There was a popular song about 30 years ago which some of you might remember. It went, “They’re rioting in Africa, they’re starving in Spain, there’s hurricanes in Florida and Texas needs rain" ...and ending with “What nature doesn’t do to us will be done by our fellow man.”
It only needs a little tweaking to update it for 2023. They’re actually starving in Africa, while the riots are in France. There are still hurricanes in Florida, though, and both Texas and California need rain. There are floods here, earthquakes there, open war between two countries, random massacres in another, and famine in more places than we can keep track of. We no longer see pictures of starving children, though; are we just too jaded to care or is it that the media is concentrating on other, more “important” things? The hollow-eyed Ethiopians children used to haunt us... but they look just like the Somalis who looked just like the Rwandans and a generation ago the Chinese and the generation before that the Armenians. And now the North Koreans are silently starving to death while still fielding the third largest standing army in the world. Aid workers say that it doesn’t really look like they’re starving when you look at them; they don’t have the usual bloated stomachs. But when you ask, you find out that the little boy you thought was 3 is really 5; the dainty little 8-year old is actually going to be a teenager next year... if she makes it. They sleep a lot and they’re too tired to play.
Until television most of us had only a one-dimensional idea of what starvation looked like. We had still photographs, and they’re bad enough. But now we have other, more vivid images to put beside those fragile, stick-drawn children. And we have also seen how people behave under these circumstances. There are three different kinds of responses. Those who no longer have the strength even to stand in line to wait for their share of the little food available are completely passive. Others seize their ration quickly and fearfully, scurrying away to eat in some place of temporary safety before it is snatched away by someone stronger or more desperate. And finally there are the predators, who storm the ration trucks and get whatever they can, eating some themselves, wasting much, using the remainder to buy power and influence.
And you know what? Even after the food trucks arrive in enough numbers to feed everyone at last, even after people can go home and their first crops come in, even after new muscle begins to cushion those angular little bodies and there’s enough energy left over to skip rope or throw a ball, the patterns remain. Children once hungry may hide and hoard food for years. Some may become predators. Some remain passive and fearful. The damage is very hard to overcome.
A couple I knew back in the Twin Cities had adopted several children from overseas. I didn’t know the man very well but the woman whom I’ll call Betsy was in a Bible study with me for years and I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who radiated warmth and comfort and welcome more than she did. I was there during the two or three years it took for them to come to terms with the fact that if their eldest child was ever going to be able to function in society it would not be while under their care. He was, I think, Cambodian; he had been found nearly dead from starvation near a refugee camp in Thailand and was unable or unwilling to speak; doctors guessed his age at around three but couldn’t be sure. Anyway, Nat had a lot of behavior problems, some severe enough to put their other children at risk. But what I remember Betsy agonizing over most was the food. Mind you, they had had him already for over six years when I met her. They had been feeding him lavishly for those years but he still couldn’t believe that the next meal would ever come. He always finished his food long before anyone else did, gobbling each morsel down as fast as he could go as if someone were going to snatch it off his plate. He used to steal his brother and sister’s Halloween and Easter candy. Betsy would discover stale waffles and leftover French fries in his bedclothes, and saltines or sugar cubes in his underwear drawer. This constant reminder of the terrible hunger that still clearly obsessed Nat led her to excuse and endure his violence for far longer than was good for her other children. Betsy kept hoping that eventually Nat would believe he was safe. But he never did.
Most of us have never known that kind of hunger, and I pray God that we never will. And even though there is poverty and hunger in this country it is nowhere as pervasive and embedded and unending as it is in many other parts of the world.
However, the spiritual poverty and spiritual hunger in this country IS pervasive and embedded and seemingly unending. Unfortunately, spiritual poverty and spiritual hunger do not haunt us in dramatic, heart-rending photos as physical hunger does. Spiritual famine is recognized most clearly by its symptoms. And - surprise - the symptoms of spiritual hunger are the same as the symptoms of physical hunger. They are passivity, hoarding, and taking by force. And they are all the results of systematic and long-term lack of basic sustenance. Every sin in the book is a sign of spiritual starvation, or at least malnutrition.
