Lausanne World Pulse – Urban Articles – Gathering Manna in the City: Ministry in Lima, Peru

By Brian Langley
October 2008

But few name and act on the greater scandal that one of God’s children goes hungry right in front of this wall. “I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat” (Matthew 25:42), Jesus said, referring to people just like this man standing below the wall of the pristine church and to the young people who live and work on the streets with no one to love and embrace them. Inasmuch as we fail to see God in them, we fail to recognize God’s presence among us and so nourish our lives, and theirs, with the true bread from heaven that God gives.

May we together in Christian community kneel down in joyful submission and daily gather the true bread of God’s presence among us.

Our ministry center has a fig tree which last year produced buckets and buckets full of nutritious figs. We had more figs from this one tree than we could possibly eat, so one of our industrious volunteers began to prepare fig jam, which, in addition to the raw fruit, we gave away as gifts.

Many times, while working at the center, we gathered some of the fruit for a quick pick-me-up. This was a very old, gnarled fig tree, whose branches were growing weary and needed support beams under them. And yet this old tree was true to its variety and produced abundant fruit in season with scant care or water. After listening to a Peruvian friend explain the wonders of fig trees, Jesus’ curse on the fig tree in the Passover season shortly before his death on the cross (Matthew 21:18-20) became clearer.

The cursed fig tree was a visible sign of judgment for not recognizing God’s presence among us. In the desert coastal regions of Peru, mature fig trees are very hardy and easy to care for; with little rain they produce buckets of fruit every week. Similarly, a Palestinian fig tree with leaves in April, the Passover season, should have some fruit on it. A tree that is not showing any fruit at this point in the growing season is a dead tree.

Jesus called attention to something vitally wrong in the very essence of God’s people by cursing the fig tree—that which was supposed to be showing signs of life, the recognition of God’s presence among them, was not. There is a common Peruvian superstition that dwarfs live under old fig trees, and so some who come into our center are immediately filled with fear after eyeing our tree, afraid they might see a dwarf.

Many times, the Body of Christ practices a similar theological superstition by failing to recognize God’s presence among us in the poor. A young person living on the street is a child of God, a sacred object of infinite worth, just as much as the well-respected local pastor. And yet, instead of seeing the life-giving potential in a person from the street, what is seen is a macabre figure. Many of us then choose to look away in fear. In faith, we choose to see God in even the most difficult people and places. This is, in Stanley Hauerwas’ words, our “happy task.” Hauerwas writes, “As the Church, we have no right to determine the boundaries of God’s kingdom, for it is our happy task to acknowledge God’ power to make his kingdom present in the most surprising places and ways.”¹ That’s why we bring donuts to the “casona.”

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Brian Langley has lived with his wife and two daughters in Lima, Peru, since 2000, working among street populations.