Sunday, October 12, 2008 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Hunger

Deborah Kapp
The Edward F. and Phyllis K. Campbell Associate Professor of Urban Ministry
McCormick Theological Seminary

Psalm 136
Philippians 4:1–9
Matthew 14:13–21

“Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away;
you give them something to eat.’”

Matthew 14:16 (NRSV)

Go down into the plans of God. Go down deep as you may. Fear not for your fragility under that weight of water. Fear not for life or limb sharks attach savagely. Fear not the power of treacherous currents under the sea. Simply, do not be afraid. Let go. You will be led like a child whose mother holds him to her bosom and against all comers is his shelter.

Dom Helder Camara
The Desert Is Fertile

Several decades ago one of the women’s groups of Fourth Church took on a mission project: they volunteered to prepare and distribute the Meals on Wheels for Erie Neighborhood House on fifth Fridays, which meant they helped out about three or four times a year. I assume you know what Meals on Wheels is, but just in case you’re too young, it’s a program that delivers hot meals at noontime to people who are homebound—usually older adults or persons with disabilities—and the meals are usually big enough to stretch to both lunch and dinner. It’s a great program, because it allows people to live at home instead of move to assisted living. It also provides a daily check-in for persons who are living by themselves.

When we got involved, Erie House was distributing Meals on Wheels to about thirty people, Monday through Friday, and they needed congregations to supply food, cooks, and delivery people. Our efforts were headed by a member named Bea Hofsommer, a retired nutritionist. Bea selected our menu: fish sticks, mixed vegetables, macaroni and cheese, and, I think (memory fades) a fruit cup, and a light dessert. By the early 1980s, we were only doing the buying, but the menu was the same, fifth Friday after fifth Friday. The volunteers from Fourth Church were committed to supporting Erie House, which is a social service ministry on the West Side that was founded by Presbyterians in 1870; it’s an organization with which Fourth Church has a long history.

To make a long story short, neither the women of Fourth Church nor Erie House participates in Meals on Wheels anymore; we’ve passed that on to Meals on Wheels Chicago, a city program run by the Department of Senior Services and the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities. But Fourth Church and Erie House have not turned away from Jesus’ injunction, “You give them something to eat.”

Our food ministries have instead changed with the times. Erie House feeds the children in its preschool and afterschool programs, and with the support of the Greater Chicago Food Depository, it runs a pantry—a pantry whose demands have tripled in the last year. Fourth Church’s food ministries have changed, too. The expansion of the Chicago Lights Elam Davies Social Service Center has led to an increase in the number of meals it serves; in the first eight months of 2008, we distributed more than 3,500 lunches, 4,500 Sunday night suppers, and 575 bags of groceries. That’s more than 8,600 meals organized and distributed by this church between January and August, not counting the food we share in fellowship meals.

Many of us have had a part in these meals, whether we have donated money to Chicago Lights, made bologna and cheese sandwiches on Sunday afternoons, or volunteered at the Food Depository. There are many ways in which we have responded to Jesus’ command to his disciples, “You give them something to eat.”

Let’s turn back to that text for a moment. I have a preacherly need to pay attention to the Bible as we talk this morning, but more importantly this text actually has something to say to us about what we do every day. So for a few minutes, let’s turn to this story of the feeding of the 5,000.

There are two things that stand out for me as I read this narrative. The first is the injunction that I’ve repeated: “You give them something to eat.” Jesus clearly gives the work of feeding to the disciples. He presides, but they do the work of coming up with the food, distributing it, and cleaning up. We need to be clear that this is not a “God will provide” story. Jesus isn’t single-handedly responsible for this meal, nor is there any indication that Jesus miraculously multiplies the food; that’s a layer of meaning that we add to the story as listeners. Jesus doesn’t do the work of feeding here, at least not all by himself. The hungry people don’t do it, either, so this is also not a “God helps those who help themselves” sort of text. It’s the work of the disciples that is at the center of this narrative, as they respond to Jesus’ command, “You give them something to eat.”

The second thing I notice about this text are the echoes. This story is the most frequently told story in the Gospels. It is repeated six times, and each time it’s repeated, we hear in it reminders of other meals. “He blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples.” That’s the language of the Last Supper showing up here; it’s the language of communion liturgies and church worship; it’s the language used in the Emmaus story in Luke 24 and in other stories about meals that Jesus shared. Clearly Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all of whom tell this story, wanted us to think about more than one meal when we heard it.

