Sermon by the Rev. Bryan Owen

Two weeks ago Katy and I invited four nursing students from Bangladesh to our house for dinner. They had won scholarships to complete their Bachelor of Science degrees at Glasgow Caledonian University and we knew them from our time working in Dhaka at the college. I shall be back there again for my fourth visit in November.

It was lovely to see them – four girls from the poorest of villages in Bangladesh who had made the most of their chances at the College of Nursing in Dhaka and who had now come to Glasgow to further develop their skills.

Two of them were Muslims so we couldn’t have any pork or bacon, and two were Hindus so there was no beef on the table that night. But we sat down to a veritable feast.

Before we began I told them it was our custom to say a silent thanksgiving for our food. As we were of three different faiths I suggested a moment of silence when we could be thankful in whatever way was appropriate. Then we tucked in and enjoyed both the meal and each other’s company and there was much laughter round the table that night.

As I’ve thought about it this week I have discovered that most religious traditions have prayers equivalent to what we would call ‘grace’ – prayers of thanksgiving not only for the food we eat but also for those who have prepared it.

Jews also have such a tradition. Indeed, they have six different prayers to be said before a meal each of which begins with the words: Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe…

For bread and cakes the words, ‘Who brings forth bread from the earth’ are added. For wine and grape juice the words ‘Who creates the fruit of the vine’ are added and so on.

In our Christian liturgy we have taken those two prayers and sometimes say them before the prayer of consecration:

Blessed are you, Lord God of the universe,

through your goodness we have this bread to offer,

fruit of the earth and the work of human hands,

let it become for us the bread of Life.

In our lesson from Deuteronomy 26 we heard once again the instruction to the Hebrews to be thankful – to be thankful that they had arrived safely in the land flowing with milk and honey, and to be thankful they had arrived in the land where they would be able to plant crops and harvest wheat and milk their goats and eat their lambs.

But what is so wonderful about that injunction is that whenever they celebrated the abundance of bread and wine and milk and honey they should do so inclusively:

‘Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.’

Being thankful, then, is part of being truly human whatever our religious tradition might be but thankfulness is something we rarely seem to express these days. Most Christian families, I would suggest, do not say grace before meals. I wonder how many Jewish, Muslim or Hindu families do. Meals are something we increasingly take for granted. The supermarkets will always be full and there will always be food on the table so no worries. We are no longer travelling the wilderness but in the certainty of the market.

Currently the UK is around two-thirds self-sufficient in food with around a third being imported. Many foods cannot be grown in Britain, of course – bananas and pineapples, cocoa and tea and coffee so there will always be foodstuffs we need to import.

Some of you may just be old enough to remember the Digging for Britain campaign in the 1940s when the country had to ration food during the war. That is not practical today even though around a third of us do grow vegetables in our gardens or in our allotments. At 60m people our population has outstripped the capacity of the land to provide for all our food needs.

100% self-sufficiency in food is not thought to be a good thing anyway because it means putting all the UK’s eggs in one basket. If we grew all our own food then what would happen if poor weather led to a reduced harvest? What would happen if a new disease emerged or if a pest took hold and spoiled the crops? If all the UK’s food was home grown, losing a sizeable portion of any staple crop would result in price inflation as demand increased and that would adversely affect the poorest in society. The Irish potato famine between 1845 and 1852 is a salutary reminder of what can happen if we go down that road.

So we import some of our food but remember we also export some – Scotch beef and Welsh lamb are exported, as are Scottish shellfish, whisky, chocolates and biscuits, jams and pies and poultry – the list goes on. For example, last year the UK exported over £100m worth of food to China – almost half of it pork. We live in an interdependent world.

However, here at home a staggering £10 billion worth of food is thrown away each year - a third of what we buy. We are not good stewards of the food we actually purchase – we have all found horrible and smelly things at the back of our fridges, haven’t we? Where does being thankful come in when we throw away so much?

As St Paul says in our epistle reading: ‘God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.’

In other words throwing away good food is simply wrong. Out of our abundance we should be generous towards others. In binning up to a third of the food we buy where is our generosity to other people?

The Hebrews long ago realised that the land didn’t always flow with milk and honey. There were times of drought, times of disease and times or war when crops were devastated. You remember the story of Joseph and the seven years of plenty that were followed by the seven years of lean?

The supermarkets won’t always be full. Across the world pressures are building up and the good earth can only produce so much.

For example, how do we feed an increasing global population? The 7 billionth person was born in late 2011 and the 10 billionth person is estimated to be born around the year 2050.

As the poor of the world become more educated, more skilled and more middle class – as in China and India and many parts of Africa – so diets change. Remember the atrocity last weekend in the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi – it was fully stocked with products for the Kenyan middle class. The more affluent people become the more meat they eat and that means more animal fodder has to be produced on the same land that produces cereal and root crops. And we’ve run out of land.

In the past few years the price of oil has gone up as we all know every time we fill our cars. That means higher transport costs as lorries travel our motorways and that drives up the price of food.

And then there is climate change. Whatever the causes, a warmer or cooler or wetter or drier climate leads to changes in what crops can be grown and where. Products which haven't been farmed in Britain before, such as sweet corn, soy, maize, olives, kiwi-fruit and almonds, could all provide new business for farmers - certainly in the south east. That could well be good news. For land owners in parts of Scotland, livestock farming could become more suitable.

On the other hand, tropical crop pests and diseases have been moving north at the rate of 2 miles a year since 1960. Climate change is allowing the expansion of pests into previously unsuitable regions and there is a fear that some unknown blight, such as that which caused the Irish potato famine, could occur thus devastating food supplies across Europe.

When Jesus was preaching, teaching and healing in Galilee he wasn’t there to entertain or to help people pass an interesting hour thinking about the finer points of theology.

Jesus wanted to change people’s lives and to do that he had to change people’s attitudes…change the way they thought. The Gospel story today is a case in point: ten lepers were healed but only one said thank you. Only one turned back and praised God for his healing. And the one who did so… well, he was a Samaritan not a Jew.

My Muslim and Hindu friends from Bangladesh are deeply thankful for the opportunity they have been given to come to Glasgow to study for their degrees in nursing and midwifery. They are deeply thankful for all the many kindnesses that have been shown to them and they express that thankfulness in all kinds of delightful ways.

Here is part of one text I received last week:

‘We know we are truly blessed that we have got you around us. We do not feel we are alone here… It will be great if we get you and Katy to be like a guardian for us.’

Like the Samaritan leper these girls come from outside our tradition and they are reminding me what it is like to be deeply and truly thankful.

So will we change our attitudes and be more thankful day by day? And will we celebrate the abundance of food in our fridges and larders by being more generous towards others, as scripture says?

Will we decide to be more careful about the amount of food we buy and reduce the amount we throw away?

And above all things, will we praise God for every blessing – for family, for friends, for the country we live in, for the freedoms we enjoy, for the church we go to, and for the food we are able to buy and cook and share?

Jesus said to the Samaritan, ‘Get up, and go on your way; your faith has made you well’. It didn’t say that to the nine Jews who took things for granted and forgot to be thankful. He said it to the outsider.

Amen.