Commentary on Deuteronomy 26:1-11

At the beginning of Lent, Christians often participate in a ritual of remembrance, recalling their mortality. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (see Genesis 3:19; Ecclesiastes 3:20). Lest we lose our grounding, the ritual imposition of ashes and proclamation of mortality foregrounds our human connection to the humus, ’adam “earthling” as essentially ’adamah “earth” (Genesis 2:7). Following Ash Wednesday, on the first Sunday of Lent, the lectionary takes us to another down-to-earth ritual.

Deuteronomy 26 prescribes a bit of land-based liturgical theater for the Israelites. Each year, when the harvest begins, farmers are told to gather a basket full of the firstfruits of the harvest to present to God at the place of worship. Just as in the Ash Wednesday tradition, specific lines of dialogue are given to these farmer-worshipers to recite. First, they are to declare that they are immigrants—that they have come to the land as outsiders. This is strange, because the text imagines that this ritual would be performed by each generation, annually. Even farmers who had been born in the land, whose grandparents and great-grandparents had been born in the land, are asked to declare for themselves, “I have come into the land that the LORD swore to our ancestors to give us” (Deuteronomy 26:3).

From one angle, this statement reflects an ancient understanding of procreation, that individuals (men) carried the seed of all of their future descendants within their own bodies. From that perspective, the generation of Israelites who physically entered the land had brought future generations with them. Even native-born Israelites had “come into the land” with their ancestors.

Remembering dependence

More than this, however, is communicated in this ceremonial declaration. By foregrounding their status as perpetual immigrants, this firstfruits ritual reminded each generation that the land did not actually belong to them—they were recent tenants, but the land itself belonged to God. They depended on the land for survival and depended on God for the land. When they presented a basket of produce from the early harvest before God’s altar and declared their immigrant identity, worshipers were reminded, year after year, that their enjoyment of the bounty of the land was not inevitable. It was not their right. It was not their reward. The benefits of the land were a gracious gift from God. 

Like our Lenten ashes and fasting practices, Israel’s presentation of firstfruits and declaration of dependence served as an embodied mnemonic—a memory aid—fueling humility and gratitude to God for the gift of life and sustenance.

God’s covenant with Christians is not a land-based covenant. But just as much as the Israelites’ covenant, ours is grounded in God’s grace and lived out in our bodies of “dust.” Lent is a timely season to be reminded, as the firstfruits offering reminded Israel, that we are entirely dependent on God for our embodied lives in this world.

Ritual time-travel

The ritual script continued. The next part of the ceremony required each worshiper to recite their community’s historical memory of God’s saving action, bringing them out of Egyptian bondage and into the land of promise. It reminds me of the Words of Institution often recited at Christian celebrations of the eucharist: “On the night when he was betrayed, Jesus took bread…” At the Lord’s table, we remember and vocalize a history of God’s saving acts on our behalf. Through our own participation in that meal, we find ourselves mystically invited to the table with Jesus’ disciples. In a mysterious way—metaphorical and yet somehow real—we were there.

This is precisely the ethos we find in the historical recitation at Israel’s firstfruits ceremony. There, gathered around another divine table (the temple’s altar), prepared with bread (the firstfruits offering), their “words of institution” rehearse a gospel of God’s saving work in history: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…” (Deuteronomy 26:5). The mystical time-travel of the eucharist is also paralleled in the firstfruits ritual. In the telling of their story, they were there with their ancestors: When “we cried to the LORD … the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction … brought us out of Egypt … brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Deuteronomy 26:7–9).

Ritual remembrances such as these communicate—and in some ways create—communal identity. Those who participate are formed by their participation. For ancient Israel, this firstfruits ceremony envisioned a community for whom liberation was not just part of their origin story but was at the very heart of who they were and would always be. Jews and Christians alike have inherited that liberative identity from our ancient Israelite ancestors in faith. We are people rescued by God. 

An inclusive celebration

The lectionary reading ends with instructions for the great celebration that ought to follow the liturgical ceremony. Importantly, these instructions include the explicit command to share the bounty of the harvest “together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you” (Deuteronomy 26:11). Levites and aliens were those who had no ancestral heritage of land, and therefore depended on landholding Israelites for their daily bread. They were not, however, parasites on the Israelite economy. To the contrary, they were “essential workers” whose labor contributed significantly to the flourishing of Israelite society.

A celebration of the fruit of the land risked excluding those who did not possess ancestral land, Therefore, the text demands that these important, but vulnerable, community members must be sought out and included in the festivities.

Likewise, while care for the poor and vulnerable is our responsibility throughout the year, Lent has traditionally been a season of special focus on almsgiving. Just as our spiritual ancestors embedded a reminder to care for the needy within their annual celebration of the firstfruits, Christians can mark the season of Lent as a time to redouble a commitment to care for the most vulnerable in our communities—especially those without the privilege of generational wealth and those considered aliens and outsiders by the privileged insiders.