Worship for food security and food justice

THE CHURCHES’ WEEK OF ACTION ON FOOD
Ecumenical Centre
10 October, 2010
Prepared by the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance

Week of Churches Action on Food

Musical Preparation

Greeting

We gather hungry.
Blessed are those who are hungry now,
hungry for rice and beans,
hungry for righteousness,
hungry for a world where children do not die of hunger.
Blessed are those who are hungry now, for they will be satisfied.
We praise a prodigal God,
creating an abundant world with enough so no one needs to be hungry.
We worship the maker of new heavens and a new earth,
the Blessed Trinity, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Hymn We come to the hungry feast

Prayer

Hungry God,
hungry for justice,
hungry for a world spending on hungry children as it spends on football games,
hungry that your promise of blessing the hungry be fulfilled,
draw us into your hunger
so we discover the life you offer when we give ourselves away,
and others do not have their lives taken away by the greedy and corrupt.
Give us the courage to risk a new hunger to do your will through Jesus Christ. Amen.

“For hunger is a curious thing: at first it is with you all the time, walking and sleeping and in your
dreams, and your belly cries out insistently, and there is a gnawing and a pain as if your very vitals were being devoured, and you must stop it at any cost and you buy a moment’s respite even when you know and fear the sequel. Then the pain is no longer sharp but dull, and this too is with you always, so that you think of food many times a day and each time a terrible sickness assails you, and because you know this you try to avoid the thought, but you cannot for it is with you. Then that too is gone, all pain, all desire, only a great emptiness is left, like the sky, like a well in drought and it is now that the strength drains from your limbs and you try to rise and find you cannot, or to swallow water your throat is powerless, and both the swallow and the effort of retaining the liquid tax you to the uttermost.” (Kamala Markandaya)

Sung Response Khudaayaa raeham kar

Old Testament Reading Isaiah 65:17-25
For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice for ever in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.
I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
or the cry of distress.
No more shall there be in it
an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,
and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
They shall not labour in vain,
or bear children for calamity;
for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord—
and their descendants as well.
Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
but the serpent—its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.

Reflections Dr.Fulata Mbano & John Baxter Brown

Hymn Cielos nuevos, tierra nueva

Prayers
With the ecumenical prayer cycle we pray for the people and churches
of Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal.
Lord in your mercy,
hear our prayer.

We pray for the people along the Danube, threatened by toxic waste.
Lord in your mercy,
hear our prayer.
We pray for those whose traditional lands and livelihoods are threatened.
Lord in your mercy,
hear our prayer.

During this week of action on food we pray for the hungry.
Lord in your mercy,
hear our prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer (in our many languages)

Invitation to sign the petition to the Chair of the Food and Agriculture Organization Committee on Food Security in Rome

Hymn Un camino se abre hacia la luz

Benediction

Sharing food - a sermon by Rogate Mshana

Sharing food- a sermon preached by Rogate Mshana on 3 May 2010 in the Ecumenical Centre, Geneva

Mathew 14:13-14

“Send the crowds away so they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves,” said the disciples. But Jesus replied, “That is not necessary- you feed them.” In Mark, Jesus said “they need not go away; you give them something to eat.” In Mark the disciples ask Jesus, “are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give them to eat?” The debate is about compassion ( women call it the economics of care or compassion economicss and the market as methods to feed hungry people. Jesus refuses to send the crowd away to the market but chooses to embrace them with love and compassion.

In the text in Mark’s gospel about feeding the four/five thousand people that came to listen to him, we hear Jesus say: “I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat. If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way-and some of them have come from a great distance” (Mark 8:2-3). This fainting due to hunger reminds me during a draught period in 1961 when my mother held us together, went down on her knees and prayed that we should not perish because of hunger. She cried out, “ Lord let my children live.”

The Gospel reminds us of our obligation as churches and the ecumenical movement to overcome hunger in the world. Sadly our economic systems and trade rules are designed to send hungry people away to be fed by the market. Many of them have fainted and died on the way. In 2009 more than 1 billion hungry people were undernourished world wide. In 2006 they were 854m. (www.wfp.org/stores/world-hungry-tops-billion . The MDGs were designed to bring this number to half by 2015. This is a great challenge. In other words one in every 6 people is undernourished. Hunger has increased not as a result of poor harvests but because of high domestic food prices, lower incomes and increasing unemployment due to, among other unjust trade policies and the global financial crisis - itself caused by structural greed. In his compassionate feeding of the people, Jesus was showing another way of feeding people over and against the market. “They will faint on the way” Jesus said. The market is designed only for those people with purchasing power. If no policies and structures are in place to ensure food sovereignty for the hungry, they will faint and die. “You give them something to eat”, means do not send them to the market.

