9 When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10 You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.
In the little town where I first served as pastor up in Vermont there was an old and still-dirt road which was easy to miss unless you were looking for it. It was called “Poor Farm Road”. And in by-gone days it was literally the road to the “Poor Farm”, a plot of land the town fathers had set aside for the sake of the needs and provision of the poor in town. It was their way of putting into practice today’s Lesson on not stripping the vineyard bare or gathering the fallen grapes, but leaving something for the poor and needy and the alien.
This injunction is interesting. The command is given and it’s about as clear as anything in the Bible. And then a kind of exclamation is put on it at the end. “I am the LORD your God,” the word says.
This was a word for people coming out of the bondage of slavery in Egypt under Pharaoh. There a man’s measure was judged solely by how much he could produce in a day or in a year. No one ever produced a whole life-time because the work used them up and they were then good for nothing. That was Pharaoh’s system.
But now they’re under a new system. Pharaoh is no longer their master, the LORD is their God. And that means a new judgement for a person — were they kind and gracious and did they leave something for the alien? Because they too were once aliens, and they ought never to forget that.
So, a question: Are we leaving something around the edges of our lives? Are we leaving something in time, or money, or produce to help the poor, the needy, and the alien? Do we remember that we too as people were once looking for Poor Farm Road?
NOTE: Tomorrow’s Lesson is from Leviticus chapters 22 and 23.
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