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2024 World Hunger Lent Study: Week 5

The following is taken from the 2024 ELCA World Hunger Lent Study. The full resource can be ordered as a hardcopy or downloaded as a PDF in English or Spanish at the link here.

Week 5 — Resurrection

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Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-12; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33

 

“In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard.” —Hebrews 5:7

Thus far in our Lenten journey, we have considered what it means to encounter God in experiences of reconciliation, transfiguration, crucifixion and restoration. In this last session, coming just before the season ends and Holy Week begins, we look ahead to our encounter with God in the experience of resurrection, when God brings life out of death.

We have a long way to go before we get to that joyous event on Easter Sunday, though. As Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar reminds us, we cannot move too quickly from the crucifixion to the resurrection. We need to hang in that space between. That space between is where hunger ministry finds its identity and meaning.

At a recent ELCA World Hunger meeting, someone lamented that the images and stories the ministry routinely shares are too “happy.” People are always smiling and easygoing, and the projects supported always work out the way they were intended. No challenge is too difficult to overcome. We know, though, that the reality of ministry in the world is sometimes far from easy. Not all projects work out the way a community hopes. Costs can increase suddenly, disasters can wipe away progress, or, as we witnessed a few years ago, a pandemic can put the brakes on work that had been progressing steadily.

As we learned in the session on crucifixion in Week 3 of this study, authentic ministry is honest ministry. It doesn’t allow us to hide ourselves from the realities of hunger or injustice or to move too quickly to the hope and joy of the resurrection. Ministry in response to hunger is ministry in response to some of our deepest pain and longing. It is ministry with and among Indigenous communities confronting systemic injustices that have continued for generations (Week 1). It is ministry with and among migrant children as they face abuse at borders (Week 2). It is ministry with and among people struggling to feed themselves and their families (Week 3). It is ministry with and among orphans and families ostracized because of their health status (Week 4). It is ministry that embodies the tension between the crucifixion and the resurrection.

The readings for this week remind us of this tension. In the Gospel of John, Jesus describes how a grain of wheat must fall into the earth and die before it can bear fruit (12:24). Yet this is no simplistic aphorism about all life involving death. There is a tension between the way Jesus describes death and the way he describes life (in this reading, “the cross” and “the glory”). Jesus doesn’t ignore death. As the writer of Hebrews describes, Jesus prayed with “loud cries and tears” (5:7). The Gospel of John softens this at times, but still Jesus says, “My soul is troubled” (12:27).

In many church services the presider will invite the congregation to pray “as Jesus taught us” before beginning the rather formal convention of the Lord’s Prayer. Certainly that is the prayer Jesus taught his disciples. But to pray “as Jesus taught us” in the readings for this week is to pray with a troubled soul, with “loud cries and tears” in mourning for our own pain and for the distance our world must travel to the future God has promised.

To grieve with Ahmed as he encounters abuse at the border (Week 2), to protest with kilombolas seeking full justice (Week 1), to cry out with every hungry person who has ever been told they don’t belong or haven’t worked hard enough, to grit our teeth in anger as political leaders and pundits manipulate statistics to justify budget cuts to anti-hunger or anti-poverty programs — these are prayers, too, the prayers of troubled souls that shout in “loud cries and tears.” These are Lenten prayers appropriate for this season of repentance, grief and memory. And they are prayers in which Christ joins us.

The readings also remind us that our encounter with God does not end here. God responds to Jesus’ prayers not by rescuing him from the cross but by conquering it in the resurrection. The resurrection reveals that death and pain will not have the final word, that God is even now moving us toward a time when new life will spring forth. That doesn’t let us ignore the crucifixion. The cries and tears of our prayers are not forgotten, nor are they ended yet.

To encounter God in resurrection is to live in that tension between grief and hope, between holy anger and peace. As much as we are called to cross-shaped ministry (Week 3), so too are we called to resurrection ministry. In doing ministry in the world, ministering to one another and accepting the ministry of our neighbors, we bear witness to the resurrection hope inspired by the Holy Spirit moving within us.

Perhaps the pictures are too happy. Perhaps the stories are too clean and simple. Or perhaps the pictures, the stories and the projects they represent are exactly what they are called to be — testaments to resurrection hope birthed out of the tension between life and death. Perhaps that is what our ministry and our lives are called to be — investments in the future we know is coming and protests against the present we know falls short.

To encounter God in experiences of resurrection is to see new life springing forth amid death and longing. It is to live in that holy tension between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, knowing in our very hearts, where God has written a new covenant (Jeremiah 31:33), that it is possible to both grieve and celebrate, to both look around us with honesty and look forward with hope.

As this season comes to a close, let us pray that God will give each of us the courage, honesty and faith to live more fully in that tension. That’s where authentic ministry happens, and that’s where we are called to be.

Reflection Questions

How do you long for your community? What experiences within your community inspire your prayers of “loud cries and tears”?

What does it mean to live in the tension between crucifixion and resurrection?

How might your ministry change if it were viewed as a witness to resurrection?

What tension in your life do you wish the church would “live into” with you?

 

 

Semana 5 — Resurrección

•••

Jeremías 31:31-34; Salmo 51:1-12; Hebreos 5:5-10; Juan 12:20-33

“En los días de su vida mortal, Jesús ofreció oraciones y súplicas con fuerte clamor y lágrimas al que podía salvarlo de la muerte y fue escuchado por su temor reverente”. —Hebreos 5:7

Hasta ahora en nuestra jornada cuaresmal hemos considerado lo que significa encontrar a Dios en experiencias de reconciliación, transfiguración, crucifixión y restauración. En esta última sesión, justo antes de que termine la temporada y comience la Semana Santa, miramos hacia nuestro encuentro con Dios en la experiencia de la resurrección, cuando Dios saca vida de la muerte.

Sin embargo, tenemos un largo camino por recorrer antes de llegar a ese feliz evento del Domingo de Pascua. Como nos recuerda el teólogo católico Hans Urs von Balthasar, no podemos pasar demasiado rápido de la crucifixión a la resurrección. Tenemos que quedarnos en ese espacio intermedio.

Ese espacio intermedio es donde el ministerio del hambre encuentra su identidad y significado.

En una reciente reunión de ELCA World Hunger, alguien se quejó de que las imágenes e historias que el ministerio comparte rutinariamente son demasiado “felices”. La gente siempre está sonriente y tranquila, y los proyectos respaldados siempre funcionan de la manera en que fueron concebidos. Ningún reto es demasiado difícil de superar. Sin embargo, sabemos que la realidad del ministerio en el mundo a veces está lejos de ser fácil. No todos los proyectos funcionan de la manera que una comunidad espera. Los costos pueden aumentar repentinamente, los desastres pueden acabar con el progreso o, como vimos en los últimos años, una pandemia puede frenar el trabajo que había estado progresando de manera constante.

Como aprendimos en la sesión sobre la crucifixión en la Semana 3 de este estudio, el ministerio auténtico es un ministerio honesto. No nos permite escondernos de las realidades del hambre o la injusticia, ni movernos demasiado rápido hacia la esperanza y el gozo de la resurrección. El ministerio en respuesta al hambre es el ministerio en respuesta a algunos de nuestros más profundos dolores y anhelos. Es el ministerio con y entre las comunidades indígenas que se enfrentan a injusticias sistémicas que han continuado durante generaciones (Semana 1). Es un ministerio con y entre los niños migrantes mientras son objeto de abuso en las fronteras (Semana 2). Es un ministerio con y entre las personas que luchan por alimentarse a sí mismas y a sus familias (Semana 3). Es un ministerio con y entre huérfanos y familias condenadas al ostracismo debido a su estado de salud (Semana 4). Es el ministerio el que encarna la tensión entre la crucifixión y la resurrección.

Las lecturas de esta semana nos recuerdan esta tensión. En el Evangelio de Juan, Jesús explica que un grano de trigo debe caer en la tierra y morir antes de que pueda dar fruto (12:24). Sin embargo, esto no es un aforismo simplista de que toda vida implica la muerte. Hay una tensión entre la forma en que Jesús describe la muerte y la forma en que describe la vida (en esta lectura, “la cruz” y “la gloria”). Jesús no ignora la muerte. Como dice el escritor de Hebreos, Jesús oró con “fuerte clamor y lágrimas” (5:7). El Evangelio de Juan atenúa esto en ocasiones, pero aun así Jesús dice: “Mi alma está angustiada” (12:27).

En muchos servicios de la iglesia, el que preside invita a la congregación a orar “como Jesús nos enseñó” antes de comenzar la convención bastante formal del Padre Nuestro. Ciertamente, esa es la oración que Jesús enseñó a sus discípulos. Pero orar “como Jesús nos enseñó” en las lecturas de esta semana es orar con un alma atribulada, con “fuerte clamor y lágrimas” en duelo por nuestro propio dolor y por la distancia que nuestro mundo debe recorrer hacia el futuro que Dios ha prometido.

Llorar con Ahmed cuando enfrenta abusos en la frontera (Semana 2), protestar con los quilombolas que buscan justicia completa (Semana 1), gritar con cada persona hambrienta a la que alguna vez le han dicho que no pertenece o que no ha trabajado lo suficiente, apretar los dientes con ira mientras los líderes políticos y las autoridades manipulan las estadísticas para justificar los recortes presupuestarios a los programas contra el hambre o la pobreza — estas también son oraciones, las oraciones de las almas atribuladas que gritan con “fuerte clamor y lágrimas”. Estas son oraciones de Cuaresma apropiadas para esta temporada de arrepentimiento, dolor y memoria. Y son oraciones en las que Cristo se une a nosotros.

Las lecturas también nos recuerdan que nuestro encuentro con Dios no termina aquí. Dios responde a las oraciones de Jesús, no por rescatarlo de la cruz, sino por vencer la cruz en la resurrección. La resurrección revela que la muerte y el dolor no tendrán la última palabra, que Dios nos está moviendo hacia un tiempo en el que brotará una nueva vida. Esto no nos permite ignorar la crucifixión. El clamor y las lágrimas de nuestras oraciones no son olvidados ni han terminado todavía.

Encontrar a Dios en la resurrección es vivir en esa tensión entre el dolor y la esperanza, entre la ira santa y la paz. Así como somos llamados al ministerio en forma de cruz (Semana 3), también somos llamados al ministerio de resurrección. Al ministrar en el mundo, ministrándonos unos a otros y aceptando el ministerio de nuestro prójimo, damos testimonio de la esperanza de la resurrección inspirada por el Espíritu Santo que se mueve dentro de nosotros.

Quizás las fotos son demasiado felices. Quizás las historias son demasiado limpias y simples. O tal vez las imágenes, las historias y los proyectos que representan son exactamente lo que están llamados a ser: testimonios de la esperanza de la resurrección nacida de la tensión entre la vida y la muerte. Tal vez eso es lo que nuestro ministerio y nuestras vidas están llamados a ser: inversiones en el futuro que sabemos que viene y protestas contra el presente que sabemos que se queda corto.

Encontrar a Dios en experiencias de resurrección es ver brotar una nueva vida en medio de la muerte y el anhelo. Es vivir en esa tensión santa entre el Viernes Santo y el Domingo de Pascua, sabiendo en nuestros propios corazones, donde Dios ha escrito un nuevo pacto (Jeremías 31:33), que es posible tanto llorar como celebrar, mirar a nuestro alrededor con honestidad y mirar hacia adelante con esperanza.

Ahora que esta temporada llega a su fin, oremos para que Dios nos dé a cada uno de nosotros el valor, la honestidad y la fe para vivir más plenamente en esa tensión. Ahí es donde ocurre el ministerio auténtico, y ahí es donde estamos llamados a estar.

 

Preguntas de reflexión

¿Cómo anhela su comunidad? ¿Qué experiencias dentro de su comunidad inspiran sus oraciones con “fuerte clamor y lágrimas”?

¿Qué significa vivir en la tensión entre la crucifixión y la resurrección?

¿Cómo cambiaría su ministerio si fuera visto como un testimonio de la resurrección?

¿En qué tensión de su vida le gustaría que la iglesia “viviera” con usted?

2024 World Hunger Lent Study: Week 4

The following is taken from the 2024 ELCA World Hunger Lent Study. The full resource can be ordered as a hardcopy or downloaded as a PDF in English or Spanish at the link here.

