Blessed are the hungry, for they shall be satisfied. Lk 6:21

It is our second Sunday of Lent where we snuff out the candle of hunger in our Lenten Wreath. Hunger besets our world. Here are some sobering facts: Over 800 million people suffer from malnutrition. Most people suffering from hunger are from developing countries, but people die from malnutrition in our own country. 5 million malnourished children die from hunger each year. (Catholic Relief Services) We live in the world’s wealthiest nation with vast agricultural production, and more than 40% of American households do not have enough to eat. Yet we live in a country where 1% of the population owns 40% of the wealth of the country. In Jesus’ time, 1% of the Romans owned 16% of the wealth. The 1% of the wealthy Americans have the ability to feed all the hungry in the world. And the scandal is how many children and people in our country are hungry. These include the homeless; the elderly on fixed income who can’t afford medication costs, utility costs and rent, and food—usually, food suffers; families who live below the poverty line. That is 18% of the people who live in the San Fernando Valley, that is 810, 000 persons around us. Or since the Supreme Court declared that corporations are to be considered as people, I find an extremely troublesome dilemma. Walmart has just raised the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 hour for some four hundred thousand employees but do not allow them two work full time to secure benefits. This has created the situation that nearly $7 billion dollars in food stamps, medicaid and health bills, and subsidized housing is paid for these folks so that Walmart to be profitable and that Walton family to be one of the richest families in the world at the expense of the poor and those paying taxes. There is something unjust in this situation.

Hunger in our country and around the world is related to poverty, drought, famine, and extreme weather events, and war. Both hunger and poverty remain as a social concerns for Christians to assist those that Jesus called “the least of my family.” (Matthew 25:45).

Too many Christians read the Bible from the side of the powerful or socially comfortable, usually as a sin management text. But I have found the Bible a dangerous book to read, especially, the gospels for myself. I will give you an example: “Give us this day our daily bread” from Jesus’ prayer. The powerful and rich spiritualize the interpretation to refer to the Lord’ Supper or eucharist. Reading from this from below, from the perspective of the preferential option for the poor, Jesus’ prayer refers to hungry and the need for food
I always try to read scripture from the side of the poor, the suffering, and the vulnerable because God continues reveals God’s concern for the suffering, the hungry, barren women, eunuchs, the poor, the outsider, lepers, and the vulnerable. If we read the scriptures from the side of suffering, it makes a real difference how we understand the poor and the hungry as blessed or special in God’s affections.

Lent is a time of mindful reflection on our daily actions. I want to focus on the suffering and pain of the hungry. The world Bank and a number of International organizations issued a report last year, The State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI) 2014, has issued a millennium development goal for the next decade and a half to cut in half the numbers of malnourished people globally and to achieve the goal of ending hunger worldwide by 2030. This is morally right and just to end hunger of “the least of my family.” But we could end hunger today if people were committed.

Today’s gospel from Luke (16:19-31) is Jesus’ parable about a poor man Lazarus and wealth (Dives). The focus of Jesus’ story is the disparity between extreme wealth and poverty, abundant luxury and hungry suffering. The “gate” describes this is a wealthy mansion or palace with a wall to keep the poor outside. Jesus has brilliantly sketched the disparity of the 1% and lower spectrum of the 99%.

He describes the rich man dressed in “purples and fine linens,” indicating royalty and extreme wealth, who “feasts sumptuously each day.” In contrast is Lazarus, lying (or the word in Greek means “thrown down” or “afflicted”). He is “thrown down” by the forces of unmentioned misfortune. In others words, Lazarus is crippled physically and spiritually, he is constantly hungry and suffers from sores from a skin condition—malnutrition or chronic disease. Even the dogs come and lick Lazarus’ sores. He has lost his ability to beg for food.

Jesus communicates how hungry he is as longing to satisfy his hunger with the scraps fallen from the rich man’s table. This phrase indicates a custom that we would not recognize today. In the ancient Greco-Roman world, the wealthy used loaves of bread as napkins. They wiped their hands on bits of bread and then let them drop to the floor for the household pets.(Herzog) This communicates conspicuous consumption and luxurious waste to Jesus’ peasant audience where every scrap of food was precious, especially when you had nothing to eat.
He sits outside the gate of the rich man’s house. He suffers from sores and is very hungry. Lazarus hopes to receive some of the scraps of bread fallen to the floor when the wealthy man’s servants threw the garbage into the street.

The rich man’s crime is his absorption in his life of luxury, wealth, and abundance. You can imagine the table of the rich man, spread with a choice of food, delicacies, fruit and vegetables, and the best of wine. The rich man is walled in his estate with the poor and Lazarus outside the gate. The household dogs are let in to clean up the scraps while Lazarus receives nothing.
From the parable, Lazarus is neither virtuous nor non-virtuous. It is his condition of extreme poverty and hunger that is the focus of Jesus’ parable. Nor is the rich man particularly wicked. There is fixed and inseparable barrier between the two. The rich man is not even aware of the poor man’s existence—let alone hunger and suffering.

