Giving thanks for our food

Editorial for the Parish Magazine (Parish of Solihull – October 2009)

October is the month when we celebrate the harvest. We give thanks to God for the crops that have grown and been collected in. We give thanks to God for the food which we shall eat over the coming year.
The Victorians developed the annual harvest thanksgiving into full blown Harvest Festivals. Harvest hymns started to appear. “Come ye thankful people come” was written in 1844. “We plough the fields and scatter” was translated from the German in 1861. Churches were decorated with harvest produce. Harvest gifts were collected and shared with the poor. Church bells were rung and liturgical celebrations spilt over into Harvest Suppers and Harvest Shows.
In recent decades there have been some interesting developments as harvest festivals come to reflect the changing times. Away from rural areas, harvest gifts now tend to reflect what we eat rather than what we grow or harvest. Tinned and packaged foods have become the norm, and actually they make for much more practical harvest gifts! In some places the emphasis has moved away from harvest towards a celebration of the different ways in which we earn our daily bread. I have seen manufactured goods proudly displayed in church alongside sheaths of corn. As the manufacturing sector gives way to the services sector perhaps we should expect to see displays of consultancy brochures or software CDs in our church displays!
These changes make us realise the extraordinarily complicated and sophisticated ways in which we get our food. For most of us, the way we earn our money has nothing to do with producing food. We use that money to buy food that is often imported, sometimes over vast distances. Much of our food is mass produced. In the supermarkets most food is available all year round.
There are many benefits to this. An extraordinary variety of food is available to us all the time. It is more affordable and convenient than ever before and the quality is extremely consistent. The importing of food from all around the world makes us more aware of the interconnectedness of all humanity and the “Global Village” effect.
But despite all these benefits, the changes do raise several concerns. There are ethical concerns about intensive farming, GM crops and the terms of trade with the third world. There are concerns about the greenhouse gases generated by transporting food, and the intensive farming of cattle. Food security becomes more of a concern as we realise that our food supply is so heavily dependent on world trade and financial institutions. Then there is the very real problem of rising food prices, caused by agricultural land being switched from food production to bio-fuel production. This switching threatens to cause food prices to rise to levels beyond what can be afforded in many of the world’s poorest nations. Finally there is the sense in which we are diminished as human beings by our lack of connectedness with where our food comes from. We cease to understand our relationship with the soil and the weather. Our consciousness of seasonal foods and of local specialities disappears. Our distinctive role in food production is reduced to that of consumer.
It could be easy to become depressed about these problems, but our Christian faith teaches us always to live in hope. It also provides us with extraordinary resources that ultimately have the power to address the problems. For example, on 4th October we commemorate St Francis of Assisi in our liturgy. St Francis lived a life of radical simplicity and poverty, which was extremely challenging to the economic assumptions of his time, and which remains both challenging and inspirational to us today.
What would Francis suggest to us about our food today? I suspect that in his simplicity he would suggest growing more of our food locally and growing it less intensively. He would encourage us to grow some of our own food in our own gardens. He would encourage a more interdependent community, working together on food production. He would encourage a freer sharing of the food produced. Our involvement with growing food and our connectedness with nature would increase. Of course such proposals might involve real economic costs and a reduction in financial wealth, but with his love of “Lady Poverty” Francis would rejoice in that too!
Now, we are not all called to be Franciscans. There are other spiritualities within the Church and other legitimate perspectives on food production. However, it seems to me that as the complexities and instabilities of food production increases so the Franciscan perspective will become harder to ignore. In the meantime we must give thanks for the food that God gives us, without worrying, and remembering the advice that Jesus gave to those who worried about their food. He said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you (Matt 6: 33).

Jesus does so much with so little

Sermon preached at St Alphege, Solihull at the 9.15am Eucharist.
Sunday 26th July 2009, Trinity 7 Proper 12 Year B