We are reminded by Jesus about his holistic ministry of word and deed or diakonia as we call it. This is faith that is alive. The brief gospel of St. James defines what this diakonal ministry requires of us: If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, “Go in peace ; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? And James concludes that faith by itself, if it has no works is dead (James 2:14).

Sharing of food

In the story of the feeding of the multitudes, we learn the need for sharing food with others. Today, we know that food is wasted at the same time as others die of hunger. Hunger and malnutrition are in fact the number one risk to health world wide, greater than AIDs, malaria and tuberculosis combined (www.wfp.org/hunger ). It is our mission to address this problem. Over 9million people die world wide each year because of hunger and malnutrition. 5m. are children. This is despite the fact that World agriculture produces 17% more calories per person today than it did years ago, despite a 70% population increase. This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories(Kcal) per person per day ( FAO 2002p.9) www.worldhunger.org/articles) But rich countries waste around half of the food supplies annually. America throws away 40% of the food while UK throws away from 40 to 50%. 38 billion US dollars worth of food is thrown away every year while the direct medical cost of hunger and malnutrition is estimated at 30 billion.

To share food in our world will mean protecting small farmers, advocating for policies that promote food sovereignty because today’s hunger is mainly caused by injustice. As the book of Proverbs says:“The field of the poor may yield much food, but it is swept away through injustice.” (Proverbs 13:23)

Today, the survival of the fittest is the guiding principle in what can be called market fundamentalism. The life and teachings of Jesus provides a paradigm for the content of our mission which is to continuously take the side of those who are reduced to objects and victims by the prevailing unjust structures of Empire. We have to reach the point where we can say like the prophet Isaiah “Never again will foreign warriors come to take away your grain and wine – you raised it and will keep it.” (Isaiah 62:8b)


In March,2010 when the WCC delegation visited Norway we experienced a very moving service to remember the death of a bold church leader who advocated for the poor in Elsalvador but assassinated in march 24, 1980.This great leader of the church, Archbishop Oscar Romero said, “If I feed people they call me a saint but if I ask, why people have no food, they call me a communist.” Feeding the hungry is now an issue of prophetic diakonia and transformative justice. It is about fighting against injustice in trade and agriculture and promoting life-giving agriculture. It is about stopping dumping food into poor countries and so destroying their production systems. It is about purchasing food with a sense of people in hunger. It is about refraining from wasting food while others starve. It is about having a meaningful fating during lent. It is about advocating for the human right to adequate food as a basic human right for every woman, man and child.

It is about sharing corn with compassion so that no one shall faint and die on the way.
So I end with more words from Oscar Romero

The church would betray its own love for God and its fidelity to the gospel if it stopped being . . . a defender of the rights of the poor . . . a humanizer of every legitimate struggle to achieve a more just society . . . that prepares the way for the true reign of God in history (he spoke on 8/6/79). Where food is concerned are we ready to follow Christ's compassion or would we rather continue send the hungry people back to forces of the market?

Copyright (c) Dr Rogate Mshana / WCC

An order of service on

Morning Prayer, Monday, 3 May 2010, in the Ecumenical Centre
This service was put together by Sabine Udodesku and Rogate Mshana

There is enough food for all to share.
Hunger in a world of plenty is not caused by lack of food.
There is enough food to make most people in the world fat!
It is caused by lack of compassion and justice.

Prelude

Welcome
L: Christ is risen!
All: He is risen indeed!

Song: Mfurahini, Halleluya (Thuma Mina 280, sung in Swahili)

Prayer

L: Eternal God,
your Word declares
that the love which is laid down in faith
will be raised and produce a great harvest.
This we celebrate as we proclaim:

All: Christ has died,
Christ is risen,
Christ will come again.

L: In silence,
we surrender ourselves
and all that we count important
to your will and purpose.

All: For we cannot know
the glory of Christ’s resurrection
if we do not have the fellowship of his sufferings.
And we cannot expect to gather the kingdom’s harvest
if we do not sow the kingdom’s seed.

