Food Banks and Jesus the Badass

By Ben Molyneux

Food banks are in the news in a big way. A recent report, conducted by a cross-party group of MPs with the support of the Church of England, confirmed that there is a startlingly large number of people in Britain who simply cannot afford to eat. Trussell Trust, the major food bank charity in the UK, has grown in the last 14 years from nothing into having 400 food banks across the UK.  In the last year, 913,138 people ended up using Trussel Trust food banks to get emergency food supplies, a figure that is 78,441 higher than it was the year before.

 There have been dissenting voices: Tory Baroness Anne Jenkin claimed recently that this was due to the loss of cookery skills, assumedly through some kind of group amnesia that led 78,441 people to forget how to cook in a year; Lord Freud, in charge of pushing Tory welfare reforms through, suggested that it could be due to people just wanting free food, ignoring that 45% of people went to food banks due to the benefit system he is in charge of overhauling; and Ian Duncan Smith, the Tory Work and Pensions Secretary, accused the Trussell Trust of scaremongering assumedly broadening the definition of scaremongering to include “publishing factual reports in one’s area of expertise.”

Leaving aside ideologically-motivated voices, most people agree that this many ordinary Britons being left unable to afford to eat is a disgrace. Food banks are providing a hugely needed service, but the fact that such a service is so hugely needed is unconscionable in 21^st century Britain. How can we live in a country that is capable of incredible feats of engineering like the Shard in London, but is apparently incapable of feeding its own people?

Churches have been instrumental in helping food banks meet this need, and have been doing brilliant and possibly life-saving work in this area. Churches that host and support food banks deserve recognition and applause. In doing this, they are clearly following Jesus’ teaching, particularly in Matthew 25: “I was hungry and you gave me food… just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” [NRSV] But this worthy work is only a reflection of one aspect of Jesus’ ministry.

The story of Jesus wreaking havoc in the temple is one of the most famous Biblical stories, probably because in it Jesus is undeniably a badass – flipping tables, whipping animals and generally just being awesome. Mark’s gospel specifies who he was targeting: “he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves.” [Mark 11:15b, NRSV] The doves were particularly important, as doves were what poor people sacrificed. But the temple system controlled not only the sale of doves (and only doves bought in the temple courts were considered acceptable for sacrifice) but also the money changing which would allow people to purchase the doves. Essentially, the entire system was set up to allow the temple elite to rip off the poor.

Jesus Christ: Badass

Now, Jesus could have magic’d up some doves if he wanted to, getting them to fly out of his sleeves like failed magician Gob Bluth in Arrested Development. He could have gone round distributing the doves to anybody who needed them (provided they had a reference from the Job Centre of course). But instead he decides to take on the system that oppresses the poor and engages in a prophetic critique of it. His wrecking of the temple is a clear and unequivocal challenge to the system and those who perpetuate it.

If the church is to truly follow Jesus, it needs to follow his example in this area as much as his teaching on feeding the poor. Justin Welby has started to do that, asking the government to do more to deal with the food crisis many in Britain face, but there is so much more to be done. The church should be standing up and saying that a situation where families are being left unable to eat due to government-sanctioned changes is totally unacceptable. The Church should be standing up and defending the welfare state as one of the greatest things in Britain. And the Church should be standing up for those that the powerful like to attack – the poor, the immigrant and the working class, to name a few. It’s time for the church to make a bold prophetic stand against systems that oppress, just as Jesus did, and declare that the food crisis in this country is a modern day disgrace.

For more information on how to support Food Banks, either as a volunteer or by giving, visit the Trussel Trust website here or find out about your own local area’s food bank.

This article draws heavily on Richard Baukham’s book The Bible in Politics: How to Read the Bible Politically, both in its general approach and in the section on Jesus in the temple.