“World Hunger Day is a Hard Day” 1 John 3:16-18

Brett Younger Senior Minister October 11, 2020 World Hunger Day We know love by this, that Christ laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.

Ivan has a great voice, and I like trying to remember my high school espanol. Erica knows how to lead a prayer. Julia’s children’s sermon would make anyone of any age want to share. We have read ten passages of scripture, which is a lot, though there are, by one count, 3,000 verses on hunger in the Bible. I still wish it was not World Hunger Day. Some of you do, too. World Hunger Day is hard. We would rather not think about hungry children. When the images of starving preschoolers appear on the screen we watch only long enough to avoid seeming heartless. World Hunger Day costs money. Our finances are confusing right now. Some of us have spouses who want to give more than we want to give. World Hunger Day does not make the church popular. People have been giving to a variety of causes. We worry about criticism that the church is always asking for money. Feeding hungry children does not increase church attendance. World Hunger Day does not make the preacher popular. I have gotten angry e-mails after hunger offerings explaining that the author of the e-mail worked hard for everything he has and I have no right to try to make him feel guilty. I understand angry e-mailers, because I do not want to feel guilty either. God knows most of us have more guilt than we can handle. We do not want to feel guilty about what we buy. We want to spend our money the way we want to spend our money. We do not want to have to ask every time we order take-out or buy a book, “Is this the best use of God’s money?” We do not want to feel guilty about the way we live. We do not look forward to World Hunger Day, but if we take our faith seriously we have to take hunger seriously. The scriptures consistently tell us to give our money to the poor. Lamentations: “Pour out your heart to children who hunger.” Leviticus: “When you harvest your field, leave some for the poor.” Deuteronomy: “Don’t be hardhearted or tight-fisted. Give a tenth of your crops to strangers.” Psalms: “Don’t forget the poor.” Isaiah: “Share your food with the hungry.” Luke has that dreadful story where the rich man goes to hell for no reason other than ignoring a homeless man. In Acts, the early church sells their land to care for the needy. James argues, “If your brother lacks food, and you don’t help, what good are you?” And there is this text from First John, “Christ laid down his life for us and taught us what love really is. So we too should lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” It is a bit extreme—“lay down our lives.” John continues, “How can you say you have God’s love if you have money and see someone in need and don’t help?” We do that. We let sisters and brothers go hungry while we eat. John writes, “Let’s not talk about love. Don’t give lip service to faith. Put love into action and make it real. Don’t pray for God to fix problems that God has already given us the resources to solve.” According to John, you can tell if people are Christians, not by whether they say they are Christians, but by whether they are feeding the poor, sharing their wealth, and trying to save children in Africa who are dying. Jesus was clear when he said, “When you did it for one of the least of these, you did it for me.” If we listen to Jesus, we have to see that each face of each starving child is the face of Jesus Christ. If you look at the numbers, global poverty is the moral issue of our day. How Christians respond is the test of our faith. Doing nothing is unconscionable. We have to respond to this suffering. Our government has to make changes that give a greater priority to the hungry. Churches have to make changes so that more money goes to the hungry. Families have to make changes in our spending habits. Each one of us has to make changes in our lifestyle, giving and attitude. World Hunger Day is hard, because God commands us to feed the hungry. This day is hard because it is necessary. We need to think about people who need our help because the statistics are staggering. A conservative estimate is that during this hour of worship a thousand people will die of hunger-related diseases. Far more people die of hunger than of the coronavirus, but the virus is making more people die of hunger. Experts say the world has never faced a hunger emergency like this (Abdi Latif Dahir, The New York Times, May 13, 2020). In Kenya, people desperate to eat set off a stampede during a giveaway of flour and cooking oil, leaving scores injured and two people dead. In India, thousands of workers are lining up twice a day for bread and vegetables to keep hunger at bay. In Colombia, poor households are hanging red clothing from their windows as a sign that they need food. National lockdowns and social distancing measures are eliminating work and incomes, and are likely to disrupt agricultural production and supply routes. 