One of my prayers during our week in the cooler, drier mountains of New Mexico was for this heat wave to break and give everyone some relief. As you can see, my prayers are not always effective.
As we visited various archaeological sites of the Pueblo Indians, I noticed that after living successfully in adobe pueblo communities for over a thousand years, the one thing that forced the Indians to abandon their settlements was a twenty year drought.
Our recent experience with only a month of triple digit highs and scant rainfall has made everyone a bit grumpy and inconvenienced, but can you imagine living for twenty years with almost no rainfall where the Rio Grande River dried up?
I cannot listen to typical sermons about the so-called miracle feeding of the 5,000 as long as the specter of famine and misery haunts so many places around the world. I cannot listen to sermons that say in essence “Jesus fed the people because they believed in Jesus. If you believe in Jesus he will feed you and bless you too.”
Not only is such a sermon a heresy, but it actually causes harm and increases suffering. If Jesus heard this preached, I think he would fire the preacher.
As I write this sermon, I have intentionally run a series of images of the current famine in Somalia where one third of the population faces starvation. The director of the World Food Program visited there and reported, “I saw large numbers of children extremely weakened by the long journeys in search of food… Some people are forced to leave family members along the road as they trek on in search of help. .. one woman had lost three of her children along the way… trying to reach food.”
It is not helpful to distract your feelings by talking about the politics of a failed nation state ruled by warlords with connections to Al Qaeda. Politics for this or any other situation are irrelevant because the Gospel tells us, “When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick.” Jesus did not turn aside and say, “Let’s get out of here; these people are getting what they deserve.”
Instead he had compassion for them and he stayed there among them and he did what he could. Who among us would go to Somalia right now to help?
In our own town of Muskogee we have 300 pound ten year old children with medical needs of people in their 40s! Although it is not starvation, it is a form of malnutrition. At the same time, the Boston Globe noted “Doctors at a major Boston hospital report they are seeing more hungry and dangerously thin young children in the emergency room than at any time in more than a decade of surveying families.”
What are we called to do about these as baptized Christians? When confronted with a late hour and a crowd getting hungry, the disciples asked Jesus “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” They replied, “But we have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” You can almost hear Jesus thinking to himself, “Did you hear what I said? YOU FEED THEM.”
There are times in history when we need to hear these stories as miracle stories and times when we need to hear the more practical explanation, one that empowers us instead of dazzling us. One common interpretation of this story says that the people going to hear Jesus that day were not stupid. Who would drive to Tulsa for a late afternoon or early evening event without making some kind of provision for dinner? Likewise the people following Jesus that day knew they were going far from the village, so they brought food with them.
So the miracle here, if there is one, is that people took enough to share and there was food left over just like a church potluck. But the words of Jesus to the disciple AND to us remain the same no matter how you interpret this story. YOU FEED THEM.
In Guatemala the poor must pay money for the privilege of picking through the trash for food. In Honduras children wait at the dump for the trash to unload. Behind the children are vultures. With more than 2,000 children foraging at the Tegucigalpa dump, a few of them become food themselves for the vultures. YOU FEED THEM.
In Haiti the villagers bake and eat “cookies” made of dirt, salt, and bouillon. They tighten belts around their children’s bloated bellies to fight severe hunger pains. Jesus tells us YOU FEED THEM.
Grace Church has a long positive history of feeding others. We can and we will do more. But we need to go beyond incremental improvements. We need to have our spirits infused with the same compassion that moved Jesus that day.
I try to incorporate the Good News AND a spiritual challenge in my sermons, so this time it should be perfectly clear. The Good News is never about God blessing us or any of us benefitting because we believe. We hear the Good News so that WE will be a blessing to others. The Good News in this story is that God gives us compassionate hearts so that we can hear the cries of others.
Our challenge is that we need to engage our hearts in the presence of those who are hungry. We need to go on a mission trip. I am asking for a minimum of six people to go with me on a mission trip with Food for the Poor next summer. When you return from a trip with Food for the Poor, you will never be the same again. You will be richer in ways that really matter.