Elfan Rees - "Bread for My Brother" (December 8, 1963)

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Narrator	Of ourselves, our souls and bodies,	0:03
	our thoughts and our desires, our works,	0:08
	and our deeds to be out reasonable,	0:13
	holy and living sacrifice unto thee	0:18
	through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.	0:23
-	In the name of the father, and of the son	1:00
	and of the Holy Ghost, amen.	1:05
	Just a single sentence from the Lord's prayer.	1:13
	Give us this day, our daily bread.	1:20
	I don't suppose any of you have ever tried	1:29
	saying the Lord's Prayer, in the first person singular.	1:33
	My father which at in heaven,	1:41
	as though you were the only child of God.	1:45
	Forgive me, my trespasses,	1:52
	as though the sins of mankind were of no moment to you.	1:57
	Lead me not into temptation.	2:06
	As though the pitfalls of life did not met off other people.	2:11
	This is not my own idea.	2:20
	The great Moravian reformer Jan Hus,	2:24
	as long ago was 1410,	2:30
	preached a summon in which he accused his congregation	2:34
	of doing precisely this.	2:37
	I'm saying the Lord's Prayer in the first person singular.	2:41
	And when I read that accusation,	2:48
	I tried it myself just for the hell of it,	2:52
	and it sounded like a prayer out of hell.	2:59
	And as I said it,	3:05
	I began to get an awful sense	3:07
	of separating myself from my family,	3:08
	separating myself from my neighbors in community,	3:14
	and separating myself from the brotherhood of men.	3:19
	And perhaps the word's that appropriate enough,	3:26
	stuck most in my throat, was when I came to say,	3:29
	"Give me this day, my daily bread".	3:33
	With all its implications that I couldn't care less,	3:40
	if my children were properly fed.	3:43
	Let alone my neighbor's children and the children of men,	3:46
	you will recall that at his temptation,	3:54
	Jesus Christ refuse to turn stones into bread,	3:58
	because it was only she that was hungry.	4:05
	But later in his ministry,	4:11
	when he was told that thousands were hungry,	4:14
	his instructions to his disciples, the simple ones,	4:19
	"You will give them something to eat".	4:24
	I am a vet older generation.	4:31
	There is a members, the publication of The Atlantic Charter,	4:35
	and its definition of the four freedoms.	4:42
	The Charter, which I'm afraid is forgotten	4:49
	in the modern world,	4:51
	freedoms would don't seem to shine so brightly	4:54
	as they did in 1943, when we were fighting for them.	4:58
	Freedom of speech, freedom of religion,	5:04
	freedom from fear, and freedom from hunger.	5:10
	And because they mean so much to me,	5:18
	because also it's part my task to move around the world	5:22
	rather a lot.	5:25
	I'm always taking a spot check,	5:26
	to see if that war was worth fighting.	5:30
	If we really did win those freedoms.	5:35
	I wonder sometimes whether we have freedom of fear	5:40
	in the United States of America.	5:42
	I have good cause to wonder when I'm in East Berlin,	5:47
	if there is freedom of speech.	5:49
	Or to wonder when I'm in Hungary,	5:54
	if there is freedom of religion.	5:57
	And to wonder almost anywhere in the world,	6:03
	if there is freedom from hunger.	6:08
	And that's the freedom with which	6:14
	I am specific to concern this morning,	6:16
	the harsh facts of the life in which we live	6:21
	are two thirds, of our fellow men,	6:28
	go to bed hungry every night.	6:34
	The privileged one third, the fat and overfed,	6:40
	live in Western Europe and North America.	6:46
	And we produce 17% more food than we can eat.	6:53
	That's a lot than we need.	7:00
	The rest have 24% less food than they need.	7:05
	If I may put it in Volga fractions,	7:14
	here in America, each one of you on an average,	7:18
	eat four and a half pounds of food every day,	7:24
	and many of you look like it.	7:30
	In Asia, they eat one and a quarter pounds of food a day,	7:34
	and 85% of that is rice.	7:42
	One third of the world is worried about its diet.	7:47
	Two thirds of the world are starving.	7:52
	And one of the grimmest factors in the situation	7:59
	is that the hungry are multiplying the population	8:03
	far faster than the wise are increasing food production.	8:08
