Children’s Sabbath: When Were You Hungry?

Mark 8:1-8
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost 2010

Last night about 8:30, I received an email from someone in this congregation who is so dedicated a soul that this morning’s sermon was already on his mind. The email informed me that there is a tradition among some folks in this place that “a perfect Sunday morning would be that the Gamecocks won Saturday, Clemson lost, and the Sunday sermon was short.” Truly, I say unto you, two out of three ain’t bad. It is no more likely that the Sunday sermon would be short than that the University of South Carolina could beat the #1 team in the country in football.

So in honor of an utter unlikelihood that borders on impossibility, I’m going to preach a ten-point sermon on a miracle this morning. Not three points but ten points, and here they are. One through ten. Nutrition. Attention. Affection. Compassion. Responsibility. Commitment. Thanksgiving. Breaking up what you have. Giving it away. More than enough. Got it? Good. Then may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen. Don’t you wish? Don’t you just wish?

When were you hungry? When have you experienced a grinding, gnawing need for sustenance that is hunger? Nearly twenty years ago, our own Schaeffer Kendrick challenged this congregation by saying, “No child in Greenville County should ever go to bed hungry.” The Schaeffer Kendrick Challenge was this: every person who comes here on Sunday morning should bring one canned good or other staple, or place one dollar in a special offering that should be taken up in every adult Sunday School class. That’s why those large plastic bins are located at various places around our facility. It’s why this basket sits in the “Come Unto Me Window.” It’s why last Sunday morning in the Hope Sunday School Class I put a dollar in the envelope that was passed around before the lesson started. No child in Greenville County should ever go to bed hungry.

But they do, and here’s how we know. The most recent numbers that the School District of Greenville County has made available to the general public show that out of the almost 69,000 students in public schools in this county, more than 28,000 or 41% qualified for USDA free lunch assistance. In her children’s sermon, Laura illustrated the statistics for children living below the poverty line in the U.S. as a whole. In Greenville County, based on qualifications for free lunch assistance, the percentage of children who are hungry is not 1 in 5 or 2 in 10 but 2 in 5 and 4 in 10.

One of our own members is the principal of an elementary school in which 90% of the children qualify for free and reduced lunch. Do you hear that? Three miles from here one of our members principals a school in which 90% of the children are at risk for inadequate nutrition on a daily basis. They don’t show up in National Geographic; you don’t see them on CNN or FOX News; you won’t find relief agencies running heart-rending advertisements to adopt one of them by sending a monthly check. But children all around us right here in “River City” with our beautiful Liberty Bridge and Falls Park and downtown eateries bustling in the evenings are going to bed hungry and going to school without adequate nutrition. Point #1: Nutrition. Children are hungry for nutrition.

And for attention. One morning two years ago, I jumped into the car, backed out of the driveway, and as was my habit, I fired up my cell phone to check my work voicemail. The fifth-grader in the passenger seat beside me asked, “Dad, why are you always on the phone?” “There are a lot of people I need to be in touch with,” I answered impatiently, as I tried to listen over the sound of his voice and my own. His next question was softer, more hesitant: “Am I one of those people? Am I somebody you need to be in touch with?” Click.

Don’t think for a minute that children living below the poverty line are the only children who are hungry. We see it all the time around here. Children in affluent families don’t miss many meals, but children in affluent families can be starving for attention. Their parents are so caught up in their work or their home or their recreation or their community service or maybe even their church service that their children are left hungry for attention. By the way, it’s a small thing, but I don’t listen to voice mail on the way to school anymore, because there is someone right there in the car with me that I need to be in touch with. Point #2: Attention.

And affection. Several years ago, Bev and I fostered a child who was so abysmally starved for affection that he didn’t even know to ask for it or receive it. When he would hurt himself, for instance, by inadvertently hitting his head on the corner of the countertop as he ran through the kitchen, he would turn and walk away from the outstretched arms ready to comfort him into another room where he would cry alone until he had cried it out, and then he would return. His case was extreme, of course, but it stands for the hunger for affection that is experienced daily by more children than you would ever imagine. Their faces don’t show up milk cartons. Their descriptions don’t appear on Amber Alerts. But they are all around us and even among us, folks.