Week 4 — Restoration

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Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

 

The first reading for this fourth week of Lent is from the book of Numbers. The Israelites have been on their exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land for years, and the goal is nigh. They have received the law from God through Moses at Sinai and are now on the final leg of their journey. Yet rather than being hopeful and eager, they “became discouraged” (Numbers 21:4), complaining about Moses’ leadership and even their “miserable food” (21:5). God’s response is inventive, if not entirely gracious: “poisonous serpents” sent by God “bit the people, so that many Israelites died” (21:6). The people repent, Moses prays, and God grants Moses a staff that will heal all who are bitten.

It’s not the kindest of stories. Nor is it the easiest story to explore as we continue our study of encounters with God. What exactly is being encountered here, besides a seemingly devious and vengeful God who sends venomous serpents to kill people, then rescues them?

The psalmist gives the story a different spin, omitting any mention of the venomous snakes and lifting up the healing of God, who heard the cries of the people and “saved them from their distress” (107:19).

Despite the psalmist’s sanitized take, this pattern can be found throughout the story of the exodus. God rescues the people, the people turn on God, God punishes them, they repent, God shows mercy. Over and over and over.

These biblical narratives are often used to extol the merciful nature of God, who repeatedly forgives the people despite their sin. Truly, God does show mercy. But this might be cold comfort to the Israelites killed by snakebites. “Mercy” may not be the only lesson implicit in the people’s journey with God.

The exodus begins in Egypt, where God’s people are enslaved and oppressed. God seeks out Moses to lead the people, lays low the unjust Pharaoh and accompanies the people across the wilderness for generations, providing food, water and safety along the way. The people are often ungrateful and at times even spiteful, turning to idolatry in their frustration and despair. Yet God continues to lead and provide. Why?

Simply put, God is invested in this community. God has a vested interest in its future, and this faithfulness to the people the Israelites will become supplies the theme for this week’s study. Despite the violence of the story as recorded in Numbers, there is a lesson here about what it means to encounter God in the restoration of relationships.

The covenant between God and the people leaves both parties vulnerable to the other. By leading them from Egypt and forging a covenant with them, God has tied their futures together. God has a plan and has invested much to ensure that the people will be part of it. This people, this nation, is God’s future. The provisions God grants are not mere merciful gifts but further investments toward a future shared by God and the people who will become Israel.

Of course, the church is not God; we are spiritual descendants of the wandering Hebrews, dependent still on God’s promise of this future. Yet there may be something we can learn here about what it means to pursue a promise of hope and restoration.

Often we see the virtues of mercy and grace in the church’s work to end hunger. Food, clothing, shelter and cash donations are often interpreted as mercies showered on suffering people or as gifts offered to neighbors in need. But in reality our response to hunger surpasses a desire to meet immediate needs. In our Lutheran faith, meeting others’ needs is a response to the grace we have received from God, the grace that restores our relationship with our Creator. We are set free from worrying about our relationship with God, from feeling as if we aren’t good enough or loved enough. The grace of Jesus Christ sets us free from focusing on ourselves so that we can freely focus on others. In other words, God restores our relationship with God so that we can restore our right relationships with one another.

Yet, in true Lutheran fashion, we aren’t really the ones doing the restoring; God is working within and through us, restoring our relationships with each other and all creation. That’s what makes grace so complex. Grace is the “stuff” that restores our relationships with God or our neighbors.

Serving the neighbor is one step toward that restoration. In its most authentic form, service is a foretaste of the full restoration we will experience when the promise of God is fulfilled. Today we dine together as neighbors at the table of a community meal. Tomorrow we shall dine together as the beloved of God at the banquet.

There is something to be learned here about the shape service ought to take. When we understand serving our neighbor as an obligation commanded by God or as something we do because it is “right,” we miss what service is really about. Responding to hunger is not about fulfilling God’s law (as Lutherans, we know we can’t do that anyway). Responding to hunger is about restoring our community and world.

It is as much about the future God is building through us as it is about the present needs we are meeting through each other today.

At just 14, Lalistu knows the importance of restoring community. Lalistu’s family was one of the poorest in their town in Ethiopia. Both her parents are HIV-positive, and the stigma surrounding HIV and AIDS isolated Lalistu’s family from their community and kept them from earning enough money to feed themselves. The Central Synod Development Department of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY) provided food for the family and school supplies for Lalistu and her brother. Funded in part by ELCA World Hunger, the project supports 80 orphans and vulnerable children in the Oromia region of Ethiopia, providing them with school supplies, food, clothing and other basic needs for survival. In addition, the project leaders work with communities to help them better understand the needs of people living with HIV and AIDS.

With this support Lalistu and her brother have excelled in school. Their mother has found work selling and trading goods, and the family has gotten support to start building their own home. Instead of relying on relatives for their survival, Lalistu and her family can look ahead to a time when they will have access to the things they need. The program has not only inspired their hope for a brighter economic and educational future; it has helped to change the perceptions and attitudes of people in their community. Instead of feeling isolated, Lalistu and her family now feel accepted by their neighbors.

This restoration of community relationships is critically important. The stigma surrounding HIV and AIDS, like the stigma that often accompanies hunger and poverty, can create huge obstacles for those who are stigmatized. They may be less likely to seek medical treatment or acquire nutritional support, and more likely to face hunger or poverty in the future. We experience this over and over again, whether it is the stigma faced by Lalistu’s parents and other people living with HIV in countries around the world or the stigma experienced by the clients of food pantries. Feeding someone or helping them find work can go only so far if the community in which they are fed or employed continually excludes, marginalizes or discriminates against them.

Simply put, we cannot end hunger if our communities remain places of exclusion, fear or stigma. If the ministries we support and participate in are to be meaningful and authentic, they must be what God calls them to be: sites where God is encountered through the experience of restoration. Ministry in response to hunger is ministry in response to the promise that God is drawing us all together toward a reconciled and restored future. Every meal served, every neighbor heard and every new relationship built in the context of service gives us a foretaste of the fullness of life to which God will restore us and our world. When this happens, our service will change. We will change. And our communities will change.

God makes that ongoing restoration possible by investing in a future when hunger will be no more. How might our work as church together change when we see it as not merely a “good thing” but also an investment in this shared future?

Reflection Questions

How might stigma or exclusion make it more difficult for a family such as Lalistu’s to overcome hunger and poverty?

What does it mean to believe that God is invested in our future?

How might our understanding of hunger ministries change when we view them as a restoration of community?

How are people experiencing hunger or poverty stigmatized in your community? What has the church done or what could it do to change this?

 

Semana 4 — Restauración

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Números 21:4-9; Salmo 107:1-3, 17-22; Efesios 2:1-10; Juan 3:14-21

La primera lectura de esta cuarta semana de Cuaresma es del libro de Números. Los israelitas han estado en su éxodo de Egipto hacia la Tierra Prometida durante años, y la meta está cerca. Han recibido la ley de Dios a través de Moisés en el Sinaí y ahora están en el tramo final de su jornada. Sin embargo, en lugar de sentirse esperanzados y entusiasmados, “se impacientaron” (Números 21:4) y se quejaron del liderazgo de Moisés y aun de su “pésima comida” (21:5). La respuesta de Dios es inventiva, si no del todo misericordiosa: “serpientes venenosas” enviadas por Dios “los mordier[o]n, y muchos israelitas murieron” (21:6). El pueblo se arrepiente, Moisés ora, y Dios le da a Moisés un asta que sana a todos los que son mordidos.

Esta no es la más benévola de las historias. Tampoco es la historia más fácil de analizar en la continuación de nuestro estudio de los encuentros con Dios. ¿Qué es exactamente lo que se está encontrando aquí, además de un Dios aparentemente inescrupuloso y vengativo que envía serpientes venenosas para matar a las personas y luego rescatarlas?

El salmista le da un giro diferente a la historia, pues omite toda mención de las serpientes venenosas y exalta la sanación de Dios, quien escuchó los clamores del pueblo y “los salvó de sus aflicciones” (107:19).

A pesar de la versión expurgada del salmista, en toda la historia del éxodo se puede encontrar este patrón. Dios rescata al pueblo, el pueblo se vuelve contra Dios, Dios los castiga, se arrepienten, Dios muestra misericordia. Una y otra vez.

Estas narraciones bíblicas se utilizan a menudo para ensalzar el carácter misericordioso de Dios, que perdona repetidamente a las personas a pesar de su pecado. Verdaderamente, Dios muestra misericordia. Pero esto no les serviría de consuelo a los israelitas que habían muerto por mordeduras de serpientes. Es posible que la “misericordia” no sea la única lección implícita en la jornada del pueblo con Dios.

El éxodo comienza en Egipto, donde el pueblo de Dios es esclavizado y oprimido. Dios busca a Moisés para guiar al pueblo, humilla al injusto faraón, y acompaña al pueblo a través del desierto durante generaciones, dándoles comida, agua y seguridad a lo largo del camino. El pueblo a menudo se muestra ingrato y a veces incluso rencoroso, pues en su frustración y desesperación recurren a la idolatría. Sin embargo, Dios sigue guiando y proveyendo. ¿Por qué?

En pocas palabras, Dios ha invertido en esta comunidad. Dios tiene un interés personal en su futuro, y esta fidelidad al pueblo en el cual los israelitas se convertirán nos da el tema del estudio de esta semana. A pesar de la violencia de la historia según es registrada en Números, aquí hay una lección sobre lo que significa encontrar a Dios en la restauración de las relaciones.

El pacto entre Dios y el pueblo deja a ambas partes vulnerables la una a la otra. Al sacarlos de Egipto y forjar un pacto con ellos, Dios ha unido sus futuros. Dios tiene un plan y ha invertido mucho para asegurarse de que el pueblo sea parte de este. Este pueblo, esta nación, es el futuro de Dios. Las provisiones que Dios concede no son meros regalos misericordiosos, sino inversiones adicionales hacia un futuro compartido por Dios y el pueblo en el cual Israel se convertirá.

Por supuesto, la iglesia no es Dios; somos descendientes espirituales de los hebreos errantes, dependientes todavía de la promesa de Dios de este futuro. Sin embargo, es posible que aquí haya algo que podemos aprender acerca de lo que significa perseguir una promesa de esperanza y restauración.

Con frecuencia vemos las virtudes de la misericordia y la gracia en el trabajo que hace la iglesia para acabar con el hambre. Las donaciones de alimentos, ropa, refugio y dinero en efectivo a menudo se interpretan como misericordias derramadas sobre personas que sufren o como regalos ofrecidos a vecinos necesitados. Pero en realidad nuestra respuesta al hambre va más allá del deseo de satisfacer las necesidades inmediatas. En nuestra fe luterana, satisfacer las necesidades de los demás es una respuesta a la gracia que hemos recibido de Dios, la gracia que restaura nuestra relación con nuestro Creador. Somos liberados de preocuparnos por nuestra relación con Dios, de sentir que no somos lo suficientemente buenos o amados. La gracia de Jesucristo nos libera de centrar nuestra atención en nosotros mismos para que podamos concentrarnos libremente en los demás. En otras palabras, Dios restaura nuestra relación con Dios para que podamos restaurar nuestras relaciones adecuadas entre nosotros.

Sin embargo, al más puro estilo luterano, no somos realmente nosotros los que hacemos la restauración; Dios está obrando dentro y a través de nosotros, restaurando nuestras relaciones entre nosotros y con toda la creación. Eso es lo que hace que la gracia sea tan compleja. La gracia es la “cosa” que restaura nuestras relaciones con Dios o con nuestro prójimo.

Servir al prójimo es un paso hacia esa restauración. En su forma más auténtica, el servicio es un anticipo de la restauración completa que experimentaremos cuando se cumpla la promesa de Dios. Hoy cenamos juntos como vecinos en la mesa de una comida comunitaria. Mañana cenaremos juntos como los amados de Dios en el banquete.

Aquí hay algo que aprender sobre la forma que el servicio debe tomar. Cuando vemos el servicio al prójimo como una obligación ordenada por Dios o como algo que hacemos porque es “lo correcto”, perdemos de vista de qué se trata el servicio realmente. Responder al hambre no se trata de cumplir la ley de Dios (como luteranos, sabemos que no podemos hacerlo de todos modos). Responder al hambre se trata de restaurar nuestra comunidad y el mundo. Se trata tanto del futuro que Dios está construyendo a través de nosotros como de las necesidades presentes que estamos satisfaciendo a través de los unos con los otros hoy.

