WEEK 5

ACTION

“They are working together, united to show the country and the world that this is the way to fight for peace.”

Thus far this Lent, we have heard stories of God working through this church, our companions and our neighbors to end hunger.  We have heard stories from India, Wisconsin, and Washington, D.C., and heard of the stories that cannot be shared.  We have learned that ending hunger means committing ourselves to a more inclusive vision of community, to honesty, to justice, and to one another.  Here, in this last week, companions from Colombia will help teach us about the final tool: action.

As much progress as the world has made to end hunger, we still have a long way to go.  Nearly 690 million people around the world are undernourished, and more than 35 million people in the United States don’t know where their next meal will come from.  Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the rate of hunger around the world was on the rise after a decade of decline.  With the pandemic, we have seen historic levels of unemployment, and even the most conservative forecasts warn that hunger and poverty could increase with nearly unprecedented rapidity in the coming years as we recover from its effects.

In his response to the plague that reemerged in Wittenberg in 1527, Martin Luther addressed the question of how a Christian is to act in a pandemic.  After highlighting the ways God shows concern for good health in Scripture and exhorting his readers to care for their neighbors, Luther writes that prayer, though important, is not enough.  Christians, he proclaims, must do more than pray.  They must act.

Therefore I shall ask God mercifully to protect us.  Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine, and take it.  I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance infect and pollute others.

Pray.  Then act.

These past 40 days of Lent commemorate the time Jesus spent in the wilderness, fasting and facing down temptation.  In the first temptation, Satan placed the “famished” Jesus before a pile of stones and demanded that Jesus prove his power by turning the stones to bread that would end his hunger (Matthew 4:1-3).  How tempting that must have been!  How many parents with not enough food for their children would wish for such a miracle so that their family might be fed?  How many of the 690 million undernourished people around the world would welcome the power to turn stones into the bread they need?

Yet the choice Jesus faced was not between stones and bread but between truth and lies.  No sudden miracle will end the world’s hunger.  Ending hunger is not about wishing or praying for the power to alter reality.  Hunger does not end because of a miraculous intervention.  It ends because of the persistent work of God, with, among and through people striving for change.  It is sometimes slow work, accomplished one step at a time.  But it will not stop until we realize that vision of a time when we will hunger and thirst no more.

Carolina Camargo, a nurse from Villavicencio, Colombia, knows that this is what it will take.  Carolina is part of the work God is doing through the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Colombia (IELCO) and the church’s Justicia y vida (Justice and Life) initiative, which is supported by ELCA World Hunger.  Together with others, Carolina works toward future reconciliation in Justicia yy vida’s “From War to Peace” project, which weaves ties of solidarity between the church and communities in Colombia that have been beset by violence for many years.

Carolina and other volunteers are at work in the area of Uraba, which means “promised land” in the Indigenous Embera Katio language.  Since the 1990’s, Uraba has witnessed a war involving the Popular Liberation Army (EPL), insurgents, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and paramilitary groups.  The conflict led to more than 103 massacres in the region and 32,000 people displaced between 1998 and 2002.  Today, social leaders remain at risk from paramilitary units over disputes involving land.

The peace process has been a long road for Colombia, and IELCO has been traveling it for many years.  In San Jose, former combatants and their families are given a chance to start again through the work of the church.  In San Jose de Leon, they are able to build and maintain homes and resume their former lives raising fish, pigs and chickens.  It’s a chance to rebuild some of what was lost in the years of conflict.

Building peace is a critical step in ending hunger.  But it is a difficult step to take.

Carolina has learned this through her work with IELCO.  “There are people who believe that you can close your eyes and yearn for peace without making an effort towards it,” she says.  “What God allowed me to know is very different from that idealism, the reality I could observe and live, expressing hope in all the people who are part of this change.”  The idealistic belief that peace means simply transforming swords into plowshares ignores “the struggle against negative feelings associated with the traumatic experiences” of the people with whom Carolina works.  Yet together they “walk towards the goal of peace and reconciliation.”

“They are working together, united, to show the country and the world that this is the way to fight for peace.”

We know that we cannot merely declare or call for “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14).  Building peace and ending hunger take action within community and are fostered by the hope and trust that, with each step, God is moving our world closer to that goal.

In this study, we have read stories of people at work around the world.  Their situations may differ, their needs may differ, but what unites them is the commitment to an active hope that refuses to stagnate or stay silent.  It is the hope of the vulnerable guests seeking care at clinics and shelters, of women and girls in India, of advocates in Milwaukee and of peacemakers in Colombia.

It is the hope of Lent, which propels us on this arduous journey to — and beyond — the cross.  This hope empowers us see a number such as 690 million hungry but to refuse to despair.  It can be sustained only by our trust that God is with us in each small step, guiding us toward a promised future.  In hope, we expand our vision of what it means to be “we.”  In hope, we are honest about the challenges we face.  In hope, we invest in our shared future.  In hope, we speak up for justice.

And in hope, we act, knowing that a just world where all are fed is not just possible but promised — and knowing, too, that we are called to be part of building that future.  This is not the idealistic prayer spoken but a realistic prayer lived in solidarity with one another in cities, towns, shelters, clinics, classrooms, gardens, statehouses — all the places where God is at work.

This is the prayer of an Easter people, and this is our prayer — that God will not merely turn stones into bread but build a new world on that rocky soil, a just world where all are fed.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1. Think, share or journal about a time when you acted and it created a positive change.  What did you do?  What happened?  What did it feel like?
2. Where have you seen God turning prayers into action?
3. Think about the prayers you share during worship.  Bring one prayer to mind.  How might your community turn this prayer into action?  What small or large steps could you take?
4. Where is there a need for action to end hunger in your community?  What will it take to move this action forward?