Passivity is seen when we look at evil or suffering and turn away, believing either that we can do nothing or that what little we can do is not worth the effort or that it is not our concern. Hoarding is seen in all of the addictions, as well as in our culture’s obsession with sexuality - but also, less obviously, when we keep more than we need, or use another person for our comfort or our pride, or refuse to give credit for another’s accomplishments. Taking by force covers most of the crimes, from robbery to fraud. All of these behaviors, and other sins we haven’t mentioned, from adultery to idolatry, are about trying to feed something inside us that knows it is empty. You all know, I’m sure, the saying that inside every man and woman is a God-shaped vacuum that only he can fill. But the world waves empty promises of satisfaction at us like the woman Folly in Proverbs 9, who calls out, “stolen water is sweet; food eaten in secret is delicious!” but whose road leads to death. Hoarding, passivity, and taking by force are signposts to death, are signs of death.
Without Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit it is impossible to change these patterns, even if you try to, because just as you think you’ve gotten one under control another comes sneaking up on you from the other side. But even with their help it is still hard. Because almost all of us struggle at one time or another with believing - truly believing down in the bottom of our souls where behavior comes from - that we are wholly and completely loved by the One who created the universe, and that our lives are safer and richer after we yield. That is why John spends so much time in his first letter emphasizing how much we are loved. Because, just like Nat, part of us doesn’t really believe that our daily bread can be counted on.
“How great,” says John in the first verse, “is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”
We try to live like that, neither hoarding nor taking nor turning aside, and what happens? Sometimes people laugh at us or criticize us. What we say we believe and how we try to live is a mystery to them. They may call us failures or fools or fanatics, and we don’t want to be any of those things. So maybe a little bit of a doubt creeps in. Maybe we start spending more hours at work and less at prayer, because the world tells us that that is more prudent. Or maybe we go to a party instead of to Bible study because we don’t want to look like Goody Two Shoes. But John understands that. He understands the forces that press at us from the outside. That is why he goes on to remind his hearers that we know something our critics don’t know: “The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” [v. 1]
Once again John reassures us, his readers. “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known.” [v. 2] We don’t know exactly what being a child of God will mean for us, in detail, in all circumstances. But what we do know is that we have a model child-of-God to learn from, and the single most important thing to remember about our model is that everything he did and everything he was grew out of absolute trust in His father. We also believe that one day we will see Jesus clearly and trust that at that time he will see his reflection in us.
It is only as we grow to trust God’s love for us and learn to act on the promises we say we believe that we can, as John urges, “...purify [ourselves], just as [Christ] is pure.” [v. 3] Mind you, that’s not something we do by ourselves, and often not all at once. But what we do have to do by ourselves is to offer ourselves up to the transformation of the Holy Spirit. It is only as the Holy Spirit fills us with complete assurance that we become able to trust in God to care for us, to provide for our needs. It is only then that we stop living out our fear of deprivation, our habits of hunger.
That offering up of ourselves for transformation is what John means when he says, “No one who lives in [Christ] keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.” [v. 6] That doesn’t mean that if we make one mistake God will disown us, or that if we make one mistake we must not love Jesus. We know that because in this same chapter he gives us the classic invitation to confession of sin: “If anyone claims to have no sin we make God a liar.” [v. 10] The difference between the two is a habitual, intentional commitment to live apart from God vs. the kind of stumbling that we all do, from ignorance and weakness.
Taking, hoarding and passivity are signs of death. But the signs of life are the opposite: receiving, giving, and acting. When we receive the gift of God’s love, we give ourselves up to him, and begin to act like Christ. These are questions we all need to ask ourselves daily. How fully do you rely on the gift of adoption that God has given us through Christ? How able are you to rest in the blessed assurance of the old hymn? How much of yourself - your family, your job, your finances, your fears and your dreams have you given to God, for him to change or fill as seems best? And how actively are you involved in the partnership of the kingdom, spreading the good news, righting wrongs, and caring for the poor?
Because of the death and resurrection of our Lord, we to can share in his life and begin to show the signs of that new life. As we close in prayer, remember to invite the Spirit of God to continue in you the work of life that was begun on the day of your baptism.
