Feeding Body and Soul: Responding to Hunger, with Brenda Simpson.

Feeding Body and Soul: Responding to Hunger, with Brenda Simpson. Series: Ruckus for Good 2024 A Spacious Christianity, First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon. Scripture: 1 John 3:18; Matthew 22:37-39; Matthew 25.45.

Caring for the vulnerable nourishes our souls. In this message, Brenda Simpson, our Coordinator for Justice and Mission, will reflect on making the fight against hunger a spiritual practice of justice and love.

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At First Presbyterian, you will meet people at many different places theologically and spiritually. And we love it that way. We want to be a place where our diversity brings us together and where conversation takes us all deeper in our understanding of God.

We call this kind of faith “Spacious Christianity.” We don’t ask anyone to sign creeds or statements of belief. The life of faith is about a way of being in the world and a faith that shows itself in love.

Thank you for your support of the mission of the First Presbyterian Church of Bend. Visit https://bendfp.org/giving/ for more information.

Featuring:

Rev. Dr. Steven Koski, Rev. Kally Elliott, Tyler McQuilkin, Becca Ellis, Brave of Heart, Guests

Transcript

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Welcome to worship with First Presbyterian Church in Bend. We practice what we call a spacious Christianity, where there's room for everyone and we mean to everyone, no matter where you find yourself on the faith journey. Even if you find yourself without faith, you are so very welcome here. We welcome your questions and doubts, and see them as gifts that invite us into deeper conversations. We celebrate diversity and believe it's a strength. And we remind you every single week that you are made in the image of God's goodness, and that you are so very loved. And we do our best to live the spacious and radical love of Jesus so that all might have a chance to flourish in this world. As we try our best to practice a spacious Christianity we hope here that you can find space to breathe a faith you can believe in and a God who believes in you were so very glad to worship with you in this way. But if you find yourself in the area on Sunday mornings at 8:30am or 10am We'd love to have the chance to greet you in person take a deep breath and know that whether you're sitting on the couch at your desk in bed, maybe even washing dishes the presence of God's love is as close to you as your own breath and it's my prayer today that you might have become aware and experienced a presence of that love in a new way through our worship. Because when that happens it changes the way we are present in the world welcome God we have known your love, we have experienced your care and your provision. Some days we are able to rest in your love. Other days we find ourselves anxious, restless, sometimes even hopeless. But even on those days, even when we doubt, your love for us is steadfast and true. holding us close. Help us to recognize that love, to know it intimately and to share it with the world around us. Help us to care for others as deeply as we care for ourselves. Or sometimes help us to care for ourselves as deeply as we care for others. We bring to you the needs of our world. And in your mercy, we ask that you hear our prayer. We pray for those who do not have what they need in order to survive. Those without enough food to eat or shelter to keep them warm. Those without employment or enough money to pay their bills, those without access to medical care or medicine to keep them healthy. Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer. We pray for those who have more than enough to meet their needs. But who continue to feel empty inside those who struggle to find meaning and purpose in life who turned to alcohol, drugs or other destructive behaviors to try to hide their pain. Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer. We pray for those who are struggling physically, who are battling life threatening disease or injury, who are living with chronic pain who are coping with a dementia or facing death. Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer. And we pray for those who are caring for loved ones who are sick, be it physically or mentally. give them strength and friends to lean on. And your mercy, hear our prayer. We pray all of this in the confidence of your great love for us and for all of your creation. And we trust you hear us as we pray as your son taught, saying Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Hello, I'm Brenda Simpson, coordinator for justice admission and longtime member of First Presbyterian Church of bend. I'm excited to have the opportunity to be the first person to speak with you during our ruckus for good sermon series. We've just come through the most meaningful time in the church calendar. Easter is a time when we are reminded that the power of love is stronger than the love of power. We are reminded that love could not be defeated. The Risen Christ told Mary Go and tell the others the good news, John 20. We are loved with a powerful love just as we are without any conditions. Confident in this love and the understanding that we are enough, we can reach out, take risks, and share that love with others as we live and share the Good News of the resurrection. This sermon series is meant to challenge us to be