By Jennifer Tomshack
Sunday, February 16, 2025
Jer 17:5-8 | 1 Cor 15:12, 16-20 | Lk 6:17, 20-26
Last year at a social event where I was bored making small talk, I spotted a black man wearing a t-shirt that read, “Get your knee off my neck.” Assuming he might be a firebrand with interesting things to say, I struck up a conversation with him.
It turned out he was a professor at a prestigious Catholic university nearby, where he researched and taught about food access, which is an enormous problem in Southwest Michigan where I live — and we had a fascinating discussion about it.
In the United States, Michigan is second only to California in terms of agricultural diversity. My corner of the state is one of the most important fruit baskets in the country. Again, it is second only to California in terms of production of my county’s biggest crop, blueberries.
The poverty rate of rural residents in my area is high, and a significant percentage of them are black. Despite being surrounded by an abundance of produce, the rural poor here live in food deserts and have limited transportation — they have no access to grocery stores where produce is sold. They primarily eat processed, packaged food bought at gas stations and convenience stores. The health ramifications are staggering.
My county may not be a fruit basket for much longer. Fruit farming is labor-intensive and depends on migrant workers, whose numbers are dwindling because of the current immigration policies of our country. It could soon get a lot worse.
I’ve been volunteering with my local parish’s migrant camp outreach since 2017, and over these years, I have seen farm after farm give up on fruit and switch to low-labor corn or soybeans in order to survive. We may all be living without access to fruit soon.
I told the professor about my career as well. At the time, I was working for a nonprofit that funded more than 50 different programs that helped the rural poor in our area on an extensive variety of fronts. He commended me for it, but said, “If we’re going to do anything about solving poverty, then we have to do something about wealth.”
I completely agree — as the gap between haves and have-nots keeps getting bigger. It’s a reality that has been troubling me more as I learn more about poverty. Treating the symptoms of social ills is imperative — no question. But we have to also change the systems that cause and worsen the disease in the first place.
That’s one of the reasons I was drawn to Maryknoll, which isn’t about charity — but rather solidarity. There’s an inherent power imbalance in charity — but that imbalance diminishes significantly when one chooses to go to the margins — to the farthest reaches, as Maryknollers do — to live and work alongside the marginalized and transform unjust structures together.
One of the crucial ways to change the system is through the prophetic witness of our missioners, who show us that this subversive way of being is possible — and effective.
Like most of us, my favorite firebrand of all time is of course Jesus. He was always flipping conventions upside down (along with temple tables!) Maybe he got it from his mother, with all her talk of God filling the hungry with good things and sending the rich away empty.
“Blessed are the poor” is one of many sayings of Jesus that doesn’t make sense — at least, according to the standards of the status quo. But as business-as-usual makes less and less sense for everyone in today’s topsy-turvy world, the truth of this saying — and taking the side of the blessed poor — increasingly does.
To read other Scripture reflections published by the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, click here.
Jennifer Tomshack, communications manager for Maryknoll Lay Missioners, is a photographer and storyteller who has worked in communications and marketing for nonprofit organizations.
Featured image: A scene from Plainsong Farm, an ecumenical Christian farming community in Rockford, Michigan, depicts simplicity in a rural setting. The photographer chose this image to accompany her reflection on a verse from this Sunday’s Gospel, “Blessed are the poor.” (Jennifer Tomshack/U.S.)