PRAYER

God of promise, God of hope, God of fullness, God of peace, guide us, your people, to be your hands and feet, to work together as you build on our rocky soil a new, just world where all are fed.

WEEK 4 — INVESTMENT

“[The vision is] that we get to invest money in our families and in our community.”

The first reading for this fourth week of Lent is from the book of Numbers.  The people have been on their exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land for years, and the goal is nigh.  They have received the law from God through Moses at Sinai and are now on the final leg of their journey.  Yet, rather than be hopeful and eager, they are tempted by impatience (Numbers 21:4) and dissatisfied with the leadership of Moses and even their “miserable food” (Numbers 21:5).  The exodus they thought would bring them to a new land has instead been a seemingly interminable journey in the wilderness.  God’s response is swift and harsh: “poisonous serpents” sent by God “bit the people, so that many of the Israelites died” (21:6).  The people repent, Moses prays and God grants Moses a staff that will provide healing to all who are bitten.

It’s not the kindest of stories.  The psalmist gives it a different sort of spin, omitting any mention of the venomous snakes and lifting up the healing of God, who heard the cries of the people and “saved them from their distress” (Psalm 107:19b).

Despite the psalmist’s sanitized take on the story, this pattern can be found throughout the story of the exodus.  God rescues the people, they succumb to temptation, they repent, God shows mercy.  Over and over and over.

These biblical narratives are often used to extol the merciful nature of God, who repeatedly forgives the people despite their sin.  Truly, God does show mercy.  But perhaps mercy is not the only lesson to be learned from the story of the people’s walk with God.

The exodus begins in Egypt, where God’s people are enslaved and oppressed.  God seeks out Moses to lead the people, lays low the unjust Pharaoh and accompanies the people across the wilderness for generations, providing food, water and safety along the way, even when the going is tough and the relationship between the people and God is complicated.

Simply put, God is invested in this community.  God has a vested interest in its future.  The covenant inaugurated between them leaves both parties vulnerable to the other.  By leading them from Egypt and entering into a covenant with them, God has tied their futures together.  God has a plan and has invested much to ensure that the people are part of it.  This people, this nation, is God’s future.  The provisions God grants are not mere merciful gifts but further investments toward a shared future for God and the people that will become Israel.

Now, of course, the church is not God; we are spiritual descendants of the wandering Hebrews, dependent still on God’s promise of this future.  Yet, perhaps, there is something we can learn here about what it means to pursue a promise.

People often view the church’s work to end hunger in light of the virtues of mercy and grace.  Food, clothing, shelter and donations might be interpreted as mercies showered on suffering people or as gifts given to neighbors in need.  But the reality is that our response to hunger goes beyond a desire to meet immediate needs.  Our response to hunger is nothing less than an investment in that shared future articulated in the tagline for ELCA World Hunger: a just world where all are fed.

What difference might it make for the hunger ministries of this church to see the work we do together as an investment in this vision?

In Washington, D.C., the Beloved Community Incubator is based on the idea of investing in the people and in the Logan Circle neighborhood.  The project began with a listening campaign by Luther Place Memorial Church, with support from ELCA World Hunger.  In this campaign, residents of the community expressed their desire for cooperatives that would allow them to use their skills and talents to build wealth and income that would stay in the community.

The first cooperative incubated by Luther Place was Dulce Hogar, a cooperative of women who provide cleaning services for homes and businesses.  Together, the women learned how to run a business, pursue just employment and develop their own skills as leaders.  As one participant describes it, “The vision of the cooperative is that all eight of us are well-paid and well-trained, and that we get to invest money in our families and in our community.”

The members of the cooperative were even paid for the times they spent in meetings and trainings.  They learned together that their time and labor had value far exceeding the wages they had been offered before.  And now, with an investment in them, they will be able to invest in others.

Projects such as the Beloved Community Incubator offer a counter-witness to the policies and practices of disinvestment that have created communities with high rates of poverty and food insecurity across the United States.  These policies and practices are rooted in the misperception that some communities are worth investing in and others are not.  But the residents of Logan Circle know that, despite the challenges they face, their community is worth the investment and a better future is worth pursuing.

We know this, too, by faith.  Every community is blessed by God with assets and strengths, even as the people face barriers to using or developing those assets.  And we know by faith that the future we pursue together is a shared endeavor.  The future God has promised is a future for us and our neighbors.  We will get there together, or we will not get there at all.

To end hunger is to recognize that responding to need is a matter not of merciful intervention but of investing in a shared future and trusting that the work of God toward that end will be revealed in those very communities that the profit-driven economy so often leaves behind.  If we are going to end hunger, we need to invest in one another by sharing resources, listening to each other and building the relationships that will ensure the justice God has promised.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1. Think, share or journal about a time when someone showed you kindness and mercy.  What was that like?  How did it feel?
2. Think, share or journal about a time when someone used their time, skills and/or talents to invest in your growth.  What was that like?  How did it feel?
3. Now compare and contrast these two experiences — one of kindness and mercy, and one of investment.  How are they different?  Which experience made a more lasting impact, and why?
4. Does your community take time to invest in the long-term growth of its neighbors?  How so?  If not, how might your community begin investing in others?  What might that look like?
5. Where is there a need for the kind of investment that can end hunger in your community?

PRAYER

Covenant God, since ancient times you have led and fed your people through many wilderness journeys.  In this time, give us strength to invest your gifts in our neighbors and communities, that all might be fed.  AMEN!