Micah 4:1-5
A Sermon for World Food Day and Presbyterian World Service & Development Sunday
(With significant content borrowed from the Canadian Foodgrains Bank’s “World Food Day Worship Guide: Setting the Table for Peace.)
I was 10 years old when Brian Stewart produced a CBC National segment on the famine that was taking place in Ethiopia, shocking Canadians and spurring our country to respond with action to feed the thousands of starving people we had seen on our televisions.
Perhaps some of you will remember seeing that news coverage about Ethiopia. Or if not (if you’re my age or older) you’ll certainly remember the charity single recorded by dozens of Canadian musicians in 1985. It included the voices of Gordon Lightfoot, Burton Cummings, Anne Murray, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and many more.
We can bridge the distance
Only we can make the difference
Don’t you know that tears are not enough?
If we can pull together
We could change the world forever
Heaven knows that tears are not enough
I didn’t realize until I started looking up some of that history about the Ethiopian famine how formative that collective response was to my thinking about the global community, about generosity and care for people in need, and about the hope that can empower people to work together for good in the world.
The message seemed simple: There has been a drought, people are hungry (starving, in fact) and if the world comes together – not just with our thoughts and prayers (or our tears) but with our generous action and giving – then we can change the world.
Canada’s response was unusually unified, emotional, and large‑scale, cutting across political parties, churches, NGOs, media, and the general public. Leaders set up a non-partisan coalition to support Ethiopia which included rapid deployment of aid, significant contributions through the Canadian International Development Agency, and the Canadian Armed Forces delivered tonnes and tonnes of relief supplies and food over the coming years. These missions were among the largest humanitarian airlifts Canada had ever undertaken.
Northern Ethiopia experienced severe drought in 1983–84, leading to failed harvests and food shortages, and that’s what I remember hearing about as a young teen. But drought alone does not explain the scale of the famine.
The famine struck hardest in Tigray, Wollo, and Eritrea — regions deeply affected by long‑running rebellions against the government of the time. Conflict disrupted farming, trade routes, and transportation networks, and rebel‑held areas were cut off from government assistance.
Human Rights Watch concluded that the Ethiopian army’s strategy in Tigray and Wollo was the single most important reason the drought became a famine. Villages were bombed. Crops and food stores were destroyed. Aid access was blocked. The government also forcibly relocated hundreds of thousands of people, often in deadly conditions. Tens of thousands died during transport or in new settlements.
October 16th was World Food Day, and today we know that serious food insecurity and even famine continue around the world. Although weather patterns, intensified by significant climate change, contribute towards challenges in many places, it is clear that conflict (whether civil wars or conflicts between countries) has the largest impact on whether communities have stable sources of nutritious food, water, and other vital resources.
The Canadian Foodgrains Bank chose “Setting the Table for Peace” as the theme for their World Food Day Worship Guide this year, and provided some helpful information about the link between conflict and hunger:
“Conflict is not the only cause of hunger, but it is the major driver of global hunger today…. In every context of violent conflict, there is hunger. In many cases, violent conflict happens in areas where hunger is already a challenge alongside other factors such as political unrest, ineffective governance, and lack of socio-economic prospects.
“As soon as violent conflict breaks out, some people are injured or killed and others are forced to flee, often carrying very little with them. Violence disrupts the daily life of those in conflict-affected areas who can no longer go to work or school because of the risk of encountering violence enroute. Many of those who flee quickly run out of money to buy food. Those who stay are not able to move around to make money, tend to farms, or buy food. Widespread violence shuts down markets and destroys infrastructure.
“When conflict goes on for months or years, the situation deteriorates even further. As people flee or hide from the violence, their social networks break down. Farming is no longer safe. Crops in the field and stored grain become a target for those fighting. As agriculture and livestock keeping is abandoned, the supply of varied nutritious food goes down, and the little food available becomes expensive. Over the months and years, the constant hunger leads to high levels of malnutrition and illness with long-lasting effects on the health of those affected, particularly children.
