Month: August 2022

Philemon 1-21, Luke 14.25-33

The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, 4 September 2022

Eldroth, Clapham

Jesus was a hungry man in a land of hungry, anxious, angry people. 

Hunger isn’t much talked about, in scripture, but when it stalks a people the signs are there. Hunger was the Israelites’ companion on the long weary road to the Promised Land. The prophets and the psalmists decry the gluttony of the wealthy few and the resultant hunger of the masses. ‘There is hunger in the Gospels, in Paul’s epistles, in the Acts of the Apostles, and in Revelation – sometimes a creeping hunger, sometimes chronic malnutrition, sometimes famine.’ [1]

The signs of hunger are there in the crowds who meet John the Baptist at the River Jordan – they come from all over the country, leaving the cities empty. Why? Not primarily to hear the preacher-man – I’ll return to that in a moment – but because they were looking for food. Whether or not it was a time of famine, in Roman-occupied Palestine the wealthy 10 per cent secured their comfort by openly exploiting the 90 per cent. The system was set against the masses. Thus, hunger was widespread amongst the rural poor.

Maybe by the banks of the Jordan there would be pickings of food for those prepared to search for it. That’s why they came. And by the banks of the Jordan they found this preacher-man promising redemption for those who returned to God. Would ‘redemption’ mean bread appearing on the family table? Many were baptised in the hope that it would. [2]

Of course it may have been a time of famine: for following his own baptism by John, Jesus went out into an arid wilderness where we are told he was ‘famished’. There’s justification for saying that the devil who troubled him through that ordeal was a ‘hunger devil’ – one who teased and taunted him through the emptiness in his belly, trying to entice him into wretched acts of weakness for the sake of being fed and sustained. [3]

Hunger, though hidden, shows itself at times in anger. Jesus rebuking the hunger devil was one of those moments; Jesus fiercely defending his disciples’ right to pick corn to eat on a Sabbath was another. Jesus cursing the fig tree which bore no fruit – on a day when perhaps his belly ached for it – and a ravenous Jesus raging at those he found trading fancy meats for the Temple sacrifices whilst outside the Temple the masses starved.

Just before the feeding of the five thousand Mark’s gospel tells us that ‘many people were out and about, coming and going, for the times were not good for eating’. People were driven out of their homes in search for scraps, for these were ‘bad times in which to eat’. [4] 

And just before the feeding of the five thousand Mark’s gospel tells us that Herod had arrested and then beheaded John the Baptist, his most outspoken critic. Many people who had come to the Jordan seeking food, had found hope in John’s baptism. They heard that John was murdered at a lavish banquet in the king’s courtly palace… whilst their stomachs rumbled. Mark ‘creates a vast discrepancy: the wealthy eat at fully laden tables, while times are hard for the people, and thousands are hungry. The rich have the head of the popular movement served up, so that the people stray about heedlessly’. [5]

Jesus was a hungry man in a land of hungry, anxious, angry people.  And with John gone, they then turned to him in hope of feeding and redemption. He did not turn them away, but he did warn them there would be a price to pay for following him.

Hunger isn’t much talked about, in our society, but when it stalks a people the signs are there.  The signs are there when ‘the managing director of Iceland, Richard Walker, says on Good Morning Britain that his supermarket was losing customers ‘to food banks and to hunger’’. The signs are there when Universal Credit is slashed by £20 a week – ‘the biggest ever overnight cut to our social security, already among the lowest in Europe’. The signs are there in the more than 5,000 percent increase in the number of emergency food parcels distributed between 2008 and 2018 by the Trussell Trust, and the news that by the end of 2019, before the pandemic, the UK had more food banks than branches of McDonalds. [6] 

And hunger, though hidden, shows itself at times in anger. So the signs are there in the protests of workers whose incomes in real terms have been steadily eroded at the same time as their companies shareholders and executives have enjoyed increasingly extravagant bonuses, as profits have soared.

How does a person follow Jesus in a time of hunger? Out of the pain and the joy of his own experience Jesus tells the crowds travelling with him that it involves some giving-up. It involves giving-up serving only the needs of one’s immediate family so as to create space in one’s life to  give oneself to joining in the struggles of the masses. It involves giving-up one’s own possessions – starting with giving up the desire to possess things for oneself – for the sake of sharing what we have with others, for the common good. 

In a land of hungry, anxious, angry people, at a time when people ‘stray about heedlessly’, how do we follow Jesus? To borrow St Paul’s beautiful question to Philemon, how can we perceive all the good that we may do for Christ?

Let us remember Jesus as the one who fed five thousand hungry, anxious, angry people in a time of hunger. Let us remember Jesus as one who taught his followers to pray saying, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’, in faith that the Father who cares for each of his children will put food on our table.

But let us also remember that the five thousand were fed because Jesus asked the crowd to share what little they had with each other – that the miracle was in that sharing. And we must be clear that Jesus needs us to understand that The Father can only give us all our daily bread if we share the bread we have with others.

 

Notes

[1] Luzia Sutter Rehmann, Rage in the Belly: Hunger in the New Testament. p.5.

[2] Luzia Sutter Rehmann, Rage in the Belly: Hunger in the New Testament. p.12-14.

[3] Luzia Sutter Rehmann, Rage in the Belly: Hunger in the New Testament. p.69-71.

[4] Mark 6.31 translated by Luzia Sutter Rehmann in Rage in the Belly: Hunger in the New Testament. p.12.

