The lessons for each Sunday in the church year proclaim God’s grace in Jesus Christ. Also derived from a Sunday’s texts are lessons for the Christ-inspired and Christ-like life of God’s people. The comments here will help you find hunger-related threads – sermon starters – among the themes of this day’s texts. (We're presuming you have already done your exegetical work on the texts.) God bless your proclamation (and teaching) of what is most certainly true!

· By definition, trees living by streams are in the minority, if only that there are increasingly more “salty deserts” than there are running streams. (See “Colorado River” or “California Delta” in your background work.)

· Last week’s release of an authoritative report from a UN-affiliated group bears out the truth that humans have changed the sustainability of this planet’s ecosystem. What are we to think of this, in light of today’s Psalm and First Lesson?

· If God had not raised Jesus from the dead, we should probably fold up the “End Hunger” tents we have erected, if only out of frustration (or intellectual honesty.)

· With a lively Jesus as our Savior, our work to combat or eliminate hunger and its ugly family members is something eminently possible. The theological truth of the Resurrection yields a theological truth that “love is stronger than evil” -- as per Desmond Tutu’s simple song!

· Especially do we need release from the “evil spirits” – the addicting behaviors and brain patterns --- that keep us locked in materialism, fear of those different from us, basic selfish disregard for others or feckless pity.

· The home locations of the crowds seeking Jesus’ healing indicate an appeal larger than the environs of his country-hills homeland. (Tyre and Sidon are essentially non-Jewish locations, and Jerusalem is as much the Washington DC of Judaism as it was a symbol for Pharisees and Essenes of a religion co-opted by the Roman occupiers.

· How does Jesus’ healing touch – for the poor and downtrodden of our day – come to the people of the world through your touch? (Literally, not figuratively!) Another way to ask this question: What poor and diseased people have you touched lately?

· Absent that possibility, you can be assured that “Jesus’ touch” still shows up around the world through the ELCA World Hunger and Disaster programs. (Google Lutheran Disaster Response, and see what’s happening in Central Florida right now, and STILL happening after the December 2004 tsunami and the September 2005 hurricanes.)

1. Play around with the possibilities of two houseplants – one doing well and the other one on its last legs. Ask children about the differences between the two plants and solicit their conjectures about the causes for the two plants. Avoiding semi-Pelagianism – a new/old heresy sometimes still limping along inside our souls -- think together about how the plants could save themselves. (The answer: They can’t! The water saves them!) Save some moments to show photos, tell stories or show video clips about water-related projects that are part of the efforts of Lutheran World Federation (www.lutheranworld.org) or Lutheran World Relief (www.lwr.org) in bringing life-giving water to people around the world. (And to bring closure to the tree on its last legs, give it some water or some plant food or something.)

2. With the children, reverently re-enact the “healing touch of Jesus” scene by wandering around the sanctuary as though examples of Jesus’ healing touch. Have children place their hands on the people they touch and say a simple blessing – “Jesus heals you.” Or “Jesus loves you.” Read the Gospel – before or after this experience – and then ask the children (and the congregation members?) what it must have felt like to be healed by Jesus. Finish with the amazing truth that in thousands of places around the world, crowds of people ARE being healed on this very day by virtue of the work of Lutheran (and other) Christians who bring Jesus’ healing touch to people who are sick or hungry.

3. If you live in a warmer clime – or perhaps in a globally-warmed one – this might be an interesting Sunday to give children a small tree for planting at home (and transplanting in the Spring). You can obtain trees from the National Arbor Day Foundation (www.arborday.org) and give children the challenge to plant these trees as a way of remembering that they are like trees planted by streams of water. Look for tree-related projectas of Lutheran World Federation or Lutheran World Relief. (One interesting location: Nicaragua! Find out more about the relief and development activities of LWR at www.elca.org/hunger/openaworld/leaders )

1. In the psalm for this day the idea of scorn – or “sneering” in the CEV – characterizes the wicked. Scorn or sneering can manifest themselves in obvious ways, but in the Land of Passive Aggressives, that attitude can also lie just below the surface of human interactions or thoughts. How might you be able to identify “quiet scorn” regarding the poor, whether in yourself or the general society? How does God’s righteousness – or God’s righteous people – work against the effects of quiet scorn?

2. The psalmist talks about a “road leading to ruin.” Talk about those roads in your own life, or those you see within present-day culture. How are “roads to ruin” easily identified, and how easily missed? When does a simple path become a super-highway heading to ruin? How can you know when you’re on that kind of road? A more difficult question: How might those of us who are wicked drag along others on our own roads to ruin, without their consent? (For example, think of parents who teach their children to be acquisitive through their own adult examples.)

3. Jeremiah comes down hard on those who are evil – a broadly enveloping category that could in many ways include most of us at some moment or in some state of mind. How do you feel about “getting what you deserve” (verse 10) for doing evil but on the other hand never deserving God’s favor? Why, then, do we do good, especially for those who are poor or oppressed?

4. Jeremiah names a different group of people as trees blessed by streams of water. Where the psalmist talked about righteous people, for Jeremiah the blessed ones are those who trust in God. What’s the difference among those two groups of people, if any? How do you know which group you’re in? And where does the cause-and-effect analogy break down? (HINT: Are people living in the parched sub-Saharan region presumed to be evil or not trusting of God?)

5. After consulting the Greek translation for “power” that comes from Jesus – in the Gospel lesson for this day – what other words might you use to describe the way Jesus’ power might be seen in today’s world, just as real as it was for those who were healed by Jesus’ actual touch? (Greek: dunamis)

On this night I write from a plane high over the Nevada desert, coming from a short stay with my ailing 91-year old father. I’m thinking – perhaps like you? – that the power of Jesus to heal the poor and downtrodden extends through generations of ordinary people. Stroke or not, my father knows deep inside his bran that God’s grace infects the world with justice. And he has enjoyed being a water-graced tree for a long time . . . .

· If God had not raised Jesus from the dead, we should probably fold up the “End Hunger” tents we have erected, if only out of frustration (or intellectual honesty.)