Con tan solo 14 años, Lalistu sabe la importancia de restaurar la comunidad. La familia de Lalistu era una de las más pobres de su pueblo en Etiopía. Sus padres son seropositivos, y el estigma en torno al VIH y al SIDA aisló a la familia de Lalistu de su comunidad y les impidió ganar suficiente dinero para alimentarse. El Central Synod Development Department [Departamento de Desarrollo del Sínodo Central] de la Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY) [Iglesia Evangélica Etíope Mekane Yesus] proporcionó alimentos para la familia y útiles escolares para Lalistu y su hermano. Financiado en parte por ELCA World Hunger, el proyecto apoya a 80 huérfanos y niños vulnerables de la región de Oromia en Etiopía, proporcionándoles útiles escolares, alimentos, ropa y otras necesidades básicas para la supervivencia. Además, los líderes del proyecto trabajan con las comunidades para ayudarlas a comprender mejor las necesidades de las personas que viven con el VIH y el SIDA.

Con este apoyo, Lalistu y su hermano se han destacado en la escuela. Su madre ha encontrado trabajo vendiendo e intercambiando bienes, y la familia ha recibido apoyo para comenzar a construir su propia casa. En lugar de depender de sus parientes para su supervivencia, Lalistu y su familia pueden mirar hacia el futuro para tener acceso a las cosas que necesitan. El programa no solo ha inspirado su esperanza de un futuro económico y educativo más brillante; también ha ayudado a cambiar las percepciones y actitudes de las personas de su comunidad. En lugar de sentirse aislados, ahora Lalistu y su familia se sienten aceptados por sus vecinos.

Esta restauración de las relaciones comunitarias es de vital importancia. El estigma que hay en torno al VIH y el SIDA, al igual que el estigma que a menudo acompaña al hambre y la pobreza, pueden crear enormes obstáculos para quienes son estigmatizados. Es menos probable que busquen tratamiento médico o reciban apoyo nutricional, y es más probable que se enfrenten al hambre o la pobreza en el futuro. Experimentamos esto una y otra vez, ya sea por el estigma que enfrentan los padres de Lalistu y otras personas que viven con el VIH en países de todo el mundo, o el estigma que experimentan los clientes de las despensas de alimentos. Alimentar a alguien o ayudarlo a encontrar trabajo solo puede llegar hasta cierto punto si la comunidad en la que se alimenta o emplea lo excluye, margina o discrimina continuamente.

En pocas palabras, no podemos acabar con el hambre si nuestras comunidades siguen siendo lugares de exclusión, miedo o estigma. Si los ministerios que apoyamos y en los que participamos han de ser significativos y auténticos, deben ser lo que Dios los llama a ser: lugares en los que uno se encuentra con Dios a través de la experiencia de la restauración. El ministerio en respuesta al hambre es el ministerio en respuesta a la promesa de que Dios nos está uniendo a todos hacia un futuro reconciliado y restaurado. Cada comida servida, cada prójimo escuchado y cada nueva relación formada en el contexto del servicio nos da un anticipo de la plenitud de la vida a la que Dios nos restaurará a nosotros y a nuestro mundo. Cuando esto ocurra, cambiará nuestro servicio, cambiaremos nosotros, y cambiarán nuestras comunidades.

Dios hace posible esa restauración continua al invertir en un futuro en el que ya no existirá el hambre. ¿Cómo podría cambiar nuestro trabajo como iglesia cuando lo vemos no solo como algo “bueno” sino también como una inversión en este futuro compartido?

Preguntas de reflexión

¿De qué manera el estigma o la exclusión pueden dificultar que una familia como la de Lalistu supere el hambre y la pobreza?

¿Qué significa creer que Dios ha invertido en nuestro futuro?

¿Cómo podría cambiar nuestra comprensión de los ministerios del hambre cuando los vemos como una restauración de la comunidad?

¿Cómo se estigmatiza a las personas que padecen hambre o pobreza en su comunidad? ¿Qué ha hecho la iglesia o qué podría hacer para cambiar esto?

2024 World Hunger Lent Study: Week 3

The following is taken from the 2024 ELCA World Hunger Lent Study. The full resource can be ordered as a hardcopy or downloaded as a PDF in English or Spanish at the link here.

Week 3 — Crucifixion Exodus

•••

Exodus 20:1-17

Psalm 19

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

John 2:13-22

 

“We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”

 —1 Corinthians 1:23

In this week of Lent, having reflected on encountering God in reconciliation and in transfiguration, we turn toward Paul’s message of “Christ crucified” and reflect on what it means to encounter God in crucifixion, to be confronted with our own participation in systemic oppression.

Founded in 1888, Bethlehem Lutheran Church in the Central City neighborhood of New Orleans, La., is the oldest historically Black ELCA congregation in the continental United States. The church has a long legacy of responding to the needs of its members and neighbors. One way Bethlehem carries on that legacy is through the Community Table, a feeding ministry that provides free, no-questions-asked gourmet meals every week. This ministry, which is supported by ELCA World Hunger, helps to meet the need for food in Central City. The median household income in Bethlehem’s ZIP code is slightly more than $26,189, less than one-third of the median household income in the United States ($69,021 at the time of writing). More than 15% of the people in Orleans Parish are food-insecure.

With so many workers relying on the city’s tourism and hospitality industry, Bethlehem Lutheran saw a rapid increase in the number of people needing food during the COVID-19 pandemic. Working with partners, the Community Table was able to expand, and by this spring it was providing a free lunch four times a week, serving over 600 meals weekly. As the need has increased, Bethlehem Lutheran has been able to meet it.

A key leader in helping the Community Table and Bethlehem respond during and after the pandemic was Chef De, who planned, coordinated, supervised, cooked and served hundreds of meals for people who came to the Table. “I don’t think Bethlehem would have made it through the pandemic if it were not for Chef De,” says the Rev. Ben Groth, pastor of Bethlehem Lutheran. “And I also believe it to be true that many of our neighbors would not have made it without her, too.”

As noted by Mike Scott, a writer for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Central City neighborhood has a long, rich history: it is home to New Zion Baptist Church, where the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was formally incorporated. Yet, as Scott also writes, by the early 2000s, Central City had become “defined [by some people] by its crime rate” and its “crushing poverty.”[1]

Some people might easily let the community’s present challenges define its future. We see this often when cities are dealing with statistically high rates of poverty, food insecurity or crime. Outsiders looking in dismiss such neighborhoods as nothing more than their statistics or decide they must be “saved” by the decisive action of political leaders.

Journeying together through Lent, we are invited to consider what it means for us today that God’s son was crucified 2,000 years ago. Lent has often been a season for us to take stock of our own sinfulness and need for repentance. In many ways the cross is a mirror, reflecting back to us our entanglement in sin. Yet the cross is also a lens, a way of perceiving and apprehending the world. All too frequently during Lent, we lose sight of the latter aspect.

As a lens, the cross shapes how we understand ourselves, our world and our communities. It reminds us that God is present in Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross. This doesn’t mean that suffering or death are God’s work or that there is something redemptive in suffering or death. Quite the contrary: a cross-shaped (cruciform) lens compels us to recognize suffering for what it is, to name it and confront it.

This is the foolishness Paul describes in his letter to the Corinthians. Who would ever recognize God in the broken, pierced and dying body of Christ? Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, upon seeing a painting of a dead Christ, is reported to have remarked to his wife that such a painting could cause one to lose their faith. This is what Paul means, in part, by the “foolishness” of the message of the cross (1 Corinthians 1:18). To preach the message of Christ crucified is foolishness to those who cannot fathom the presence of divinity within frailty or weakness, who cannot comprehend God as both actor and victim.

Yet that is precisely what the cross demands of us. To preach Christ crucified, to journey through Lent to the cross, is to bind ourselves to honesty, to the sort of truth-telling that names suffering and injustice for what they are yet still affirms the presence of God. For Central City and Bethlehem Lutheran Church, the message of Christ crucified affirms that stories of poverty or hunger aren’t the only stories being written or told in the community. It may be foolishness to those on the outside looking in, but it is gospel truth for those who encounter God at a community table where neighbors prepare, provide and share meals.

To encounter God within the crucifixion is to be reminded that we cannot ignore the truth of suffering, hunger, poverty, violence, death and injustice in a world still waiting for the fullness of the reign of God. But to encounter God in this event is to be radically open to God’s presence in this same as-yet-incomplete world. It is to seek God within our communities and one another, even as the world declares this seeking to be “foolishness.” It is to affirm with faithful certainty that in the stories of our neighbors and neighborhoods, God is being revealed to us in sometimes new and surprising ways.

 

Reflection Questions

What do you think Paul means by “foolishness”?

How does your perception of Central City or your own community change when you look at them through a cross-shaped lens?

In what new or unexpected ways have you encountered God, especially as you faced your own “crosses”?

What might it mean to “bind ourselves to honesty, to the sort of truth-telling that names suffering and injustice for what they are yet still affirms the presence of God”?

 

 

Semana 3 — Crucifixión

•••

Éxodo 20:1-17

Salmo 19

1 Corintios 1:18-25

Juan 2:13-22

“Mientras que nosotros predicamos a Cristo crucificado. Este mensaje es motivo de tropiezo para los judíos y es locura para los no judíos”. —1 Corintios 1:23

En esta semana de Cuaresma, después de haber reflexionado sobre el encuentro con Dios en la reconciliación y en la transfiguración, nos dirigimos hacia el mensaje de Pablo de “Cristo crucificado” y reflexionamos sobre lo que significa encontrar a Dios en la crucifixión, para ser confrontados con nuestra propia participación en la opresión sistémica.

Fundada en 1888, Bethlehem Lutheran Church [Iglesia Luterana Belén] en el vecindario de Central City de Nueva Orleans, Luisiana, es la congregación históricamente negra de la ELCA más antigua de los Estados Unidos continentales. La iglesia tiene un largo legado de responder a las necesidades de sus miembros y vecinos. Una de las formas en que Bethlehem continúa con ese legado es a través de Community Table [Mesa Comunitaria], un ministerio de alimentación que todas las semanas ofrece comidas gourmet gratuitas y sin hacer preguntas. Este ministerio, que cuenta con el respaldo de ELCA World Hunger, ayuda a satisfacer la necesidad de comida en Central City. El ingreso familiar promedio en el código postal de Bethlehem es un poco más de $ 26,189, menos de un tercio del ingreso familiar promedio en los Estados Unidos ($ 69,021 en el momento de escribir este artículo). Más del 15% de las personas en Orleans Parish sufren inseguridad alimentaria.

Con tantos trabajadores que dependen de la industria del turismo y la hospitalidad de la ciudad, Bethlehem Lutheran vio un rápido aumento en el número de personas que necesitaban comida durante la pandemia de COVID-19. Al trabajar con socios, Community Table pudo expandirse, y para esta primavera estaba dando un almuerzo gratis cuatro veces a la semana, sirviendo más de 600 comidas semanales. A medida que la necesidad ha aumentado, Bethlehem Lutheran ha sido capaz de satisfacerla.

Una líder clave que ayudó a Community Table y a Bethlehem a responder durante y después de la pandemia fue la chef De, quien planificó, coordinó, supervisó, cocinó y sirvió cientos de comidas para las personas que vinieron a la mesa. “No creo que Bethlehem hubiera sobrevivido a la pandemia si no fuera por la chef De”, dice el reverendo Ben Groth, pastor de Bethlehem Lutheran. “Y también creo que es cierto que muchos de nuestros vecinos no lo habrían logrado sin ella.

Como señaló Mike Scott, escritor de New Orleans Times-Picayune, el vecindario de Central City tiene una larga y rica historia: es el hogar de la Iglesia Bautista New Zion [Nueva Sión], donde se incorporó formalmente la Southern Christian Leadership Conference [Conferencia de Liderazgo Cristiano del Sur]. Sin embargo, como también escribe Scott, a principios de la década de 2000, Central City había llegado a ser “definida [por algunas personas] por su tasa de criminalidad” y su “pobreza aplastante”.[1]

Algunas personas podrían dejar que los desafíos actuales de la comunidad definan su futuro. A menudo vemos esto cuando las ciudades se enfrentan a tasas estadísticamente altas de pobreza, inseguridad alimentaria o delincuencia. Las personas externas que miran hacia adentro desestiman esos barrios como nada más que sus estadísticas o deciden que deben ser “salvados” por la acción decisiva de los líderes políticos.