conduits of God's incredible love to our neighbors, to live the resurrection and to prove to the world that love will always have the last word. Some of you may know that the Bible verse that is my personal favorite challenge is first John 318. Little children let us not love with Word or with tongue, but with deed and truth. I love this sermon series that will examine what we can actually do to share God's love, not just talk about it, not just think about it, but something, but do something about it. Richard Rohr said faith and God is not just faith to believe spiritual ideas, it's to have confidence in love itself. Love is not just a feeling, but inaction. Love is our commitment to extend our will for the flourishing of others. When asked what the most important law of Moses is, Jesus said, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Matthew 2237 through 39. Today, I'm going to speak specifically about hunger. Hunger is something that we talk about often, but let's take a moment to really think about it. When were you last really hungry? Maybe fasting before a medical procedure? Maybe you ran out the door without breakfast or forgot your lunch. Many of us have been blessed to never have been in a place where we could not afford basic foods to meet our nutritional needs. And I'm not referring to the shopping trip where we noticed Ooh, scallops are a little too expensive right now. But the actual inability to buy enough of the basics to feed ourselves and our families. Many of our neighbors find themselves in this place. A December 1920 23 article in the bend bulletin reports that one in five central Oregon's experienced food insecurity. According to this article before the pandemic, neighbor impact helped 14,000 to 16,000 people attain food each month. Now that number is closer to 60,000. The problem is getting worse, said Scott Cooper, Executive Director of neighbor impact. The article explains that the defining characteristics of a household experiencing food insecurity includes being worried food or run out before having the money to buy more being unable to afford healthy balanced meals and are cutting the size or frequency of meals. In more severe cases of food insecurity. Adults have reported not eating for an entire day due to lack of food and losing weight because they cannot afford to buy more food. I do know that people that can't for whatever reason eat enough to fulfill their nutritional needs have lots of issues. They metabolize their muscles which makes them physically weak. They metabolize proteins that are necessary for their bodies to heal and for their immune systems to ward off sickness. Not having sufficient nutrition also has psychological consequences. Abraham Maslow have proposed a theory now generally accepted that human needs can be thought of as a pyramid, we must satisfy the needs at the base before we can rise to the top. Physiological needs are the bottom of the pyramid. To advance to working on needs of safety, love and belonging, self esteem self actualization, people must first meet their own physiological physiological needs. One of these key needs at the base of the pyramid is having enough food. This isn't hard to understand. houseless neighbors often use all of their energy to figure out how to meet their basic needs of food and shelter. It's easy for a spectator to wonder why they're not figuring out how to get a job and move on with their lives. But people don't have the capacity to do that until their basic needs are met. educators understand that children can't learn if they are hungry. Our government supplies Free and Reduced hot lunches to students in need. Many schools in our district are Title One schools, a school that has a high enough percentage of children on free and reduced lunches that they provide free breakfast and free lunch to all of the children. I have heard from several educators that the time before school, a school break has so much energy. Some of their students are excited for the fun and and vacation that will be had. While school is closed. Some students are anxious for how they will get their basic needs met and be safe. While they are going to school. Some students know that they will be hungry during a break. It is sometimes hard for us to realize that people around us truly don't have enough to eat. All of my friends, people on my street have enough food. Food Insecurity is a term that seems sterilized. It doesn't trigger understanding or empathy. Thinking about serving a sparse meal to a very hungry growing child and seeing the disappointment and discomfort in their eyes makes the situation very real. How can we say we love our neighbors as ourselves when we fill our plates and have excesses in our refrigerators and pantries, while some of our neighbors are going to bed hungry, because they don't have enough food? loving our neighbors means we are not willing to accept less for our neighbors than we would be willing to accept for ourselves or our family. As a group, and individually, our church does much to fight hunger. How many ways do you think that First Presbyterian meets hunger needs? Take a moment, count them up? Do you have enough fingers? All this wood, I have a burgundy partnership, family kitchen, where we cook and serve food once a month, and give money from our general fund to support their efforts. Our Guatemala mission team, especially during COVID, when many were hungry, we provided