Keynote speaker shows Presbyterian Women the beauty of asking, ‘Did you eat yet?’

The Rev. Yung Me Morris challenges crowd to show more hospitality in a world gripped by famine, war and polarization

by Darla Carter | Presbyterian News Service

Photo by Ryan Kwok via Unsplash

LOUISVILLE — Using food as a centerpiece, the Rev. Yung Me Morris took the audience at Presbyterian Women’s 2024 Churchwide Gathering on a journey Friday, beginning with the everyday hospitality of Korean people and climaxing with the universal need to show more hospitality for those going without food because of traumatic experiences such as war, homelessness and greed.

“Hospitality is how we love the world, but it is not easy because hospitality puts people over profits,” said Morris, spiritual care and bereavement care coordinator at Heartland Home Care & Hospice in Pennsylvania. “Ever get in the way of somebody’s money? Hmm? Or a corporation’s money? It is dangerous.”

Morris, who’s been a pastor to the unhoused and pastored congregations, was keynote speaker at the morning plenary. She was preceded by Rev. Dr. Patricia K. Tull, who gave an introduction to the PW/Horizons Bible Study, “Let Justice Roll Down: God’s Call to Care for Neighbors and All Creation,” (which she wrote) and the Rev. CeCe Armstrong, who warmly embraced the gathering’s theme “Do everything in love.” (1 Corinthians 16:13–14)

“What a wonderful start to this journey with you by receiving the mandate to do everything in love: Smile in love, cry in love, laugh in love, fight for justice in love. Do everything in love, and the love of Jesus Christ will pour from your presence into a world that needs love now more than ever,” said Armstrong, co-moderator of the 226^th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

As Morris dove into her keynote, she explained the connection between love and the way people who share her Korean heritage often greet each other.

“In my country and in my culture, food is our primary love language,” so “instead of asking, ‘How are you? How have you been? How are the kids?’ we ask, ‘Did you eat yet?’”

This is not just because Koreans have good food, she said. It’s shorthand for saying, “Are you taking care of yourself? Did you meet your most basic need today because you are important, your life is important, and it’s worth preserving,” she said.

The question, she explained, is an outgrowth of the culture’s collective memory of the historical trauma of war, occupation and scarcity.

“Wouldn’t you be obsessed with food too, if you had a living memory of nearly starving to death or watching men, women and children starve to death?” Morris asked. The culture knows about having “a deep, empty belly” but also the fact that justice is sometimes slow in coming.

The Rev. Yung Me Morris

“Justice may want to flow like rivers,” she said, “but the people who benefit and profit from injustice will build dams across those rivers, and we may not see justice in our lifetimes.”

To provide other examples of trauma and the effects it can have on people, she turned to the ancient stories of the Bible.

“There’s a ton of trauma in the Bible — not just famine, tons of trauma — but we don’t like to talk about it, we don’t like to preach about it, we don’t like to teach about it,” Morris said.

However, “if we don’t teach about trauma, if we don’t examine the trauma in the Bible and the trauma in our own lives, how are we going to testify to how great and good God’s healing really is?” she said, drawing applause.

She noted that a famine forced Abraham into Egypt “where he traffics Sarah for the first time to save his own skin,” she said, adding, “trauma makes us do some crazy stuff and hurt other people around us.”

Morris also talked about how famine affected Ruth and Naomi. “In Naomi’s hometown of Bethlehem, which is translated ‘House of Bread,’ there was a famine, and so it forced them to migrate. It forced them out,” and eventually, the women benefitted from gleaning — Ruth being able to gather leftover grain from the harvesters. “This is how widows could survive.”

Going beyond the Bible, Morris described several famines that have occurred since ancient times, including a famine in India that was perpetuated by the apathy of the British government, two great famines in China, and the Irish Potato Famine during the 19^th century. Furthermore, there are people starving today in Gaza, Yemen and South Sudan, she said.

Famines are usually the result of human interference, such as starvation being used as a weapon of war. “So, I have to ask, is famine caused by denying hospitality?” she said.

She went on to ask the crowd to imagine opening their home to a total stranger or paying for their medical treatment or hiding people in the attic to save them from state-sanctioned violence.

“Can you imagine doing that, even if it meant risking your life and the lives of your family members, your children?” she asked. “Hospitality is not easy, but as it was stated yesterday — last night — it is necessary.”

During the Korean War, “food was scarce, and if it was not for the generosity and hospitality of individual soldiers sharing their rations, some people would have starved,” Morris said.

She also noted the ingenuity of women who got jobs as laundresses, janitors, and sex workers and “started the first black market that got these rations into the hands of starving Korean people, rations like Spam,” which is now packaged like fine wine and given to family members at holiday time, she said.

Before closing with a portion of The Beatles song “All you Need is Love,” Morris left the crowd with examples of how to display hospitality in their own lives.

“Hospitality challenges unjust policies that might cut food stamps or deny children lunch at school, children who are hungry; that might be their only meal that day,” she said. “It will also confront unjust laws that make it illegal to feed the unhoused. There are cities with that law on the books, and St Louis happens to be one of them.”

Remember, “hospitality doesn’t ask, ‘Are you a Republican or a Democrat?’ Hospitality doesn’t ask, ‘Who’s right and who’s wrong?’ Hospitality doesn’t ask, “Is it in the budget?’ Hospitality saves lives, and it’s a moral imperative even today. … Hospitality asks, ‘Did you eat yet?’”

Follow the Presbyterian News Service for more coverage of PW’s 2024 Churchwide Gathering.