En nuestra jornada juntos durante la Cuaresma se nos invita a considerar lo que significa para nosotros hoy que el hijo de Dios fue crucificado hace 2,000 años. La Cuaresma ha sido a menudo una temporada para que hagamos un balance de nuestra propia pecaminosidad y necesidad de arrepentimiento. En muchos sentidos, la cruz es un espejo que nos refleja nuestra participación en el pecado. Sin embargo, la cruz es también una lente, una forma de percibir y aprehender el mundo. Con demasiada frecuencia, durante la Cuaresma perdemos de vista este último aspecto.

Como lente, la cruz moldea la forma en que nos entendemos a nosotros mismos, a nuestro mundo y a nuestras comunidades. Nos recuerda que Dios está presente en el sufrimiento y la muerte de Jesús en la cruz. Esto no significa que el sufrimiento o la muerte sean obra de Dios o que haya un elemento redentor en el sufrimiento o la muerte. Todo lo contrario; una lente en forma de cruz (cruciforme) nos obliga a reconocer el sufrimiento por lo que es, a nombrarlo y enfrentarlo.

Esta es la locura que Pablo describe en su carta a los Corintios. ¿Quién reconocería a Dios en el cuerpo quebrantado, traspasado y moribundo de Cristo? Se dice que el novelista ruso Fiódor Dostoievski, al ver una pintura de Cristo muerto, le comentó a su esposa que tal pintura podría hacer que uno perdiera la fe. Esto es lo que Pablo quiere decir, en parte, con la “locura” del mensaje de la cruz (1 Corintios 1:18). Predicar el mensaje de Cristo crucificado es una locura para aquellos que no pueden comprender la presencia de la divinidad dentro de la fragilidad o la debilidad; que no pueden comprender a Dios como actor y víctima.

Sin embargo, eso es precisamente lo que la cruz exige de nosotros. Predicar a Cristo crucificado, caminar a través de la Cuaresma hasta la cruz, es comprometerse con la honestidad, con el tipo de verdad que llama el sufrimiento y la injusticia por lo que son, pero que aun así afirma la presencia de Dios. Para Central City y Bethlehem Lutheran Church, el mensaje de Cristo crucificado afirma que las historias de pobreza o hambre no son las únicas historias que se escriben o cuentan en la comunidad. Para las personas externas que miran hacia adentro puede ser una tontería, pero es la verdad del evangelio para aquellos que se encuentran con Dios en una mesa comunitaria donde los vecinos preparan, proveen y comparten comidas.

Encontrar a Dios en la crucifixión es recordar que no podemos ignorar la verdad del sufrimiento, el hambre, la pobreza, la violencia, la muerte y la injusticia en un mundo que todavía espera la plenitud del reino de Dios. Pero encontrar a Dios en este evento es estar radicalmente abierto a la presencia de Dios en este mismo mundo aún incompleto. Es buscar a Dios dentro de nuestras comunidades y entre nosotros, incluso cuando el mundo declara que esta búsqueda es una “locura”. Es afirmar con fiel certeza que, en las historias de nuestros vecinos y vecindarios, Dios se nos está revelando de maneras a veces nuevas y sorprendentes.


[1] Mike Scott, “A Brief History of Central City, the Forsaken Heart of New Orleans,” Nola.com, July 12, 2019, tinyurl.com/mpks2x8m.

[1] Mike Scott, “A Brief History of Central City, the Forsaken Heart of New Orleans” [Breve historia de Central City, el corazón abandonado de Nueva Orleans] Nola. com, 12 de julio de 2019, tinyurl.com/mpks2x8m

ELCA World Hunger is celebrating 50 years!

As ELCA World Hunger celebrates its 50th year pursuing God’s promise of a just world, we invite you to join us, beginning by sharing this video with your communities, families, and friends.

 

2024 World Hunger Lent Study: Week 2

The following is taken from the 2024 ELCA World Hunger Lent Study. The full resource can be ordered as a hardcopy or downloaded as a PDF in English or Spanish at the link here.

Week 2 — Transfiguration

•••

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Psalm 22:23-31
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38 or Mark 9:2-9

This week in Lent we continue exploring the places and moments in which we encounter God, reflecting on transfiguration as recounted in Mark 9:2-9. Here God’s manifest presence before the disciples demonstrates God’s presence in the life of creation, especially in times of injustice.

“Transfiguration” is an odd word telling an odd story. The word comes from two Latin roots — “trans,” meaning “across,” and “figura,” meaning “shape” — so it indicates a change in shape or form. Its occurrence in this week’s reading from Mark is one of the few times it appears in the Christian Scriptures.

The story is a little strange. Jesus takes Peter, James and John up a mountain. There he is revealed in all his glory, in dazzling clothes, with the spirits of Elijah and Moses beside him and God claiming him as God’s own son. Curiously, this experience of Jesus’ divine glory occurs immediately after his long speech about the suffering he will soon endure on the cross. Is it any wonder the disciples are depicted as confused?

Peter is often portrayed in the gospels as well-intentioned but foolish, a far cry from the confident leader he will become in the early church. In Mark’s story, Peter just doesn’t get it. Amid this mystical experience on a mountaintop, Peter, like some rabid suburban developer, suggests, “Hey, let’s build some houses and just stay.”

But Peter may not be quite as dense as we readers first assume. Peter is the one who reminds us that, even during a mountaintop experience, we never cease to be human. Peter is the one who says, “Jesus, I know your clothes are all shiny, and it looks like you got some ghosts with you, and yeah, I hear God talking, too, but we’re all up on top of a mountain right now, and if we’re going to spend any time here, we’re going to need some shelter.” Peter’s reaction isn’t one of fear or stupidity. It’s the reaction of a human being who can’t forget the physical realities that continually impinge on even the deepest spiritual moments.

Like Peter, we are confronted by physical realities that we cannot ignore, even as we experience a profound spiritual crisis of yearning for the day when God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. Like Peter on the mountain, we need to be brought into that ecstatic reality where the presence of God among us is revealed. But also like Peter, we can’t just stay in that moment, ignoring the reality of lived, physical need. We must have a different kind of faith, a faith that refuses to separate transfiguration from transformation, to ignore people around us who are assailed by injustice, disease and violence. We need a faith that captivates, motivates and activates us to respond boldly and recklessly when God invites us to be part of the transformation being enacted for all creation. In the event of transfiguration we encounter God where the physical and the spiritual intersect. New Testament scholar Dorothy Lee puts it well:

[T]he transfiguration is not an other-worldly narrative, disconnected from the body and ordinary human experience. On the contrary, it is precisely Jesus’ transfigured body that discloses the face of God and the hope of God’s future. … The transfiguration on the mountain is the meeting-place between human beings and God, between the temporal and the eternal … between everyday human life — with all its hopes and fears — and the mystery of God.[1]

Peter’s suggestion of building shelters doesn’t seem all that far[1]fetched when we recognize that Jesus never ceases to be a physical human being, even as the transfiguration discloses him as also divine. Peter isn’t missing the story. According to Lee, the story is really about him — and us.

To encounter God in transfiguration is to experience those moments when our perception is opened up radically to the presence of God in our midst. Jesus’ transfigured body births a transfigured faith — a faith that holds in tension the holy and the ordinary, the spiritual and the physical. The story of the transfiguration in Mark isn’t the story of Jesus experiencing his own divinity. Nor is it the story of some important consultation Jesus had with Moses and Elijah. We don’t even know what they said! Rather it is the story of the disciples encountering God in their own physical midst, represented by Jesus’ body and clothing, and in their own history, as represented by Moses and Elijah. It is the story of a faith that opens them to encounter God in their past, present and future, as Lee suggests.

What does this mean for us today? What does it mean to live with a transfigured faith? For over three years Church World Service (CWS), with support from ELCA World Hunger, has provided child protection services to unaccompanied children in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Living in a foreign land without parents or relatives by their side, these vulnerable children are on a difficult journey, trying to reach a better future. Many of them have come to live by a simple but devastating principle: “Do not trust people.” They build walls around themselves to keep safe from those who would take advantage of them, but these walls also bring anxiety, depression and a deep skepticism of adults or agencies trying to help them.

One of the youth helped by CWS is Ahmed (name changed for privacy). Ahmed left his home in Burundi two years ago, relying on money his parents had raised for him to travel to Croatia. When CWS met him, he had been living in Bosnia and Herzegovina for almost a year. “I left with six friends, all from Burundi,” he says. “We watched hungry people every day [in Burundi], and we were among them. I am the oldest, so I am responsible for my brothers. My father is sick, so he cannot work. I need to help them.”

Along the way Ahmed faced steep challenges, including physical violence and intimidation by police at the Croatian border. “Go back where you came from!” they yelled as they pushed him. “How can I go back,” Ahmed says, “when my family’s survival depends on me going forward?”

Ahmed’s story is, tragically, not unique. Like many others, he carries the weight of his journey, his yearning for home and his frustrated hope for a future in Europe. By the time CWS staff met him, Ahmed was making his ninth attempt to enter Croatia. After providing him with whatever help they could, they watched him go, hoping that, this time, the journey would be successful.

A transfigured faith — shaped by an encounter with the God who transforms our world and our perspective — changes us. To encounter Jesus transfigured is to remember that God has entered human history, that God plays a role in the story of unaccompanied children. But encountering Jesus transfigured also means remembering the physical as well as the spiritual, to say, with Peter, “We should build some shelter here.” Ahmed’s fears and disappointment don’t vanish just because God is part of his story. Nor are Ahmed’s tired feet miraculously soothed.

To carry a transfigured faith into the world, to bear witness to our encounter with God in transfiguration, impels us radically outward to seek God in the real people and events around us. This faith is grounded in the belief that God is present with us through the Galilean carpenter — and through a Burundian child. All too often, migrants such as Ahmed are viewed as nothing more than a burden or an intrusion: “Go back where you came from!” he was told. Yet a transfigured faith reminds us that our neighbors are more than burdens or disturbances, more than even their own need; to us they are the presence of God, just as we are to one another.

Encountering God in transfiguration is more than an odd event on a mountaintop 2,000 years ago. God transfigures our faith and perception, opening us to recognize God in our neighbors and to perceive God active in our history. After Peter, James and John reach the mountaintop, there is no going back. Jesus is no ordinary teacher they are following. This is something new, something miraculously and wonderfully different. Here is the unveiling of divinity, transforming their lives and how they view the world.

As we journey together spiritually through Lent, let us do so with a transfigured faith, remembering the difficult, dangerous, physical journeys so many of our neighbors are on and remembering our call to be present with them and one another, to be changed by the presence of God within them.

 

Reflection Questions

How would you have reacted if you were on the mountain with Peter, James and John?

With the transfiguration of Jesus, the disciples come to see Christ’s divinity. How might this have changed their understanding of what it meant to be a disciple?

How does a transfigured faith, recognizing the ways God is present in our world and one another, change us?

How can the church confront and change people’s negative perception of neighbors such as Ahmed? What difference might this make?

 

Semana 2 — Transfiguración

•••

Génesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Salmo 22:23-31
Romanos 4:13-25
Marcos 8:31-38 o Marcos 9:2-9

Esta semana de la Cuaresma seguimos explorando los lugares y momentos en los que nos encontramos con Dios, y reflexionamos sobre la transfiguración tal y como se relata en Marcos 9:2-9. Aquí la presencia manifiesta de Dios ante los discípulos demuestra la presencia de Dios en la vida de la creación, especialmente en tiempos de injusticia.

“Transfiguración” es una palabra extraña que cuenta una historia extraña. La palabra proviene de dos raíces latinas: “trans”, que significa “a través”, y “figura”, que significa “forma”, por lo que indica un cambio en el aspecto o la forma. Su aparición en la lectura de Marcos de esta semana es una de las pocas veces que aparece en las escrituras cristianas.

La historia es un poco extraña. Jesús lleva a Pedro, Santiago y Juan a una montaña. Allí se revela en toda su gloria, con ropas deslumbrantes, con los espíritus de Elías y Moisés a su lado y Dios lo reclama como su propio hijo. Curiosamente, esta experiencia de la gloria divina de Jesús ocurre inmediatamente después de haber dado su largo discurso sobre el sufrimiento que pronto soportará en la cruz. ¿Es de extrañar que los discípulos sean representados como confundidos?

