Reconciliation as Kingdom Work: Introduction to Anathoth
Someone once told me that the hard work is narration. This statement was made all the more impactful because it was said after spending nearly eight hours laboring in a field, harvesting vegetables, pulling weeds, laying down trailer loads of compost on 250 foot long rows all by hand. It was said as seven young adults finally sat down from what we would all consider a long day of hard work in 98 degree weather, covered in sweat, dirt, and feather mill (ground up chicken feathers used as a natural fertilizer). And yet we realized the young man who spoke this statement was right. The hard work was going to be telling the story of our summer, what we learned about God, land, and people, telling the long and complicated history and future vision of the farm we worked on, and telling the many stories of the people we found ourselves living in community with.
My formal internship with this faith-based nonprofit ended less than a month ago and already I have found that every time I tell the story of Anathoth Community Garden and Farm it changes depending on who I am talking to, depending on whether I am discussing racial reconciliation, food justice, sustainable agricultural practices, or communion, depending on what details I can remember. None of my versions of the story is ever complete with the full picture and none of my versions has fully expressed the intentionality in which this organization keeps Christ at the center of everything they do. So here is another version…
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If I had to summarize Anathoth Community Garden and Farm, it would be this:
“A beautiful, meaningful attempt at the Kingdom of God.”
However, maybe their mission statement provides more details with:
“Cultivating peace by using good food and sustainable agriculture to connect people with their neighbors, the land, and God.”
Inherent in both of these statements are ideas about what the Kingdom of God will look like when Christ comes again and what work we should be doing right now to participate with God in His promise for us. Allow me to share with you three beliefs that I have about the Kingdom of God.
1. We will be in right relation with all peoples, who are made perfect through Christ's death.
Romans 5: 18 Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. 19 For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
In these verses from Romans, Paul tells us that because Adam sinned, so all people are sinful and fallen. Most Christians understand and can agree with this. We are all sinners and none of us worthy of the love of God. Paul quickly follows this solemn truth with the wonderful words of grace, which is that because Christ lived a perfect life, one without sin, He gives the opportunity for all peoples to be righteous or worthy of God’s love and promise of everlasting life. Since Christ followed the will of God all the way to the cross, He has made a way for all peoples to be perfected after their own deaths, to be made sinless and blameless.
For me to be sinless after death or what I would rather term as “to be made perfect in the coming Kingdom of God”, means that all the economic, social, and political injustices that we see in our current world, will be no more. People will no longer possess or fall victim to racism, sexism, ageism, nationalism, and all the –isms of this world that cause us to harm others. Such things as war, economic inequalities, and the denial of civil rights that occurs within our current world will be righted, because all people will be without sin and we will therefore no longer harm each other intentionally or unintentionally.
2. We will be in right relation with the Earth, also made perfect through Christ's death.
Romans 8: 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for the Creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the Creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole Creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23 and not only the Creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
Here again, we see Paul speaking about how people will be made perfect in the Kingdom of God, when he speaks about how our physical bodies will be redeemed from sin or made physically perfect without the ills of disease or defects. But Paul also tell us that all of Creation will no longer experience the sin, which was introduced by Adam, but rather will be made perfect of its ills and healed.
This speaks directly to the environmental issues we have caused ranging from accelerated species extinction to the pollution of our oceans to global warming and everything in between. Our sin not only harms ourselves and other people, but it also harms the good Creation of God, and often all of these harms go hand-in-hand together. For example the economic inequalities between developed nations versus developing nations, we might attribute to our need to find our own worth in material things and for dirt cheap. However, this sin harms not only the people having to work long hours in unsafe conditions for pennies a day, but it also harms in the environment when we use fuel to ship these material goods from all the way across the world, when we extract precious natural resources to make these superfluous goods, and when we allow factories to emit pollutants into the earth. However, it is in the Kingdom of God that we have the hope of a planet healed of all the ills we have caused it through this example and countless others.
3. We will be in right relation with God, because we are made perfect through Christ’s death.
Colossians 1: 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. 21 And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him…
Because we will be made sinless or perfect through a right relationship with God, we will no longer harm other people or God’s Creation. We will no longer struggle to find the words to pray, we will no longer harbor feelings of estrangement from God, we will no longer blame God for the ills that have fallen upon us in our lives, we will no longer seek satisfaction or our worth in things other than God. We will see ourselves and others as God see us, as children made perfect or reconciled through Jesus, as “holy and blameless and irreproachable”. All of this is only made possible through the love and sacrifice that was made by Christ; we have been given the promise of living fully in a right relationship with God and will therefore be reconciled not only to God but to all people and to all of Creation.
Through the works of the Paul, we are presented with a very vivid image of what the Kingdom of God will look. It is an existence without sin, one where we as individuals are made sinless through Christ’s death and therefore can know God and be in right relation with Him. This then allows us to be in right relation with all people and all Creation. It is towards this vision that our faith allows us to work for in our daily lives, through the strength and love of Christ Jesus.
2 Corinthians 5: 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.
As Christians, regardless of our chosen vocation, we are called into the ministry of reconciliation, the ministry of Kingdom work. The importance of social and economic justice, Creation care, and personal growth towards and with Jesus are fundamental in bringing about the Kingdom revolution. However, I haven’t always felt this way.
It was only four months before starting my internship at Anathoth this summer, that I decided to obey Christ and His calling and one real question for me was how to live out my faith. I was not satisfied with simply praying each day and attending church on Sundays. While during the week involving myself in work that I felt was inherently immoral and against what I had been reading in my Bible. I wanted every action I took to reflect my God of grace and love. Anathoth provided me with an answer to this stumbling block. I learned that I needed to do Kingdom work, or work that reflects what the Kingdom of God might be like, by healing human relations with each other, with the land, and with God. In this way I might participate with God in His will and also get glimpses of what we have been promised, bringing hope to this world of ours which is so terribly broken.
Anathoth Community Garden and Farm came about as an attempt to reconcile people to each other, to God, and to all of Creation through sustainable farming and healthy food made affordable and accessible. The ministry itself was a response to a murder that occurred at a corner store just down the street, when several youths influenced by drugs shook the small rural community to its core. Rather than acting in revenge, the community at Cedar Grove held a prayer vigil instead, and it was here that God brought together Senobia Taylor, an African-American woman who owned land nearby and who had a vision to donate several acres in order to help the heal community, and Reverend Grace Hackney, the minister of a local white church, Cedar Grove United Methodist, whose idea was to start a community garden.
Five acres of Scenobia’s land was donated to Cedar Grove United Methodist Church and Anathoth Community Garden was born. At its heart is the idea that shared work in the garden and shared meals at weekly potlucks might begin the healing process and attempt to reconcile a community wrought with issues of racial and economic disparities. All the while, people could come to appreciate not just each other but their own connection with the land and God through sustainable means of producing food.
Anathoth has grown much in the 10 years since its conception and now has many programs through which it attempts to accomplish this Kingdom work of reconciliation. In my future articles, I hope to outline each of these programs and some of my own personal stories of reconnection with my neighbor, our land, and God, which lead to a renewal of my spirit and the formation of a vision for my own part in the work of the Kingdom.