[5] Luzia Sutter Rehmann, Rage in the Belly: Hunger in the New Testament. p.12.

[6] Francesca Newton, Another summer of hunger. Tribune, 18 August 2022.

Hebrews 13.1-16, Luke 14.1, 7-14

The Eleventh Sunday after Trinity, 28 August 2022

 

Do you remember when you were younger ever having to sit at the Children’s Table at a family gathering or wedding party? Do you remember how that felt?

Perhaps quite an adventure, if you were four or five years old, especially with the sweet treats and party games you’d enjoy sharing with the other children. 

But what if you were say, seven or eight, or ten, and put on the Children’s Table? Then, did it irk you that you were being left out of the grown-ups’ party, particularly when it looked like they were getting bigger helpings of better food?   

You may have even had the experience of being an adult placed at the Children’s Table. I read a recent news report of a 23-year-old who stormed out of a wedding when he discovered that he’d been assigned amongst the kids; and I’m told that it was once quite routine for the younger unattached women – the spinsters – to be placed there as babysitters whilst the parents got the grown-up treatment at the adult tables.

Jesus was spot-on in identifying that there’s a hierarchy at play when it comes to who sits where at parties. His observations are even more profound if we try to read them through the eyes of a child. And if I were a child, I wonder if the reasons that adults give for separating us at parties would truly add up.

We have a Children’s Table because there’s not enough room to fit everyone around just one table. In which case, ok, but why does it have to be children who get separated off? Why not have a table for the golfers and another for the non-golfers? A table for those who want to talk politics and a table for the rest?

We have a Children’s Table because if you put them with the adults they’ll want to be the centre of attention. Oh really? More so than loud Uncle Dave the travelling salesman with his endless stories of motorway misdemeanours and lists of speed cameras to avoid? 

We have a Children’s Table so we can have some unspoiled adult conversation. But doesn’t that mistakenly assume that all adult conversation is worthy and elevated when we know that it’s mainly mundane and competitive? Doesn’t that short-sightedly think that children, though freshly engaged in full-time education, will have no interesting questions to ask or perspectives to share? [1]

People not only eat at table, they also learn, celebrate, and experiment there. Social hierarchies are mirrored there just as much as hospitality and compassion. Eating together shapes the structures of a society, its customs, language, and theology. [2]

Jesus is impassioned to transform those structures which diminish us by introducing new customs, fresh language, and enlivening theology. He challenges us to disengage from those hierarchical games we play when we’re invited to take our seat at parties. He says, “When you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place”. The reason? Not to punish or diminish us, quite the opposite: to give us the chance to open our eyes to the world in fresh ways … from the Children’s Table.

And Jesus suggests to those planning a dinner, to not invite your friends or your relatives or your  rich neighbours, but instead to invite ‘the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind’. The reason? So we will know the blessing of abandoning the usual games we play, which catch us in a spiral of trading party invitations to keep up our social appearances; and so we will know the blessing of shaping original conversations with new and different people whose fresh perspectives will raise for us many insights and enlivening questions and fruitful challenges. 

The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, in his own particular way, reminds us that Jesus set the example for this when he “suffered outside the city gate” and entreats those who wish to follow to  “go to him outside the camp.” 

Christians, like everybody else, are always drawn to gather in like-minded groups, and engage in clannish behaviour, for it is our human instinct to do so. But we are called to the discipline to disengage from this drive to belong to some at the exclusion of others – and to go to where the excluded ones are, to listen to them, to learn from them, and so to experience a fuller life through cultivating these relationships.

After our service today we will gather for refreshments. There will be no Children’s Table, but the whole gathering will be focussed on The Children’s Society, a charity which many of us know. It’s an opportunity for us to say ‘thank you’ to those of you who support The Children’s Society year on year, and it’s also a chance for anyone to make a modest donation today, should you so wish. I’m grateful to Alison, our Children’s Society rep, for arranging this gathering.

What do The Children’s Society do? Lots of work supporting vulnerable children including those missing from home, living in poverty, suffering sexual and criminal exploitation, and young carers looking after dependent parents and peers. And how do The Children’s Society do it? “We stand up for children’s rights by including them in everything we do,” they say. “From designing our services to leading on our campaigns, we put young voices first.” [3]

The Children’s Society choose to take a place at The Children’s Table, to listen to them, learn from them and then advocate for them, help them speak out. “If a child doesn’t agree with something that affects them, our advocates make sure they’re listened to,” they say. 

A recent example of this was how young people from The Children’s Society started a campaign to cut the cost of school uniforms, which was championed by Mike Amesbury MP, and eventually became a bill passed through parliament which becomes law next month. You may have seen The Children’s Society’s Chief Executive Mark Russell discussing this in the news this week. [4]

Take a seat at The Children’s Table: it’s what Jesus encourages us to do; it’s an encouraging place to begin.

 

Notes

[1] Can I sit kids with adults at a plated dinner? Food52 discussion forum, October 17, 2011.

[2] Luzia Sutter Rehmann, Rage in the Belly: Hunger in the New Testament. p.xiii.

[3] The Children’s Society, Childrens rights and advocacy.

[4] Richard Hansen, New school uniform law to come in after Cheshire MP’s long battle – here’s what it means. Cheshire Live, 29 April 2021. Rebecca Wearn & Tom Beal, Do new school uniform rules save parents money? BBC News, 22 August 2022.