This text isn’t just a story of a meal that occurred 2,000 years ago in a deserted place in Galilee. It’s a story about many meals that Jesus shared with other people—disciples, outcasts, and sinners. It’s a story about Jesus’ last meal with his friends. It’s a story about the communion meal that Jesus shares with worshipers whenever a church celebrates the sacrament.

I would like to suggest that it’s also a story about the meals that staff and volunteers will provide this week through the work of Fourth Church. It’s about a meal that a Presbyterian church in the western suburbs will cook today or tomorrow and deliver on Tuesday morning to the First Presbyterian Church in Chicago, in the Woodlawn neighborhood, where the two churches will feed about sixty people who really need extra food this week. In Chicago, many of the working poor or older people or folks trying to make do on a subsistence income need extra food so that their food supplies will last through the end of the month, until the next check comes. The soup kitchens will be full this week, as they always are, and pantries will have their usually high demand. With all the economic upheaval we are seeing lately, the demand for emergency food will likely increase this winter. Some people are going to be hungry, really truly hungry. Many will turn to churches across the city for the grace of God revealed in bags of rice, boxes of cereal, containers of dried milk, canned fruits and vegetables, a cooked meal. “You give them something to eat,” said Jesus. This text is about those soup kitchen and pantry meals, too, and the very real hunger that they satisfy.

This text applies to some of the more remote work we do as food providers, too. Next Sunday, for example, is the annual CROP Walk. CROP was founded in the aftermath of World War II as a way to share American agricultural surpluses with the starving populations in Europe; since then its mission has broadened to include other parts of the world, and for more than sixty years it has been a vehicle for Christians to do God’s work of feeding. So have food programs sponsored by World Vision, the Presbyterian Hunger Program, the Heifer Project, and other religious organizations dedicated to alleviating hunger. Many of you in this sanctuary today participate in programs just like these, and this text is about the meals that your generosity provides.

But this text is about much more mundane meals as well, everyday meals that you or I share with friends and family, coworkers and colleagues. The other day I had lunch at one of the cafeterias at the University of Chicago. I looked around at who was there: the Korean pastors who accompanied me, groups of students, a bunch of high school kids at the university for a special program, people all alone. I had been thinking about this text, and as I watched everybody eat, I was reminded of what a basic need everybody has for food—and food on a regular basis. Eating is part of daily life, and figuring out how or where we will eat is regular activity, too. This text is about that everydayness, and it reminds us of how dependent we are on food itself, on the God who creates all that wonderful food and on the thousands of people who work to get it on our tables: farmers, manufacturers of farm equipment, truck drivers, migrant workers, grain elevator operators, people working on commodity exchanges, grocery store clerks, cafeteria workers, cooks, chefs, waiters, friends and family members. “You give them something to eat.” Everyday there are people working to do just that, and you and I receive real nourishment from the work they do.

As today’s text reminds us, there is miracle in the nourishment we receive at God’s hand. With the food that God in Christ shares with us at table, we are strengthened and sustained, filled to overflowing with God’s grace.

We find paradoxically that we are also filled with grace when we work behind the scenes to nourish others. Witness the pleasure that Bea Hofsommer and other women felt when they participated in Meals on Wheels. Witness the deep satisfaction that volunteers feel when they cook and serve our Sunday afternoon community meals, serve in a soup kitchen on the South Side, or participate in the CROP Walk. Witness the quiet fulfillment that many people feel when they prepare food for family or friends. There is miracle here, too, whenever you and I become partners with Christ in the work of feeding, the work of grace.

The feeding of the 5,000 is a miracle story. There are many versions of what actually constituted the miracle. Some say that the miracle was that Jesus multiplied the food. Others contend that the miracle was that people suddenly produced their lunchboxes and shared what they had with others. From my vantage point in a well-fed, Weight Watchers world, the miracle was that people were content with a small portion. Other people—some of you, maybe—perhaps have a different interpretation. In the end I’m not sure it really matters what the miracle was that occurred in that lonely place in Galilee. Maybe it is better that this account of a sudden shift from scarcity to abundance hints of more than one miracle, multiple ways that God can deliver grace.

That is a comforting thought for me, and I hope for you, too, as we re-enter a world in which many of us are scared and hungry and worried about how we will take care of today and tomorrow. God’s grace comes to us in many guises: food, sharing, work, self-restraint, gift. May God work a miracle in your life and mine in all these ways. And in whatever we encounter, may God give us grateful hearts.

Let us pray:

Lord, make us instruments of thy peace;
where there is hatred, let us sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.

(Prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi; amended, as the original is phrased as an individual prayer)