World Hunger & Call

Among the bills in my mail on Monday afternoon came an envelope with big red print on the outside: “Emergency! Food Crisis in Brazil: 800 helpless children facing death by starvation.” I confess here and now that I usually just toss these letters unopened in the recycling box. Almost every mail delivery brings me a new plea for assistance from somebody somewhere. 

I am certain that hunger is a serious issue for children in Brazil as well as children in Uganda, India, and - well - in all to many places all over this world. Its also a serious issue for teens, adults, and the elderly and its been an issue for what seems to be as long as we can remember, including as long as we’ve been writing our memory down. It was famine that moved the great grandchildren of Abraham off of their land and into debt slavery in Egypt, the slavery that required Moses’ to persistently confront the pharaoh in order to set the people free.  And it is the act of receiving food from God that marks their journey across the desert as being holy, of their remaining under God’s good care. 

It isn’t that the pictures of starving children doesn’t get to me. They do even as I flick the envelope away from me. I’ve seen it in person too. I’ve seen a three year old boy sit patiently on a curb at a very busy intersection watching his mother stand between fast moving streams of cars as she sells newspapers. At least I think he was three. He was small. He could have been older. That’s one of the side effects of the not-eating much thing. 

Once I was in a van traveling across a South African rural area in the late afternoon. There were children and young teens walking home from school. If they had the option, many of them were already modifying the school uniform with t-shirts or shorts. Almost all of them were barefoot. In 1998. In South Africa. I visited their school. My colleagues on my journey talked of buying computers for the school. I looked around and wondered where they’d plug the computer in for power? There was no electricity. The children sat close to windows to read. This was only ten years ago. 

Sometimes I wonder why God didn’t keep sending down the manna, the special food that appeared each morning with the dew and which sustained the Israelites in their forty-year cross-wilderness meander. And Jesus knew how to make a loaf of bread feed 5,000 people. It seems to me that God might to share the information with us or at least those standing near to Jesus might pay enough attention to master the technique. Instead, we’re left with an ancient creation story that tries to explain why we have to work so hard in order to eat.  

After the resurrection, Jesus is repeatedly recognized when he shows up with the food. From breaking bread on the road to Emmaus to the breakfast fish fry on the lake shore, Holy and food goes together over and over again in scripture - and in our lives today. Reconciliation with God starts with the eating and it is a gift to that the eating is free. No work involved, just the gift of enough. 

Its tempting to give up on these Biblical stories of hungry people being fed. It is tempting to write them off as some fanciful padding of the divine resume but I am not one to turn away so quickly. To imagine that to be present with God is to be fed, literally as well as metaphorically is to claim our own physical existence of being worth God’s loving care and personal attention. And if we are imagining God’s care for us, then perhaps we can also start imagining how we can extend that care to the ones that God sends us toward.

We need to work on multiple levels. The folks who sent me the envelope, their call was to go to Brazil and set up some sort of orphanage and offer food right there and right then. But there are other calls which include challenging with public advocacy and with active resistance the economic systems that clumps up food and money around people who already have more than enough and away from people who need it or calls to write and teach and raise money. And there is a call to grow and sell good, healthy food for ourselves and for others. 

Why do children walk barefoot to school while my children ride school buses? Why does a mother risk death by automobile for herself and her child when my family enjoyed the blessings of good, healthy childcare providers? Because something is broken and we need to keep trying to make it right. While we await the arrival of God’s Great Banqueting Table  where there’s enough food for everyone, we can share what we do have - our food, our intelligence, our time, our work in anticipation and memory of what it means to be present with God. 

I set aside the plea from Brazil because I work with and through the Presbyterian Church (USA) Hunger Action Program. My money flows through the One Great Hour of Sharing to support hunger relief on the ground and to keep challenging systems to do better by their children - our children.  But that’s my call. Where is yours? 

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Comments

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[Jollibee web site]

I'm so sad to hear that many people will die because of hunger.We can do something about it.Some people waste food instead of giving it to the helpless.

-Ava