Rev Michael Docherty's sermon 29-02-2004

'He was hungry': three words in a gospel passage of over two hundred and fifty words: a phrase among a number of phrases, yet one that described the condition of the Son of God at the end of forty days without food, a man who was like us in all things but sin, yet a man on the edge of starvation, exhausted, sapped of energy, nearing his end.

Many in the world share that experience: in the words of our opening hymn - 'longing for food, many are hungry'. Having no food over a long period of time is something most of us haven't experienced: to have that clawing ache in the stomach that demands to be satisfied. I think the only genuine experience of hunger that I have gone through was as a teenager on a twenty-four hour fast, but even then it was slightly false - I knew that when my time was up, the twenty-four hours over, I could make up the food I had gone with out - some of you may be thinking I've been compensating (or over-compensating) ever since. We live in a society where food is always readily available, shops stocked with food from every continent all the year round, where nothing is out of season - the only considerations being purse strings and the amount we can carry home. We, in the West consume on average 3,300 calories per day - you can see this amount in the container full of cooked rice, it's a lot of rice and if all those calories consumed as rice, we probably wouldn't have the appetite.

Yet 'he was hungry' - and he remains hungry today in the form of millions who are starving in the third world, the many thousands in our own country who will go to bed tonight without a decent meal. The other bowl represents the average calorie intake of those in the third world: it's an average so many are on far less than is contained in the bowl. It less than half the calories we consume on a daily basis.

Our participation in the CAFOD Fast Day on Friday may help to alleviate the suffering of many, particularly those in Rwanda - it will go some way to tip the scales of many who, like Christ, live these days of Lent without the sustenance of food. The fast in some way helps us to experience a little of the hardships of those people, to participate in a small way in the suffering of our brothers and sisters who endure life sapped of energy and strength. A fast which is a true Lenten fast - a fast in the words of Isaiah, that lets the oppressed go free, that beaks every yoke of oppression, that shares bread with the hungry - it is then that the light of Christ, our light may rise in the darkness. And the Christ who was hungry will say to us on judgement day 'come, you whom my Father has blessed…for I was hungry and you gave me food'

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