Con frecuencia Pedro es representado en los evangelios como bien intencionado pero tonto, muy distinto del líder seguro en el que se convertiría en la iglesia primitiva. En el relato de Marcos, Pedro simplemente no entiende. En medio de esta experiencia mística en la cima de una montaña, Pedro, como un entusiasta desarrollador suburbano, sugiere: “Oye, construyamos algunas casas y quedémonos”.

Pero es posible que Pedro no sea tan bobo como los lectores asumimos en un principio. Él es quien nos recuerda que, incluso durante una experiencia en la cima de una montaña, nunca dejamos de ser humanos. Pedro es el que dice: “Jesús, sé que tu ropa es resplandeciente, y parece que contigo hay algunos fantasmas, y sí, también oigo a Dios hablar, pero en este momento todos estamos en la cima de una montaña, y si vamos a pasar algún tiempo aquí, vamos a necesitar un albergue”. La reacción de Pedro no es de temor ni estupidez. Es la reacción de un ser humano que no puede olvidar las realidades físicas que continuamente afectan aun los momentos espirituales más profundos.

Al igual que Pedro, nos enfrentamos a realidades físicas que no podemos ignorar, incluso cuando experimentamos una profunda crisis espiritual de anhelo por el día en que Dios enjugará toda lágrima de nuestros ojos. Al igual que Pedro en la montaña, necesitamos ser llevados a esa realidad extática donde la presencia de Dios se revela entre nosotros. Pero también, al igual que Pedro, no podemos quedarnos en ese momento e ignorar la realidad de la necesidad física vivida. Debemos tener un tipo de fe diferente, una fe que se niegue a separar la transfiguración de la transformación, a ignorar a las personas que nos rodean y que son asediadas por la injusticia, la enfermedad y la violencia. Necesitamos una fe que nos cautive, motive y active para responder con valor y audacia cuando Dios nos invita a ser parte de la transformación que se está llevando a cabo por toda la creación.

En el evento de la transfiguración nos encontramos con Dios donde lo físico y lo espiritual se cruzan. La erudita del Nuevo Testamento, Dorothy Lee, expresa esto muy bien:

[L]a transfiguración no es una narrativa de otro mundo, desconectada del cuerpo y de la experiencia humana ordinaria. Al contrario, es precisamente el cuerpo transfigurado de Jesús el que revela el rostro de Dios y la esperanza del futuro de Dios. … La transfiguración en la montaña es el lugar de encuentro entre los seres humanos y Dios, entre lo temporal y lo eterno… entre la vida humana cotidiana —con todas sus esperanzas y temores— y el misterio de Dios.[1]

La sugerencia de Pedro de levantar albergues no parece tan descabellada cuando reconocemos que Jesús nunca deja de ser un ser humano físico, incluso cuando la transfiguración lo revela como también divino. No es que Pedro se pierde la historia. Según Lee, la historia es realmente sobre él —y sobre nosotros.

Encontrarse con Dios en la transfiguración es experimentar esos momentos en los que nuestra percepción se abre radicalmente a la presencia de Dios en medio de nosotros. El cuerpo transfigurado de Jesús da a luz una fe transfigurada —una fe que mantiene en tensión lo santo y lo ordinario, lo espiritual y lo físico. El relato de la transfiguración en Marcos no se trata de la historia de Jesús que experimenta su propia divinidad. Tampoco es la historia de alguna consulta importante que Jesús tuvo con Moisés y Elías. ¡Ni siquiera sabemos lo que dijeron! Más bien es la historia de los discípulos que se encuentran con Dios en el propio medio físico de ellos, representado por el cuerpo y la ropa de Jesús, y en la propia historia de ellos, representada por Moisés y Elías. Es la historia de una fe que los dispone a encontrar a Dios en su pasado, presente y futuro, según sugiere Lee.

¿Qué significa esto para nosotros hoy? ¿Qué significa vivir con una fe transfigurada?

Por más de tres años, Church World Service (CWS), con el respaldo de ELCA World Hunger, ha prestado servicios de protección de menores a niños no acompañados en Bosnia y Herzegovina. Como viven en una tierra extranjera sin padres ni familiares a su lado, estos niños vulnerables atraviesan una jornada difícil, tratando de alcanzar un futuro mejor. Muchos de ellos han llegado a vivir según un principio simple pero devastador: “No confíes en la gente”. Levantan muros a su alrededor para mantenerse a salvo de aquellos que se aprovecharían de ellos, pero estos muros también conllevan ansiedad, depresión y un profundo escepticismo hacia los adultos o las agencias que intentan ayudarlos.

Uno de los jóvenes que CWS ayudó es Ahmed (su nombre fue cambiado por motivos de privacidad). Ahmed dejó su hogar en Burundi hace dos años, y confiaba en el dinero que sus padres habían recaudado para que viajara a Croacia. Cuando el CWS lo conoció, había estado viviendo en Bosnia y Herzegovina durante casi un año. “Me fui con seis amigos, todos de Burundi”, dice. “Observábamos a la gente hambrienta todos los días [en Burundi], y estábamos entre ellos. Soy el mayor, así que soy responsable de mis hermanos. Mi padre está enfermo, así que no puede trabajar. Tengo que ayudarlos”.

A lo largo del camino, Ahmed se enfrentó a grandes desafíos, como la violencia física y la intimidación por parte de la policía en la frontera croata. “¡Vuelve de donde viniste!” le gritaron mientras lo empujaban. “¿Cómo puedo volver –dice Ahmed– cuando la supervivencia de mi familia depende de que yo siga adelante?”

Trágicamente, la historia de Ahmed no es única. Como muchos otros, lleva el peso de su jornada, su añoranza del hogar y su esperanza frustrada de un futuro en Europa. En el momento en que el personal de CWS se reunió con él, Ahmed estaba haciendo su noveno intento de entrar en Croacia. Después de brindarle toda la ayuda que pudieron, lo vieron partir, con la esperanza de que, esta vez, el viaje fuera exitoso.

Una fe transfigurada, moldeada por un encuentro con el Dios que transforma nuestro mundo y nuestra perspectiva, nos cambia. Encontrar a Jesús transfigurado es recordar que Dios ha entrado en la historia humana, que Dios desempeña un papel en la historia de los niños no acompañados. Pero encontrarse con Jesús transfigurado significa también recordar lo físico y lo espiritual para decir con Pedro: “Debemos levantar aquí un albergue”. Los temores y la decepción de Ahmed no se desvanecen solo porque Dios es parte de su historia. Tampoco se calman milagrosamente los pies cansados de Ahmed.

Llevar al mundo una fe transfigurada, dar testimonio de nuestro encuentro con Dios en la transfiguración, nos impulsa radicalmente hacia afuera a buscar a Dios en las personas y en los acontecimientos reales que nos rodean. Esta fe se basa en la creencia de que Dios está presente con nosotros a través del carpintero galileo y a través de un niño burundés. Con demasiada frecuencia, los migrantes como Ahmed son vistos como una mera carga o una intrusión: “¡Vuelve de donde viniste!” le dijeron. Sin embargo, una fe transfigurada nos recuerda que nuestro prójimo es más que cargas o perturbaciones, más que incluso su propia necesidad; para nosotros son la presencia de Dios, así como nosotros lo somos los unos para los otros.

Encontrar a Dios en la transfiguración es más que un evento extraño en la cima de una montaña hace 2,000 años. Dios transfigura nuestra fe y percepción, poniéndonos dispuestos a reconocer a Dios en nuestro prójimo y a percibir a Dios activo en nuestra historia. Después de que Pedro, Santiago y Juan llegan a la cima de la montaña, no hay marcha atrás. Jesús no es un maestro ordinario al que siguen. Esto es algo nuevo, algo milagrosa y maravillosamente diferente. Aquí está la revelación de la divinidad, transformando sus vidas y su forma de ver el mundo.

Mientras caminamos juntos espiritualmente a través de la Cuaresma, hagámoslo con una fe transfigurada, recordando las jornadas difíciles, peligrosas y físicas que atraviesan muchos de nuestros vecinos y recordando nuestra llamada a estar presentes con ellos y entre nosotros, para ser cambiados por la presencia de Dios dentro de ellos.

 

Preguntas de reflexión

¿Cómo hubiera reaccionado usted si hubiese estado en la montaña con Pedro, Santiago y Juan?

Con la transfiguración de Jesús, los discípulos llegan a ver la divinidad de Cristo. ¿Cómo pudo esto haber cambiado su comprensión de lo que significa ser un discípulo?

¿Cómo nos cambia una fe transfigurada, que reconoce las formas en que Dios está presente en nuestro mundo y entre nosotros?

¿Cómo puede la iglesia confrontar y cambiar la percepción negativa de la gente hacia vecinos como Ahmed? ¿Qué diferencia podría marcar esto?

 


[1] Dorothy Lee, Transfiguration (New York: Continuum, 2004), 2.

[1] Dorothy Lee, Transfiguration [La Transfiguración] (New York: Continuum, 2004), 2.

2024 World Hunger Lent Study: Week 1

The following is taken from the 2024 ELCA World Hunger Lent Study. The full resource can be ordered as a hardcopy or downloaded as a PDF in English or Spanish at the link here.

Reconciliation

•••

Genesis 9:8-17

Psalm 25:1-10

1 Peter 3:18-22

Mark 1:9-15

During Advent we reflected together on what it means to encounter God. We contemplated the spaces where God is revealed to us, the invitation to be part of God’s work in history, the vocation to which the church is called today and what it means to be grasped by the proclamation of Christ’s birth. Now, during Lent, we return to this journey, exploring the many ways we encounter God as we respond to hunger, poverty and need today. In this first session we will explore the act of reconciliation, the restoration of wholeness to relationships and to people when injustice makes the fullness of life in community impossible.

Jerri Eliano de Quevedo and his wife, Sirlei Eloí, live in the Kilombo Monjolo, a community in the municipality of São Lourenço do Sul in Brazil. Like many kilombola — descendants of the 4.5 million enslaved Africans brought to Brazil between 1570 and 1857 — they support themselves and their children principally through farming a plot of land in the kilombo. The plot is small, about 2 hectares. Given the frequent droughts, inadequate infrastructure and insufficient legal or political protections, making a living in this community can be incredibly difficult. In the past Jerri and Sirlei have tried to find work in urban centers outside the kilombo, but they have no access to education, so few jobs are available to them.

For Jerri, finding a way to stay on the land while feeding his family is not just a matter of finances but also of kilombola cultural identity. “The kilombolas always had to grow their food in small spaces, all together, because they didn’t have much land,” he explains. “This, for us, is cultural, and working in another way is out of our custom.”

A cultural relationship with and ecological knowledge of the land are central to kilombola history. From Africa the kilombola brought seeds and extensive knowledge of crops, which helped some of them to develop sophisticated agroforestry and farming systems. Yet access to sufficient land has always been a challenge for kilombolas, whose communities sprang from their resistance to slavery. As Edward Shore describes in the Texas Law Review, “Wherever there was slavery, there was also resistance — which assumed many forms. One such form of resistance was the formation of communities by [people who had escaped enslavement], known in Brazil as mocambos and kilombolas, demonyms of Kimbundu (Angolan) origin that signified ‘hideouts’ and ‘encampments.’”¹ Kilombolas in Brazil are similar to maroon communities in the United States, where self-liberated enslaved people formed isolated or hidden settlements.

These communities quickly became an important and visible part of Brazilian life but remained frequent targets of vilification and violence, both during and after slavery. Kilombolas were often forcibly removed from their land, and laws were passed in the 19th century that prevented them from owning land without official government titles, something most kilombolas were unable to obtain. In the century after Brazilian slavery ended in 1888, kilombolas faced significant obstacles to legal protection, education and economic opportunities.

In 1988 a new constitution in Brazil promised to protect AfroBrazilians’ rights, especially the right to land. Shore writes, “Brazil, the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery (in 1888) became the first country to constitutionally guarantee the collective land rights of the descendants of enslaved people.”² Though there is work to be done to fully guarantee kilombola rights, kilomobolas across Brazil have joined together to grow local economies and defend their constitutional right to land. The oppression of kilombolas testifies to the need for full reconciliation, to bring full opportunity for dignity and life to a people the world actively marginalizes.

