Food banks and our call to care

Here is a picture of our MP Amber Rudd visiting our town food bank here in Hastings.


On her website she writes following her visit: “We are extremely lucky to have so many volunteers in Hastings making such a wonderful contribution.  I am not surprised that there are so volunteers, as Hastings people are always so quick to help other people.  It was a pleasure to meet some of the wonderful volunteers on my visit.”
But she makes no comment about the ridiculous situation that we need them in the first place! 

People are struggling at the moment with all sorts of things. I’m meeting quite a lot of them in my daily life. People are searching for answers, for meaning, for peace, for love, for hope, for someone to treat them with respect. This week, we've seen a letter go to the Prime Minister from Anglican Bishops and several other denominations including my own, suggesting the current welfare reform plans are nothing less than dehumanising. Food banks are at breaking point, people are in crippling poverty.The former Archbishop of Canterbury wrote in the Daily Mirror this: “When you actually come face to face with the anxiety people face about feeding their children, you cannot ignore what is in front of your nose.I would urge people in decision-making positions to come and spend a couple of hours watching what goes on and listening to some of our volunteers. We hear a lot said praising the volunteer culture in this country, but it does not run on thin air and at the moment it is stretched to breaking point.The Russian author Tolstoy observed that “food for myself is a material issue, but food for my neighbour is a spiritual issue”.In the same week, Wayne Rooney signs a new deal at Manchester United, being paid £300,000 a week. I worked out it would take me about 15 years to earn on my salary what he earns in a week

The church has a context in which to work, and I’m glad she is speaking out about things that are just not right. We need to take the pain in people’s eyes seriously. I remember when my Dad died leaving my Mum a widow at 48, she would go shopping in our town and good, lovely, genuine Christian people would cross the road when they saw her coming because they didn’t know what to say, they would rather avoid entering the pain she was in. That is so far away from biblical principles! It’s easier to avoid pain but it is not I believe part of the calling of the Church to avoid pain.

We are Christ like when we engage with it, we might not solve it, but we enter it. I believe we only remain close to the God who has called us into being if we include those we share human breath with. We are commissioned to care.

There's a lesson here for all of us; a lesson that is clearly demonstrated in the passage in Leviticus 19 set for this Sunday in the lectionary.
Others were guilty of stealing, dealing falsely, speaking lies, and using God's name to justify phony promises in order to defraud others (Leviticus 19:11-12). Some were holding back wages from labourers who had expected to be paid at the end of each day's work. Still others took advantage of the deaf and blind (Leviticus 19:13-14). Injustice, slander, family grudges, and favouritism were commonplace (Leviticus 19:15-18).

During a meeting of a church finance committee, members viewed a thirty-second video clip taken in the monkey house of a local zoo. The zookeeper placed some "monkey delicacies" (banana bits, lettuce, and others) into a plastic container with a very tiny opening. Then she put the bottle on a table and left the room. Soon, one of the monkeys slowly approached the container, reached carefully inside, and grasped a large handful of treats. Unfortunately, with its fist full of food, the monkey was unable to remove its hand from the container. The monkey would first shake the container; then vigorously pound it on the table. This happened time after time, monkey after monkey. After a training session, the monkeys learned that the only way they could get their hands free was to let go of the food. The only way they could receive any food was to dump the contents of the bottle on the table, in the middle of the other hungry monkeys who were observing. The only way for a monkey to taste the food was to share it with others. 

Moses addressed the people in the wilderness, describing God's will for faithful and holy sharing. Owners of farms and vineyards were harvesting all of their crops, reaping to the very edges of [their] field (Leviticus 19:9). They would strip [their] vineyards bare gathering even the fallen grapes for themselves (Leviticus 19:10).


Doesn't this sound a lot like the monkeys with their fists filled with food and trapped inside the plastic container? Doesn't this also reflect what we see in our society, even among Christians today? What does our own plastic container look like? What do we grasp so tightly in our clenched fists that prevents us from holy living? The call of the church is firstly ... You shall love your neighbour as yourself – you will reach out and help those in poverty, those with questions, those in anguish, those who are frightened, those who are unwell, those who need space to reflect, those who think that they aren’t good enough to be part of us, you will walk in your communities, you will share the joys of others too. Get stuck in – it might hurt, it might cost, it might take time, you might have to stop doing something in order to start doing something new, but maybe that has to be. The first call of the Church is to be God’s people where God needs to be.

I think it was Archbishop William Temple who once said the Church is the only organisation that exists for the benefit of its non members. I am glad to see the Church in Britain standing up this week. We need to see this more. Less talk about structure, and more talk and action about what we can do to make a difference. Those of us who believe in an inclusive, caring God can do no other.    

I found a hymn in Singing the Faith which says:

“God cries at hungry mouths, at running sores, at creatures dying without cause, and till we change the way we care, God cries.”