i was hungry
“I was hungry and you fed me.”
It’s clear. It’s specific. It’s indisputable. Jesus said this is what righteous people do.
The author of the gospel of Matthew places this message at the end of the twenty-fifth chapter, just before beginning the account of Jesus’ last days — his passion, his arrest, trail, and execution. These are Jesus’ “final words,” his “parting message,” to his followers. This is what matters. It is by this standard that you will be measured. “I was hungry and you fed me.”
But when did we ever see the Lord hungry and feed him? Whenever you did this for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it for me. That is Jesus’ message. Clear. Specific. Not metaphorical, but quite literal. You see a hungry person? Feed her and you feed me.
I was overcome with grief and horror when I read about the plight of the people of the Horn of Africa as I was doing research for last Sunday’s sermon. Twenty million people in Somalia and South Sudan and Yemen at risk of severe famine. The equivalent of the entire population of Iowa and Wisconsin and Minnesota and Missouri combined, all starving to death.
If that were indeed true here, we would think it a crisis of apocalyptic proportions. It is a crisis of apocalyptic proportions! I could not do nothing: “I was hungry and you fed me.” If you want to do something, consider a gift to the American Relief Agency for the Horn of Africa (ARAHA), a relief organization based in Minneapolis. A gift of $150 supplies one family with a relief package that includes a “food basket, nutrition packs for children, and water“ (https://araha.org/drought-relief-2/).