Dear Friends,
"Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?" Jesus to Philip, John 6
The Gospel for this Sunday highlights Jesus’s question to Philip when they face a hungry crowd. This is a question Jesus also asks us when we turn to him for help in responding to hungry children, women, and men.
This passage reminds me of a young man I follow on Instagram. Hamada Shaqoura is a 33-year-old chef, social media influencer, husband, and new father currently posting from a refugee camp in southern Gaza. After fleeing Gaza City, he and his wife are living with their baby in a small tent. His outdoor kitchen reveals the scarcity and generosity that characterize refugee life in Gaza.
Shaqoura is the cook for his camp neighbors. He waits hours in food lines for bags or boxes of emergency food aid. After returning to his makeshift kitchen, he surveys the diverse supply and uses hoarded spices, experience, and creativity to produce a meal. Ingredients vary by the day, and may include chickpeas, beans, rice, grain or canned tomatoes. His knowledge of Gaza City restaurants and international street food informs his camp cuisine. He prepares tacos, hummus, soup, flat bread, or falafel.
His Instagram and Tik Tok posts show excited and hungry children watching him work. They also show a scowling chef, whose frown is for the camera, not his guests. That angry gaze, he says, is for the political and social situations that result in hungry children in crowded camps.
Listen with me to Hamada Shaqoura, a man of faith:
We believed we could do this, despite the scarcity of ingredients and the poorer quality of the food available due to the siege on Gaza over the last 17 years. The taste may remind people of a time before the war. You can give them a sense of hope that this war will end, and we will return one day to the normal lives we deserve. And when we do, we will eat the delicious food we used to.
~ Sister Susan Schantz
*Photo from Bon Appetit, April 2024