Psalm 104:24-31 (in Swahili and English)

L: Ee Bwana, jinsi yalivyo mengi matendo yako; kwa hekima umevifanya vyote pia. Dunia imejaa mali zako.
All: God, how many are the works you have created, arranging everything in wisdom!
Earth is filled with creatures you have made:

L: Bahari iko kule, kubwa na upana, ndimo vilimo viendavyo visivyohesabika, viumbe hai, vidogo kwa vikubwa. ndimo vipitamo merikebu,
All: See the vast ocean
teeming with countless creatures, great and small,

L: ndimo alimo Lawiathani uliyemuumba acheze humo.
All: where ships go to and fro,
and Leviathan that you made to play for you.

L: Hao wote wanakungoja. Wewe uwape chakula chao kwa wakati wake.
All: All creatures depend on you
to give them food in due season.

L: Wewe huwapa, wao wanakiokota; wewe waukunjua mkono wako,
wao wanashiba mema,
All: You give them food they eat;
with generous hand, you fill them with good things.

L: wewe wauficha uso wako, wao wanafadhaika, waiondoa pumzi yao, wanakufa, nakuyarudia mavumbi yao,
All: If you turn your face away – they suffer;
if you stop their breath – they die and return to dust.

L: waipeleka Roho yako, wanaumbwa , nawe waufanya upya uso wa nchi.
All: When you give your spirit, they are created.
You keep renewing the world.

L: Utukufu wa Bwana na udumu milele; Bwana na ayafurahie matendo yake.
All: Glory forever to you, God!
May you find joy in your creation.

Song: Murassalat (verses 1 and 2)

Bible Reading - Matthew 14:14-16

When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves." Jesus said to them, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat." Read in Arabic

Song: Murassalat (verse 3)

Reflection (Rogate Mshana)

Song: Cuando el pobre (verses 1 & 2 in Spanish, verses 3 & 4 in English)

Prayer of Intercession

L: This week in the Ecumenical prayer Cycle, we pray especially for the churches and people in Sudan and Uganda…

Almighty God,
we pray for peace on earth.
For peace that is life-giving;
for peace that is love-baring;
for peace that is true freedom;
for peace that is purposeful;
for peace that is prevailing.

We pray for children in time of war; they are defenseless.
We pray for the old; they are unable to escape danger quickly.
We pray for those with physical disabilities; they are at the mercy of others.
We pray for women; they are vulnerable to abuse.
We pray for the innocent; they suffer from the unjust desires of others.

We pray for those whose lives have been changed by war:
the blinded; the burned; those who have lost limbs;
those who have lost their reason;
those who have lost their peace of mind;
those who have lost their health and strength forever.

O God, above all we pray for those in anguish,
those whose lives will never be the same again;
those who have lost their loved ones; those who have lost their lives.

Deepen in us our desire for peace,
restore our resolve for peace, increase our intent to work for peace.
Will for us your peace, perfect and prevailing
for your Son, our Saviour Christ’s sake.
Amen

Song: Bendice, Señor, nuestro pan (sung in Spanish and in English)

The Lord’s Prayer (each in his or her own language)

Benediction

L: Living God,
we thank you for this time of worshipping together
and for the thoughts and awareness that have been awakened within us.

All: May the peace of your presence,
the fire of your Spirit,
and the energy of the wind of heaven fill us
and rekindle the living flame of love in our lives.
Amen.

A liturgy on Daily Bread for international women's day

A liturgy for International Women’s Day
Our Daily Bread, 8 March 2010

Call to Worship
We are gathered in the name of the Nurturing God.
We are called to share our gifts of life, and the symbols
from our different contexts and diverse expressions of spirituality.
God, our Sustainer, feed our bodies with strength and hope.
These symbols serve to remind us of the presence of our relational God, who takes care of creation.
Let us now reflect on these symbols, as we bring forward various experiences, instruments and tools used by women. These women care for our people, nurture our children and preserve life in our communities, creating healing, hope and wellness, even in the midst of despair.
God of Wisdom, we thank you for the breath of life in us.
Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will never forget you. See I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands, your walls are continuously before me. (Isaiah 49: 15-16)

