Gary Paul Nabhan - Jesus for Farmers and Fishers: Justice for All Those Marginalized by Our Food System

Praise for Gary Paul Nabhan

Nabhans holistic look [at our food system] extends to his own life, in which daily work and daily spiritual practice provide balance.

Utne Reader World Visionary Award

Lyricism... infuses [Nabhans] prose, a rhapsody tempered by hard botanical science.

San Francisco Chronicle

Nabhans painstaking research has not eclipsed an evident natural knack for storytelling.

Saveur

Nabhan teaches ecological lessons to nonscientists through an impressive range of disciplines: ancient history, ethnobiology, paleo-nutrition, ecology, history, anthropology, and more.

Choice Reviews

Praise for Jesus for Farmers and Fishers

A bold, courageous, and utterly original rereading of Jesuss parables that draws us deep into questions of what it means to stand with those struggling with food insecurity, erosion of cultural identity, and spiritual loss. This gifted ethnobotanist, with his eyes wide open, helps us feel anew the pathos and power of Jesuss teachings about food and life and reimagine the world as sacramental.

Douglas E. Christie, PhD, author of The Blue Sapphire of the Mind

Every page of this fascinating book imbues the Scriptures with smell and taste, a living landscape and rich cultural tradition. Nabhans gift for telling true stories and his keen insight into the practices of extractive economies then and now open our eyes to the gospel imperative of food justice.

Ellen F. Davis, Amos Ragan Kearns Distinguished Professor of Bible and Practical Theology, Duke Divinity School

Who better to give us a fresh reading of the Jesus story than one of our leading agrarian writers and practitioners? In Jesus for Farmers and Fishers, Gary Paul Nabhans vast scientific and agricultural acumen melds with a deep contemplative wisdom. The result is one of the most insightful readings of the Gospels Ive encountered, read through the eyes of the very people Jesus served: fishers, farmers, bakers, gleaners, migrant farmworkers. Here is a book for todays food justice movement, and for anyone who hungers for restoration of our lands and our communities.

Fred Bahnson, author of Soil and Sacrament, and founder of the Food, Health, and Ecological Well-Being Program at the Wake Forest University School of Divinity

I am hungry for this book. Gary Paul Nabhan calls us to discover the tastes, scents, and textures of food in the Gospels and encounter the people who grew it, caught it, and cooked it. Nabhans work plunges us into the way of Jesus that turns things upside down and inside out. The powerful are brought low and the lowly raised up. As Nabhan digs into the complexity and depth of injustice in Gospel times, were shown stories that interweave with those of field hands and food service workers who provide our foodat great cost to themselves.

Anna Woofenden, author of This Is Gods Table: Finding Church Beyond the Walls

Prepare to be illuminated! Jesus for Farmers and Fishers brims with insights that can only come when you join in one person the worlds leading ethnobotanist, a major food justice advocate, and a member of the Order of Ecumenical Franciscans. Page after page, Gary Paul Nabhan shows how living closely and practically with land, water, and fellow creatures helps readers appreciate Scripture in ways they never have before.

Norman Wirzba, Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Theology, Duke University, and author of Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating

By Gary Paul Nabhan, known as Franciscan Brother Coyote

Broadleaf Books

MINNEAPOLIS

JESUS FOR FARMERS AND FISHERS

Justice for All Those Marginalized by Our Food System

Copyright 2021 Gary Paul Nabhan. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email or write to Permissions, Broadleaf Books, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209.

Cover image: shtonado/istock

Cover design: James Kegley

Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-6506-7

eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-6507-4

This book is dedicated to all farmers, fishers, and Franciscans.

The kin-dom of heaven

is like this: a treasure hidden

within a field of golden grain,

which some folks accidentally stumbled upon

and then covered up with soil and brush

to keep safe deep in the ground

where it had been originally found.

In their joy, the discoverers

go out and sell everything

they have ever possessed

so that they may protect

and prosper in that treasured place.

I t is time for you to taste and see. It is time to smell and listen.

Open your taste buds and eyes as well as your nostrils and ears. As you do so, try to imagine Jesus as a child, one who is beginning to explore this world. Picture him as he comes into his first sensory contact with the delicious bounty of the Holy Lands and the Sacred Seas:

The mildly sweet flavor and semifirm, flaky texture of Saint Peters fish. It is a tilapia special to the Sea of Galilee.

Nutty, whole-grain flatbreads baked on hot stones or in small wood-fired ovens. The dough for breads came from ancient grains such as barley, einkorn, and emmer wheat. After baking on both sides atop hot stones, the flatbreads were eaten while still warm, still carrying the fragrance of olive branches lingering in the wood smoke.

The pale-green figs of the Mediterranean basinsweet and delicate in texture and yet so capable of enduring the harsh environments of the desert as they rooted themselves in the slightest crevices of barren cliff faces.

The oil-rich olives, sharply bitter in their flavor until salt, water, and time soften and sweeten them.

The pomegranate, with its tough, leathery skin on the outside. Crack it open and you discover its treasure trove of carmine-colored arils hidden inside. Their moisture-rich packets of sweet juice and crunchy kernels are like a dream to the pilgrims tongue, which is parched and fissured.

When we taste and see, smell and listen, as the young Jesus did, our senses assure us that the earth that the Lord gifted us is a good place in which to dwell.

Our Creator gave his only begotten Son to this precious world. To be incarnate in it. To be with us here. Who can doubt that Jesus of Nazareth took pleasure in these flavors, fragrances, textures, and colors? He may have been poor, but he was no puritan who disavowed his senses.

He offered every passerby a place at the table, regardless of their race, faith, social status, or political stance. Together with his nearest neighbors and wayfaring strangers, Jesus celebrated the sensory abundance of the creation with a fervor and elation usually reserved for families joined at a wedding feast. As though Jesus had to remind us what a delicious, sensuous world we enjoy!