Give Them Something to Eat

A Sermon by

The Rev. Karen Hill

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Text:  Mark 3:34-42

There’s a show on National Public Radio that I really like – it’s called Hidden Kitchens; have any of you heard it before?  The show explores how communities come together through food, whether it’s a local diner, or a street vendor, they highlight all kinds of interesting and quirky people and places that serve  good food.

Several years ago, they aired a show they called “An Unexpected Kitchen: the George Foreman Grill.”[1]  Many people living in Single Room Occupancy Hotels or YMCA’s have no kitchen, so they use the George Foreman Grill as a Hidden Kitchen.  They create all kinds of meals on the grill.  The show’s producers called George Foreman to see if he knew about this hidden kitchen he’d created.  He did not.  George Foreman was surprised and happy to learn that his grills were being used in this way. 

It seems that Foreman grew up in Houston, Texas, one of 7 children raised by a single mom.  He said that he never had enough to eat as a kid.  When he was in school, he used to grab old lunch bags out of the trash.  He would blow them up and pretend that he had a lunch in there.  When it was time to eat, Foreman would tell the other kids that his lunch was so good, that he ate it on the walk to school.  Foreman said that being hungry all the time made him so angry that he started fighting; that’s how he began boxing.  Eventually, someone referred him to the Job Corps where for the first time in his life he got 3 meals a day.  It took him a long time to realize that it was ok – at the Job Corps, he could relax and begin to read and study and finally get an education, because he wasn’t hungry all the time.

At the end of the show, George Foreman said that feeding people is really important to him.  He said that food banks are his weakness – if you are raising money for any kind of food project, all you have to do is ask, and George Foreman will be there. 

It seems to me that George Foreman would have had great sympathy for the hungry people in our gospel story this morning, who found their own hidden kitchen with Jesus by the side of the lake.

Our reading this morning is from Mark 6.34-42.  In this story, Jesus feeds the five thousand with five loaves and two fish.  As you listen to this familiar story, listen closely for God’s word to you.

 ^“As (Jesus) went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.  When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.’  But (Jesus) answered them, ‘You give them something to eat.’  They said to him, ‘Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii^* worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?’  And (Jesus) said to them, ‘How many loaves have you? Go and see.’  When the (disciples) had found out, they said, ‘Five, and two fish.’  Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass.  So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties.  Taking the five loaves and the two fish, (Jesus) looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all.  And all ate and were filled.”  This is the word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.

Let us pray.  “O God, to those who have hunger give bread, and to us who have bread give the hunger for justice.”[2]  Amen.

The disciples come off pretty poorly in this story.  That’s sort of how it is in the book of Mark; the disciples never really get it.  We know they were not bad.  They didn’t like to see people go hungry, but it was the end of a long day, and they knew how much it would cost to feed a big crowd of hungry people.  So, they want Jesus to send the crowd away to buy their own food.  It makes sense.  Jesus rarely does what makes sense.  “You feed them,” he tells the disciples, and he sends them back into the crowd.  Find out how many loaves there are out there. 

They do, and they find five loaves and two fish.  Then there is a miracle, but maybe not the miracle that I learned as a child.  As I read it now, the miracle of this story is not some supernatural stretching of the five loaves and two fish; it is the sharing, the communal meal, the completely unexpected, hidden kitchen that is created right there on the shore.  The people sit in groups, and the food is passed, and everyone has enough, more than enough.  That’s the miracle; a miracle of community.

I think we’ve seen a little bit of that miracle here this year, in our community.  Last year, the Mission Committee began to work on a vision for its ministry and to set some long-term goals.  At the same time, we found that as a group, we were increasingly concerned about the rising food needs in our community.  We began to focus more of our work and our mission giving on food ministries.  We decided to ask the church to join us in a church-wide, mission project – our goal was to increase our church’s food giving by 25%.  It seems now like a very modest goal, but at the time we had no idea how any of you would respond, and if you would actually join us in this project.  But you did respond, enthusiastically. 

It’s the end of September, and we are almost there – hopefully, you saw the thermometer upstairs on your way into church this morning.  We are easily going to reach our goal of collecting 5,375 pounds of food before the end of the year; hopefully, we are going to surpass that initial goal by many, many pounds.

So, thank you, all of you.  Thank you for keeping that shopping cart full all the time, not just on Sundays.  It’s heart-warming to walk into church on any day of the week and to see food in the basket.

Lest you think the need for food has abated, let me tell you what’s happening in our city, state and nation.  In New Mexico, one in four children under the age of five is food insecure – that means that they don’t know where their next meal is coming from and that their family is using emergency food sources, like a food bank.[3] 

The national estimate in 2007 was that 3.5 million children, ages 5 & under, were food insecure.  Given what’s happened to our economy in the past two years, this estimate is probably very low.  These figures for young children are especially worrisome when you think about the important brain development that happens during those early years; child hunger causes damage which can not be fixed. 

The Rio Grande Food Project, which is where we’ve been donating our food, reports that as of July of this year, they had given away 47,000 pounds of food, which is 17,000 pounds more than they gave away in all of 2008.  As of July, they have served 14,000 people, which is already 1,000 more people than in 2008.[4]  This is a substantial increase in the first half of this year, as compared to all of last year. 

So, our food donations are desperately needed.  Given that our goal is to give around 6,000 pound this year, and the food project has already given out 47,000 pounds, you may be very surprised to hear that First Presbyterian Church is the largest food donor this year for the Food Project.  Lots of other groups give also, and maybe they give more money, but no one group is giving more food.  That means that they are depending on us; every can and every dollar that we give is extremely important.

