Some Bread For God

The Virginia MennoniteRelief Sale effort
to raise cash for needy refugees in
2018 was encouraging, but fell
short of 2017 SOS giving,

Something memorable and unexpected happened to me as I wrapped my arms around our preschool granddaughter, who was sobbing from having hurt herself in a fall. In trying my best to comfort her I felt a new sense of connection with untold numbers of parents and grandparents around the world holding hurting and hungry children. How must they feel when their most vulnerable cry from lack of something as basic as healthcare, or the food they need to survive?

Few of us have ever embraced a malnourished child, or experienced any significant lack of food ourselves. This in spite of the fact that an estimated 17,000 children die of hunger and hunger-related diseases every day, more than the total number of students enrolled at nearby James Madison University every twenty four hours. What makes this so tragic is the fact that there is actually enough food in the world for everyone if it were only distributed equitably.

Jesus spoke more about feeding the hungry and helping the needy than almost any other subject. He taught his followers that to offer bread to a hungry person is the same as personally providing food for himself, and that to look the other way when one has the means to help is like turning away from God.

Unfortunately, Americans in general, and Christians in particular, aren’t doing very well in sharing their wealth. According to a study done a decade ago by sociologists Christian Smith, Michael Emerson and Patricia Snell, authors of Passing The Plate, Why Christians Don't Give More  of Their Money (Oxford University Press, 2008) one in four US Protestants doesn’t give at all, and the the median rate of annual giving for professed followers of Jesus is only $200. This represents less than half a percent of their taxable income. Among Protestants who call themselves evangelicals, one in ten report giving nothing, and a mere 27 percent tithe, while another thirty-six percent give less than 2% to their churches or other charities.

According to the Passing the Plate authors, what makes us look especially miserly is that American Christians who attend services at least twice a month and claim their faith is “very important” to them earn a staggering $2.5 trillion dollars a year. Collectively that’s enough wealth to qualify for membership in the G7, a group representing the world’s seven largest economies. Even a modest ten percent of that could do wonders.

Smith and his coauthors discovered that the poor are actually more generous than their wealthier counterparts. American Christians who earned less than $10,000, they found, gave 2.3 percent of their income through their congregations, whereas those who earned $70,000 or more averaged only 1.2 percent.

Is this pathetic or what?

My parents, who struggled to feed their family through the Great Depression, never lost sight of their obligation to share generously with others. I remember well my father consistently giving a tithe of his farm income when I was growing up, in spite of how hard that was at times. And my mother, hospitable from the heart and amazing in her ability to enjoy more while living on less, never hesitated to help a neighbor in need. I feel forever blessed by their example.

Activist Catholic priest Daniel Berrigan once wrote these words:

"Somewhere in your life, may you see one starved person,
the look in her face when the bread finally arrives.
Hope you might have baked it or bought it or even kneaded it
yourself. 
For that look on her face, for your hands meeting hers across a piece of bread,
You might be willing to lose a lot, or suffer lot, or die a little even."