farming culture of the village. They used parables, stories, and humor to get across their ideas. These ideas were not simply about techniques. Everything they taught always seemed to be based on some value such as dignity, fairness, and mutual aid.
In a way, their teaching style was not all that much different from the teaching style of Jesus. Jesus spoke in parables that drew from the daily lives of the peasants who flocked to hear him. Scholars now think that the image of the farmer sowing seeds on the path and amid the thorns and rocks suggests a farmer with a rather small plot of land with a meager amount of good, ploughed soil. This would have reflected the dire straights of many peasants in Palestine who in general lacked land and good soil. The crowd surrounding Jesus would have identified with the picture he was painting. Where they would have been resistant would have been in the belief that this land would have produced crops of a hundred fold. That would have stretched the boundaries of what they believed to be possible. The boundaries of the possible, however, are exactly what the kingdom of God pushes us toward. Jesus recognized that the great challenge was to get people to believe that a better world truly was possible. He preached and preached about the kingdom of God, but only with some did it sink in. Only with some did faith grow and bear fruit.
If Jesus were here today, what boundaries of the possible would he seek to push? Would he call us back to our faith and push us to believe in a world that values people more than profits and humanity more than nationality? Would he tell us a parable and push us to consider the plight of peasant Mexican farmers as they flee to big cities and the United States because they cannot compete against subsidized U.S. crops? Would he tell us about seeds scattered among the rocks and thorns and push us to consider whether the message of the kingdom is really sinking in?
I am not sure how effective Jesus’s preaching style would be today. With the Guatemalans, at first their teaching style seemed ineffectual. The two local farmers who attended were resistant to changing their ways. Marcos, however, saw this as not only understandable but desirable. He declared, “Better for a person to accept things after great resistance. Those [who] adopt new ideas quickly, drop them just as quickly.”
Marcos was careful not to invite the farmers to bite off too much too fast. Instead, he sought to convince them to “experiment with new things on a small scale first to see how well they worked.” Before leaving he said, “I don’t care if you try new ideas out on a one-meter-square test plot, and if you only tell a neighbor. But do something and show someone.”
The message sunk in. At the end, one of the village farmers broke into tears of thanksgiving as he told of how he had never gone to school, but now for the first time ever he had learned something good. He promised to have a conservation lot that he would display to the entire town. He held true to his word and ultimately hundreds of farmers visited him over the years to learn from his plot. This farmer eventually became a leader in the educational movement known as Campesino a Campesino, farmer to farmer. In this movement that has stretched though a number of Latin American countries, farmers have learned from each other and often experienced “dramatic increases in productivity of 100 to 200 percent or more.”[ii]
I don’t know if our church will be the birthplace of a movement, but I do know we have members who know what to do with a small plot of land. I am continually amazed by David Slocum’s reports of the growing quantities of produce donated from our garden. At last count, the grand total so far this year is 893 pounds. In the end, we might mainly be a bunch of gringos, but thank God for the good soil. Let’s keep on sowing, and let’s keep on believing in the promise of God’s kingdom. Amen.
[i] The story of the farmers from Vicente Guerrero told in this sermon comes from the following source: Eric Holt-Gimenez, Campesino a Campesino: Voices from Latin America’s Farmer to Farmer Movement for Sustainable Agriculture, (Oakland, CA: Food First Books, 2006), vii-xi.
[ii] Ibid., xxi.