God of Healing, embrace and reconcile us to strengthen our communion in your presence.
Prayer:
Let us pray acknowledging the nurturing God through nursing mothers:
We thank you, creating and nurturing God, for sharing the secrets of creating and nurturing with nursing women. As an expectant mother co-exists with her unborn child, You carry and com-mune with them in ways that only You can. You assure the mother of the certainty of life within her, and the baby of the mystery of life and love.
We want to thank you also for your provision to nursing mothers. We particularly thank you for providing gaat (porridge), prepared from barley flour.
We are grateful for the action of nurturing when women can take; ½ kg barley flour, ½ liter water per 100 g flour, and butter or margarine, pepper, salt, and yoghurt, to make a meal for three people.
For 10 minutes, they put the water in a pan and add a little salt. They add the barley flour gradually to the cold water and stir it energetically to avoid lumps. Stirring all the while, they leave the mixture to cook over medium heat until it becomes solid. They remove it from the stove and put it in a deep plate. Using a spoon, they make a big hole in the middle of the gaat to fill with warm butter (or margarine) pepper, and salt. They mix them together well and put some of the yogurt around the gaat and eat it while it is still hot.
As they do all this, they thank you, God, for sharing such birthing secrets with women.
And thank you also for creating barley and other produce that come from your bounty.
Yet, here we are, often so busy creating theologies and embracing spirituality that tends to overemphasize God’s power as if it were devoid of love and vulnerability.
(Gaat recipe, see LWF cookbook – Food for Life: Recipes and Stories on the Right to Food, p.64)

Response: Kyrie Eleison (Ukraine tune).

Call to Repentance
We acknowledge our inability to embrace the nurturing face of God, and we repent. Our daily ac-tions allow the dominant and powerful to flourish, even as God cares for and nourishes the needy. This practice of upholding the powerful over the vulnerable often leads us to become abusive, vio-lent and destructive, either by acting or by failing to act.
Our pride and incapacity to feel for others makes us too full of ourselves, while at the same time, we are like empty bowls.

Response: Kyrie Eleison (Ukraine tune).

Thanksgiving for God’s Forgiving Mercy
Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits—who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
The LORD works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed.
The LORD is merciful and gracious; slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He will not always accuse, nor will he keep his anger forever.
He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion for his children, so the LORD has compassion for those who fear him.
For he knows how we were made; he remembers that we are dust.

Psalm 103: 1-3, 6, 8-14.
Assurance of God’s Mercy and Healing
Together we commit ourselves to embrace your loving and nurturing qualities as the standard for our relationship with each other as part of your creation. We will embrace diversity as your divine gift to enrich our perspectives and renewal as we journey together toward transformative and re-storative justice. Yet, there are still some whose diversity is used as a justification for their margi-nalization and exploitation. Therefore, rooted in love, we will allow the Holy Spirit to stir us to restlessness until we seek justice together in all its forms. Go with us, loving, nurturing and just God, we pray.

The healing of our community should include physical healing, as part of our assurance of God’s mercy.
Learn from how the Meru people in Kenya use the njahi (black beans) for the restoration of health for our brothers and sisters who are HIV positive.
The women take a cup full of njahi, two medium size onions, three medium size tomatoes, garlic, and a dash of salt (to taste).
With loving care, the beans are washed and put to boil, until tender. Salt is added. The onions are peeled and garlic is crushed, and both are fried, adding in the tomatoes. The cooked njahi is added to simmer, until the stew is thick and appetizing. The beans can be served with steamed brown rice or ugali (maize meal cake).
We visualize the face of our God in the actions of these nurturing women.

Scripture readings

Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: 2 Kings 4: 1-7
Now the wife of a member of the company of prophets the sons of the prophets');" onmouseout="return nd();">^* cried to Elisha, ‘Your servant my husband is dead; and you know that your servant feared the Lord, but a creditor has come to take my two children as slaves.’ ²Elisha said to her, ‘What shall I do for you? Tell me, what do you have in the house?’ She answered, ‘Your servant has nothing in the house, except a jar of oil.’ ³He said, ‘Go outside, borrow vessels from all your neighbours, empty vessels and not just a few. ⁴Then go in, and shut the door behind you and your children, and start pouring into all these vessels; when each is full, set it aside.’ ⁵So she left him and shut the door behind her and her children; they kept bringing vessels to her, and she kept pouring. ⁶When the vessels were full, she said to her son, ‘Bring me another vessel.’ But he said to her, ‘There are no more.’ Then the oil stopped flowing. ⁷She came and told the man of God, and he said, ‘Go, sell the oil and pay your debts, and you and your children can live on the rest.’
New Testament: Matthew 15: 21-28
21 Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. ²²Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.’ ²³But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.’ ²⁴He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ ²⁵But she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ ²⁶He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ ²⁷She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’ ²⁸Then Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.

