Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty: And Service is Its Prayer

The spoken affirmation we say every Sunday contains the line, “and service is its prayer”. Honoring our heritage as Unitarians and as Universalists and Unitarian Universalist, we affirm again and again our commitment to act in ways that make a difference in this world, in this lifetime.

Many of us acknowledge that meditative prayer can be useful for centering the soul, yet it is “praying with our feet”, our acts of service that make a difference in changing what needs to be changed in this hurting world!

This afternoon many of you, along with many of the youth of this congregation, will gather with others, from many other communities of faith in this city, to walk in order to raise funds to feed those who are hungry. If you can’t walk, you can sponsor those who do… Whether you are walking or writing a check or both; this afternoon’s act of service is about joining with others to change what needs to be changed.

This afternoon’s event, the Greenville CROP walk is just one of the over 2000 walks that are sponsored by Church World Service (www.churchworldservice.org) all over the nation at this time of the year. Church World Service is a humanitarian agency that works through an international network of secular and faith organizations to help struggling people lift themselves out of poverty. CWS is committed to sustainable development programs, disaster relief, refugee assistance and social justice advocacy.

CWS is affiliated with the National Council of Churches (www.ncccusa.org), a decidedly Christian organization, that the UUA (www.uua.org) is not a part of…

In fact, CROP used to be an acronym for the “Christian Rural Overseas Program” which CWS began in 1947. During the post WW-II years, it was CROP that helped Midwest farmers share their grain (their crops) with starving families in Europe and Asia. Midwest farmers had too much grain. People in Europe and Asia had too little. The Church World Service saw an opportunity to put the “have’s” and the “have not’s” together. These Christian activists felt compelled to serve based on their particular religious perspective.

In 1969, C.R.O.P. came to mean Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty. The change reflected a growing recognition, on the part of the leaders of Church World Service that diverse communities of faith and secular organizations could work together towards the same goal. The fine points of particular religious perspectives may be important to the National Council of Churches, but the CWS doesn’t dwell on that. What it cares about is finding ways to get food and clean water to those who need it.

Just like Habitat for Humanity and many other humanitarian agencies, CWS recognizes that faith communities can and will set aside their differences when it comes to meeting basic human needs. (Having participated with groups of UU’s in many of the projects led by these humanitarian agencies, I can tell you that they still have some work to do to learn how to start a project with an appropriate multi-faith “prayer”. Often UU’s, and others who are set off on the particular service project with a commissioning prayer are “inspired” in a realization that it is the common urge to do the work of creating a just society, rather than the often- less- than- inclusive prayer that really counts!)

Every year, since 1969 CROP Walks have taken place all over the US. Many UU congregations participate in these walks. CWS calls all the walkers, “hunger activists”. That’s got a nice UU ring to it! We UU’s have been a respectable percentage of the 5 million walkers who have participated in the last 20 years. Walkers representing UUCG will again today, as we have been year after year, be a very respectable percentage of the activists participating in the Greenville CROP walk.

25% of the funds raised during these walks go to programs in the areas where the walks occur. All across the US, 3.7 million dollars will be given to local food banks, pantries and community gardens. The rest of the funds will be spent on hunger fighting development efforts in 80 countries worldwide. Tools, seeds, wells, water systems, technological training and micro-loans are part of CWS’s efforts to help people help themselves world-wide.

CWS efforts in the past 30 years and the efforts of many other humanitarian agencies have helped reduce the percentage of world’s population that live in absolute poverty by half. In the same three decades, literacy has risen from 35% to 77%. Perhaps it goes without saying that a human being has to have enough food and water to learn to read and write! It is doesn’t take a sophisticated theology to agree that every human being deserves food and clean water to drink…
Church World Service and other programs that provide humanitarian assistance, such as our own UUSC (www.uusc.org), have made a difference in the lives of those whose most basic needs have been met.

That’s great. We can be proud of what we have helped accomplish!

Yet, we’re not done! Still, more than 862 million people in the world go hungry every day. In the US, one in 10 households, including 11.7 million children do not get enough food for regular meals. In developing countries 60 percent of the preventable childhood deaths are from hunger and malnutrition.

CWS says that “many factors contribute to hunger in the US and around the world, including the global food crisis fueled by rising food prices, lower crop yields as a result of climate change, unemployment and poverty.”

Undoubtedly, the rapidity of global warming, the worsening financial economy, including rising fuel costs, will mean that the situation is going to get worse…

Just last week there was an article in the Daily Reflector (www.reflector.com/news/food-bank-official-says-hunger-is-on-the-rise-159470.html) reporting on Eastern Carolina food banks. These agencies are anticipating an increase in need due to an increased number of families that must choose between paying their bills and putting food on their tables.

What kind of stepped up measures will it take to address the needs of families here and all across our world who are and are going to be hungry and thirsty, who barely exist beneath the weight of war, greed and wastefulness, when everyone except maybe the very wealthy are going to feel the effects of a economy in turmoil?

It will take people who care about more than themselves, who are aware that even though they may have less, there are others who are struggling even more. Walking to raise funds, bringing a can of food, or a bag of rice whenever there is a food drive is important. The local food bank says that every dollar they receive turns into eight dollars of food that they can give to needy families. Showing up on Saturdays at First Born Community Development Center, the agency that UUCG has partnered with for several years is important, as are all our acts of service.

So is changing the way we each consume food.
· Taking less so that others have more.
· Eating less meat so that more grain is available for people instead of cattle.
· Investing in any of the many micro-loan programs so that all one’s investment goes to those who really need it.

Perhaps the most important thing we can do as a community of faith is to recognize that service to those who have less is a moral duty, a “justice issue”. We already are activists, many of us, finding ways to join with others to make our collective service count is critical.

I don’t doubt that each and every one of us here today, thinks of themselves as an activist on some front. I trust that each and every one of you here today has a rich history of actively working to change what you have believed deep in your soul needed to be changed.

It was likely long ago, when you first became convicted that the gulf between the “have’s” and the “have not’s” was far too wide.

Let us join our efforts, our voices and our feet, responding to a common moral obligation to be of service to those whose basic human needs continue to go unmet.

We can rely on the same vision we have always had that teaches us to look beyond the shelters we have built for ourselves as individuals, as identity groups, as nations, to reach beyond what divides us, to what unites us as human beings.

Nothing could be more basic than the need to eat nutritious food and drink clean water.

In the words of the UU minister, Rev. Marilyn Sewell let us continue in the vision of our forebears to create a society where “all people have worth, a society…judged not by how much freedom it gives to the strong but by how much care it gives to the most vulnerable.” (from the preface of How Much Do We Deserve? An Inquiry into Distributive Justice, 2nd Edition, by Richard S. Gilbert)

We can create that society as we pray with our feet…