The Parable of the Christmas Tomatoes

The last thing I did on Christmas night a couple of years ago was pick tomatoes. 

Real tomatoes. Outside tomatoes. Yes, they were green, but they were growing against all odds on a vine outside our bedroom window, and we were expecting a hard freeze, so JB and I put on our heavy coats and grabbed baskets and headed out into the dimming daylight and dropping temperatures to pick the tomatoes. As if it were June. That’s when you pick tomatoes around here.

I've shared with many of you that I was baptized in an Episcopal church at six weeks old and grew up reciting the prayers of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, raised my four sons in this tradition as choristers and acolytes. I dearly love this church and all its traditions. I cherish Easter Sunday and Christmas Eve, the two times when I truly believe that ‘because we’ve always done it that way’ is a valid excuse for doing what we’ve always done. I love the familiar collects written in the 16^th century by Thomas Cranmer and even older prayers, some going back to the third century. I love the structure and predictability of our liturgy and have found comfort in this familiarity when I’ve worshiped in Hong Kong and Rome and London.

But as much as I’ve experienced God’s presence in the familiar, I know that it is when God has jumped out from behind bushes at me, when God has plopped unexpected coincidences in my path, and when God has appeared before me in the most un-God-like guises that God has grown my heart and soul and drawn me closest to God’s thumping heart of infinite love. All the Glorias in Excelsis have not done for my spiritual growth what a grocery store valentine tucked in the pages of an old paperback book once did. (Ask me.)

I didn’t even know the plant was there until sometime in October when I spied it on a hunt for scattered dog toys. It had taken up residence in a spot where a gardenia had died a number of years ago. I hadn’t planted a tomato seed. Credit a visiting bird for that. I hadn’t fertilized it or watered it. From time to time I checked it out, merely curious, and it was growing like the flesh-eating plant in Little Shop of Horrors. It was covered first with yellow blossoms – did it not know that it was autumn? I showed it off to friends who knew way more about growing tomatoes than I did, having never planted a tomato in my life. (They are standing in line for seeds!) The yellow blossoms became baby green tomatoes, and the plant now stretched fifteen feet in diameter, covering old flower pots and wrought iron furniture. The December days were short and the nights were cool, but the tomatoes grew. They grew in spite of me.

We filled the first basket and called in reinforcements. We filled a second basket and a third. The smallest tomatoes were the size of gumballs. The largest were the size of tennis balls. And every time we lifted a tentacle, there were nests of more tomatoes. It got dark and very cold, and we came inside. I didn’t wash and count them for a couple of days, but when I did, there were 468 tomatoes from that single seed. And Jesus thought a mustard seed was impressive?

The only parable I remember Jesus interpreting for the disciples was the one about the sower and the seeds, and, frankly, I think there are more challenging interpretations than the one in the gospel. So what about this freaky tomato? How do we confront it theologically? I simply offer some of my own musings.

I didn’t plant it. I didn’t fertilize it. I didn’t water it. I discovered it accidentally, but once I did, I understood it was a gift and a responsibility. We did cover it with sheets during a number of light frosts. I visited it and honored it and wondered at its fecundity. I showed it off to dinner guests.

I didn’t let the baby tomatoes freeze when I knew they wouldn’t survive. I harvested them for what they were, ripe and not, brought them inside and let them be the centerpiece of our Christmas table between Santa and an angel. As I said, I washed them and counted them. I turned them into fried green tomatoes for New Year’s and green tomato chutney in glass jars, which I’ve given to special friends. But I brought most of them to church to share with my beloved parishioners. I didn’t ask what they were going to do with them. Real gifts don’t have strings attached. If you ask me what is gospel, I think that’s it.