While children are starving

So, it is mid-summer, the weather has been lovely, the sun shining equally on those who rest and on those who toil.  We live in a country enjoying the gift of peace, in a splendid city, which offers about everything in abundance. No shortage of milk, or flour, or bread, or butter, or even meat. 
Yet, relentlessly nudging us, at the back of our minds, even at the risk of becoming background noise, or right in front of our eyes, in newspapers, on social media, just one click away on our phones is the starvation of children. Children we do not know, whose story we do not know, whose parents we do not know, who seem both far away, as if living in a different world, and right next to us everywhere we go. 
We hear their voices, we see their faces or starving bodies, crying out for help, but we do not know their names. We haven’t had an interaction with them. We haven’t held them in our arms, seen their smiles, heard their joy-filled spontaneous laughter. We haven’t built a relationship with them. If our eyes and hearts have not reached full capacity already, we may find it overwhelming if, for a moment, we try and imagine how they feel right now. We may consider it to be our duty to keep an eye and an ear out to note any progress on the situation, but we may just as well decide to look away, or ‘switch off’ as we do with our phones. 
Worried to be reduced to mere watchers of a merciless destructive game, feeling powerless, we can make that other donation which will definitely benefit organisations helping people on the ground. But we wonder: what if this is going to be stopped by the powers that be, by those in control of the flux of food and medical care? Is this not going to be entirely wasted? ‘Vanity of vanity, all is vanity’ as Ecclesiastes 1, one of the potential readings in the lectionary for this morning, had. We can give in in despair or, worse still, apathy.

And yet … ‘if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth’.
It certainly requires a bit of imagination to picture Christ above, seated at the right hand of God. In spite of the very many representations I have seen of it, in many chapels, churches, cathedrals, on carved stones, paintings or icons, this is something that does not come up easily to my mind. I need a bit of help and effort to mentally get there, especially when I pay attention to what is going on in the world.
Christians are not idealists who ignore their surroundings and pretend that everything is all right when it is not. Christians are people who are called instead to be particularly attentive to those around them and beyond, and to use their whole selves to improve situations and bring about peace, healing, new life. Whilst imagination may lead us to anticipate and fear the worst, it can also help us capture a glimpse of that which is beyond or just below the surface and which would otherwise remain invisible or inaudible. 
Christians are called, we are called, to both keep our feet on the ground, our hands in the mud, our eyes and our ears open and to do so with our hearts and minds set on the things that are above, to be inspired, literally to seek where the Spirit moves and be moved by it to action.

Easier said than done …

As it happens for the rich man whose land produces in abundance but who only seeks to store provisions for himself, fear and its counterpart our need for security get in the way. In that sense, we all too often let our imagination to cause our world to shrink rather than to expand. Our fear of scarcity takes over a sense of gratitude for the abundance; our fear of suffering and death over the celebration of life with all it has to offer. 
The land produces in abundance the parable tells us: the rich man could take reassurance in that. Yet, instead of sharing some of it and help alleviate others’ same need of security, his attention is focused on how to keep it all for himself. Yes, there is greed in the constant pursuit of accumulation, but at the core of it, and as he is able to articulate it, there is anxiety. He says to himself: ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ Will this really give his soul reassurance? Perhaps in the moment, but possibly not for very long. He could well lose it all. Or, as the text as it, his life may be ‘demanded of him’ that very evening and he will have stored these for nothing: vanity of vanity. A hope-filled imagination may have led him to consider how his crop could have benefited others, multiplied joy around. Instead, his fearful imagination led him to focus on himself alone, and made his world shrink. Instead of being a tool of liberation, it became a tool of his own imprisonment. Of course, what is striking for us listening to this story as well as to the news is the connection between land and food; the proximity of abundance of an exceptionally fertile land to starvation next door; how we, humans, so easily get in the way of God’s grace and abundance, out of fear.

The problem with greed, ‘wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language’ (Colossians 3:8) is not only the consequences on other people’s lives, but the consequences on ourselves, including that they deface us, disfigure us. They hide who we are, what we are made of and for. And whilst we may feel powerless about many other matters in the world, we do have power over how we choose to react and the face we want to reveal to the world.
If ‘Christ is all and in all’ as the epistle to the Colossians tells us, we are not only bearing God’s image within us – all of us – we are also empowered by God’s grace to reveal Christ in each other, who is the source of love, the strongest power in the world.
What would you do out of love? As a parent, as a partner, as a spouse, as a child, as a friend? How far would you go out of love? It is difficult to love people with whom we have no interaction with, whose names we do not know, with whom we haven’t built a relationship. But seeing the face of a loved one in the place of those who suffer may help us realise what love would prompt us to do.
As a friend recently said: ‘we are just one accident, one diagnosis, one unexpected phone call away from a completely different life.’ The question is: are we waiting for that one accident, one diagnosis, one unexpected phone call to wake us up and realise what is to be truly valued, what is worth fighting for, what is worth dedicating our lives to, which people we wish to spend our time with, or which causes we wish to contribute to? In short, to find out what life ‘consists in’?
While the world tells us that we should be seeking our own gain, our glory, because the world is only a stage for competition in which if you gain, I lose, so I must keep on accumulating, until we hit the wall together: global warming, massacres, genocides ... bringing destruction and not life, we are called to reveal another possible order of things, another form of relationship, the one we discover when we truly love another: if you win I win, if you lose I lose, if you suffer I suffer, if you rejoice I rejoice. 
Gandhi famously said: ‘the world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.’ We believe in a God who constantly tells us: do not be afraid, I am providing enough for everyone, I multiply bread, I keep on giving freely, I am only asking you to share with one another.