The Feeding And Aiding Of The Four Billion

In Mark 8, when Jesus was moved to compassion
by a hungry crowd, he asked his followers one
simple question, "How many loaves do you have?"

Of the earth's 8.1 billion people, at least half are living in conditions most of us would consider intolerable. 

Examples:

• One in nine of our world neighbors face serious food shortages. By contrast, an estimated 40% of food in the U.S. goes to waste, and far more to waist.

• Over a billion people in the world live in urban slums without power, sewer systems or running water. Most of us over consume energy to the detriment of our environment.

• Well over a hundred million people are refugees due to war, drought, persecution and civil unrest, and many of these have been homeless for decades. Their number is growing.

• Fewer than 18% of the world's people will ever be able to afford a vehicle. We have more licensed vehicles in the US than licensed drivers.

• An estimated six out of ten children around the world are not learning basic reading and math skills. We are blessed with free public education.

• Countless numbers of people suffer from lack of basic dental and medical care. We take that for granted.

According to World Vision president Richard Stearns, author of the The Hole in our Gospel, those of us who earn $50,000 or more a year are among the wealthiest one percent of the world's population. This raises grave concerns about the future of a world with these kinds of disparities between haves and have nots.

A friend recently noted that we likely ignore such glaring disparities for fear that responding generously and justly would "hurt our pocketbooks."  But in light of St. Francis of Assisi's words, "Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing that have received--only what you have given,"  this could actually be the best thing that could happen to our pocketbooks. Francis truly believed Jesus's teaching that giving to those in need was the soundest possible investment we could make in the most secure enterprise on earth, the worldwide and everlasting "Company of Heaven."

Here are some ways we can help create a more just, joyful and peaceful world:

• Urge our nation's lawmakers to set an example to other nations in drastically reducing what we spend on war-making and instead investing in a kind of Marshall Plan that would fund food and development projects all over the globe. According to the War Resister's League, a stack of $1,000 bills equal to what the US government currently spends each year on past and present wars would be over 115 miles high. Reinvesting such funds could literally eradicate starvation.

• Encourage people to divert their retirement savings from stock traded corporations to investments in Calvert and other funds that provide immediate help to the poor through loans for small businesses and which invest in such projects as alternative forms of energy, agricultural development and healthcare.

• Radically reduce the short sighted spending we do for our personal comfort and convenience and double up on investing in the long term wellbeing of our world neighbors. For example, we could all fast regularly and/or have a subsistence rice and bean diet meal once a day, then give extravagantly to organizations that benefit needy members of our worldwide human family.

We all have multiple opportunities to help save lives and to make life better for the hungry and homeless Jesus and the prophets cared for. For example, many in our community support the Virginia Mennonite Relief Sale held at the Fairgrounds on the first Friday and Saturday of October, an effort that raises over $400,000 annually for Mennonite Central Committee's worldwide relief and development work. In the past number of years a significant percentage of that has come through direct cash, check and credit card donations at the Sale, and from contributions made on their website--in addition to income from food, craft and auction sales.

Even this commendable effort represents only a fraction of the kind of generosity today's urgent world needs call for. But to the hungry and homeless every little bit helps.

From the prophet Isaiah:  

Is not this the fast that I choose:
    to loose the bonds of injustice,
    to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
    and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
    and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them
    and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

 Isaiah 58:6-7 (NRSV) 

When we claim God as our Creator, every human on earth becomes our kin, and deserves a hand up.

An Alternative Creation Account (Satire Alert)

The Garden of Eden, as envisioned by Thomas Cole, 1928

And God said, "Let the earth be paved over with urban development, and include multiple convenience stores, McManna fast food outlets and supermarkets laden with all manner of processed food products according to their kind. And let there be large scale factory farms that produce, harvest and ship food from the far corners of the earth, such as beef fattened on massive feedlots, eggs mechanically gathered and packaged from caged laying hens, bacon and prime ribs from pigs confined to cramped individual stalls all their life, exotic fruit from as far away as China, and bananas and pineapples from corporation-owned plantations from all over the world.
And it was so.
Then God created suburbs with three car garages and with manicured, well fertilized and irrigated lawns, regularly sprayed to prevent native clovers and pollinator dandelions from adding any variant color or texture. These acres of unnatural turf created for Adam and Eve's enjoyment were interspersed with a variety of non-native trees, flowers and shrubs that were "pleasing to the eye" but usually not "good for food" for humans, bees, birds and other habitat.
And it was so.
The Lord also provided conveniences like riding mowers, leaf blowers and weed eaters to help keep all of the lawns neatly trimmed, and to separate the sterile paved areas from the sterile turf spaces. Gyms, fitness centers and pickle ball courts were provided for physical exercise so that well-to-do humans would not have to work the ground to produce vegetables, fruits, nuts or berries of any kind for their food. The Lord also offered employment at local McManna and supermarket outlets for their sons Cain and Abel to earn spending money and to keep them occupied in their spare time.
And it was so.
And God saw all that was made, and mused, "What ever made us think this was 'very good'?"

