Day 2: Fasting and the Body
The Rev. Noelle Damico, Associate for Fair Food, Presbyterian Hunger Program
Scripture
“Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many…If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” (1 Corinthians 12:14, 26-27)
Reflection
We are more than just minds and hearts, more than thoughts and emotions. We are embodied people. Fasting is a bodily, spiritual practice. Every part of our body is affected by the decision to refrain from eating. And as we fast we become acutely aware of our own body’s processes, its yearnings, and its strength. We become more aware of our own bodies and those of others.
For generations farmworkers have borne the brunt of a corporate purchasing process that seeks the cheapest tomatoes. The labor is hard enough on the body, requiring enormous upper body strength to toss a bucket full of tomatoes weighing over 32 pounds up over one’s head to a truck, requiring endurance in extreme heat, scorching sun, and facing hazards to the body such as pesticides. These harsh conditions have been coupled with poverty wages and, in extreme instances, forced labor (modern slavery). Meanwhile consumers purchase tomatoes in the grocery aisle at Publix and bring them home to feed our families while farmworkers harvesting those tomatoes can barely feed their own families. We know this is wrong. We know this is not what God intends for us as a human community.
The Fast for Fair Food is a collective fast involving fifty farmworkers and consumers who are going without food for six days. This fast proclaims that we are many bodies who belong to one another. Indeed it is a fast by some of the parts of the body to draw the attention of other parts of the body that all parts are needed for the body to function well. One part of the body cannot say to the other “I have no need of you.” And yet, that is what Publix has been doing. It has refused to recognize that it is part of a body which needs all its members to work together if it is to function well.
The Fair Food Program embodies a collaborative approach to ensuring a more modern and human industry by drawing upon the unique power of farmworkers, growers, corporations and consumers. The program is working – but it is hopping on one foot until Publix and the rest of the supermarket industry add their enormous purchasing power to undergirding these gains in wages and human rights.
Question for reflection
What is my responsibility to the body that is our food system?
Prayer
Creator God, you have made us in your own image; shaping us from the dust of the earth, breathing your life into our bodies. Your son Jesus became incarnate, God taking human flesh and bringing hope to our world. Bless this witness to “one body” and help every one of us remember that we have a unique and essential contribution to make, as corporate leaders, farmworkers, growers and consumers, to the well-being of all your people. Today we pray for consumers of faith and conscience who have made a powerful witness together with farmworkers for the new day of human rights that is now dawning. Strengthen and enlarge that witness until the human rights of farmworkers are respected across the entire industry. Amen.
