“The Redfruit Of God”

 “He is ready to separate the chaff from the wheat with his winnowing  fork. Then he will clean up the threshing area, gathering the wheat into his barn but burning the chaff with never-ending fire.” – Matthew 3:12

They had never seen wheat. They don’t even eat bread! The words describing what is taking place in this verse seemed about as foreign to their language, way of life and culture as it would be for us talking to aliens from a different planet about the strange other-worldly foods that they would eat! So how would we get the point of this passage across in our teaching and translation?  How could we help them understand the word picture that is being displayed here?

As we continued to think through this passage and the other verses in the gospels that use this same word picture we began discussing the verses with the Dao people who were hearing it in their language for the first time. At first the imagery seemed confusing to them; a “winnowing fork”? a “threshing area”? But then there was a breakthrough. Right along the time we were discussing these things a Dao man walked into the village with a huge, freshly cut red fruit.

It was red fruit season! And boy did the Dao people love their red fruit. In the local language it is called by the word “pai” and it looks like a large, two to three foot long, bright red pine cone. We ourselves had never laid eyes on “pai” nor did we know of this fruit’s existence until we moved into the jungles of Indonesia to work with this remote tribe. But man had we grown to love it. Once we had gotten used to eating it we craved it! To us it resembles the taste of fresh roasted hazelnuts with the aroma of fresh brewed coffee and just a hint of dark, bitter chocolate on the finish. There isn’t a fruit or food that we have found anywhere else in the world that can quite compare.

One of the most interesting things about “pai” or “redfruit” is how it is prepared. The inside of the fruit, along with the thousands of seeds are hard and dry and so tough that they are inedible. But the outer layer of skin and the bright red pulp that coats the seeds are a near delicacy. In order to extract that thick nutty pulp from the thousands of one inch seeds on a single fruit the entire cone is first split from top to bottom.

A sharp stick is used to scrape and hollow that tough inedible chaff-like inside from the fruit and then the outer layer of skin and seeds are boiled over an open fire for hours to get the fruit soft enough to where the much coveted pulp can be separated from the tough seeds.

And then the real work begins! Those thousands of tiny seeds are taken one handful at a time and squished in between cupped hands back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and…..well, you get the idea…until the pulp drips out through the bottom of the hands and into a bowl below. For what seems like an eternity (when one has a  rumbling hungry belly), this process is continued one cupped handful of seeds at a time until all of the seeds and skin has been sorted through  and the delicious pulp is separated and ready to eat.

The mounds and mounds of inedible seeds that have been removed are set aside along with the thick, chaff-like center and thrown away into the jungle and then the red fruit meal proceeds and everyone eats until the bright red pulp is gone or they could not swallow another bite. Which is rare, because when something is that good, there is always room for “just one more bite”.