Hungry people are the concern of the readings from this First Sunday in Lent. First, people fleeing Pharaoh into the desert are hungry. Their hunger eventually ends when, after fighting divisive and destructive wars for it, they gain “land flowing with milk and honey.” Next, Jesus has been 40 days in the desert, “He ate nothing during those days, and when they were over he was hungry.” Jesus rejects a devil’s temptation to end his hunger by using division and destruction. Jesus seeks oneness and vitality.
In our own day we think it likely an easy task to end any hunger we feel without being divisive or destructive. But is it? We who live among multiple grocery stores with stocked shelves have for decades been made more hungry. It is because we and so many other people across the world are being forced into a corporate food system. Through depleted soil and GMO seeds, the corporate food system diminishes the nutrition of the real food it packages. It certainly diminishes the nutrition of the processed food it packages. Both result in people being hungry, around the world. Corporate controlled food can be likened to a devil, an adversary tempting us to end our hunger in divisive and destructive ways. We are not experiencing oneness nor vitality. Investigations into this truth are often dismissed with claims the U.S. feeds the world and gratitude should be our response. But who in the U.S. or elsewhere in the world would feel secure knowing their corporate controlled food originated in the War Department and remains dominated by the Department of Defense? Corporate food is dominated by chemical warfare. Corporate food comes from toxic feed lots filled with toxic animals stuffed on plants grown with toxic sprays. We are subject to a food system that is keeping us hungry in divisive and destructive ways. We need a new vision for food, a renewed Spirit of oneness and vitality.
A Spirit of oneness and vitality has us in touch with creation and connected to local farmers who grow our food. From that Spirit we can end our hunger. We can make sure hungry people get the nutritious food they need. A Spirit of oneness and vitality energizes farmer and activist Vandana Shiva. In a recent (02/22/19) National Public Radio (NPR) interview Shiva shared some of the research from her most recent book Oneness vs. the 1%. In it she addresses the warrior values of the corporate food industry. “The 1 percent, of course, is the symbol of the concentration of wealth…turning every natural resource into a war zone. … But war over seeds(!)…by a poison cartel of three—Monsanto/Bayer, Syngenta/ChemChina, Dow/DuPont—all of them with their roots in Hitler’s Germany and finding chemicals to kill people. No wonder they’re still killing people. No wonder they’re killing our butterflies and our bees and our pollinators.” “(Y)ou can’t run democracy…through the divide-and-rule policy of the 1 percent to destroy our oneness, our solidarity, our recognition that we are one humanity and can be strong when we fight for the rights of the planet and for our basic rights to food and water.”
Prayer: Spirit, keep us One and keep us vital in touch with each other and all creation.
Question: What else can I do to help feed hungry people with real, nutritious food?
March 10, 2019 Gospel Luke 4:1-13 First Sunday of Lent