“Hunger also makes a conflict more deadly. Parties in conflict have used the supply or denial of food and humanitarian supplies as a strategy to punish their opponents or reward their supporters. When hunger is used to advance conflict goals, it deepens humanitarian suffering. The extreme case of this is famine.”
In recent years, we have seen this kind of thing happening in Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine, and Nigeria with the destruction of food supplies, the cutting off of food supply routes, and the blocking of aid convoys.
I don’t know about you, but I find all of this so very discouraging. The problems seem so huge, and our ability to make a difference seems so small. I long for the feeling I remember having in the 1980s when I was listening to songs like “Tears are not enough” and “We are the world” – that confidence and hope that people around the world could just “pull together and change the world forever.”
I was at a lecture at Campion College earlier this weekend, and one of the things the speaker mentioned was that young people today are struggling to find hope for the future. Maybe that’s because we’re all much more aware of the conflicts and the hunger and the complicating factors like climate change and political power struggles. We don’t have a coalition of political leaders or famous musicians rallying us around a single humanitarian goal, and we may feel constantly overwhelmed by the magnitude of the world’s struggles and needs.
But the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, which is a partnership of 15 denominations and church-based agencies including our own Presbyterian World Service & Development, suggests that on this World Food Day we focus on God’s vision of hope for the world.
“In our world on ongoing conflict, war, and fear, the Prophet Micah captures such a powerful image of hope, light, and peace in the darkness – the image of the Day of the Lord, the coming of God’s Reign, the Mountain of God.
“And Micah also captures such a powerful image of the role of farming and food security in the Reign of God; where the tools of war are not thrown away, but they are transformed into instruments for farming – for peace! Instead of being used in war, swords and spears are beaten and reshaped into ploughshares and pruning hooks, key tools for gardening, for farming, for growing food. All of us are called to the fields to take part. God empowers us to participate.
“This brings together a powerful connection: that an essential part of true peace is a world where everyone has enough to eat – where no one goes hungry, where there are tables full of nutritious food. It is a vision that peace contributes to ending hunger, and that ending hunger contributes to peace.
“Another strong image in Micah’s vision is freedom from fear, as everyone rests under their own vine, under the shade of their own fig tree. This image ignites hope, that we look forward to God’s Reign, where no one is lacking anything, where everyone has enough to eat, everyone has a full table, a safe place to call home, and a place in their community.
“And as we look forward to this reality, we all have a part to play. God calls us to participate in the building of this Reign, right now, and in a variety of ways. This isn’t just a far-off image of some unimaginable hope and peace. God calls us now to take part; to grab our ploughshares and pruning hooks and get to work.”
To conclude, I would like to tell you about one way that we can embrace God’s vision of hope and participate in moving towards that vision in our time. As I mentioned, Presbyterian World Service & Development is one of the 15 partners in the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, and food security is a significant part of the work of PWS&D.
Current projects include: Food baskets for drought-affected households in Kenya; therapeutic feeding for malnourished children in Somalia; agriculture and livelihood support in Pakistan; conservation agriculture and emergency food assistance in Malawi; training women ecological promoters in Guatemala; monthly food baskets in Yemen; and nutrition support for adolescents and mothers in Sudan.
We always have the option to give directly to PWS&D or to give to particular projects or emergency appeals that are important to us. But here in Saskatchewan we also have another way to partner with local farmers to multiply our gifts towards food security through PWS&D. It’s called “Grow Hope Saskatchewan,” and it is a growing project of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank.
Local Saskatchewan farmers set aside a portion of their land to grow a crop on behalf of donors. Individuals, families, or congregations “sponsor” an acre by donating the cost of seed and inputs. The farmer grows and harvests the crop, sells it, and the proceeds go to the Canadian Foodgrains Bank.
The Government of Canada then matches those funds (up to 4:1) for food‑security and emergency food‑assistance projects around the world. It costs about $350 to sponsor an acre, and our acres become many times more valuable, turning a local harvest into global help for people facing hunger.
Watch the “Grow Hope Saskatchewan” Promo Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMCB6qOHCvY