People are concerned about being fed in this Sunday’s readings. The people of the Old Testament have risked escape from slavery in Egypt only to be near starvation in the desert. In the Gospel, thousands have been fed by Jesus. Still hungry, they risk pursuing him further. Jesus understands their hunger for food, and their hunger for the communion meals create. Jesus risks creating that communion.
The food insecurity experienced by ancient people is experienced still. Across history and across the world people lack food. It is not because the earth lacks generosity in providing food. It is because a fertile and abundant earth has been made into a desert by Militarists and their corporations that control and destroy food. Food insecurity is the result of gorged Militarists incessantly devouring people, energy, resources, and skills to develop and use weapons that destroy life. Militarists devour from the time of ancient empires to current, from the militia of local wars to world wars. Militarists devouring all resources is the history of Japan and the United States. That history is remembered this week for the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, before, during, and after the bombings. All militaries devise that all people, energy, resources, and skills will be fed to the War Lord system and what meager crumbs remain will be tossed as charity to people made perishable by it. People are made perishable by a military that spends exorbitant amounts of money for its domination, values ecological destruction as necessary collateral damage, and practices eco-terrorism as routine policy. Militarism produces food insecurity by its mere existence. Brave souls take risks to transform it all. The transformation begins with communion; living as one human family called to care for each other. Vandana Shiva has been risking food communion at Navdanya. So too Raj Patel author of Stuffed and Starved and The Value of Nothing. Betti Wiggins has been doing so as a school nutritionist and Joann Lo and Jose Oliva through Food Chain Workers Alliance. One especially brave group eradicating food insecurity and risking communion is Food Not Bombs. Food Not Bombs is an all-volunteer global movement started by anti-nuclear activists in 1980 in the U.S. Understanding the direct correlation between a stuffed military and a starved populace, they combined their anti-war protesting with pro-food communion. Volunteers committed to nonviolent social change risked peace rallies and free food giveaways in city parks. It was a risk because they were getting arrested. Volunteers were met with police harassment and a variety of invented city ordinances to stop them from creating communion. Food Not Bombs have kept on, across the U.S. and the world, risking arrest in divisive military cultures to create communion among brothers and sisters.
“Our aims are termed conspiracy … no more our home an anchorage for us may be. There is risk our mutual blood may redden in some lonely wood … I fear not, dost thou fear? … Thou didst thy crust with me divide, Thou didst thy cloak around me fold; And, sitting silent by thy side, I ate the bread in peace untold … So close to thee, my heart beat warm, And tranquil slept my mind. … Refreshed, erelong, with rustic fare, … Courage will guard thy heart from fear, And Love give mine divinest peace: To-morrow brings more dangerous toil, And through its conflict and turmoil We shall pass.” (Charlotte Bronte – The Wood)
Prayer: Spirit of Abundance, nurture us so that we may nurture others.
Question: What risks am I taking to create communion?
August 05, 2018 Gospel John 6:24-35 Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time