	During the course of this service,	8:15
	the population of the world would increased by 5,000.	8:17
	By this time tomorrow by 120,000,	8:22
	by this time next year by 48,000,000.	8:27
	I don't think you realize many of you,	8:34
	the extent to which the population explosion is occurring,	8:36
	even in the United States.	8:40
	You had in this country, that there is a birth	8:43
	every eight seconds.	8:46
	There's a death every 21 seconds.	8:49
	An immigrant arrives every two minutes,	8:53
	and somebody leaves the country, you have your 17 minutes.	8:55
	The net population gain for you	9:01
	is one new plus in every 12 seconds.	9:03
	Actually your population has gone up by 33%	9:09
	in the last 20 years.	9:15
	But your food production has gone up by 50%.	9:17
	So you can, if you like use that unpleasant English phrase,	9:24
	"I'm all right, Jack."	9:28
	Whereas in Asia,	9:32
	the population increases slightly lower than yours	9:36
	because of infant and mortality.	9:38
	It's gone up by 30% and food production by 25%.	9:43
	The net result of two decades of technical assistance,	9:52
	and technocracy, an aid to underdeveloped countries	9:57
	is that the hungry have less to eat today,	10:03
	than they had 20 years ago.	10:08
	Their food consumption has gone down by 8%.	10:10
	One would think that this staggering problem	10:18
	is indivisible in its proportions,	10:21
	but it is not so in fact.	10:25
	While these scientists and United Nations,	10:29
	are bending every effort to increase food production.	10:33
	No realistic attitude has been taken up tour	10:38
	about the population explosion, or a family planning.	10:42
	No one is more backward than the leadership of our churches.	10:50
	And so in default, the attack on hunger is a one-way attack.	10:57
	In June of 1960,	11:05
	The Food and Agricultural Organization of United Nations,	11:06
	launched the Freedom From Hunger Campaign.	11:10
	Like anything else that comes out of the United Nations	11:16
	it had to start with a resolution.	11:18
	And the preamble to this resolution reads as follows.	11:22
	Considering the launch parts of the world's population,	11:25
	does not have enough to eat.	11:29
	And an even larger part does not get enough	11:33
	of the right kind of food.	11:36
	Now that wasn't a resolution	11:39
	adopted by a lot of pious church.	11:41
	It was an admission by cynical diplomats	11:45
	of a world situation that has to be tackled.	11:50
	The freedom from hunger campaign	11:57
	aims at creating a worldwide awareness	11:59
	of the problems of hunger,	12:02
	which apart from the human suffering and degradation	12:05
	that they involved are posing a very serious threat	12:08
	to peace and to orderly privileges.	12:12
	The campaign also aims to promote	12:17
	a climate of public opinion.	12:19
	In which solutions can be organized.	12:23
	We have now some 18 national committees in 18 countries.	12:26
	If you are in your country,	12:31
	you have the Food for Peace Council.	12:33
	We know it's a long term problem.	12:38
	In fact, when we met at the World Food Congress	12:42
	in Washington last June,	12:45
	about the only satisfactory conclusion we came to,	12:49
	was that people not really airable enough	12:51
	to two and a half years.	12:53
	And the five years was not long enough	12:56
	for the campaign we have in mind.	13:00
	It's long term, but it's charged with a sense of urgency	13:02
	and of immediacy.	13:07
	It's urgent first of all,	13:10
	because the hungry can't afford to wait.	13:11
	Most of them would be dead of starvation	13:17
	before we can act, unless we move faster.	13:21
	It's urgent also because the world can't afford to wait.	13:26
	Lord Boyd Orr, once said that hunger	13:32
	is a dangerous politician, and how right he is.	13:35
	If I want an apostle of communism,	13:42
	it is not to people like you, that I would preach my gospel.	13:44
	You can't digest called mocks on a full stomach.	13:49
	It's to the hungry I would turn, as people are to it.	13:54
	If I wanted to start a riot in the middle east,	14:01
	It's not to the oil shakes that I would go,	14:04
	but to the hungry of the streets of Amea,	14:07
	hunger is a dangerous politician.	14:10
	There are two other things that disturb me	14:16
