On the day after Thanksgiving, columnist Leonard Pitts announced good news: “An average of 17.7 percent of Americans were at times unable to feed themselves in the 12 months prior to September of this year.”1 How on earth could this be good news, Pitts asked. The answer: the percentage of hungry Americans was down from 18.5 percent at the end of 2009. Pitts went on to remind us that we don’t have to go to Kenya or Haiti to find hunger. In this season of “gorging on turkeys and hams and yams and greens, potatoes by the mound, dressing by the mountain, and groaning tables of puddings, pies, cookies, and cakes,” hunger endures in this country. Even though the lieutenant governor of South Carolina likened children who receive free and reduced price lunches to “stray animals you feed at your back door,” hunger endures. Even though we work hard at providing free meals to people, even though we participate in the distribution of food, hunger endures. Is it because of the recession that we have so much hunger? Well, we had hungry people before the recession. Are hungry people lazy or dishonest? Maybe a few are, but many hungry people are disabled, mentally ill, or poorly educated. Some have lost their jobs, some will never find a job in their community, and some have a job that doesn’t pay enough to live on. (Read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickle and Dimed for more on that last reason.) And truth be told, any of us could be poor and hungry. Even middle-class people can lose their jobs and find themselves suddenly poor. Many of us are one health-care crisis away from poverty. Did you know that the majority of people who file for bankruptcy do so because of medical bills not covered by insurance?
At this point, you’re probably thinking, “What does this have to do with me? And what on earth do hungry poor people have to do with today’s Scripture lessons?” The answer is: everything! In our Old Testament reading from the prophet Isaiah, and in our psalm, we have a vision of what God intends our world to look like, of what a future of shalom, the well-being of all, might look like. In God’s shalom, all creation lives in harmony and peace. In God’s shalom that peace is a peace founded on justice, and especially justice for the poor. Hear Isaiah describing the ruler of God’s future: “He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear,” i.e., he won’t be impressed by the trappings of high status or by elegant language, but “with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.” The psalmist also looks forward to a future of harmony and peace: “There shall be abundance of peace till the moon shall be no more.” And the psalmist reminds us that the ruler of God’s peaceful kingdom will “rule your people righteously and the poor with equity,” and that “he shall defend the needy among the people; he shall rescue the poor and crush the oppressor.” Clearly the God whose word Isaiah proclaims has a special heart, a special preference, for the poor. Could these be the same poor people about whom Pitts was writing?
Our Gospel lesson strikes a slightly different note. Standing squarely within the prophetic tradition of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, Ezekiel, and all the rest, John the Baptist also proclaims God’s word. But John proclaims that a great change in people’s lives is about to occur, that the ideal king, the messiah, the just ruler proclaimed by earlier prophets, is indeed about to appear. In preparation for the coming of God’s anointed one, John calls out, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” As a token of their repentance he charges people to be baptized, i.e., to be immersed in water, in a symbolic cleansing. John also has harsh words for the religious leadership – and we’ll hear a lot of this in Matthew’s Gospel. John warns them not to take refuge in their standing as children of Abraham, i.e., as heirs to God’s promises, but themselves repent and bear good fruit.
John was speaking to the people of his own time, to first-century Jews who were awaiting the coming of God’s anointed. Is he also speaking to us? Our collect for today asks for God’s grace to heed the warnings of the prophetic messengers whom God has sent and to forsake our own sins. So, yes, the Hebrew prophets, the prophets of our own day, and John the Baptizer are also addressing us. As a pastor and teacher, I especially hear John’s harsh words to the religious leaders as addressed to me, and I do challenge myself to repentance, and I ask God’s grace to bring forth the good fruit that God would have me bear. But ultimately John’s harsh words are addressed to all of us. All of us baptized Christians are also heirs to God’s covenant, along with the original descendants of Abraham. And like the religious leaders who first heard John’s accusations, we too cannot think that we are immune from any further attention to the demands of God. We too are called to repentance, and especially in this season, when we too wait eagerly for the appearing of the Prince of Peace.