Reflection on the Word - Fulata Mbano Moyo
Desperation as enemy to women's dignity

Intercession Prayers

The Feast of Life
By Elsa Tamez, Mexico/Costa Rica
(Alternately in two groups)
Come on; let us celebrate the supper of the Lord
Let us make a huge loaf of bread
And let us bring abundant wine
Like at the wedding at Cana
Let the women not forget the salt,
Let the men bring along the yeast.
Let many guests come,
The lame, the blind, the cripples, the poor.
Come quickly,
Let us follow the recipe of the Lord
All of us, let us knead the dough together
With our hands
Let us see with joy how the bread grows
Because today
We celebrate
The meeting of the Lord.

(All) Today we renew our commitment to the Kingdom. Nobody will stay hungry.

Leader: We thank you, God, the Source of never ending love and creativity. Fill us with your love and unite us.
Those who don’t eat alone are never hungry
Those who share will receive
(Haiti saying in LWF cookbook – Food for Life: Recipes and Stories on the Right to Food, p. 32)

Bakerwoman God
By Rev. Dr Alla Bozard Campbell
(The Episcopal Church, USA)
Bakerwoman God, I am your living bread.
Strong, brown, Bakerwoman God,
I am your low, soft and being-shaped loaf.
I am your rising bread,
Well-kneaded by some divine and knotty pair of knuckles,
By your warm earth-hands.
I am bread well-kneaded.
Put me in fire, Bakerwoman God,
Put me in your own bright fire.
I am warm, warm as you.
From fire, I am white and gold,
Soft and hard, brown and round.
I am so warm from fire
Break me, Bakerwoman God.
I am broken under your caring Word.
Drop me in your special juice in pieces.
Drop me in blood.
Drunken me in the great red flood
Self-giving chalice, swallow me.
My skin shines in the divine wine.
My face is cup-covered and I drown.
I fall up in a red pool in a gold world
Where your warm sunskin hand is there to catch and hold me.
Bakerwoman God, remake me.

Hymn -“There is a Line of Women”
(John L Bell) (melody: Stand up, stand up for Jesus)

There is a line of women, extending back to Eve
Whose role in shaping history God only could conceive
And though, through endless ages, their witness was repressed
God valued and encouraged then through whom the world was blessed

So sing a song of Sarah to laughter she gave birth
And sing a song of Tamar who stood for women’s worth
And sing a song of Hannah who bargained with her Lord
And sing a song of Mary who bore and bred God’s Word

There is a line of women who took on powerful men
Defying laws and scruples to let life live again
And though, despite their triumph, their stories stayed untold
God kept their number growing, creative strong and bold

So sing a song of Shiphrah with Puah in her hand
Engaged to kill male children they foiled the king’s command
And sing a song of Rahab who sheltered spies and lied
And sing a song of Esther, preventing genocide

There is a line of women who stood by Jesus’ side
Who housed him while he ministered and held him when he died
And though they claimed he’d risen their news was deemed suspect
Till Jesus stood among them, his womanly elect

So sing a song of Anna who saw Christ’s infant face
And sing a song of Martha who gave him food and space
And sing of all the Marys who heeded his requests
And now at heaven’s banquet are Jesus’ fondest guests.

The Lord’s Prayer, each in his or her own language.
Leader: Blessing and Sending
We embrace each other in love, reaching out to each other with our hands; left hand with palm up, in an open hand, which receives from the neighbor, and right hand with palm down, ex-pressing our ability to give to the other. As we hold each other’s hands, we connect ourselves in the web of creation; we celebrate diversity, which brings out the beauty of God, enhanced much more through diversity than through uniformity.
Let us sing and dance!
May all of you come!
Arranged in a file
May you come and dance!
Arranged in a file
May you come without feeling shame!
Well dressed, having adjusted your tarachi,
Having arranged your ornaments,
May you sing and dance!
Grasping one another by the hands
May you dance!
Grasping one another by the hands
May you dance!
Like the swallow which is moving his body to and fro,
Like the hawk, which is making his circles in the air,
May you sing and dance!
(From the Head-Hunters of Western Amazonas)

Closing Hymn – We shall go out with hope of resurrection - Agape 105

A group of women from the Geneva-based church organizations—Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance, World Alliance of Reformed Churches, World Council of Churches and the Lutheran World Federation—jointly prepared this liturgy.