	very much as a Christian.	14:18
	The first is that the mess of the hungry	14:21
	are the so-called colored people.	14:24
	The well fed are the so-called whites.	14:28
	God knows race relations are bad enough	14:33
	with that they're being exacerbated by hunger.	14:36
	The other thing is that most of the well fed	14:41
	are people who come from	14:46
	what they appease to call Christian countries.	14:47
	And most of the hungry are to be found	14:53
	in what we appease to call pagan countries.	14:55
	And I have found nothing in the gospel of Jesus Christ	15:00
	that relates obesity with faithfulness,	15:05
	or dieting, with divinity.	15:12
	Not anything that says that one of the penalties	15:18
	of either not hearing or not accepting the gospel	15:20
	should be starvish.	15:26
	It is not in the order of the world	15:28
	that Christians should eat, and the pagan should not.	15:30
	It was said once that every war	15:38
	is either a crime or a crusade.	15:40
	This is a crusade against want.	15:45
	I know that it's a world governmental	15:50
	and inter-governmental problem.	15:53
	We can't solve this problem by private societies,	15:56
	collecting subscriptions	15:59
	or through conventional fundraising efforts.	16:02
	The effort of every one of the rich nations of the world	16:06
	must be harnessed, if we are ever to achieve victory	16:09
	in a war on want.	16:14
	But don't run away with the idea	16:16
	that I'm merely passing the back to the governments	16:18
	or to the United Nations.	16:21
	My insistence that this is an inter-governmental,	16:23
	international problem in no way precludes	16:26
	or excuses the churches.	16:30
	God's purpose as revealed in Jesus Christ,	16:33
	is to redeem the whole of human life.	16:37
	And it's the judges to carry conviction	16:40
	that it's gospel is the only gospel.	16:42
	It must do so by showing the redemption	16:46
	is for the whole of life.	16:49
	And is offered by one who came.	16:52
	Not only that men might have life,	16:54
	but have it more abundantly.	16:57
	I am glad that I can report to you	17:01
	a remarkable Christian Association	17:03
	with this effort of United Nations.	17:07
	Churches to Western Germany	17:10
	in their campaign Bread for the World,	17:11
	are working miracles of development.	17:15
	In Latin America and Africa, in Britain,	17:18
	the hungry in the world,	17:22
	in Switzerland Bread For My Brother.	17:24
	And if you had in the United States,	17:27
	the great work of church will service	17:30
	and your one bread are of sharing.	17:32
	I repeat that only massive international action	17:36
	can solve this problem.	17:39
	But I say too this essentially depends	17:41
	for success on three things,	17:45
	public understanding, public compassion and public support.	17:47
	And I believe that if in the churches	17:54
	we have public understanding of this tragic problem,	17:56
	then surely we would have public compassion.	18:00
	And I know that when that is compassion	18:04
	in the hearts of Christians,	18:06
	they will seek action by their governments	18:08
	and other people's governments.	18:13
	You see, this is not just a handout.	18:18
	If there's a philosophy behind this campaign,	18:25
	it may be put in the woods of the old Chinese proverb.	18:27
	"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day,	18:32
	if you teach a man how to fish,	18:39
	you feed him for a lifetime".	18:43
	And we are seeking to teach the hungry of the world,	18:47
	how to fish, or if you like how to plow deeper farrows.	18:50
	So better seed, rip better harvest and help themselves	18:57
	in their want and in their need.	19:05
	But we must remember one thing,	19:11
	and this is perhaps the role of the churches.	19:12
	You will find out in due course,	19:16
	that when you send your kids to school,	19:18
	you've got to feed them while they're there.	19:20
	One of the more emergent urgency tasks	19:25
	is feeding the people whom we are teaching how to fish.	19:28
	And that is why these surplus food	19:33
	that comes from America to Asia and elsewhere.	19:35
	Why the work of a body like UNICEF	19:39
	out of such vital importance is it bridges,	19:43
	in this long-term campaign that we have on the ticket.	19:47
