From a young age I was formed to believe that putting other people’s needs before my own needs was the right thing to do, the most satisfying and holy action to take. Surely part of this was because I was a female child growing up in 1950s’ and 60s’ America. I got lots of messages about letting boys be first and certainly not competing against them, about being polite which meant not assertive, and otherwise patiently waiting to be asked rather than stepping forward. My mother didn’t think I should take advanced studies as it would make me nerdy. It was important not to take the larger portion of anything as it would be greedy. When I married young and unwisely, I was reminded that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach and told that if there were difficulties, I should try harder, get the house tidy, the children settled and food ready before my husband got home from work and certainly not bring up any potential problems until after dinner etc. etc. etc.
I also had six children to raise. I know all about putting my needs aside and I think there is a time when people, both men and women, need to stand up for what they need, but I also sincerely believe that as a culture we have not found a healthy balance. Girls for the most part don’t get the messages I was given, but neither do the boys, in fact no one seems to get them and sometimes that means that children or the elderly suffer. Instead, we have become a nation of people that think first of their own needs, and as a nation on the world stage we do the same.
In contrast, the very heart of the Christian message is to think of others. With so many young families avoiding the church world, I often wonder who will teach the children, or reinforce their parents, or grandparents in their efforts to encourage sharing or fairly distributing opportunities as well as goods?
This week the church considers how we feed one another, especially the poor in our midst. The first reading comes from 2 Kings 4:42-44 and it is the story echoed in the hearts and minds of the Jewish people when they heard of Jesus feeding the 5000.
“A man came from Baal-shalishah bringing to Elisha, the man of God, twenty barley loaves made from the first fruits, and fresh grain in the ear. Elisha said, ‘Give it to the people to eat.’ But his servant objected, ‘How can I set this before a hundred people?’ Elisha insisted. ‘Give it to the people to eat. For thus says the Lord, “They shall eat and there shall be some left over.”’ And when they had eaten, there was some left over, as the Lord had said.” With God there is an abundance. The problem is with distribution.
In the Gospel story, which is from John rather than Mark, the cost of feeding the crowd that has come to hear Jesus teach and heal the sick is considered. In Mark’s telling the disciples want Jesus to dismiss the crowds for a meal break so that the people can go buy food from the surrounding communities, but Jesus tells the disciples they should feed the people. At their protest due to cost he asks them to see what food is available. They bring back 5 loaves and two fish.
In John’s telling Jesus asks the question about where they can buy food to which Philip responds regarding the enormous cost and limited supply. Jesus then directs the disciples and the crowds to sit while he blesses the food that one boy has, five loaves and two fishes, which are served to the people with leftovers aplenty. In both Gospel stories the people have enough. In John’s Gospel having enough is understood as a sign that Jesus is a great prophet. Mark does not declare it a sign. It is miraculous enough that the people all sat down together and shared food, so that all had enough. Mark leaves the agency of the miracle open ended while John makes sure his readers know that Jesus is the prophet who was foretold to come into the world. The nuance is slight, but the shift in the development of the story is toward a Jesus who acts with foreknowledge and divine agency while Mark’s message implies that the disciples, all of us, are part of the work.
Walter Brueggemann would argue that the church has failed in the call to be agents for feeding the world, which in our day means addressing all of the basic needs of people: food, water, clean air, community, etc. “The fissure between self-indulgent satiation and a sustainable modest standard of living is an acute issue for all of us” he writes and then goes on to challenge ministers not to become “chaplains for the old world” in which there is no future, but rather to become the leaders who assist people in developing a new lowered standard of living that will allow all to have what is needed, and the world itself to continue. (1) There is no doubt that the continued demand for more that comes from the developed world has contributed to the disasters that we are now experiencing, but the idea of “lowering our standard of living” is scary. What does it mean? If it is, as the prophets tell us, a trade of quantity (of goods) for quality (of life) who will help us change so we are not facing the upheaval of that future alone?
In the past few months, through dramatic and terrifying climate events, floods, heat domes, wildfires, and melting permafrost, the threat of climate change is finally coming home to many people who have until this moment in time, not been too worried about it. The threat of horrendous flash floods was for people in Bangladesh not Germany. Temperatures of 116 degrees are for deserts not for the lush and rainy Pacific Northwest. And Oregon isn’t supposed to have the largest wildfire in the country, isn’t that for California with its deserts and high-water usage? Yet, all those events are wrapping around us even as some people continue to put all of the agency in God’s hands: ‘it’s a natural cycle’, ‘humans don’t have that much influence’ and ‘God will take care of things’.
Do not ask, “What can we buy to fix things,” for we cannot purchase our way out of the mess we are in even as stores run out of air conditioners, filters, fans, and generators. The way we get out of this mess is by sitting down together and sharing from our wealth of knowledge and goods, and distributing that knowledge and those goods, in ways that allow everyone to thrive. That does indeed mean learning to live at a new lowered standard of living. Where are the leaders who will lead us, as people of faith, into this new way of being? Who will help us generate the miracle of caring for others enough to adjust our standard to what makes for a good life while leaving the world what is needed for everyone else to live well too? In Laudate Si Pope Francis said, “We are always capable of going out of ourselves toward the other.” (#208)
We must all lead by example.
1. Walter Brueggemann. Tenacious Solidarity; Biblical Provocations on Race, Religion, Climate, and the Economy. Edited by Davis Hankins. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2018. (Pg. 195-196)