Immediate Word

In this week's program, Protestant theologian Don Saliers observes that churches sometimes transmit principles and rituals without passing on some of the original dynamics of faith behind them. Saliers and my other guest, Catholic priest and theologian Edward Foley, frame the meaning of the Christian Eucharist or Communion in terms that are basic and human....

One of the most salutary observations of this hour for me is Don Saliers' reminder that in the earliest churches, which gathered in homes, the community meal was afterwards shared with outsiders and especially the poor. Communion was inextricably linked with service. Though Foley and Saliers have different theologies of what is happening in the bread and the wine of Communion, they agree on this: to partake of that "body of Christ" means to participate in the suffering of God in the world, to embody the church "in the world and for the world." The intimacy of "supping with God," isn't meant simply to confer grace and inward spiritual blessings, Foley says, it asks something of communicants. It calls Christians to embody the notion of sacrifice, and, as best they are able, to be agents of justice.

-- Krista Tippett, Speaking of Faith online journal, 11/24/05


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Carolyn Winfrey Gillette's recent hymn, "Where is Bread?" (set to the familiar tune, "Abbot's Leigh") could prove useful this week, either as a sermon illustration or for congregational singing:
http://www.churchworldservice.org/Hymns/whereisbread.htm

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We are involved now in a profound failure of imagination. Most of us cannot imagine the wheat beyond the bread, or the farmer beyond the wheat, or the farm beyond the farmer, or the history beyond the farm. Most people cannot imagine the forest and the forest economy that produced their houses and furniture and paper; or the landscapes, the streams and the weather that fill their pitchers and bathtubs and swimming pools with water. Most people appear to assume that when they have paid their money for these things they have entirely met their obligations.

-- Wendell Berry, "In Distrust of Movements"


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The Union of Concerned Scientists notes that there are two main areas where US citizens take a hoggish bite of the world's limited resources and fuels. First is transportation. Anybody would guess this....

Gas-guzzling area number two, and this may surprise you, is our diet. Americans have a taste for food that's been seeded, fertilized, harvested, processed, and packaged in grossly energy-expensive ways and then shipped, often refrigerated, for so many miles it might as well be green cheese from the moon. Even if you walk or bike to the store, if you come home with bananas from Ecuador, tomatoes from Holland, cheese from France, and artichokes from California, you have guzzled some serious gas. This extravagance that most of us take for granted is a stunning energy boondoggle: Transporting 5 calories' worth of strawberry from California to New York costs 435 calories of fossil fuel. The global grocery store may turn out to be the last great losing proposition of our species.

-- Barbara Kingsolver, "Lily's Chickens," in Small Wonder: Essays(New York: HarperCollins 2002), pp. 113-114.

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One of my Internet friends, Dwyn Mounger, once wrote, "I remember, from seminary days, a Taiwanese student who told me that, in his native Taiwanese language, the every-day greeting isn't, "How are you?" or, "How goes it?" but, "Have you eaten?"

Susan Forbes, another Internet colleague from Saint Louis, adds, "In Indonesia (where she lived for 6 months) the question is not, "Have you eaten?" but, "Have you eaten rice yet?"
If you haven't eaten rice, you haven't eaten.

--Gayle Bach-Watson on the Ecunet computer network, 1/19/02


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After the Dalai Lama delivered a lecture, a member of the audience asked him what the answer to world hunger is. He responded, "Sharing."

-- The Christian Century, 7/12/05, p. 6.


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In Barbara's preview, she mentions that it is estimated that we spend $20 billion on excess food that makes us overweight and that it would only take $30 billion to solve the food crisis. All of this reminds me of Gandhi's famous quote: "The world can produce enough to meet the world's need, it just cannot produce enough to meet the world's greed." If we could solve the problem of greed in the world, we could go a long way towards solving the major problems that plague us. We may not be able to eliminate greed from everyone but we can clearly begin to work on our own greed.

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I once saw a cartoon that in the first panel had a figure sitting under a tree speaking to God. He said, "God, why do you allow so many people to die of hunger in our world?"
In the next panel, the voice of God comes out of the sky. "I've been meaning to ask you the same question."

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In Deuteronomy 8:3 it says, "He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord."

Dorothy Soelle, in her book, Death by Bread Alone, speaks of the danger of our overly materialistic society experiencing death by bread alone.

Death by bread alone means being alone and then wanting to be left alone; being friendless, yet distrusting and despising others; forgetting others and then being forgotten; living only for ourselves and then feeling unneeded; being unconcerned about others and wanting no one to be concerned about us; neither laughing nor being laughed at; neither crying for another nor being cried for by another. How horrible is this death by bread alone.

-- Dorothy Soelle, Death by Bread Alone (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), p. 4

Perhaps, as Christians, we need to be concerned about hunger in this world for the sake of our own soul.