One of my father’s favorite things to do on a summer evening, especially if we had had a thunderstorm that day, was to take me with him while he checked the farm. I was handy to open the gates, but there was a more important reason why Daddy took me with him: it was a chance for him to teach me about life.
Sometimes, we would count cows, to make sure none had wandered off. Sometimes, especially on a Saturday evening, Daddy would use his survey to determine what was the most important work to do in the coming week. Sometimes, we just looked at the fences and the furrows.
One thing Daddy taught me again and again: fences and furrows needed to be straight. We had fences that stretched over rolling hills further than your eye could see—but Daddy made them absolutely straight. He would show me how to stand at any gate to look down the line. The fence posts were always exactly in a row. And, in the days before weed eaters, Daddy or a workman would take a lawnmower or a sickle to clean all the weeds out of the fence rows—even in the bottom where no one but us ever saw the fields.
As I grew and could drive a tractor, I learned the secrets of plowing furrows and making crop rows straight. The secret was to keep your vision on a point at the end of the plowing—whether that end was a hundred feet away for the garden or halfway across the bottom for a corn field. As a girl, I never did that work with the mules, but sometimes, I walked beside him while he plowed. Even with the eccentricities of a couple of not-always-cooperative animals, the lesson was the same: fix your vision on the end, then make and keep the furrow straight.
Straight Lines for the Israelites
This week our first readings cover about 200 years of Jewish history, from about 1300 BCE to 1100 BCE. This history is told in the books of Judges and Ruth. During this time, Israel was ruled by Judges. A judge was a political and religious leader; judges had prophetic powers. There were fifteen judges altogether, and one of them, Deborah, was a woman.
Today’s reading begins with what could be considered the theme of the time of the judges:
The children of Israel offended the LORD by serving the Baals.
Abandoning the LORD, the God of their fathers,
who led them out of the land of Egypt,
they followed the other gods of the various nations around them,
and by their worship of these gods provoked the LORD
The people of Israel were NOT living in straight lines. In spite of all the Lord had done for them and their promises to serve Him, to the knowledge of historians, they were the only people who were serving a living God, rather than an idol. Certainly, all the peoples around them worshiped a god in an image they had made. The primary images/gods of those people were Baal, a god in an image like a man, and Ashtaroth, a god in an image like a woman.
The Ten Commandments and other rules of Jewish law gave them straight lines to follow, but what God asked of them—to trust and worship a living God not contained in an idol—was asking a lot. It put them at odds and in contrast with all the peoples around them. It was hard for them to see the goodness in what God was asking. It was too counter-cultural.
They lived a crooked pattern: they would wander away from God’s straight lines; God would raise up a judge; they would follow the judge’s guidance for as long as the judge lived; but, once the judge died, the people strayed again—and the process happened all over again.
Straight Fences and Fertile Furrows in Jesus’ Conversation
In Matthew’s Gospel today, a young man asks Jesus about straight lines. He says, “Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?” Jesus answers, “Keep the commandments.” The young man wants to make sure he gets it right. “Which ones?” he asks. Jesus says, in effect, the main ones, as he lists several of the Ten Commandments. The young man answers, “All of these I have observed. What do I still lack?”
This story is told in Matthew (19: 16-30), Mark (10:17-31), and Luke (18:18-30). Mark adds a sentence that Matthew leaves out, “Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him.” I think that sentence is important, for it indicates that when Jesus asked much of the young man, he did it to help and nurture him, not to restrict or hurt him.
Still, though, Jesus then gives the rest of the story: “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
Jesus gave the young man a NEW straight line fence that was meant to be a fertile furrow: “Go, let go of what you have, and come, follow me.”
That was too distant of a vision point for the young man. It was too hard, too counter-cultural, like the Ten Commandments had been for the Israelites in the days of the judges. “When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.”
Straight Lines and Fertile Furrows for Us
The theme of “what God asks is counter-cultural” is where my prayer goes. I think of my understanding of straight fences as a child. I understood Daddy’s fences were straight, but I didn’t value “the straight and narrow” like he did. Yet, when I needed to plow, plant, and cultivate garden or crop rows, I saw the value of the straight line requirement. Crooked rows are darn near impossible to cultivate without killing plants. The good fruit the land can provide does not reach harvest if the rows are crooked.
Daddy, a wise teacher, let me by with some crooks in my garden planting, to show me what happened if I let my vision wander while I worked.
Fascinating to me, my son, now the farmer, is known on his other job in construction, for his eye that knows exactly the slope and grade of a road or parking lot. He knows how to make it just right—like the fences on the farm. Must be Daddy’s influence!
Prayer
Lord, whether it be the straight line fences of your commandments: “You shall,” “You shall not” or the straight lines of your invitations to fully follow You, You call me to live by straight lines, that my furrows of good soil may bear good fruit. My good soil now is writing, teaching, counseling,–and the way I live, the way I treat people. Lead me, guide me, Lord, to keep the fences and crop rows straight in the way I live today, that, here and now, I live as counter-cultural as your commandments and counsels ask me to be.
