Sunday Recap: Hunger & Justice

We had a special treat this week! Our friend and partner in justice work, Rajni Shankar-Brown, joined us for some engagement and education surrounding the issues of hunger, encouraged us with simple ways to help, and challenged us to self-examine, especially as we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving. Rajni shared a song from her sacred tradition and reminded us that hunger is a human issue which transcends religious divides. We considered the story of Jesus feeding the multitudes and asked some pointed questions about what this story does to us, rather than what we would rather it do for us.

This week, Rajni Shankar-Brown led a discussion that continues our theme of Food & Faith. We considered the many sides of hunger and the factors that affect people's access to food. Rajni explained how the problem of hunger is not caused by a lack of food in the world, as we have more food now than ever before. Instead, hunger comes from people not having fair access to this food. Oftentimes those who are hungry do not have an equal voice in the United States, such as people below the poverty line, women, children, and minorities. In Volusia County alone, 1 in 6 children are in poverty, which is directly linked to hunger and access to food. 

With these thoughts of hunger and food access in mind, Ben led the service in a reading of Jesus feeding the multitudes.  Often, this passage is read as Jesus miraculously creating enough food to feed over 5,000 people. However, we considered a decisively Collective reading of the text. The crowd which followed Jesus was made up of different classes of people: rich, middle class, and poor, and they probably knew that Jesus would be speaking for a while and brought food. We imagined the rich bringing baskets of food, the middle class bringing one meal, the poor having just enough bread and fish to satisfy themselves, and still others having no food. We considered how humans have a fear that the universe is withholding, that there is not enough, and this fear led those at the gathering to hold their baskets of food a bit closer, not wanting to give any away. But when they saw Jesus breaking bread and passing out what little he had to those around him,  the tension from the fear that the universe is withholding met the reality of hunger, and this is where the miracle truly took place. Jesus forced the crowd to confront this tension, and this confrontation led to a communal meal, a sharing of food with everyone.  

YouTube Subscription

iTunes Subscription