Enough for Everyone
A sermon preached with the people of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Oakland, California.
Some of you may have seen that the Annual State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report was published on Wednesday. And it revealed that “733 million people faced hunger in 2023, equivalent to one in eleven people globally and one in five in Africa.” The report shows that QUOTE “the world has been set back 15 years, with levels of undernourishment comparable to those in 2008.” The report projects that “if current trends continue, almost 600 million people will be chronically undernourished by 2030, with 53% living in Africa.”
What a painful thing. To know there is not enough to feed everyone. Except … is that really true? No, of course not.
The United Nations World Food Program explains that there is no global food shortage. QUOTE: “we produce more than enough food to feed everyone in the world. We produce so much food globally yet one–third of it – 1.3 billion tons – is wasted. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), all that wasted food is enough to feed 1.26 billion people: almost twice the number of undernourished people across the globe.”
So, why do people (around the world and right here in our country and our city) go without? Not because of lack of food, but because of lack of access to food. Because of war and conflict, environmental changes resulting from climate change, global economic systems that do not prioritize the wellbeing of all people (far from it), to name a few. But not because of a general shortage of available nutrition.
“Olivier De Schutter, UN special reporter on extreme poverty and human rights, says QUOTE: “the global industrial food system is disastrously vulnerable to increasing climate, conflict and economic shocks – with climate change increasingly pounding farmers. Building climate-resilient food systems is now a life-or-death matter. As is establishing social protection floors and ensuring workers are paid living wages. We desperately need a new recipe for addressing hunger.” UNQUOTE.
I wonder what it would take to do that. To formulate and follow that “new recipe.” I wonder what it would take to feed everyone.
“Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little,” Philip said to Jesus.
“How can I set this before a hundred people?” the man from Baal-shalishah said to Elisha.
What would it take to feed 100 hungry people in war-torn land. 5,000 in an occupied territory. 733 million in a warming planet? It’d take a miracle, right? Well, maybe? A miracle suggests something unexplainable. Supernatural. But these problems seem to have explainable solutions. Feeding everyone? We actually know that is possible. Without divine intervention (the kind we might imagine, anyway).
So I think what Jesus is up to this morning is not so much to show off his divine powers. Not to perform a magic trick. But to reveal the truth: that there is enough for everyone.That God had already provided the miracle of the feeding. A long time ago. The miracle was and is creation itself. There was already enough for all those gathered that day, and for all those who have come after. Bread and fish. Fruits and vegetables; beans and grains; milk and meat.
I think Jesus was calling those 5,000 to a “new recipe” that is the mission of God. Jesus was calling them, and us, to protect that existing miracle, and to distribute its yield to all people. Jesus was and is calling the crowd to God’s mission.
It is not easy to answer that call. Clearly. There has not been a day since then that human beings have not gone hungry. We’ve built skyscrapers, travel through space regularly, split the atom, and hold a world of knowledge in our palms. But we have never been able to answer this call. It just feels too big. Too hard.
“Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little,” Philip said to Jesus.
“How can I set this before a hundred people?” the man from Baal-shalishah said to Elisha.
Instead of organizing, and forming new friendships and connections to preserve this feeling of 5,000 gathered in community on the grass; instead of founding foodbanks, taking up collections, planning for free farming and livestock education programs; instead of trusting themselves and their own God-given power to engage in the mission of loving one another, those gathered on the grass tried to make … a king. Tried to force Jesus to sit on a throne.
“You do it!” “You’re so good at it!” “Do it for us!”
And Jesus responds by running for the hills. Because as much as we still try to place a crown on his head, Jesus will not be a king. He will not partake in the very earthly power structures that obscure the truth that there is enough for everyone.
I wonder what kind of mood Jesus was in when he retreated to the mountain by himself? Did he scream to the wilderness void, “I showed them exactly what to do! Why don’t they get it? Why don’t they think they can do it? Why are they so afraid?”
I wonder if the disciples thought the same about Jesus’ mood; thought he might just be done with us. Might never return. I wonder if that’s why they went ahead and got in the boat, rowing toward the other side of the sea without him, defeated. I wonder if, as the stormy waves threatened to pull them to the rocky bottom, they were sure they had been abandoned.
I wonder if, as Jesus appeared, walking on the waves, they feared that he was here to rebuke them. To punish them. And I wonder if, as his presence pulled them to immediate safety, they knew. Truly knew. That our God does not abandon us.
Through years and decades and millennia, as we try and succeed and fail and try and succeed and fail to get it right. God is here. Pulling us back to dry land, again and again. Revealing the truth of the Kingdom of Heaven, and calling us to the work of God’s mission. And no hero – no king – is going to do that work for us. It’s ours, together.
It’s the big hefty stuff of fighting climate change. Demanding justice and promoting policies and organizations that hep the most vulnerable in our communities. Pursuing peace. Repenting of the devastation in the wake of colonialism and empire that resulted in a single continent experiencing more hunger than the rest of the world; and the shadow of continued racism and insulationist impulses that threaten to let it go unnoticed. It’s coming up with economic solutions and scientific breakthroughs that seek, specifically, to feed.
It’s also the smaller stuff of meeting in the kitchen, here at St. John’s, making sandwiches, wrapping eggs, and packing lunch bags.
As to staggering report released this week, we cannot and should not count on a miracle to respond. I suspect that’s the kind of thinking that makes us throw up our hands in defeat. We can count on the hope that comes when we know. We know for certain. That there is enough.
This feeding of multitudes – it’s not magic. It’s not miraculous, I don’t think. John calls what happened that day a “sign,” not a miracle.” It’s not necessarily exciting. It will not result in fame or fortune or a throne. It will not be driven by ambition.
It will be driven by mission. By the “new recipe” Jesus promises is there for us, just waiting to be revealed as the truth that has always been. The real miracle: there is enough for everyone.