Readings: 2 kings 4: 42-44 Ephesians 3: 14-21 John 6: 1-21



I studied Maths at university. On the whole I found the maths lectures incredibly difficult. I found that I could never understand what was being taught in the lecturers, but I would take notes and hope to work it out later. The lecturers used to give us “examples sheets” with questions on. The idea was that you worked through the examples with your lecture notes and that way started to understand what the course was all about. We were also encouraged to go to “examples classes” were the lecturer would go through the example sheet and help people who were stuck. But the trouble with going to examples classes was that it was all too easy to show yourself up as being very ignorant and stupid.
I remember on one occasion the lecture had been particularly obscure. I had failed to any progress on even the very first question on the example sheet. I decided to go to the examples class, and I hid myself quietly at the back. Mercifully there were several other people there. We all stared down at our books, hoping not to be asked a question. The lecturer started, “Now put your hands up if you managed to complete the example sheet”. Not a hand moved. I felt relieved. “Oh, Oh, that’s a bit disappointing. Er.. put you hand up if you managed to complete the first half of the example sheet.” Not a hand moved. I felt even more relieved. “Oh dear, Oh dear” said the lecturer, “I hope that this wasn’t too hard for you all, because it was really very basic. Perkins, you usually complete the example sheets, how far did you get?” Perkins, who we all respected as a wiz kid, said, “Actually I couldn’t do any of it.” Waves of relief swept through the classroom. One by one we could all safely admit that we hadn’t managed to do make any progress. And once we were all confident that everyone in the room was hiding an ignorance similar to our own, then we all felt able to admit it. The lecturer had no choice but to go back to the very start and explain it all again.
Now there are people who think that the feeding of the five thousand worked a bit like this. They think that what really happened was that everybody present had hidden away in a cloak or a bag some form of packed lunch. But nobody knew that anybody else had brought food. Nobody wanted to get their food out in case they would need to share it with the people around them, and they would end up going hungry. But when Jesus started to share food around everyone suddenly felt able to get their own food out. Perhaps this was because they recognised it was now time to eat. Perhaps it was Jesus teaching that changed their hearts and made them willing to share, even at the risk of going hungry. Perhaps people simply needed to know that there was plenty of food to go round, and once they knew this they felt confident to get their own food out and share it.
Now personally I don’t believe that this is an adequate explanation of the miracle. It seems to me that something physically miraculous must have happened. Jesus must have really created some food, because, it seems to me, the people present clearly saw it that way and were deeply affected by it.
But however you try to explain it, there is no doubt that something very remarkable happened. A very meagre offering of five loaves and two fish brought about, through the presence of Jesus, the feeding of five thousand people, with 12 baskets of food leftover.
Let’s just think for a moment about the boy who provided the five loaves and two fish? What was it that made him come forward and offer the food that he had? Did he think that such a pitiful amount of food could possibly be significant among so many people? Did he worry that people might laugh at him? Did he worry that people would just steal his food? It may be that he had thoughts like that, but they did not stop him from offering his gift. Then Jesus, somehow or other, in the midst of all those people, ensured that there was sufficient, or rather plentiful food.
Sometime we can be put off doing good because our contribution seems so small compared to the demands of the situation. We might think of picking up a piece of litter while walking to work, but then be put off because there is so much litter. We might think of driving very courteously, but be put off because nobody else does. We might think to write to our MP about a particular issue, and then not do it because nobody else seems to care. We might think of walking rather than using the car, but be put off because that on its own will not solve climate change. We might think of increasing our giving to the church, then shy away because the church needs so much money. We might think of visiting that elderly lady who is lonely, but then not do it because there are so many lonely people we could visit.
The feeding of the five thousand teaches us not to worry about the demands of the situation, but to offer to Jesus what we can and to make the contribution that Jesus asks us to make. We each of us needs to offer to Jesus our own small contribution, and then entrust to Jesus the outcome, because Jesus can do wonderful things. Maybe he does it by encouraging lots of other people to make their own small contribution, maybe he intervenes in some other extraordinary way, but over time Jesus does address the situations that are entrusted to him in love.
I am always amazed by the work of Solihull Churches Asylum Seekers Support Group. A few people shared together a desire to help and support the asylum seekers who the UK Boarder Agency requires to sign on monthly or weekly at Stamford House on Homer Road. What could these people hope to achieve? Yet now, three years later, there are sixty volunteers, four sessions of support offered each week, many regular visitors and an inspiring example that that has been influential with councillors, MPs and Bishops.
And this is just one example. A few years ago a different group of people had a comparable experience in setting up Solihull Churches Action on Homelessness (SCAH). And looking further back, what about those Christians who first established schools to educate the working classes, or who were first moved to make medical services more available to more people.
So let’s never be discouraged from doing good. Let’s make our own contribution in accordance with what Jesus wants from us. Let’s offer this to Jesus, not worrying that it is only a small contribution, and not feeling that we need to solve the problem ourselves. Rather let’s trust Jesus and work with him according to what he asks of us. And over time, let’s see what miracles Jesus performs.