Lazarus is the only person given a name in any of Jesus’ parables. His name means “helped by God.” He is the focus of God’s attention. Jesus brings this out in the reversal after death. The rich man dies and is buried according to religious tradition. But Lazarus dies was either thrown into the garbage heap of the city for the birds and dogs to devour. The rich man goes to Hell, and the Lazarus is carried by angels to the side of Abraham. I can’t help remembering the verse from Mary’s prophetic song in accepting becoming the mother of Jesus: “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.”

Jesus uses the reversal in the afterlife to stress how cares for the poor and hungry—those who are suffering, for now there is an even greater chasm than the previous wall between the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man cannot alleviate his punishment but asks Abraham to send Lazarus to his brothers to warn them. Abraham mentions that they already have the Torah and the Prophets—the scriptures. The rich man knows that this will not be enough to change the hearts of his wealthy brothers, for they will read the scriptures from the perspective of the wealthy, ignoring the multiple times that the scriptures says God care for the poor and suffering and the hungry.

The fundamental crime of the rich man is blindness to the hungry and suffering man outside the gate and his failure to hear God’s message in the scriptures that God cares especially for the poor and suffering. This point becomes very relevant to the many Christians in opposition to food distribution to the homeless or any other services given away without paying or earning the service—from health care, to welfare services, to educational subsidies. And the 1% get richer, and the chasm between the 1% and the 99% has become wider in the last three decades and even during the latest recession as many middle class folks have been squeezed out of the middle class.

Christians and businesses owned by Christians have pushed municipal governments to ban feeding the poor and the homeless. Nearly 40 cities have made it illegal to distribute food to the homeless. Even LA City Council was looking at such a banning of food distribution programs a year and a half ago. Some claim that food distribution programs to the homeless in the parks aggravate the situation by preventing the homeless from seeking help in recovery programs. Such restrictions or blaming the food distribution of food to the homeless not seeking recovery programs. Such blaming the poor results from bad theologies that claim I am prosperous because God has elected me and that you are poor because you have brought upon this yourself. There are people in congress who want to cut food stamps programs, and I want to shout them at the top of my voice that this is wrong. Jesus said, you are doing this to the least of my family.

As Christians, we have a responsibility to ensure that every person has access to basic material necessities, including food. We model this at table each Sunday where everyone is invited to come forward and share communion. No is excluded. This value emerges from the biblical notion of God’s preferential option for the poor and the vulnerable. How can we help the poor access food? How can we help them access a greater variety of food and other services?
We as Christians believe that feeding hungry people is an honorable and socially just endeavor, that farming is a noble vocation that gives great pride to those involved in it. We believe that we are responsible for promoting justice in our own lives, in our communities and in the world. We do this for the sake of our neighbors, future generations and all of God’s glorious creation. We believe that all of our actions have an effect on the common good of creation and that we carefully consider our personal and eating choices we make.

Jesus shared meals constantly as celebration of God’s forgiveness and presence in our midst with sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes. He was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. He drank wine to party with folks, yet there are Christians who rigorously will abstain from wine and all alcohol. Some have good reasons to abstain from alcohol because it has controlled them. The same can be said for many of us who are controlled by food.

We celebrate the Lord’s Supper every Sunday by sharing consecrated bread and grape juice. Is everyone called to the table? Is everyone’s presence expected at the table? Who is called to Christ’s table? Does Christ have any expectations of his disciples when they gather at his table? How are the disciples expected to treat one another? Paul face such questions in the Corinthian community. There were a few wealthy members who brought food for an agape meal with the breaking the bread and sharing the cup in memory of Jesus’ last supper. These wealthy folks refused to share the food that they brought with the poorer members of the community who went hungry. Hear Paul’s words: “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord.” (1 Cor. 11:27) The “unworthy manner” that Paul mentions is to selfishly not share with the brothers and sisters what you have brought.

We here on Sunday model a meal where all are welcome, no matter who you are or where you are on your journey, you are welcome to the table of God’s abundant grace. It is a free gift of God’s unconditional grace given to us. The meal models the hospitality that Christians who have been welcomed to the Lord’s table need to extent the same hospitality to those who are hungry, poor, in need, suffering, and vulnerable. When we become the like the rich man by ignoring the hungry and homeless on the streets. I passed a sign of a homeless person on the street on my way with Joe to Pantages Theater. The sign read, “Am I invisible?” It was the cry of the least of Christ’s family, calling for people to take note of his plight and assist him. How many of us walked by without seeing because we are so-absorbed in our own luxuries?