A Sermon by The Rev. Mike Cassell

Food for the Poor

The Rev. Mike Cassell

St. Margaret's Episcopal Church & School

Biblical Reference

Good Morning.

I am Fr. Mike Cassell and I represent Food for the Poor a ministry you people have been supportive of and hopefully will continue to be many years to come. I’ve come a long way to be with you, 3000 miles in fact, so I hope you will let me talk a little longer than your good Rector normally does, I figure I’ll pay my dues and there’s a big message to be shared. I must say with the choir behind me I feel if I were a parakeet I might be able to make eye contact but I can’t pull it off, so you’ll forgive me as I’m speaking with you as well, of course, so God Bless you. You know I feel very much like Mr. Rogers use to feel, I think, when he uses to say, “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood”. And you know something, it is a beautiful day in the neighborhood, this is a beautiful part of the country and I very much enjoy the opportunity of being here and it’s a very beautiful day to say the least, weather wise, and this is a beautiful parish and I met some really wonderful beautiful people in the brief time that I have been here. It would be very easy this morning for all of us that God’s in His heaven and all is right with the world, this is some kind of deal that we’ve got. Well, God is in his heaven, there’s no doubt about it, I’m sure as we sit here the heavenly mansions are being white-washed one more time and the saints are praying up a storm as we’re told they do for us and the angels of God are obeying God’s will instantly as the theologians assure us, but on earth, while everything is fine in heaven, on earth all hell is breaking loose. You may have noticed. You don’t even have to read the newspaper just keeps your ears open and you’ll see what I mean.

As you and I sit here this is a fact, in the glory of our American way which I very much enjoy with you, one third of the world in which we live is starving to death — 1/3 of the world, 2 billion people, thousands and thousands of them right off the coast of the United States of America right in our shadow, right in the shadow of the wealthiest nation that the world has ever known, and it’s right off our shores. I live for instance closer in flying from Miami to Haiti than I do to Disneyworld in Orlando, though I live in Southeast Florida. So, that is how close the need, not of the poor, but of the destitute are in terms of my understanding. If we had a neighbor living up the street who had no toilet, no toilet paper, no food, no dental or medical attention, no house which he could live in, no water that was bacteria free, no dental or medical attention, no job, no hope, we would do something about it, I think and these are neighbors, they are right next to us in proximity. And that’s why Food for the Poor focus’ on these people.

Seventeen nations in the Caribbean we serve, because they are truly our brothers and sisters in a physical way. Now, Food for the Poor, in my mind, is very much a misnomer, I wish they would change the name, they’re not going to do it, but I wish they would because we are about so much more than food - we do feed people, as a matter of fact, listen to this, we feed, thanks to the generosity of people like you, because we can’t do it without you, we feed 4 million people a day on rice, beans and milk keeping starvation away - that’s astounding in and of itself, you people have contributed 3 billion dollars in goods and services so that we have become a major force for good in the world at this present time, making a difference in poverty stricken nations of the world. But we’re about so much more than feeding people.

Here are some of the things we do. I was just in the Dominic Republic last week we get the tour regularly and the facilities that Food for the Poor serves and we serve hundreds and hundreds of them throughout the Caribbean. Schools and hospitals and leprosaria’s we build them, thousands of them ten thousand this year, 8 thousand last year for people. We build or fund schools and teach electrical skills and plumbing skills and carpenter skills, agronomy skills, animal husbandry skills, car repair skills, shoe repair skills, tailoring skills, we’re out to empower people so that they can help themselves, and as I say, we focus on using the people themselves to do the work, we don’t do it for them, we train them how to do these things and then we employ them so that they have a job, there’s no sense training an electrician and then not having any work to do. So we employ them. So all throughout the Caribbean these lives have been changed.

Now, I was in, as I said, in the Dominican Republic last week and I met, one of the many sites we toured Trinity Ministry there, we are working Food for the Poor in conjunction with the Taiwanese government who has sent us 7 ichthyologists to help us and we have just completed 3 Tilapia ponds and one brine shrimp pond, we have planted a bamboo forest there so that they can harvest the bamboo so that they can make bamboo furniture, bamboo scuffling, bamboo verticals for windows, bamboo seat covers for cars and many, many products that they are now able to do themselves. We’ve given them 10 thousand chickens so that they can start a chicken farm, they can now buy the chickens, they can buy the eggs they can sell the eggs, they can start their own farm now that they have their own where with all and knowledge. And so this is a program of empowerment and then so that they have a place to live because they have been living under tin cans and cardboard, we built 500 houses for them in that village last year and we are presently building 500 houses for them this year. See, this is the love of God that you can get your arms around. This isn’t guess work.

I always like to say that if I lived in the Third world today and some missionary came down and started talking to me about Jesus the Lord and Savior and about the 7 sacraments and all of the wonderful things that are part of our Christian heritage, and wasn’t concerned that neither I or my children had any medical attention or dental attention, and I had no toilet, or toilet paper, or had no stove, let alone any food. That I only had the clothes on my back and nothing else as many people do there, many of the kids run naked through the streets - that I had no protein to supply me with strength and no job that would employ me and no hope for tomorrow - I would not listen to the missionary for one second. And I would say, “Look at me. Don’t talk to me.” St. James put it so well, Faith without works, is dead. I have a friend of mine who says to me, let’s cut the talkie, talkie and get into the doey, doey. And I think that’s what we Christians need to focus on more and more is the doey, doey, the action.

