It’s possible to worship God when you are hungry. I have worshiped in hunger and thirst. But in those times I had chosen to be hungry and thirsty. It may be that hunger creates in the poor such dread that, like me in fretfulness, they find it hard to pray. And hunger alone might come between creator and creature. To be hungry is to be in danger of losing sight of God. Judge the hungry or don’t. Your call.
I don't have children. So my ability to worship while my daughter groans in her sleep for lack of food is entirely hypothetical. So I cannot judge the man with a hungry daughter who cannot lift his eyes to God.
This is a beautiful prayer, the beauty of which I would not wish on anyone:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
and by night, but find no rest. [Psalm 22:1-2 (NRSV).]
1. Helping the rich, hurting the poor.
That prayer might soon be the anthem of many hearts among America’s poor. An element of the House of Representatives has killed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps).
But they gave billions of dollars to Big Agribusiness – $195 billion over 10 years.
2. Hurt has its reasons.
Many if not most of these members of Congress confess Christ. So I am enjoined from hating them. But if I could ask them a question, it would be this: Congressmen, how do you beautify helping the rich and hurting the poor? What is the biblical lipstick you put on your legislative pig? Is it Matthew 13:12?
For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. [NRSV]I would say, Jesus did not mean that men and women of power in our time should add to corporations’ fleets of jets at the same time that they put discount bakery-remainders above the grasp of a poor family. Jesus was talking about understanding.
I would urge them, Get that; that is a prayer my for you: get understanding. Your authority is greater than mine, but I will seek it, too.
3. Hearing from heaven and hell.
And when two or three are gathered in his name, Jesus is there. I hope he brings Lazarus, from his parable, who was poor, who had sores that dogs licked, who did not get even crumbs from the rich man’s table, who’s door he starved at. Lazarus suffered in his lifetime, but now he gets every good thing in heaven. And maybe Lazarus will pray his own gospel story into the hearts and minds of we who speak together about hunger. Lazarus stands for the poor and desperate in Jesus’s Palestinian days and in our present time.
But if Jesus does not bring Lazarus, maybe he will bring up from hell the other character in that parable – the rich man, who did not love Lazarus, who did not help him, who suffers now, who suffers unbearable thirst, who will suffer forever. Maybe, from the rich man’s mouth, in which lack of spittle makes his mucous congeal into tiny, sharp pebbles, he will rasp a warning not to enjoy our prosperity as if God had prospered us only for ourselves. Not that Jesus wants the rich to have less; he wants the poor to have more. He wants them not to be hungry.
4. Where Jesus will be.
After food stamps are cut off, if that is the final outcome, Jesus will be in America. Jesus will be among the poor, just as he was among the poor of Israel two-thousand years ago. In that time, he did not enter a palace until it was time to die.
And for every man, woman, and child who suffers, Jesus will know their suffering as if it were his own. It will be his own. When we afflict the poor, we afflict Christ. Isn't that revealed in the nature of a brother, a father, who loves perfectly?
5. Prayer.
Jesus, pray Lazarus into our hearts. Amen.
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