- selections of Genesis 1 and 2 from the "Reversed Standard Version" 

Satire aside, there are these more hopeful visions:

"Indeed, the Lord will comfort Zion;
God will restore all her waste places.
And her wilderness God will make like Eden,
And her desert like the garden of the Lord;
Joy and gladness will be found in her,
Thanksgiving and sound of a melody."  Isaiah 51:3

"They will say, ‘This desolate land has become like the garden of Eden; and the waste, desolate and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited.’"   Ezekiel 36:35

"Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations."  Revelation 22:1-2

A Gale-Driven Jesus Movement Becomes Radically Inclusive

map courtesy of https://www.freebibleimages.org/illustrations/maps-early-church/

...the earth was tohu vavohu (without form, and void); and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Ruach Elohim (Wind, or Spirit, of God) was hovering upon the face of the waters. Genesis 1:2 (Orthodox Jewish Bible)

 Suddenly there came a sound from the sky like the roar of a violent wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Genesis 2:2 (Complete Jewish Bible)

The God-movement unleashed on the day of Pentecost was revolutionary in the way it brought diverse and disparate people together. Quoting from the prophet Joel, the apostle Peter noted that young and old,  men and women, slave and free were are to be formed together into one living, loving community. 

But that was just a start, the coming together of Jews of different languages and cultures from all over the then known world--Parthians, Medes, Elamites, citizens of Mesopotamia, Judaea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya and Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians. From there the circle of inclusiveness continues to expand at a breathtaking rate.

Philip, one of the Greek speaking Jews appointed to oversee the daily distribution of food among needy followers of the Way in Jerusalem, goes on a preaching mission to despised half-breed Samaritans, baptizing scores of them into the new movement. Immediately afterwards, he is led to speak to a eunuch who is a Jewish court official on the road to his home in Ethiopia from Jerusalem, where he would have been excluded from access to temple worship due to his status as an emasculated male. The eunuch is baptized and "goes on his way rejoicing." 

It is soon thereafter that the most dramatic kind of inclusion imaginable takes place. The apostle Peter is called to visit and to baptize the household of Cornelius, an uncircumcised Roman occupier who is a "God-fearing and upright" Gentile. This represented the crossing of the most fundamental of all barriers, an act which would have been anathema to a devout Jew like Peter. But according to the text, God's Spirit gave him no choice but to fully embrace a hated and uncircumcised oppressor whom God had declared "clean." 

Meanwhile, new believers who were scattered all over the empire after the wave of persecution that took place after the stoning of Stephen, carried the inclusionary message of the Way to places like Antioch of Syria, which became a northern hub of the Christian movement, one that openly incorporated both Jews and Gentiles into the church.

Soon thereafter, Paul, once a terrorist prosecutor of followers of the Way, with his companion Barnabas, went on a 500 mile preaching tour in which they baptized Jews and Gentiles alike into the movement. This created major problems on the part of believers in the mother church in Jerusalem, and resulted in a summit of church leaders being called to resolve the rift created by the inclusion of uncircumcised Gentiles. 

It is hard to overestimate the gravity of this question among early believers. It could not have been more abundantly clear, in the only Bible Jesus and the early apostles knew, that God had initiated this special rite of inclusion as mandatory, first to Abraham, at age 90, and then 400 years later, to the lawgiver Moses. There were to be no exceptions. 

"Here is my covenant, which you are to keep, between me and you, along with your descendants after you: ...Generation after generation, every male among you who is eight days old is to be circumcised, including slaves born within your household and those bought from a foreigner not descended from you. The slave born in your house and the person bought with your money must be circumcised; thus my covenant will be in your flesh as an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male... will be cut off from his people, because he has broken my covenant.”    from Genesis 17:10-14 (CJB)

"The Lord said to Moses: 'Say to the Israelites: If a woman conceives a child and gives birth to a son, she will be unclean for seven days... On the eighth day, the flesh of the boy’s foreskin must be circumcised.'"   Leviticus 12:1-3 (CEV)

For people whose faith was deeply rooted in Judaism, any thought of being a part of God's covenant people without that kind of sacred initiation was nearly unthinkable. Clearly the first century church could have easily divided over this issue, but instead felt led to draw the circle of welcome wider rather than excluding those being drawn into it. That appears to be the trajectory in which God is forever moving.

Today there are still those among us who seek to exclude rather than to include, who would draw the circle ever narrower. And the movement should exclude those would be followers of Jesus who insist on doing harm to others in violation of the first and greatest commandments, the "royal law" to love God with a passion and our every neighbor with compassion. Christ-like love, by definition, never inflicts harm to a fellow human being. 

It is there, and only there, that all those with "circumcised hearts" must draw the line. No harm.