The Igreja Evangélica de Confissão Luterana no Brasil (IECLB) and its diaconal arm, the Fundação Luterana de Diaconia (FLD), have journeyed with Jerri, Sirlei and the Kilombo Monjolo in this work, in partnership with the Center for Support and Promotion of Agroecology (CAPA) in the southern region of the Rio Grande do Sul state. This work is supported in part by ELCA World Hunger. Through the project, kilombola farmers joined together in cooperatives to gain access to seeds, training and new opportunities. “The community started to change,” Jerri says. Over time, other entities, including universities, began working with the community. “We began to have support, and life got better.”

“The work of CAPA within the community is about accompaniment, partnership and joint construction, and with open dialogue, creating the farming projects and other activities,” Jerri says. The kilombola communities, which practice their own ancestral spirituality, have worked with CAPA/Lutheran Foundation of Diakonia for decades. In addition to the farming projects, the partnership has helped as the kilombola market handicrafts, share technical advice, and acquire legal documentation, housing and access to spaces for public policy advocacy.

The most important work, though, according to Jerri, has been winning recognition of the community as a kilombola. “In my
understanding,” he says, “the work of CAPA so that we were recognized as a kilombola community was fundamental, so that today we could be in spaces of discussion, commercialization and seeking our rights.”

The project has helped Jerri and Sirlei diversify their crops, access markets and increase their income. Through it all they
have been recognized for their identity, dignity and rich history. “When we came to Brazil, it was not to be merchants but to be
traded,” says Jerri. “So this has brought us a big change, bringing respect and visibility.”

Jerri and Sirlei’s story shows how historic and ongoing injustices leave families vulnerable to hunger. Hunger is not incidental or accidental. In the case of Brazilian kilombolas it is the direct result of oppression and injustice — slavery, racism, discrimination, inequity, violence. Yet their story also reveals their witness of courage, strength and resilience as we work together toward a just world where all are fed.

In the Bible readings for this first week of Lent, the author of 1 Peter reminds us of Jesus’ death and resurrection, the cost of the sacrifice and the consequences. Jesus, who was executed by an unjust occupying political power in Jerusalem, gives his life and, in doing so, makes possible our reconciliation with God. Whereas sin estranges us from God and one another, Jesus restores us to fellowship with God, so that we may be restored in fellowship to one another.

This reconciliation is more than just a good feeling, more even than the experience of forgiveness. It is a radical restoration of relationship with the One who knows us. Reconciliation has its roots in a Latin term meaning “to overcome feelings of distrust or hostility” or, in another form, “to bring together, unite in feelings, make friendly.” To be reconciled is to overcome conflict and transform a broken relationship — to be restored, often in a new way. For the writer of 1 Peter, this is the work of Christ. As the author writes of baptism, this is not merely the removal of offending “dirt from the body” but a more profound transformation of relationship.

As we are reconciled to God, God calls us to reconcile with one another. Lent invites us to think more deeply about what that means. Grace assures us that we need not worry about our relationship with God; Christ has reconciled us. But grace also impels us into the world, to be witnesses of reconciliation in every relationship. This is not easy work. It will take confronting the brokenness in relationships marred by racism, oppression, exclusion and injustice. Nor is it quick work. To be reconciled isn’t merely to apologize and be forgiven for past wrongs but to do the work of building together a new, shared world where each of us will be recognized and respected for the fullness of dignity we have from God, who created us.

 

Reflection Questions

What does it mean to be reconciled? Where have you experienced reconciliation through your own faith?

How can hunger ministry be seen as an expression of our reconciliation to God, the world and each other?

How does the story of kilombolas in Brazil demonstrate that reconciliation must mean more than apology and
forgiveness?

What relationships in society, the church and the world need to be transformed to end hunger?

 

Reconciliation

•••

Génesis 9:8-17
Salmo 25:1-10
1 Pedro 3:18-22
Marcos 1:9-15

Durante el Adviento reflexionamos juntos sobre lo que significa encontrarse con Dios. Contemplamos los espacios donde Dios se nos revela, la invitación a ser parte de la obra de Dios en la historia, la vocación a la que la iglesia está llamada hoy, y lo que significa ser aprehendidos por el anuncio del nacimiento de Cristo. Ahora, durante la Cuaresma, volvemos a esta jornada, y exploramos las muchas formas en que nos encontramos con Dios mientras damos respuesta al hambre, la pobreza y la necesidad de hoy. En esta primera sesión exploraremos el acto de reconciliación, la restauración de la integridad de las relaciones y de las personas cuando la injusticia hace imposible la plenitud de vida en la comunidad.

Jerri Eliano de Quevedo y su esposa, Sirlei Eloí, viven en el quilombo Monjolo, una comunidad del municipio de São Lourenço do Sul, en Brasil. Como muchos quilombolas —descendientes de los 4.5 millones de africanos esclavizados traídos a Brasil
entre 1570 y 1857— se mantienen a sí mismos y a sus hijos principalmente a través del cultivo de una parcela de tierra en el quilombo. La parcela es pequeña, de unas 2 hectáreas. Dadas las frecuentes sequías, una infraestructura inadecuada e insuficientes protecciones legales o políticas, puede ser sumamente difícil ganarse la vida en esta comunidad. En el pasado, Jerri y Sirlei han tratado de encontrar trabajo en centros urbanos fuera del quilombo, pero como no tienen acceso a educación, hay pocos puestos de trabajo disponibles para ellos.

Para Jerri, encontrar una manera de permanecer en la tierra mientras alimenta a su familia no es solo una cuestión de finanzas, sino también de identidad cultural quilombola. “Los quilombolas siempre tuvieron que cultivar sus alimentos en espacios pequeños, todos juntos, porque no tenían mucha tierra”, explica Jerri. “Esto es algo cultural para nosotros, y no es parte de nuestra costumbre trabajar de otra manera”.

La relación cultural con la tierra y el conocimiento ecológico de esta son elementos fundamentales en la historia de los quilombolas, quienes trajeron de África sus semillas y un amplio conocimiento de las siembras, lo que ayudó a algunos de ellos a desarrollar sofisticados sistemas agroforestales y agrícolas. Sin embargo, el acceso a tierras suficientes siempre ha sido un reto para los quilombolas, cuyas comunidades surgieron de su resistencia a la esclavitud. Como describe Edward Shore en Texas Law Review: “Dondequiera que había esclavitud, también había resistencia, la cual asumía muchas formas. Una de esas formas de resistencia fue la formación de comunidades por personas que habían escapado de la esclavitud, conocidas en Brasil como mocambos y quilombolas, demónimos de origen kimbundu (angoleño) que significaban ‘escondites’ y ‘campamentos’”¹ Los quilombolas de Brasil son similares a las comunidades cimarronas de los Estados Unidos, donde las personas esclavizadas auto liberadas formaron asentamientos aislados u ocultos

Estas comunidades se convirtieron rápidamente en una parte importante y visible de la vida brasileña, pero siguieron siendo blanco frecuente de vilipendio y violencia, durante y después de la esclavitud. Los quilombolas eran a menudo sacados de sus tierras por la fuerza, y en el siglo XIX se aprobaron leyes que les impedían poseer tierras sin títulos oficiales del gobierno, algo que la mayoría de los quilombolas no podían obtener. En el siglo posterior al fin de la esclavitud brasileña en 1888, los quilombolas se enfrentaron a importantes obstáculos para recibir protección legal, educación y oportunidades económicas.

En 1988, una nueva constitución en Brasil prometió proteger los derechos de los afrobrasileños, especialmente el derecho a la tierra. Shore escribe: “Brasil, el último país de América en abolir la esclavitud (en 1888), se convirtió en el primer país en garantizar constitucionalmente los derechos colectivos sobre la tierra de los descendientes de personas esclavizadas”.² Aunque queda trabajo por hacer para garantizar plenamente los derechos de los quilombolas, los quilombolas de todo Brasil se han unido para hacer crecer las economías locales y defender su derecho constitucional a la tierra. La opresión de los quilombolas atestigua la necesidad de una reconciliación plena, para brindar plenas oportunidades de dignidad y vida a un pueblo que el mundo margina activamente.

La Igreja Evangélica de Confissão Luterana no Brasil (IECLB) y su rama diaconal, la Fundação Luterana de Diaconia (FLD), han caminado con Jerri, Sirlei y el quilombo Monjolo en este trabajo, en colaboración con el Centro de Apoyo y Promoción de la Agroecología (CAPA) de la región sur del estado de Rio Grande do Sul. Este trabajo es respaldado en parte por ELCA World Hunger. A través del proyecto, los agricultores quilombolas se unieron en cooperativas para obtener acceso a semillas, capacitación y nuevas oportunidades. “La comunidad comenzó a cambiar”, dice Jerri. Con el tiempo, otras entidades, incluidas las universidades, comenzaron a trabajar con la comunidad. “Empezamos recibir apoyo, y la vida mejoró”.

“El trabajo de CAPA dentro de la comunidad tiene que ver con el acompañamiento, alianza y obra conjunta y, con diálogo abierto, crear los proyectos agrícolas y otras actividades”, dice Jerri. Las comunidades quilombolas, que practican su propia espiritualidad ancestral, han trabajado con CAPA/Fundación Luterana de Diakonia durante décadas. Además de los proyectos agrícolas, la alianza ha ayudado a que los quilombolas comercialicen artesanías, compartan asesoría técnica y adquieran documentación legal, vivienda y acceso a espacios para la incidencia de políticas públicas. Sin embargo, el trabajo más importante, según Jerri, ha sido ganar el reconocimiento de la comunidad como quilombola. “A mi entender”, dice él, “fue fundamental el trabajo de CAPA para que se nos reconociera como comunidad quilombola, para que hoy pudiéramos estar en espacios de discusión, comercialización y búsqueda de nuestros derechos”.

El proyecto ha ayudado a Jerri y Sirlei a diversificar sus cultivos, acceder a mercados y aumentar sus ingresos. A través de todo, han sido reconocidos por su identidad, dignidad y rica historia. “Cuando llegamos a Brasil, no fue para ser comerciantes, sino para ser comerciados”, dice Jerri. “Así que esto ha producido un gran cambio, trayendo respeto y visibilidad”.

La historia de Jerri y Sirlei muestra la forma en que las injusticias históricas y actuales dejan a las familias vulnerables al hambre. El hambre no es incidental ni accidental. En el caso de los quilombolas brasileños es el resultado directo de la opresión y la injusticia —esclavitud, racismo, discriminación, inequidad, violencia. Sin embargo, su historia también revela su testimonio de coraje, fortaleza y resiliencia mientras trabajamos juntos en pro de un mundo justo en el que todos seamos alimentados.

En las lecturas bíblicas de esta primera semana de Cuaresma, el autor de 1 Pedro nos recuerda la muerte y resurrección de Jesús, el costo del sacrificio y las consecuencias. Jesús, quien fue ejecutado por un injusto poder político ocupante en Jerusalén, da su vida y, al hacerlo, hace posible nuestra reconciliación con Dios. Mientras que el pecado nos aleja de Dios y de los demás, Jesús nos restaura a la comunión con Dios para que podamos ser restaurados en comunión los unos con los otros.

Esta reconciliación es más que un buen sentimiento, más incluso que la experiencia del perdón. Es una restauración radical de la relación con Aquel que nos conoce. La reconciliación tiene sus raíces en un término latino que significa “superar los sentimientos de desconfianza u hostilidad” o, en otra forma, “reunir, unirse en sentimientos, hacerse amigable”. Reconciliarse es superar el conflicto y transformar una relación rota —ser restaurado, a menudo de una manera nueva. Para el escritor de 1 Pedro, esta es la obra de Cristo. Como escribe el autor sobre el bautismo, esto no es simplemente la eliminación de la ofensiva “suciedad del cuerpo”, sino una transformación más profunda de la relación.

A medida que nos reconciliamos con Dios, Dios nos llama a reconciliarnos unos con otros. La Cuaresma nos invita a pensar más profundamente sobre lo que eso significa. La gracia nos asegura que no tenemos que preocuparnos por nuestra relación con Dios; Cristo nos ha reconciliado. Pero la gracia también nos impulsa a entrar en el mundo, a ser testimonio de reconciliación en cada relación.

