“Three Rules To Live By”

Deuteronomy 26:1-11, James 2:14-17

Near the end of this service, as you have heard, we will have the opportunity to write letters to our Congressmen and women in support of actions that will serve to help reduce hunger not only in this country but around the world. 

To prepare you for that, I thought I might share with you a few statistics that boggle my mind:

According to the United Nations there are 520 million malnourished people in the world. 

Each year 15-20 million people die of hunger-related causes.  Three out of every four of these are children.

At least 50 million children are permanently blinded each year simply through lack of vitamin A. 

A person born in the richer parts of the world will consume 30 times as much food as a person born in the poorer parts of the world.

In the United States 36.3 million people, including 13 million children do not have access to enough food for an active healthy life. 

The UN estimates that the basic health and nutrition needs of the world’s poorest people could be met for an additional $13 billion a year. 

To put that in perspective:  Animal lovers in the United States and Europe spend more than that on just pet food each year. 

The U.S. spent over $100 billion on the war in Iraq in 2006 and have spent over $400 billion since the “war” started … enough to feed the world’s poorest people for THIRTY years.

And what percentage of the federal budget goes toward reducing poverty around the world? Any guesses??? 39/100^th’s of one percent.  Of the 48 industrial nations, the U.S. ranks dead last in the percentage of its budget used toward this end. 

The problem of the poor and the problem of hunger have been around forever.  There have always been the haves and the have-nots. In our Old Testament lesson we learn how the Israelites were told to deal with this problem. 

The Israelites were coming to the end of their time in the wilderness. After 40 years of wandering without a home and with barely enough to eat, they were about to enter the Promised Land.

God, knowing human beings pretty well, knew that people who were used to being hungry would need some instructions about how to live in a land of plenty. The generation that had been slaves in Egypt had died out.

This generation was born in the wilderness. They would need help knowing how to live with abundance. So the book of Deuteronomy includes all kinds of rules about how to manage when you have more than enough.

God also knew that the people would soon forget the bad times, and the rules provide for that too.

In today’s scripture lesson, Moses gives the people three rules out of God’s instruction manual.

Number one: Whatever grows in the new land, give the first of it to God. Why? To remember that we did not create this abundance, God did, and God will always provide enough.

It’s very important that we offer the first fruits, not what we have left over. Offering God what we can when we have taken care of everything else is not following this rule.

By offering the first part to God, we show that we trust in God’s abundance to provide more than enough.

Number two: Tell the story of your people. Why? To remember. When we have been in the land of plenty for a while, it’s easy to forget that things were not always so prosperous, and that God brought us through bad times, too.

 And, to remember that it was God who brought us through the wilderness, and not we ourselves.

Number three: Throw a big party. Why? There were probably some Israelites who needed no excuse to throw a big party, just as some of us are ready to celebrate any time.

Those people might not understand the point of this rule. There are others of us who need to be reminded to celebrate.

We tend to think so much about the things we don’t have that we forget to rejoice in what we do have.

But the important thing, God says, is that in the Promised Land, when we celebrate, we need to open up the party to others, the Levites and the aliens, those among us who don’t fit in, who may not have any land of their own.

Okay, so what would happen if we tried to apply these three rules to our own time? Are we not living in the Promised Land?

I don’t mean the United States of America, as richly blessed as this country is. I mean the whole world we live in. This world is a land of abundance.

The good news is that right now the world has enough food for every man, woman, and child living on this planet.

And yet, right now, over 500 million people are hungry. Right now more than 500 million of our brothers and sisters around the world don’t get the calories their bodies need to live a healthy life.

Even in this wealthy nation, more than 36 million Americans live in households that struggle to put food on the table. Why?

If God has given the world an abundance of resources, a bounty of blessings, enough for all, why do so many of God’s people still go hungry?

We know that hunger does not exist because of a lack of food. God has blessed us with the experience and the technology right now to end the problem. Hunger exists simply because we have not decided to end it.

Hunger still exists because the people and nations of the world allow it to exist. But here is the good news: If we really want to end hunger and malnutrition worldwide, we can. And so the key to overcoming hunger is to change the politics of hunger.

I suspect that we can learn a lot about how to make that change by remembering the rules from the instruction manual for living in the promised land.

Rule #1 was about giving. We as individuals, as churches, and as a nation need to remember where our abundance comes from and give freely back to God for the welfare of God’s people.

The Mormon Church membership fast one Sunday a month, skipping two meals, and then donate the money they saved to their emergency aid fund.  We could learn a lot from them.  Can you imagine how much we could raise for the poor if we adopted that practice? 

Our government also has a long way to go. Right now only about one tenth of one percent of the U.S. budget goes to official development. By that measure, once again we rank nearly last in generosity among all the developed nations.

Rule #2 was about telling the story. I’m going to indulge in a little storytelling here, and tell the story of Bread for the World:

Thirty-five years ago, a young Lutheran pastor named Art Simon realized that his church and the other churches on the lower east side of Manhattan were handing out food year after year, and the problem of hunger never seemed to go away.

He gathered a group of church leaders, Protestant and Catholic, who came together with the bold vision of changing the things that made people hungry in the first place.

They realized that all the charity from all the churches in the country could be completely wiped out by an act of Congress, cutting food stamps for example.

Their vision was that if there could be a small group of committed Christians in every congressional district, we could persuade our lawmakers to work for poor and hungry people, and make ending hunger a national priority.

That vision led Art Simon and others to start Bread for the World.

Now, thirty-four years later, Bread for the World is a nationwide Christian citizens’ movement against hunger. Its members are people in churches across the country, people who believe that in God’s world, no one needs to go hungry.

They have about 55,000 members, including 2500 churches representing 45 different denominations.

Every year its members send hundreds of thousands of letters asking members of congress to support legislation that brings hope to hungry people both in this country and overseas.

And it is working. Remember what Moses’ Rule #3 was? Celebrate. There has been a lot to celebrate.

In 2001, Congress overwhelmingly adopted Bread for the World’s  “Hunger to Harvest Resolution” and authorized more than 300 million dollars in poverty-focused aid for Africa. The letters helped make that happen.

In 1999 and 2000, Bread for the World played a key leadership role in the Jubilee campaign for debt relief. Because of the money that was freed up, twenty-seven of the world’s poorest countries were able to invest more in health care, education, and agricultural development, the things they need to become self-sufficient.

In 2002 the letters helped win another major victory – Congress authorized the Millennium Challenge Account, which resulted in the largest increase in poverty focused development assistance in 20 years. That’s something to celebrate.

Hunger is a problem that, by God’s grace, we can solve. Worldwide, hunger has actually decreased by about 20 percent in the past 30 years.

I believe that God has given us the means to end hunger in the next 30. But churches and charities cannot do it alone. Governments have to do their part too. And we, as citizens of the United States, are blessed with a voice in our nation’s decisions.

This year, you can add your voice to the growing movement to eliminate hunger and extreme poverty throughout the world by writing letters to your congressmen and women in support of specific provisions of the Farm Bill that Cathy talked about. And it only takes a few minutes.

In our New Testament reading in the Epistle of James we learn that it is not enough to merely give lip service to helping those less fortunate that ourselves. 

If they are hungry we are to feed them.  If they are naked, we are to clothe them.

 If we truly believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ we are required to prove that by our deeds. If we only talk the talk but can’t walk the walk, our talk is useless.

It is my prayer that we will be moved by the Spirit to perform acts of compassion for those who have not been blessed with the wealth we each possess. 

It doesn’t take a lot … but it does take a little.  May we do what we can, with what we have, to benefit who we can, for as long as we can.

Amen.