This morning you’ve heard from Jim Collie about the hunger relief work of our presbytery.  Today the Mission Committee invites you to join a new effort to fight hunger.  This is the Centsability Food Offering.  We’re asking that each time we gather as a church community to eat, we remember those who have nothing to eat.  Every month at our third Sunday lunches, we’ll have a Centsability food bank on the table.  Please, put your change in the bank – we’ll send 50% of the offering to benefit our Presbytery’s food ministries, and 50% will be distributed by the Mission Committee among the community food projects that we support.  Now, please don’t confuse this with the free will offering which pays for your lunch – it’s not the same thing.  Please, do continue to pay for your own lunch.  The Centsability offering will help to pay for someone else’s lunch! 

As a Mission Committee we have also struggled with the fact that much of what we do treats the symptoms of hunger, but not the causes of hunger.  We know that giving food to the food project helps provide food to families for one week.  It does not solve the problems which led them there.  I asked David Whiteley, the director of the Rio Grande Food Project, and more importantly, Libby’s husband, if through his work he had gained any deeper understanding of the causes of hunger.  I was hoping that he might have some special insight or secret knowledge.  What he said was that hunger is caused by poverty.  Plain and simple.  Poverty and hunger go hand in hand. 

Eugenia Cabiedes, who is the director of Martineztown House of Neighborly Services, told me this story.  Last year at Christmas time, the students at Menaul School collected food in big plastic bins, similar to the food boxes we collect for Longfellow School.  One of the Martineztown House families received one of these bins.  The father had recently lost his job and his family of five needed the food.  Well into March of this year, the family was still eating that food.  It’s not that there was so much food in that bin; it’s that they were so scared to run out of food that they were rationing it and eating very sparely.  Three months on one bin of food. 

Poverty and hunger go hand in hand. 

In our call to worship from Isaiah 58, the chapter begins with the people’s lamenting and questioning God.  We worship, we pray, we fast, and you don’t hear us.  You don’t answer. 

God finally does respond, through the prophet Isaiah.  God tells them – I don’t like your fast.  It is false and self-righteous and hypocritical, because while you worship, there is injustice and oppression and hunger and poverty. 

Listen to God’s word from Isaiah 58 one more time.  God is telling the people what God wants.  

“Is not this the fast that I choose:  to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?  Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?  Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard.  Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and (God) will say, Here I am.”

In scripture God shows us over and over again, that God loves the poor.  Not because God loves or accepts their poverty, not at all.  God expects that all of us will work together to end their poverty.[5]  

In our North American culture, we assume that the poor and hungry of the world are responsible for bettering themselves, for feeding themselves and for moving out of poverty on their own.  This is not a biblical notion.  Not at all.  I know that’s really hard to hear.  It’s hard for me, too.  And I know that poverty is really complicated, but I am concerned that as a church, and as a country,     it is easier for us to give charity, to keep on filling up shopping carts with food, rather than address the root causes of poverty and hunger.

Hunger will never be completely solved by charity.  Giving food will not make poverty go away.  We know that.  It is also true that if we truly believe that each person is made in the image of God and has inherent value as a child of God, then we cannot allow hunger and poverty to continue.  Walter Brueggemann wrote an article in 1974 called, “A Biblical Perspective on the Problem of Hunger.”  In it he says that the church “has no special competence in the area of economics.  It has a particular competence in urging that the hunger question must be discerned in the field of public covenanting.”[6]  End quote.  We are God’s covenant community.  We are God’s beloved community.  We are good at that.  Look at the ways we care for one another.  Look at the way we rally when given a goal. 

It is extremely important that we keep on giving food.  That we continue to donate our cans and boxes of food, because there are hungry people out there right now who need to be fed.  Jesus told his disciples and told us, ‘you feed them’.  At the same time, God in Isaiah points out that what God really wants is justice.  That means no more poverty, no more hunger.

Can we agree to continue the important work that we are doing to relieve hunger right now, while at the same time, to begin to work on the public covenanting?  Can we advocate for change that brings permanent relief of hunger and poverty?  September is Food Action Month.[7]  I just learned that and it’s already the 20^th day of the month.  This is a great time to get out of our comfort zones and to get our hands dirty.

You hear this a lot from this pulpit, but Interfaith Hospitality Network is the best way I know to help individual families escape homelessness and poverty.  Please, volunteer for our next rotation.  No matter our political bias, all of us can urge our state and national representatives to make sure that our society does not accept hunger and poverty as a norm for many.  At the Bread for the World website[8], they outline current legislation regarding food and hunger issues.   

You can also volunteer at any of our local food banks.  They need you now more than ever.    You can register to raise money and walk in the CROP Walk for Hunger on October 18^th.   We can all make a phone call or write a letter – we have influence, and we need to use it.   

Recently, I read John Lewis’ autobiography called “Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement.”  John Lewis was a leader in the civil rights movement – he organized his first sit in while a teenager; he was the national chair of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee; he gave a speech at the March on Washington.  He has been a congressman from the state of Georgia since 1987.  He has a lifelong commitment to non-violence and a vision for the beloved community of God. 

I guess that’s how I see us right now.  In this little corner of God’s beloved community, we are holding hands, walking to the corner of the house which is most threatened.  If we hold on to each other, we can do this with God’s help. 

May it be so.  Amen.