food, emergency shelter, we feed people that come into our church to escape from dangerous outdoor conditions. Bethlehem in we serve food there three evenings a month. We have a food fund where we mail out grocery vouchers to family in need. Presbyterian hunger, money from our General Fund goes to our denomination to feed people around the world, our sensibility offering where we collect our change through our church's spiritual practice, and this is given to the Central Oregon hunger Prevention Coalition. There's a shopping cart in the comments that collects food donations for St. Vincent DePaul Food Bank. One great hour of sharing is a phenomenal denominational offering Bread for the World. We write letters to our representatives in Congress and give money from our general fund to support this group that fights for aid for people that are hungry around the world, including in the United States. Jesus said, I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. He was asked, When did you see? When did we see you hungry and give you something to eat? And Jesus answered. Whatever you do for the most vulnerable of these brothers and sisters of mine, you do for me, Matthew 2545. I am so blessed to be part of such a generous church that focuses on loving others. If you have not become part of our hunger efforts, please consider how you can work with us to fight hunger. Even though we do so much. It is important that we reflect on what we do, and how we can improve our efforts. People are still hungry. In my position as coordinator of justice admission, I get lots of feedback on what we could do differently. Someone mentioned to me that we are a band aid church, we treat the symptoms and not cure the problem. I have thought about this a lot. And I believe that it is partially true. But first, I do believe in band aids. If somebody is bleeding per fruit Fuseli that needs to be stopped. To follow this analogy. We can't let a person die from blood loss while we're trying to understand why they why they're injured. Still figuring out how to stop the injury should be part of the plan. How do we balance this? How do we help fight the root cause this is harder to determine. And it's also harder to measure our success. We do have several programs that address the root causes of hunger. Bread for the World is a Christian advocacy organization urging us decision makers to do all they can to pursue a world without hunger. Our Varun de team is also a great example of this, instead of shipping food to people in need. In the villages, we help improve the agriculture there. We are also supporting education for their children. The cost of education for the village children is significantly increasing because of the number of children that are starving to death has significantly decreased. Just think about that statement for a second. Think about the suffering that is alleviated by fewer children starving to death. This is a great example of addressing the root cause of hunger through improving agriculture in education. The SLT scholar program that we support in Guatemala also addresses the root cause. The children that are educated make a higher wage than their parents. They suffer less from hunger and often decrease the grip of hunger for their whole family. educating children living in poverty helps breaks the cycle of poverty. Or church Foundation has two endowments that provide educational scholarships. One is for nurses at sea OCC and one the educational support for aim for economically disadvantaged children was established to fight poverty through education. Getting to the root causes is hard. Keeping a project going when you can't quickly see and measure the results is also hard. My goal is to work with many of you to discern, discuss and implement more mission and justice efforts in our church. Please reach out to me a few if you are interested in digging deeper into finding the root causes of hunger feeding the hungry and caring for the most vulnerable isn't something that we do to earn our way into heaven. It is our calling to bring heaven on earth in the way we care for our neighbors we should not be doing it just to make ourselves feels good it is a spiritual practice that helps us to see others through eyes that are more like Jesus eyes to pull our thoughts and worries away from ourselves and move them towards our neighbors who we are to love as ourselves in feeding the hungry and caring for the most vulnerable we just might discover that we are the ones whose souls are fed and whose hearts are full. Friends, we sincerely hope you found this broadcast and worship meaningful. Please help us make it possible to reach others with the important message of a spacious Christianity. First Presbyterian seeks to serve Jesus by serving the needs of others showing up in our community and the world when and where love and compassion are needed the most. Your generosity helps us to be generous and love and offer hope at a time when hope is in short supply for so many financial gifts large and small, make a huge difference in helping us continue these broadcasts and helping us continue to serve the needs of others in our community in the world. You can give online at band F p.org. You can use the QR code on your screen or mail a check to the church. We hope to see you again and please reach out if we can support you in any way until the next time may God bless you and may you be a blessing to others.