A few weeks ago I was in Philadelphia’s Penn (train) Station. It was late and I was hungry, so I went into the only available store: Dunkin’ Doughnuts. The store was about to close and I was talking to the lady behind the counter. I couldn’t decide what I wanted and she said that I needed to hurry and choose because when the store closed, the doughnuts were thrown in the garbage. After I purchased what I wanted, I then watched her scoop 20 or more doughnuts and pastries into a brown bag, roll the top down, and stuff it into the garbage.

When he was younger, my wife’s brother worked in fast food, like McDonald’s and Kentucky Friend Chicken. From stories that he’s told me, I know that similar patterns happen there as well. At the end of the day, all the food that is left is tossed into the garbage.

My dad stopped into a fast food restaurant just as the manager was shifting from breakfast food to lunch food. My dad wanted breakfast and he could actually see breakfast food sitting there. But the manager told him that it was lunch time. He then proceeded to cram 20 to 30 sausage biscuits and other breakfast foods into the trashcan. Disgusted, my dad left.

In all of these instances, edible food that could have been given to hungry people was wasted.

This made me start thinking about what gleaning means in our present day context. In the OT, food along the edges of the field were reserved for the poor and the alien. Gleaning, for instance, enabled Ruth to survive. Gleaning doesn’t appear in the NT. Instead, the poor and the alien gather around Jesus. What about today? What does gleaning mean? Does it have any meaning at all?

As part of my professional research, I’ve met self-identified anarchist groups that climb into dumpsters, take the edible food, and then redistribute it to homeless people on the street. In particular, I know of a group in DC that gathers up expensive, healthy fruit drinks that were tossed into the garbage because the ‘sell by’ date was past (but they are still edible), and they hand them out to thankful needy people. The activity is illegal and there is risk involved, but anarchists see it as an act of mutual aid, an important component of anarchist life.

Is this gleaning in our present context? Or is it something else? What do you think? What does gleaning look like today?