Este no es un trabajo fácil. Será necesario hacer frente a la ruptura de las relaciones empañadas por el racismo, la opresión, la exclusión y la injusticia. Tampoco es un trabajo rápido. Reconciliarse no es simplemente disculparse y ser perdonado por los errores del pasado, sino hacer el trabajo de construir juntos un mundo nuevo y compartido donde cada uno de nosotros sea reconocido y respetado por la plenitud de dignidad que tenemos de Dios, quien nos creó.

 

Preguntas de Reflexión

¿Qué significa ser reconciliados? ¿Dónde ha experimentado reconciliación a través de su propia fe?

¿Cómo puede verse el ministerio del hambre como una expresión de nuestra reconciliación con Dios, con el mundo y con los demás?

¿Cómo demuestra la historia de los quilombolas en Brasil que la reconciliación debe significar más que disculpas y perdón?

¿Qué relaciones en la sociedad, la iglesia y el mundo necesitan ser transformadas para acabar con el hambre?

 


¹ Edward Shore, “A Dream Deferred: The Emergence and Fitful Enforcement of
the Quilombo Law in Brazil” [Un sueño aplazado: el surgimiento y la aplicación
irregular de la Ley del Quilombo en Brasil] Texas Law Review 101:3, notas 24-25,
texaslawreview.org/a-dream-deferred-the-emergence-and-fitful-enforcement-ofthe-quilombo-law-in-brazil/

² Ibid, note 18.

Regenerating Life: Watch and Meet the Filmmaker

Event information image. All information below on page.

Lutherans Restoring Creation and ELCA World Hunger are eager to share a resource faith communities can use to start discussions and inspire community-based-solutions to grow climate justice, as part of the One Home, One Future collaborative.

Regenerating Life: How to Cool the Planet, Feed the World, and Live Happily Ever After offers attainable solutions to the climate crisis through an ecological approach that unpacks the social and environmental crises confronting us.

Join us Tuesday Feb 27th at 8:00 pm ET/7:00 CT/6:00 MT/5:00 PT/4:00AK for film highlights & discussion with the filmmaker, John Feldman. You can view the trailer here.

Register now (click here) to gain free temporary access to this three-part documentary film, to watch at your convenience before we spend an hour meeting with the filmmaker and considering how best to share this multifaceted resource within our communities. You are also encouraged to start planning a screening for a larger group gathering in your own context to imagine together what your community’s next most faithful step can be. There is a curriculum in development to help us grow into answering the call from this remarkable collection of voices across the globe.

Once you register for this event, look for a follow-up email with your private link to stream the film. Please be sure to join the online discussion, even if you don’t get a chance to watch it in entirety before we meet.  We will be watching a few minutes of highlights together for a shared experience before starting the conversation with the filmmaker.

Reflections on the Israel-Hamas Conflict: Scarcity, Abundance, and Imagination

Image of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, foregrounded by a cross. Both the cross and the Dome of the Rock are separated by a chain-link fence.

Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem (ELCA)

For many U.S. residents reading this blog post, our ability to think soundly about the Israel-Hamas conflict has been consistently interrupted by waves of conflicting images and emotions: stories of trauma and grief from Israelis impacted by the Hamas attacks on their homes, followed almost immediately by accounts from Gaza of deaths; both moments of horror followed quickly by a outrage and ambivalence gestated over decades by a binary debate over U.S. involvement in the conflict. We can certainly feel tired to act when we pile onto these emotions the ways social media and cable news saturate our lives with every world event.

When, on the edge of exhaustion, it can be difficult to consider a Christian response, but Bishop Eaton has laid down a challenge to Lutherans: “God has called us to be a people who stand with others amid suffering.” From the Hunger Education desk, this notion boils down to two key words: scarcity and abundance. Indeed, confronted with death around the world we often turn to comfort in distractions. This is scarcity, the limitation of our own opportunity to seek justice for the other. But to see and read about 2 million people imprisoned and besieged in a warzone, while we as Western Christians have the ability to turn away? This is indeed a sign that we have the resources to participate in full, abundant life with and for our neighbors.

Both concepts have found voice for me in John 4:1-26, a moment in our Christian story when political divisions over who belongs momentarily paralyze recognition of basic human needs for sustenance and care. Both the current political discourse in the U.S. and the historical conflict between ancient Jews and Samaritans, start from an understanding that the neighbor should be mistrusted. And a mistrustful stance toward others means accepting that they don’t deserve our resources, that our abundance is, in fact, scarcity. But here, in John’s Gospel and in Gaza, we find an opportunity to view the need of the other as precisely the moment to act in accordance with our abundant life.

Mistrust, Scarcity, and Abundance in John 4:1-26

John 4:1-26’s relation here is not incidental: while on a much smaller in scale to the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza, Jesus has a need for water—he had been traveling a long way and was thirsty (vv. 1-4). He asks a Samaritan woman approaching the well to draw water and she immediately draws the political battleline with a mistrustful interrogation: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria”; and the narrator puts the difference in bold, with, “Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans” (v. 9). Jesus is in need here and this woman has what he needs. Political differences allow her to defer or even avoid sharing the resources of her home in a moment of scarcity. Helpfully, though, this narrative opens with Jesus exposing his own vulnerability and need, and the woman eventually showing hers, making space for a gift of life-giving water, water that will end all thirst (v. 10-15).

Without a moment of vulnerability and tension, one that allows for the painful past and power politics to be exposed, we can lose sight of the real issue: abundant water. To this end, Bishop Eaton’s challenge to Lutherans to hold “tension between two truths” highlights the actual need for those of us with the privilege of resources, voice, and time: “God has called us to be a people who stand with others amid suffering.” The Samaritan woman faces a choice, as someone in need is before her face, at her very well—her home—in need of merely a drink. She can reinforce the scarcity illusion or she can stand in solidarity with another created person who needs sustenance as much as she does.

Partisan back-and-forth, “both sides are to blame” narratives, and public vitriol benefit people in power, because these things require little material resources of us as citizens: we can protect our common good(s) while blaming the other. Complaint and blame demand little of us, as Christians, while advocacy and activism require use of our resources and focus. Retreating to traditional lines of difference and tired tropes can feel easy, like reciting a script, but doing so also prevents those with privilege from seeing and treating the needs of the marginalized, the thirsty, and the hungry.

In moments of tension and discomfort, as John’s Gospel shows, we find opportunities for justice where those truly in need are seen, where myths of scarcity are banished in favor of abundance.

Abundance, Imagination, and Faith

In times and places like Israel and Palestine at this moment, belonging and hope can feel scarce. Israeli families killed in the private and public comforts of their daily lives or meant to feel fear in the very places they find routine; Palestinians killed from miles away, already imprisoned in a patch of land, under occupation, and invisible to those of us who fund Israeli bombs leveling their neighborhoods. Like many of us, I have come to understand home as something more complicated than the walls of a building—it has something more to do with the relationships, memories, and meaning that form around a particular place.

As Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb, president of Dar al-Kalima University of Arts and Culture in Bethlehem, reminds us, to call a place like Palestine home is fraught with mourning in this “battlefield for competing empires.”[1] That is, the bombs dropped on Gaza neighborhoods is both nothing new and the result of millennia of colonial ambitions in this area. Certainly, for those of us who live in relative peace and privilege, unconscious of the violence meted out by nation-states—even our own, funding decades of war in the Middle East—Rev. Dr. Raheb’s call might seem, at first, fatalistic and a call to give into scarcity.

Instead, Rev. Dr. Raheb calls back to the faithful imagination necessary to break out of the U.S.’s current stance of “managing conflict” in Israel and Palestine through Israeli military aid,[2] to the imagination called for by faith “to have life and have it abundantly.”[3] The current stance that prizes national security over the abundant life demanded by Palestinians under occupation is the same one that makes it acceptable to cut of 2 million Gazans from food, water, and energy—while killing thousands of people in Gaza. Scarcity means rocket attacks, terrorist killings, airstrikes, ground invasions, and imprisonment.

The Augusta Victoria Hospital on the Mount of Olives. Photo: Albin Hillert/Life on Earth

“Security” and its accompanying violence are parts of a scarcity value system, while belonging, memory, love, and care can exist only with abundant, imaginative, faithful life. There is always room for home. Ancestors “can worship on this mountain” and “in Jerusalem” (John 4:19). We can give water from a well and “water from a spring gushing up to eternal life” (4:14). When world leaders tell us, “Security first!” our Christian response must always start with life, and life abundantly.

And I hope you and your community can respond to the crisis emerging in Israel and Gaza with abundance—whatever that looks like. Here are some places to start:

The ELCA is curating opportunities to act with your abundance here. On this page, among other things, you can…

  • Support Lutheran Disaster Response’ work on the ground with your financial gifts
  • Join with other ELCA members and write to your representatives in Washington (head to this link), urging:
    • A cease-fire, de-escalation and restraint from all parties
    • That all parties to abide by the laws of war, including the Geneva Conventions, customary international law and international human rights law
    • Steps to secure immediate release of hostages and international protection for civilians.

Learning. We have numerous opportunities and a strong network of partners available to support your congregation’s reflection, discussion, and growth.

  • Check out resources from the ELCA’s Peace not Walls network and begin the discussion about human rights and dignity in Palestine and Israel.
  • Explore the work of our partner church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL).
  • Start a conversation with your congregation about adopting an abundance stance toward the economy and hunger with ELCA World Hunger’s “Hungering for Justice” study guide on Luther and the economy.
  • Check out Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb’s book, Faith in the Face of Empire (the text I referenced above). It’s well-suited for congregational reading groups. Despite being written in 2014, reflecting on the Arab Spring, the book provides a prescient voice out of Palestine in this

 

Dr. Peter N. McLellan is the Program Director, Hunger Education with the ELCA’s Building Resilient Communities team.

 


[1] Mitri Raheb, Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible through Palestinian Eyes (New York: Orbis, 2014), 5.

[2] Raheb, Faith, 125. The 2016 ELCA Churchwide Assembly resolved that all military aid to Israel must be conditioned on the observance of human rights (CA16.05.15).

[3] Raheb, Faith, 129.

World Hunger Leaders Gathering: Embracing Hope – Taking Action – Moving Forward!

 

For fifty years, we have stood together as Lutherans, taking action to address root causes of hunger and poverty around the world through ELCA World Hunger, grounded in God’s promise of a time when we will hunger and thirst no more. As part of the long tradition of the church meeting human needs, ELCA World Hunger is a testament to our hope and our commitment for this church to be part of God’s transformation of the world.

Today, we invite you to celebrate the 50th anniversary of ELCA World Hunger at the 2024 ELCA World Hunger Leadership Gathering. The Mary and Howie Wennes Hunger Leadership Endowment supports the gathering, established by the Wennes Family in 2016.

This signature event gathers ELCA World Hunger’s leaders for a time of networking, idea sharing, learning, and planning for our shared ministry to address hunger and its root causes in our local and global communities. Next year’s event, February 1-4, 2024, will center on 1 Peter 4:10 and the theme Embracing Hope – Taking Action – Moving Forward! We celebrate 50th years of God’s faithfulness!

Who is invited?

· Each synod is invited to bring up to three participants to the event.

· To reflect the diversity of our church, synods bringing three participants must ensure that at least one participant is a youth, young adult or person of color. A discounted registration rate will apply for the third representative.

· Former Hunger Advocacy Fellows.

· Big Dream Ministry Partners.

· Invited ELCA World Hunger ministry partners.

 

What is the cost?

All registrations include airfare, all event costs, and room and board for four days, three nights. Rates below are for synod representatives. Ministry partners, Big Dream ministry partners and former Hunger Advocacy Fellows will receive information about their rates in separate email invitations.

 

Standard Registration: $450 | Discounted Rate (for Third Hunger Leader): $250

Registration is NOW OPEN at this link.

Questions? Contact us at hunger@elca.org

New Data Show Trends, Challenge Old Wisdom

Knowing the numbers for hunger and poverty can go a long way to helping us talk about the issues accurately and craft effective, forward-looking responses. For those who share with their congregation information about hunger and poverty, these numbers can also be helpful in putting together presentations or workshops.

There are several sources for data that are particularly reliable and useful[1]:

  • The World Bank’s poverty report;
  • The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO) annual “State of Food Security” report;
  • The US Census Bureau’s annual reports on poverty and income; and
  • The US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) annual “Food Security in the US” report.

