My mother told a story about her days as a refugee in Germany at the end of World War II. She and her family had just trekked west in the winter of 1945, leaving behind their house, their belongings, all that they had in the city of Stettin in the east. They had been fortunate—in a way—to arrive in the last days of the war in the city of Kiel up on the Baltic near the border of Denmark. I say fortunate in a way, because Kiel was also the main port of the German navy and in the last weeks of the war the city was heavily bombed by the Allies to destroy what remained of the German naval fleet. So almost nightly there were bombing runs over the city. Still, my mother felt fortunate they had survived the trek along the roads where the only shelter they had from bombs were the ditches on the side of the road, and had landed in a city with buildings. The refugee office assigned the family temporarily into a 4th floor apartment in a partially bombed out building, and gave them some ration coupons to get staples. Somehow they also managed on the second or third night there to also get some fish, Bueckling—they are like sardines, small and bony. But it was fish—something other than the bread and raw potatoes they dug out of fields they walked by on their journey. My grandmother cooked the 7 small fish—they were a large family of 5 children and 2 grown ups—and arranged the 7 fish on a serving plate and placed it in the middle of the table that stood in the dining room they had now occupied. Only just as she served, the sirens went off, another bombing raid was underway. There was no time to head for a basement. They left the food on the table, and ducked underneath any furniture they could find—a table, an armchair, a sofa—and waited for the bombing to end. When the all-clear signal rang, they climbed out from their hiding places and reassembled around the table, even hungrier than before. Only, as they sat down to eat they realized instead of 7 fish, now there were only 6. Someone, someone during the bombing had eaten. Someone who was terribly hungry and afraid had gone ahead of the others and taken a fish. When the father asked sternly who had eaten the fish, no one spoke up. In fact, to this day, none of my aunts or uncles or other relatives ever admitted to having taken the fish, but I have always suspected it was my mother. The children were afraid that now they would all be punished—none of them would get a fish because no one confessed. As they sat in silence quaking and hungry, the mother stood up and started serving the fish, one on each saucer except for her own. When the father protested, the mother said: “I’m not that hungry. You all eat.”
I have always liked that story, because it illustrates both the depth of human need, and the capacity of human generosity. Whoever took that fish off of the serving platter in the middle of the bombing raid, was consumed with a hunger and a fear and wounds that drove them to eat ahead of others. A hunger from weeks of deprivation, the wounds of war, and fear of death. But in the face of that same fear, similar wounds and ongoing deprivation, one person—the mother—was able to overcome her own needs for the sake of the others. That is somehow consistent with the role of a parent—overcoming your own needs, your own fears, and your own wounds for the sake of your children. But I think it is also emblematic of what God does. God overcame God’s need for God’s son enough to share Jesus with the world, even at the cost of the wounds of suffering. God gives away, abundantly, for our wellbeing.
We may be broke, we may not know how we are going to pay the rent or mortgage next month. We may not know exactly how we are going to pay all our expenses at church next year. But internally, our needs are met. Through the gifts of faith. Through the life, death, suffering and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our deepest needs are met. Our profoundest wounds are healed. Yes, we need to eat. Yes, we need shelter. Yes, we need equity. But through faith our deepest needs are met. And because of that, we can forgo the fish on the platter. We can forgo the attitude of consumption for our own sake that God vilifies through the prophet Zephaniah.
Through our faith, knowing that we are loved by God, knowing that we are forgiven by God, knowing that we are accompanied by God, we are liberated from the fear that keeps us from living abundantly and living generously. Because we have faith, we find ourselves with nothing to lose by being generous. We have nothing to lose by acting in ways that amplify God’s abundance. Because we have faith, we can risk generosity. We can risk trusting God’s abundance.
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