Affection is a fundamental physiological need as well as an emotional need. Insufficient affection results in a “failure to thrive” in children and adults alike that has physiological as well as psychological consequences. If you are among those people who happen to think that when Jesus says “Love one another,” that it’s a bunch of touchy-feely religious sugar-water hocus-pocus, then you don’t know your science. You haven’t study the development of the human brain, the importance of the human limbic system, and you haven’t studied primate social behavior, just for starters. Point #3: Affection.

In our family we have a tradition called the “goof hug.” The term was coined by our oldest son when he was very young, before he could pronounce “group hug.” Bev or I would call for a “group hug,” and his eyes would light up and he would say excitedly, “Goof hug!” “Goof hug!” Over the years our goof hugs have gone from three of us to four to five and now six. And it’s goofy alright. It can happen in the kitchen or the den or the living room or the driveway whenever or wherever anyone in the family calls for it: Goof hug! It’s silly, I know, but it’s also a parable. The people of God must always be the people of the goof hug, because there are always children and adults alike in our world and in our community and in our congregation who are “failing to thrive” because they are starving for affection. Nutrition, attention, affection.

In this morning’s gospel lesson, Jesus was surrounded by hungry people: “there was a great crowd,” we are told in Mark 8:1, “without anything to eat.” Jesus’ first response is my point #4: Compassion. “I have compassion for the crowd,” Jesus said, “because they have nothing to eat.” “Compassion” means “co-suffering.” It is the capacity to feel someone else’s hurt. Compassion is the essentially human response—and the Bible teaches that it is an essentially divine response as well—to another person’s suffering. Compassion.

But Jesus goes a step beyond compassion in verse 3. When Jesus says, “If I send them away hungry to their homes,” he is taking personal responsibility for their condition. If Jesus is our example, then it is not nearly enough to “feel someone’s pain,” as they say. It is also necessary to acknowledge our responsibility in relation to them when they are suffering. Compassion. Responsibility (#5).

Having had compassion and acknowledged responsibility, Jesus then commits the resources he has available to alleviate the suffering that he sees. Of course it’s not enough: seven loaves and a few small fish are not sufficient to satisfy the hunger of 4,000 people. But if you never make the commitment to allocate the resources that you do have to accomplish what you can accomplish, your expression of compassion is worthless, and your sense of responsibility is hypocrisy. Commitment (#6) of resources.

Jesus’ next step may be the biggest difference between Jesus in this story and us in our stories. In verse 6, Jesus offers up thanks (#7) to God for what he does have instead of whining about what he doesn’t have. That might be the miracle in the story: that the person with compassion who feels responsible for those who are suffering and is willing to commitment all he or she has gives thanks instead of whining when they only come up with only seven loaves and a few fish. But you see, if every group of 13 fishes around, so to speak, and comes up with seven and few, thousands can be fed. Remember that as you leave this morning where children stand at the door with baskets to receive an offering for seed money to launch an initiative in 2011 to feed hungry children in Greenville County. If everyone comes up even with just seven and a few, thousands can be fed.

Once you have given thanks, you have to break it up (#8) to give it away (#9). You can’t keep what you have intact and do any good with it. You have to break it up. And you can’t keep it to yourself to do any good with it. You have to give it away. Whether we are talking about nutrition or attention or affection, it has to be distributed—spread around—by breaking it up and giving it away. When we follow Jesus in compassion, responsibility, commitment, thanksgiving, breaking it up, and giving it away, we discover that we actually have more than enough (#10) to go around. Let’s make it so.

Nutrition, Attention, Affection, Compassion, Responsibility, Commitment, Thanksgiving, Breaking it up, Giving it away, More than Enough. Let’s make it so.


Photo of the mosaic floor of the Church of the Multiplication in Tagbha on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee by Steven Conger by license of Creative Commons.


This material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.