“The Bread of Life”

May 7, 2006

Scripture Reading:   Matthew 25:34-40 

Rev. Dr. Carol L. Kerr 

Blue Point Congregational Church

World hunger is about many things.  It is about numbers, big numbers.  It is about real people and their feelings.    It is also about sharing.  Finally it is about Christ and the heavenly banquet that he offers to us. 

Let’s start with the numbers of hunger.  Look at your insert..  Try to get our minds around these numbers.

1-c      840 million are hungry about the world.

2-c      33 million Americans cannot afford enough food.

3-b      23% of the world’s population live on an income of less than $1 a day.

4-d      49%of Africa’s population is living on less then $1 a day.

5-a    Asia is the area of the world with the largest number of hungry people.

6-b    Overall the # of the hungry worldwide is decreasing.

7-d      One in 5 children live in poverty in the U.S.

8-d      the # U.S. spend on foreign aid is $10 billion dollars.  The amount the U.S. people spend annually on diet and weight loss products is $33 billion.

9-c      Hunger related deaths are due primarily to poverty.

10- d Hunger is a complex person-made tragedy and can be overcome.  Most of all it calls me to faithful response. 

Numbers we have a lot of numbers…840 million, 23% of the world’s population, 1 out of 5 children in the U.S.  The numbers go on and on.  The numbers are startling.  They bring me up short.  I find I have to reread them a couple times to make sure I heard it right.   

Hunger is about numbers.   Hunger is also about feelings.     We all have a piece of bread in our hands.  Raise your hand if you have a small piece.  Raise you hand if you have more than one piece.  I know it is a simulation exercise.   It is pretend.  For one thing, none of us is really hungry.  We had a good breakfast before we came.  There are good snacks at coffee hour waiting for us. We are going to have lunch soon after that.  For another thing, it is just bread that we are holding.  It is not something really good, like a Reeses Candy Bar, or Skittles, or a lobster or steak.  It is just a stupid little piece of bread that we are holding.  But, even if this is pretend, it still feels funny.  Who thinks they have one of the littlest pieces of bread in their hands? Those with a little piece of bread in your hand are probably feeling this is not fair!  You are probably thinking at some level, I don’t like this pretend game.  You might feel stuck having to play this pretend unfair game because it is church and you are stuck in the sanctuary and the minister is making you do it.

If you took these little funny feelings we have right now, in this pretend environment, and amplify them by making it a real poverty situation, these funny feelings would turn into feelings like humiliation, anguish, grief and fear.   With hunger also comes the feeling of powerlessness.  (That’s maybe the stuck in the sanctuary feeling.)  It can get very nasty between the “haves” and the “have nots.”  Graces Moore Lappe writes about her experience:

In Guatemala some years ago, I met two highland peasants.  With the help of a U.S.-based voluntary aid group they were teaching other poor peasants to make “contour ditches” to reduce the erosion on the steep slopes to which they had been pushed by wealthy landowners in this valley.  Two years later, I learned that one of the peasants I had met had been forced underground.  The other had been killed.  Their crime was teaching their neighbors better farming techniques, for any change that might make the people less dependent on low-paying jobs on plantations, threatens the country’s ruling elete. 

What about the American?  Holding all the slices    Do you feel stuck too?  Do you feel powerless?  Do you feel self conscious?  It probably would be easier if the American didn’t have to see all the other people around without the bread.  I ran across an interesting story by Dave Schrock-Shenk:

My American Airlines flight was packed.  Passengers from a cancelled United Airlines flight had switched to American at the last minuet.  The pilot addressed us on the intercom:  “We’re glad we had enough seats for our friends from United.  Unfortunately, we don’t have enough meals.  When the flight attendants come by, tell them if you’re ‘American,’ in which case you get dinner, or ‘United,’ in which case you will get a soda.” 

At first I was relieved.  I was an American passenger.  I would get supper.  Then I though of my seatmates.  Would I share my food with them if they were United?  I was relieved when my seatmates told the attendant they were also American.

But then I started wondering if the people in the seats right behind me got food, and the people behind them.  Should I share my food with them?  If I stared sharing, where would I stop?  I didn’t turn around to check.  As long as I didn’t see them, I was able to eat.  I face the temptation ‘to not look’ at the hungry and homeless people in the world.  But I know looking away makes me more calloused, and a bit less human.  Gaining awareness of those with too little – better yet, sharing a meal with them – makes me more human.

Hunger is about numbers.  Hunger is about feelings.  Hunger is also about sharing.  Kids, have your parents ever told you to share with your brother or sister?  Raise your hand.  Do your teachers talk about sharing?  I bet even your brother or sister or friend has told you how important it is to share.  I don’t know about your family, but when I was a kid, that meant that my sisters wanted me to give them something of mine!  Or, it meant I was trying to get someone to share something with me.  That is when I would lecture my sisters about sharing.   Do you know someone who is able so save their Halloween candy a lot longer than anyone else.  My sister, Cindy, was like that when we were kids.  My sister, Joan, and I would always eat our candy in about a week.  But, my sister Cindy would still have some of her candy left by around Christmas.  That is when we would beg her to share with us.  But, she never did.  And, I never could find where she hid the bag in her room!

Even though parents lecture us, teachers lecture us, sharing is just plain hard to do.  And don’t let them kid you, sharing is something we all struggle with whether you are 2 years old, 10 years old, 14 years old, 20 years old, or 90 years old!  It is hard to give away something you want.  If I give something to you, that means I end up with less.  I myself have a hard time sharing.  However, there is one thing that helps me.  It is when I think about Jesus. 

Hunger is about numbers.  Hunger is about feelings.  Hunger is about sharing.  Hunger is also about Jesus.  Isn’t it a funny coincidence that at the center of our most holy sacrament, communion, it a loaf of bread that gets shared with everyone?  Jesus said, This is my body broken for you.  Then, he shared bread with everyone. 

The important thing to remember is that when Jesus said these things and shared the bread he was not in a church like we are today.  Jesus was at supper when he said and did this.  You see, for Jesus heaven was not like the inner holy of holies at the temple of Jerusalem.  This inner sanctuary could only be entered by one very special priest and only once a year.  Instead, for Jesus heaven was like a great big banquet.  It was a big banquet where everyone was invited to sit and eat.  Jesus was constantly inviting everyone to come and eat with him.  He would invite the poor, women and children.  Jesus constantly reached out to the outcast and marginalized in society.  Come and eat with me, he would say.  At the core of Jesus’ ministry was feeding the world.   He fed out bodies and he fed our souls. 

I don’t know how it works exactly, but when I think about Jesus sharing the bread with me, and all of us, it makes me a nicer person.  It makes it easier for me to share what I have with others.  I think Jesus knew that was how it was going to work.

So let us sing our communion hymn.  Come to the banquet there’s a place for you.  Though you maybe have no money, though you maybe feel unworthy, in your strength or in your weakness you are welcome come.    As we are singing it, I would like the children to collect the bread that we all have in our hands.  Put in on the communion table.  We will do a different kind of pretend.  We will do a holy kind of pretend.  We will pretend that this bread is the body of Christ.  We will break it.  We will bless it.  And we will give it, ministry in his name, freely and equally to each other.  Amen.