Something to eat

James Cathcart August 25, 2017 0 0

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Romans 11: 29

29 for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

“…for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” writes Paul. Che Guevara may have had different theological views, but he similarly believed in people’s fundamental right to decency and respect. It is not our place to deny others’ humanity. But sadly all too often people’s callings and gifts are written off because people can’t see past the circumstances they are in.

Liberation Theology, a movement that emerged from Latin America in the 1950s, challenges this complacency. It finds Biblical evidence for the central importance to Christianity of releasing people from oppression. It puts an emphasis on practice (or ‘praxis’) over doctrine. Meeting people’s physical, emotional and psychological needs are not seen as incidental to their spiritual welfare, but as an integrally linked part. A key proponent Gustavo Gutiérrez, stressed the importance of identification, “If there is no friendship with them and no sharing of the life of the poor, then there is no authentic commitment to liberation, because love exists only among equals.”

Virginia Woolf the celebrated and pioneering 20th Century author wrote her seminal ‘A Room of One’s Own’ in the same year that this week’s featured diarist, Che Guevara, was born. Like him, she was an engaged and revolutionary voice that challenged the status quo. In the book, she skilfully articulates that the majority of people, including almost all women throughout history, have been denied the opportunity to express themselves creatively, to release their full potential - trapped as they were in drudgery and constricting systems. Structures that we could argue hide the ‘gifts and the calling of God’. In making this argument, she famously said, ‘One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.’

Sometimes the most spiritually moving thing you can do for someone is giving them something to eat. It is not down to us to save souls, to shepherd people through rings and hoops, and so to prove them worthy. It is our role to care for one another and address their needs, to love them as equals. We are to help feed people, to give them dignity and respect. We can help provide both the emotional reserves and psychological space necessary for others to express themselves creatively.

Guevara, in his journals has a profound sense of this need to treat others with dignity and respect. “It is there, in the final moments for people whose farthest horizon has always been tomorrow, that one comprehends the profound tragedy circumscribing the life of the proletariat the world over. In those dying eyes there is a submissive appeal for forgiveness and also, often, a desperate plea for consolation…” 

Dear God,

Forgive us for when our words, actions, and thoughts,

have masked, obscured, or hidden, 

your gifts and callings to others.

Amen.