“Repentance.” Now what does this word really mean? One thing it does not mean is a trip down the aisle at a revival. It does not mean solely renouncing evil in our baptisms and thinking we are done with repentance forever. No, repentance is a lifelong process, something we need to do continually. Nor does repentance mean putting ourselves on a guilt trip. Certainly, confession and absolution are good and necessary processes. But repentance really means turning around, changing direction, changing our mind-set, aligning ourselves with what God is up to in the world. And repentance is not only for individuals. Parishes, communities, even nations can repent. All of us, individually and collectively, can change course, can turn away from our own selfish desires, and begin heading in God’s direction.
How does such change come about? Ultimately, all change of heart is the work of the Holy Spirit within us. However, the Holy Spirit has many different ways of working. Sometimes we change as a result of new experiences, sometimes through getting new information, sometimes in response to prayer that God will show us the road that God wants us to travel. Most of us don’t need to “invite Christ into our lives” – we’ve probably already done that, or we wouldn’t be here today. What we do need to do is change how we think and how we act.
Can we change our thinking and our action with respect to issues of hunger in the U.S.? Dear God, you may say, I do believe that all your people, even your poorest people, should have enough to eat. How are you asking me to change my mind? What are you asking me to do? Everything you are currently doing, the Lord may say, and more! Yes, continue feeding my people in Loaves and Fishes. Yes, go across the street and help out at the Lutheran Social Services mobile food pantry. Yes, help people access benefits through the Ohio Benefit Bank. And there’s more. Consider educating yourself about hunger nationally, through organizations like Bread for the World, a Christian hunger advocacy organization. Some of you may have read in Friday’s paper, for example, that Congress passed the Child Nutrition bill to increase access to free and reduced-price meals for children. Bread for the World members educated themselves about the bill and then pressed their elected representatives to vote for it. The Ohio Hunger Alliance does the same kind of work on a state-wide level, also asking people to educate themselves about local hunger issues and to take appropriate political action. These are all good things to do, and as Christians we do these things because we understand ourselves as charged to partner with God in the bringing in of God’s future.
But one more thing I ask of you, the Lord says. Love those who are hungry as I love them. Bob Erickson was a volunteer at a free breakfast. Assigned coffee-pouring duty, he drifted from table to table “warming up cups for persons who often embody a ‘down and out’ slice of society,” people from shelters or, literally, off the streets and even from under bridges. Some were physically disabled, some had mental health issues. Few could get or hold a job. At one table, Bob tells us, he met Ben, “who had recently been freed after 25 years in prison. Gradually warming to my interest in talking with him, he told me a predictably sad story: he has no money for rent, is alienated from family, has lost his previous friends, and is aware of few resources in this or any other community, except a homeless shelter where he lives and this once-a-week service….” Yet Ben was confident he could make it, because at some point he had met someone who had accepted him unconditionally as a person, who had enabled him to feel truly loved and able to surmount the many obstacles in his life. Meeting Ben shook all of Bob’s assumptions. Bob realized that, important as our material support of people is, extending the hand of love and friendship, embodying Jesus for them, may be more important. “That someone cares enough to offer themselves -- their time, their attention, and most importantly, their heart -- may be the greatest gift we ever give…. Seeing beyond all that is obvious to criticize about the messiness of how they happen to be standing in front of us, can we accept them as they are as the starting point for who they might become? And by more than ‘bread alone,’ may we have the grace to love them and they, to accept it!”
Repent, change course, make a personal connection with the poor and needy. This is a tall order! Give us grace, O God, to heed the messages of your prophets, and to change our ways. Enable us by your grace to love those whom you love and to be the people you are calling us to be.
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1. “Amid amber waves of grain, hunger thrives,” Worthington Daily Globe, published November 26, 2010, accessed at http://www.dglobe.com/event/article/id/43356/, 11/29/2010.
2. Hunger Network in Ohio Newsletter, Fall 2010.
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