Vegetables in Malawi. Photo: Paul Jeffrey, ACT
Randall K. Bush, pastor of East Liberty Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, submitted the winning sermon in the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance’s (EAA) Food for Life Sermon Competition. Launched during the 2010 Food Week of Action, the competition encouraged individuals to submit sermons reflecting on food and faith, as a basis of campaigning together for food justice.
Using Ruth 1:22-2:7 as the Scriptural passage, the winning sermon is a challenge to listeners to do more to help others and be more accountable for our decisions.
“As we mull over our responses to hunger in America and hunger in the world, as we scrape food from our plates into the trash, as we pick from which places we buy our food and decide what we will buy based far too often only on cost and convenience, Ruth and millions upon millions like her remain in the field. This very day she and many others are working without resting for a moment, just trying to survive.
We can do better. This is not just a practical issue or a political issue. It is a spiritual issue. It is about freeing people – from sexist oppression, from debilitating poverty, from lives without a horizon of hope. It is about redemption – after the example of Christ whose sacrifice and whose love has redeemed us.”
Presbyterian World Service & Development is the development and relief agency of The Presbyterian Church in Canada. Visit the PWS&D Facebook page.