	And the protestant churches are not alone in this concern.	19:52
	Shortly before he died,	19:57
	that Great Saint Pope John, the 23rd, said this,	20:01
	"Rightly and holily, the loving children	20:05
	must be repeated and exalt the principle of human solidarity	20:09
	and remember, and preach loudly,	20:14
	the duty of those who live in plenty,	20:17
	to reach out to those who live in want".	20:23
	The thing I like about Pope John's call	20:27
	is his use of the injunction to preach loudly.	20:31
	When I was an undergraduate many years ago,	20:36
	there was some cassette on the music halls.	20:38
	It was called "Jack Smith The Whispering Baritone"	20:40
	I'm afraid half our pull pit,	20:45
	it's now a field of the Reverend John Smith,	20:47
	the whispering preacher.	20:49
	It's the task of the church in these times to preach loudly.	20:52
	Any of my person friends in America telling me	20:58
	is that the pace of life in this country is so hectic.	21:01
	You all have tranquilizers for breakfast,	21:06
	but the main task of the ministry	21:10
	is comforting the disturbed.	21:13
	And I only thank God that that's not my job.	21:17
	Mine is disturbing the comfortable.	21:20
	And if any of you say to me off to this service	21:25
	that you've enjoyed my serve and not have wasted my time.	21:28
	But I was in India last November, just over 12 months ago.	21:34
	Some of us went out into one of the villages	21:39
	with a guide interpreter.	21:43
	And while we were there,	21:46
	I saw a little girl about 11, I suppose,	21:47
	sitting in the dust, sobbing her heart out.	21:51
	And I sent out a guide over	21:54
	to find out what her little trouble was.	21:55
	And he came back	21:59
	without any great show of concern mellish,	21:59
	"She's only crying,	22:02
	he said, because it isn't her day to eat".	22:03
	And that is not the way the world was meant to be ordered.	22:11
	We were taught to pray, not only for us,	22:15
	but for daily bread.	22:19
	The daily bread of hungry mankind.	22:25
	Nicholas Berdyaev, once said that,	22:29
	"Bread for oneself is a material preoccupation,	22:31
	bread for others is a spiritual preoccupation".	22:35
	And must become one of the major spiritual preoccupations	22:39
	of the modern church in the modern world.	22:43
	Will you remember again, the command of our Lord,	22:48
	his disciples, "Don't send them away.	22:51
	You'll give them something to eat".	22:56
	And you would remember to the excuse the disciples gave,	22:59
	"We only have five small loaves, two fishes".	23:04
	And if I may say so in America,	23:11
	that's one excuse, you can't give.	23:14
	Now to God, the father, God the son	23:20
	and God the Holy Spirit,	23:22
	you all honor and glory, well without him, let us pray.	23:24
	All mighty God, our father grant me, pray thee	23:35
	a deeper understanding of the needs of our fellow men	23:39
	and greats have gifts to meet them	23:44
	and greater courage to go towards them.	23:47
	The didn't I name and the name of thy church.	23:50
	We may hear after be more faithfully	23:55
	and more truly thy servants.	23:59
	Lord, be with you.	24:02
	The Lord bless you and keep you.	24:04
	The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you	24:07
	and give you peace.	24:09
	So may of the grace of God, our father,	24:11
	the love of our Lord, Jesus Christ,	24:13
	the fellowship and communion of the holy spirit,	24:16
	rest and abide with you,	24:19
	now and evermore.	24:21

Item Info

Title:

Elfan Rees - "Bread for My Brother" (December 8, 1963)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4ks6p57f

Date:

December 8, 1963

Speaker:

Rees, Elfan

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Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0249
ref5703_xq4
uachapelsermaud
duke:628154
dcrau002253
ark:/87924/r4ks6p57f
f15009c8-920e-4069-89a0-36f13825d835

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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English

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United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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Elfan Rees - "Bread for My Brother" (December 8, 1963)

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