135 million people had already been facing food shortages, but now with the pandemic, 130 million more could go hungry (Arif Husain, chief economist at the World Food Programme). An estimated 265 million could be pushed to the brink of starvation in 2020. The crisis could increase the number of children dealing with hunger by up to 106 million by the end of the year (UNICEF). Every one of those children has a name. Hunger is a two-year-old in Malawi named Moses with the body of an infant and a face aged beyond time hanging limply from his mother’s arms. His faintly beating heart is visible through the wall of his chest. Can you imagine someone so thin, so hungry, that you can see their heart? Chronic malnutrition leads to impaired vision, listlessness, stunted growth, increased susceptibility to disease, and decreased mental capacity. Severely malnourished people are unable to function. The constant struggle for food takes their time and energy, allowing less time for earning an income. The lack of food causes shame so that those most in need of support are often least able to ask for it. Worst of all, hunger steals hope. It is a vision of hell. What could be worse than to be in a starving village with malnourished children who have no hope? Can you imagine the horror of being the parent of a hungry child that you cannot feed? Mother Teresa said, “Somebody is suffering. Somebody is hungry. Don’t wait for tomorrow. Tomorrow we will not have them if we don’t feed them today.” Every day is World Hunger Day for millions of God’s children. If we pay any attention at all, this is a hard day—depressing, expensive, guilt-inducing, necessary, and yet hopeful, because we are beginning to understand that we have enough for everyone. We produce sufficient grain to give every living person two loaves of bread a day. Enough food is available to provide four pounds of food per person a day worldwide—enough to make most people fat. Before the pandemic we were making progress. Saints were working hard to end hunger. The number of undernourished people was dropping. 25,000 people die every day from hunger-related diseases, but that is down from 35,000 twenty-five years ago. What we have learned is that it often takes just a few resources for impoverished people to be able to grow enough food to become self-sufficient—like quality seeds, appropriate tools, and livestock. Small improvements in farming techniques make a huge difference. Is it really possible even during this pandemic to turn the corner on ending hunger? It is. Virtually every country has the capacity for growing sufficient food on a sustainable basis. We have the experience and technology to fix the problem. The consensus in the academic community is that it would take a relatively modest effort to end hunger worldwide. Our government gives less than 1/2 of 1% to global poverty issues, while countries like Denmark give 8% of their national budget. Hunger is a political condition. The key to overcoming hunger is to change the politics of hunger. On Friday, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the United Nations’ World Food Programme for its “efforts to combat hunger” and its “contribution to bettering conditions for peace.” The World Food Programme responded: “This is a powerful reminder to the world that peace and Zero Hunger go hand-in-hand. The coronavirus has contributed to a strong upsurge in the number of victims of hunger in the world. Until the day we have a vaccine, food is the best vaccine against chaos. There’s an urgency to the issue at the moment, because after decades of progress, world hunger has started to rise again.” Jeffrey Sachs, an economics professor at Columbia, has argued that the costs of action are a tiny fraction of the costs of inaction. Our biggest obstacles are the pandemic, climate change, global inertia, war, prejudice, and understandable skepticism that hunger can be solved. Sachs outlines several strategies: boosting agriculture with fertilizer, irrigation and improved seeds; improving health through immunizations; investing in education, helping students learn the skills of modern farming and computer literacy; providing clean water; bringing power, making electricity more readily available. Sachs offers nine concrete steps that will make poverty history. The first eight sound like the recommendations an economist would propose, but the last one makes him sound like a preacher. Number nine is “Make a personal commitment” (The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time). You and I can make a personal commitment. We can make a difference. We know that. We feel that. The hunger we have to save a child’s life is a hunger that comes from God. The opportunity to share with the needy is an opportunity to know that we are following Christ. On this hopeful day we give, transform someone’s circumstances, and learn more of what it means to be part of God’s family caring for God’s children. The Dalai Lama said: “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” We can save lives. We can make sure that we are on God’s side. Our willingness to share with others reflects the depth of our understanding of God’s love for us. If we recognize God’s love we will give what we have come to think of as ours, find joy in feeding the hungry, and the hope of loving others as God loves us.

sermon © Brett Younger plymouthchurch.org