In this sermon, Shenoute takes the common conceptual metaphor people are plants in uncommonly intricate directions. Repentant sinners are plants that Jesus, as a poor person, finds acceptable to eat, a striking inversion of the Eucharistic relationship with potent socioeconomic overtones. Those who do not repent are poisonous weeds, hinting at a dichotomy between wild and cultivated plants that Shenoute will eventually use to situate ascetic labor, like agriculture, as a normative feature of human existence. Like Chrysostom’s metaphors of medical regimen, Shenoute’s metaphors of agriculture and food production evoke a richly blended conceptual field for structuring ascesis in a lay environment.