The more I learn about our Church, the more I find myself looking back at times in my life where I had missed God. One of those times occurred to me as I was slicing up a fresh, locally grown Jersey tomato.
Tomatoes were the crowning achievement to my father’s backyard garden. In late May, he would plant tender little plants he purchased from Rocky’s Farm Market, a small, family owned roadside stand that today is a sad, barren roadside eyesore. To support the plants as they grew, he posted tall cedar poles in the ground close to each plant and gingerly tied each plant to the pole with torn strips of a soft rag. As they grew higher, he added more tiers to keep each plant from bowing to its own bountiful weight.
Soon after Independence Day, the first tomato was picked by my father, of course. No one else was allowed in past the chicken wire fence that separated the garden from the rest of the world. Because of my father’s kid-in-a-candy-store excitement, the first fruit was usually more on the orange side of the ripening spectrum. A day or two on the windowsill, and the tomato was a deep, delicious red. Within a week or so, a sudden barrage of tomatoes flooded into our house.
As summer went on, I was often sent to pick eight or 10 tomatoes for my mother’s tomato cucumber salad. I remember walking among the vines that stood taller than I, picking each tomato with a twist and pull, just like I had watched my dad do.
The smooth tomatoes were warm to the touch from the summer sun and smelled thick and earthy and sweet with a hint of acidity hidden within. Along with the tomatoes, I was instructed to gather three or four cucumbers. (None of my mother’s recipes were very specific: five or six teaspoons of butter, two or three large eggs, a pinch or two of salt. Yet everything was always so good.) I was also asked to pick five or six leaves of basilica, which is basil, although I did not know that until I was in high school. My mother would mix all of this together with one small onion, doused with extra virgin olive oil, a touch of oregano and salt to taste. This was lunch. This was summer.
By September, there were more tomatoes than we could give away. No one came over to our house without leaving with a ShopRite bag full of tomatoes. Though my parents canned both red and green tomatoes, by the time the once-valiant vines lay drooped over the rag ties that once held them brawny against their cedar stakes, many tomatoes started the compost that would be next season’s fertilizer.
Over the years, it never failed that when I first picked up some summer tomatoes at a nearby farmer’s market, I always thought about my father’s garden – how it started as a small patch and then, year by year, expanded to over half the backyard; how it served as an escape for him from his suit-wearing managerial job; how it gave him gratification watching the fledgling plants he so lovingly nurtured mature and bear fruit.
Now, though, I cannot help but think of Galatians 5:22-23: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”
I realize that my father’s garden was more than just a hobby. It was the fruits of the Holy Spirit on display the whole time.
Love is the motivation for my dad’s work in the garden, just as love is the first fruit of the Spirit. Joy is found in each step, from tilling to harvesting, just as is the joy the Spirit gives us as we witness God’s work. Peace is felt trusting that the garden will grow after the work of pruning plants and pulling weeds has been completed, just as is the peace we receive from trusting God.
Patience is needed to not plant too early in the season and knowing that fruits ripen in their own time, just as patience allows us to trust God’s timing in our lives. Kindness and generosity are shown to family and neighbors alike by giving away baskets full of cucumbers, zucchini, and, of course, tomatoes, just as the Holy Spirit forms us into people who help others generously.
Faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are what the gardener reveals by returning daily to the soil to carefully do the ordinary work that will result in extraordinary fruit just as we all must continue doing the work Jesus commissioned us to do – spreading the Gospel and performing acts of love – remembering that the fruit is not a prize earned but evidence that the Divine Gardener has been at work in us.
Deacon Dean Johnson serves at Church of the Holy Family, Sewell.
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