Julie Andrews use to sing, Don’t speak of love, show me. She says. None of you here want a husband who says you’re so sweet and you’re so lovely and pretty teeth and blue eyes and blond hair and you’re just gorgeous — and let it go at that — Show ME, flesh it out, see, that’s what the incarnation was about, God comes to earth in the person of Jesus and he unfleshes deity in our midst and embraces the world in which we live, to make a difference in this world for the good here and now. See a religion that is totally other worldly is no earthly good. That’s why I love Food for the Poor. We are about this earth and the here and now about embodying, manifesting what the love of God looks like by caring for people, not by talking at them or saying we’ll pray for you, as good as prayer is, if we don’t enflesh our prayer and live out our prayer, frankly it’s not worth the powder to blow it up. See, you don’t pray for the poor, you say, God bless me through my generosity Lord so you can feed the poor through me - that’s the way God works, he doesn’t use smoke and mirrors - He uses us.

Remember Christ founded one catholic and Holy and apostolic church to be His body on earth so that people look at the church they see Christ, hopefully, they hear His voice, they feel His touch, His embrace, His caring and if the church doesn’t show it because we’re His body, then the world will not know it. It isn’t just that we’re called to believe in God and Christ but that Christ believes in us. And He chose you and me, this rag-tag army, to be His body such an incredible act of faith, I cannot imagine. Really, it’s up to us is what I’m saying, it won’t just happen by wishing it so.

I always add though that I’m a fund raiser, St. Paul is a fund raiser -1/3 of his ministry was raising funds for the poor Christians of Jerusalem, so I never apologize - you can’t do anything without money, did you notice? Can’t send your daughter to college, can’t have medical attention, can’t have a house, can’t have a car, can’t have a church, you have to have money to bring in the Kingdom of God is very financially expensive and we’re at the work of bringing in the Kingdom of God. Not some serial land beyond the clouds, though I believe in the eternal life with all my heart, but making a world safe and suitable for human habitation, now and that was our Lord’s priority. :You know, people very often give me pictures of Jesus, they probably figure I need them, I remember in my last parish at St. Peter’s in Niagara Falls, I don’t know why, they use to give me tigers, don’t ask me why, I don’t even like tigers - but they use to give me in St. Joseph’s parish, these pictures of Jesus and I appreciated it is certainly a great step forward and I know I need them, but you know what, most of the pictures I’ve ever seen of Jesus given to me — Jesus looks like Brad Pitt, he really does, He has blond hair, and a coiffure beard and blue eyes, he looks about as much as a Jewish rag merchant. I just can’t imagine it, it’s really ridiculous, and did you ever notice that Jesus is always looking up like the roof is leaking, every picture I’ve ever seen. If you look at a lot of stained glass windows, you’ll see it, there He is there He goes again. I remember when John Paul II died there was a picture on the Time magazine, guess what, looking up, you know it, all the Holy card, they’re all looking up. If Jesus was around here, He would look straight ahead, the Kingdom of Heaven is now, now is the appointed time now is the day of salvation, this is the moment we are called to embrace the world in which we live and to make a profound difference for the good now, and Christ is counting on us, now - that’s a profound act of commitment.

You, know a lot of people say to me , oh, I want to feel so spiritual so I love to go to St. Stevens church because it’s so spiritual there, I just love it, I feel so close to Jesus , I have a beautiful red carpet and stained glass and statues and I just feel so close to Jesus it precious, or they’ll say, I just read a book by Mother Rose and she is so spiritual, I read that book and my ears tingled and Jesus was sitting right next to me and I was so excited — or they’ll say I just went on a retreat with Fr. Peabody and he’s so holy and he’s so spiritual I just like to sit near him he’s so spiritual — well, look, I love retreats, I love good books , and I love pretty churches, I do I have just been to Italy and I’ve see more churches that will last a life time, they’re all gorgeous, that’s great — but I’m not saying you shouldn’t go to retreats and read good books and go to churches, what I am saying is this, if you want to get close to Jesus He says this, “listen carefully,” He says, “I was sick and you visited me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was hungry and you fed me and I was in prison and you came to me, I was sick and you visited me.” What I’m saying, if you want to find Jesus, He’s spelling it out in clover, He’s yelling it out. I am in the broken and the dispossessed of the world - they were our Lord’s passion and priority the poor, the dispossessed, the broken.

Our Lord had many wealthy friends, Nicodemus, many of the Pharoses He broke bread with them, He like them, He loved them, but his passion was of the poor, and that’s why I am here this morning, on behalf of the poor. On behalf of the people who eat this (holding a biscuit in fingers) you know what this is, this is an authentic Haitian biscuit this is what people eat right off our coast, I want you to use your imagination on this - to be a mother of a child or a grandmother of a child and this is breakfast friends, not Cheerios, not fried eggs, or pancakes or waffles not orange juice and toast, this is what they get - you know what it is - this Haitian biscuit, it’s not made out of wheat, corn or rice, it’s made out of 100 per cent dirt - laced with a little bouillon to give it a little flavor a little salt, and that’s what a Haitian mother gives her children very often because there is nothing else. One out of two children are dead before the age of one if they survive and if there is anyone here over 40, course I doubt that very much, but if there would be anyone here over 40, we wouldn’t be around here. Use your imagination, in Haiti, the average age of death is 40. Think about this parish; think about how many would be here, by the way, I wouldn’t be here, many times over. It would be a very quiet place, I think. That’s what’s happening in our world.

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