We are still waiting for the release of the USDA’s report, hopefully within the next week, but already, the data are showing some troubling trends and some surprising shifts in understanding hunger and poverty.

Rather than litter this post with a ton of footnotes, the sources are summarized below.

Information and infographics about global hunger and food security come from:
FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. 2023. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023.
Urbanization, agrifood systems transformation and healthy diets across the rural–urban continuum. Rome, FAO. https://doi.org/10.4060/cc3017en
Information and infographics about incomes in the United States come from:
Gloria Guzman and Melissa Kollar, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60-279, Income in the United States: 2022, U.S. Government Publishing Office, Washington, DC, September 2023.
Information and infographics about poverty in the United States come from:
Emily A. Shrider and John Creamer, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60-280, Poverty in the United States: 2022, U.S. Government Publishing Office, Washington, DC, September 2023.

 

Global Hunger

The first troubling trend in the data is that the spike in hunger we have seen in recent years has not eased. Hunger is still “far above pre-pandemic levels” (FAO, 2023, viii). In 2022, between 690 and 783 million people were hungry. If we look at the middle of this range – 735 million – we find about 122 million more people hungry in 2022 than in 2019 (613 million.) The prevalence of undernourishment, which is the measure the FAO uses to determine the rate of hunger, has increased from 7.9% in 2019 to 9.2% in 2022 – nearly 1 in 11 people around the world.

Prevalence and number of undernourished people globally, 2023 (FAO)

Fortunately, that’s come down a bit from 2021. There were about 3.8 million fewer people facing hunger in 2022 compared to 2021, but the number remains remarkably high. The rate of hunger in 2022 was a slight decrease from 9.3% in 2021, but still the highest rate since 2005. In some areas, especially Africa, Western Asia and the Caribbean, hunger continues to rise, in part because of reliance on more expensive exports.

We see even more concerning news if we turn to another measure the FAO reports, namely food security. While the prevalence of undernourishment measures long-term, chronic signs of hunger, the FAO also reports on food security, which is a shorter-term measure of people’s access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food year-round.[2] In 2022, 2.4 billion people were food-insecure, an increase of 391 million people since 2019, relatively unchanged from 2021. This means nearly 30% of people around the world cannot reliably access the food they need.

What is keeping hunger and food insecurity so high?

For starters, one critical factor is the war in Ukraine. The FAO estimates that, without the war, 23 million people would not have faced hunger in 2022. Another factor is rising costs. Food is more expensive, fuel is more expensive and incomes haven’t risen to match the jump in prices. Many countries at risk of hunger are dependent on exports. The “world food import bill,” which measures how much is spent globally on the import of food and food products, reached nearly US$2 trillion in 2022, the highest on record and an increase of 10% from 2021. This puts enormous pressures on importing countries and translates into much steeper prices for consumers. The cost for imports of agricultural inputs, such as fertilizer (a huge export of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus), was even more staggering – $424 billion in 2022, an increase of 48% from 2021. Put together, it’s more expensive to bring food in and significantly more expensive to produce food in-country.

One of the trends impacting hunger and the cost of food is urbanization. More and more people globally are moving into large cities or closer to cities. By 2050, nearly 7 in 10 people worldwide are expected to live in cities. The result of this shift, according to the FAO, is that the old framework of a rural-urban divide simply doesn’t match the world as it is. In general, as people move toward cities, their economic prospects grow, and their risk of hunger and poverty decreases (slightly.) The problem we are seeing now, though, is rapid urbanization without economic growth. While we used to think of hunger as primarily a rural issue globally, the data point us toward understanding the need to attend to a continuum of rural-to-urban, including people who live in the in-between spaces between cities and rural areas.

As people move into cities, their diets change, and this presents a challenge to traditional thinking about hunger. For years, the truism has been that the world produces enough food to meet everyone’s needs. That might not be the case going forward. Between diets changing and more people moving away from food production in rural areas, the FAO finds that “the availability of vegetables and fruits, in particular, is insufficient to meet the daily dietary requirements in almost every region of the world” (FAO, 2023, xxii; 62). The reality seems to be that the world doesn’t produce enough food for everyone in every region to enjoy a healthy diet. Hunger isn’t just a problem of access but of production that meets changing needs – and changing understandings of nutrition and health.

The availability of food groups to meet a healthy diet (FAO)

 

Another surprising finding is that, in most of the countries the FAO analyzed, the majority of food consumed in rural households is purchased, not produced. This, too, challenges the traditional picture of rural subsistence farmers relying solely on food they grow or produce and makes the relationship between access and production more complex. The reality is that, in rural areas, the share of food that is produced by a household represents only about 33-37% of the food they consume, according to the FAO. The rest is purchased from grocery stores, street vendors or other suppliers.

There are a couple of consequences here. First, the growth in food purchases also means, in many cases, increased consumption of highly-processed foods, which can have lower nutritional value. This may mean that improving food security and nutrition will require new regulations to incentivize healthy eating and prevent exposure to unsafe foods, especially convenience foods purchased from street vendors. Second, focusing on increasing yields and production among rural farmers is important but may need to be combined with other efforts. It may also be important to focus on ways to generate income and to connect people to markets, particularly through improved infrastructure, such as navigable roads. That said, there still needs to be a focus on increasing farming production, especially of fruits and vegetables but also of staple grains, to meet the growing needs of an urbanizing population and to build resilience to shocks to export markets, as we’re seeing with the war in Ukraine.

The long-and-short of it is that the data suggest that the world may face a problem of not producing enough food to meet the changing diets of the world, and rural subsistence, as we tend to envision it, doesn’t completely reflect people’s actual dietary lives. These are huge shifts in our understanding.

Poverty and Income in the United States

As mentioned above, we are still waiting for new data on food security, but we do have information on income and poverty, courtesy of the US Census Bureau.

In 2022, the official poverty rate in the US was 11.5%, representing about 37.9 million people living in poverty. The good news is this wasn’t significantly different from 2021; the bad news is that this rate is far too high and still slightly higher than in 2019, before the pandemic.

Number of people in poverty and poverty rate over time in the US (US Census Bureau)

 

One thing to note in the data is geographic differences in poverty. While people living in every type of setting – city, suburb, rural– face vulnerability to poverty, the highest rate of poverty in the US is found “outside metropolitan statistical areas” or, in other words, rural areas. Fifteen percent of people living in rural areas in 2022 experienced poverty, compared to 11.0% living in urban centers (“metropolitan statistical areas.”) In principal cities themselves, poverty remained above 14% for 2022. So, the picture of poverty in the US as being primarily urban is not quite borne out by research; rural areas actually experience poverty at a slightly higher rate.

In addition to the official poverty measure, the US Census Bureau also calculates a Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM.) You can read more about the differences here, but one of the interesting things the SPM lets us see is how certain safety net programs and benefits help alleviate poverty. It also allows us to estimate how much certain costs contribute to poverty. Moreover, it determines the threshold of income that is “in poverty” a bit differently.

One important caveat before getting into the numbers: the numbers below are from the Supplemental Poverty Measure, not the official poverty measure. While they are illuminating and help us to analyze poverty more deeply, they should not be used as a replacement for the official poverty measure.

Here is where the news gets a bit frustrating, to be honest. We knew when the Child Tax Credit was expanded that we would see a rapid reduction in child poverty, and we did. Of course, that expansion and COVID-19 stipends expired in 2022, so the rate of child poverty in the US went up, as we knew it would. In fact, between 2021 and 2022, according to the SPM, child poverty more than doubled, from 5.4% in 2021 to 12.4% in 2022. At the same time, the official poverty rate for children stayed relatively stable, showing the deep impact the Child Tax Credit expansion had on child poverty. Perhaps even more worrisome is that the share of children in households with income of less than half of the poverty line also doubled, showing an increase of more than 100% for children living in what is considered deep poverty. Increases in deep poverty were true across the board for all age groups. The share of the population with resources below 50 percent of the SPM poverty threshold increased for every age group in the US. What this may point to is the way in which tax credits and stimulus payments had had a particularly significant impact on people living in deep poverty. What it also suggests is that ending poverty for households, even households in deep poverty, is not impossible; progress just takes bold but doable policy choices.

Child poverty – supplemental poverty measure vs. official poverty measure, US (US Census Bureau)

 

From the SPM, we can also get an idea of how effective certain public programs were in keeping people out of poverty in 2022. As the graph below indicates, for example, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP; formerly food stamps) and the National School Lunch Program lifted 5.1 million people out of poverty, while out-of-pocket medical expenses moved 7.1 million people into poverty, which means that, after medical expenses are subtracted from their resources, more than 7 million people had household resources below the poverty line.

Supplemental poverty measure – the impact of various sources of income or costs (US Census Bureau)

 

In terms of income, real median household income in the US decreased 2.3% between 2021 and 2022, from an estimated $76,330 per household to $74,580. More people were working full-time, year-round, but real median earnings of workers (including both part-time and full-time) decreased 2.2%. For just full-time, year-round workers, the drop in earnings was 1.3% from 2021 to 2022. So, the next time someone complains about how workers “these days” earn so much, you can gently and gracefully remind them that earnings are lower now than they were last year when accounting for inflation– at the same time (and partially because) goods cost so much more.

 

Credit: US Census Bureau, 2023

 

Moreover, the next time someone says, “People just don’t want to work anymore,” it might be helpful to point out that the number of full-time, year-round workers increased 3.4% between 2021 and 2022, compared to an overall increase in workers of 1.7%, which, according to the US Census Bureau, suggests that what we are actually seeing is a shift from part-time work to full-time, year-round work. The percentage of people 16 years and older who were in the labor force in 2022 was 63.5% – not much different from the 63.6% 5-year average from 2017-2021.

In terms of racial disparities in real median income, White and non-Hispanic White households experienced a decrease of 3.5% and 3.6%, respectively, while the change in income for other racial groups was not statistically different from 2021. This change may be because of long-term income disparities. White and non-Hispanic White workers tend to be paid disproportionately higher incomes than other racial groups, sometimes as much as 25-100% higher, and still, despite the modest decrease, get paid real median incomes of $108,700 per year per household, the highest among racial groups. Further analysis shows that the losses in real median income nationwide largely occurred in middle and high income brackets, so this makes some sense.

This drop in middle and high incomes means that income inequality was lower in 2022 than in 2021. In fact, the US Census Bureau reports that 2022 represented the first drop in the Gini coefficient – a common measure of income inequality – since 2007. There is some good news there, though, if we look at other measurements, such as the mean logarithmic deviation of income, which is a bit more sensitive to changes at the lower end of the income spectrum, we still see income inequality at the highest rate it has been since 1967, with the exception of 2021, of course.

What this means is that, yes, income inequality decreased because of drops in income at the middle- and high-income levels. But when the lowest 20% of income earners draw in only 3% of the total income of the country, and the highest 20% get more than 52% of the total income, can we really say that we are making headway on inequality? Probably not. There’s more work to be done.

Where to go from here?

“More work to be done” is a good way to sum up what we can learn from the data. Certainly, we are nowhere near the worst of projections from the early months of the pandemic. But we are also a far cry from the Sustainable Development Goal of ending hunger by 2050.

We know, though, that things do not have to be this way. We have come a long way from where we were as a country and a world in 1974, when the Lutheran hunger appeals that became ELCA World Hunger began. As we look ahead to the 50th anniversary of this ministry next year, we do so with hope and faith. Hunger and poverty are not givens. What the last few years’ worth of data demonstrate isn’t the intractability of hunger but the risk our world runs when we collectively ease up on progress toward ending hunger and poverty.

Working together, learning from one another, listening to each other, advocating together and creating spaces for communities to build trust and address the injustices that create vulnerability will all be important steps along the way.

 

[1] What makes data “reliable and useful”? One of the first things to consider is whether the sources of data describe their methods, including limitations of the data. This can help point to whether the data are reliable or not. Another factor to consider is consistency. The agencies named in the list use the same methods year after year, so data can be compared over time, and they report any changes to methods that might impact comparability.

[2] In the past few years, there has been more attention to “food crises” around the world and reports that use a measurement referred to as IPC/CH to determine risk of famine. The FAO has a great explanation of how food crisis measurements compare to undernourishment and food security measurements in the 2023 “State of Food Security” report. See Box 1, page 12 of the report.