_______________________
NEW FEATURE: TWO SUNDAYS AT ONCE!
SCROLL DOWN TO SEE BOTH APRIL 8 AND APRIL 15 STARTERS
______________________
Welcome to Hunger Sermon Starters!
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!
April 8, 2007
Resurrection of Our Lord
Easter Day
First Reading: Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2; 14-24
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Gospel: Luke 24:1-12
STARTER ONE: PREACHING THEMES
Although today’s lessons are woven around the wonder of resurrection, other close-to-home themes--consistent with the hope of Jesus’ rising for those who are poor--might include these:
Resurrection for a purpose
· The objective facts of the Resurrection of Christ are wonderful and rewarding for those of us who live well with not too much effort. We receive the promise of life easily, with just a hint of deservedness.
· Over the centuries, people who are poor look at Christ’s Resurrection much differently. They/we are astounded, gratitude overwhelms, hope sprouts wings, words fail, shouting commences.
· In our work to stamp out injustice and hunger, we make the promise of resurrection something tangible, real as a bale of clothing, the assurance of a job, a healthy water supply, corruption exposed, land that can produce food, solidarity seen in our presence – these ripples of Christ’s Resurrection spread over the world. Christ lives. So do people who are poor.
Life is stronger than death
· The March Madness may be over, but we still want to know the answer to the question forced on us by our culture: “So, who’s going to win here?”
· This is a silly question for a God who’s powerful beyond description. Yet we persist with our queries, and so God answers. Kindly, patiently.
· This is a cruel question for those whom our culture relegates to the status of perpetual “losers.” Yet we persist in accepting the culture’s answers, so God answers. Overwhelmingly, to crush the culture of death.
· Death has a grip, but not a good one. Finally, death lets go.
· Life’s strength is obvious—victories for those who suffer—and subtle—a set-aside stone with a new function, or death-clothes that don’t fit anymore.
Love is stronger than evil
· Resurrection Day is about power, make no mistake.
· The power of evil is easily seen in today’s world: A war without end, intransigent leaders in the world, a greedy-grabby culture that eventually impoverishes those who seem to be weak, hate and mistrust, fear of people different from us.
· Evil has to work hard in order to last, though. Predators, spiteful haters, greedy-grabby people, the pleasure-addicted among us, people purposefully ignorant – these folks have to keep at their evil-making and evil-thinking with great effort.
· Evil creates its own resistance. “Work” is sometimes defined as overcoming resistance.
· Love is stronger because it creates its own pathways, its own life.
· Love is stronger because it perpetuates itself.
· Out there in the rest of the world, the power of military might and wrangling economies into submission, the slurping up of the world’s natural resources – these are hard work.
· The power of Resurrection is Christ’s power as one who loves us beyond our deservedness.
· The power of Resurrection increases as we love others beyond their deservedness.
Gritty, Good-Newsy Resurrection Day
· The facts are in, and the news is good: Resurrection is more than the cornerstone of a necessary theological edifice.
· Good news: For no apparent reason, we have escaped perpetual and eternal death.
· Good news: Death’s ugly family—their names include “hunger”, ‘poverty” and “injustice”—are done for. Condemned, defeated, their power draining away.
· Good news: There is no ending to the story of our lives.
· Good news: We can continue to live our lives so that the story of poverty in the world does have an end.
· Good news: If we make our own environmental Doomsdays, God’s power can change us from un-creators to re-creators.
· Good news: Like those who are poor everywhere in the world, we can risk rebelling against the power of evil, wherever we find it. Including “right here in RiverCity.”
· Good news: Truly-alive people help keep other people truly alive.
STARTER TWO: CHILDREN’STHOUGHTS AND ACTIVITIES
1. Like most adults, children can get lost in the trappings of Easter pretty easily. So today you can ask the question, “What’s the True Meaning of Christmas?” and pretend to be confused about what holy day this is. Play out “Baby Jesus” and “God coming to Earth to love us” until some child objects. When that happens, tie the two high holy days together with some of your deft theological wisdom. On Christmas, we celebrate that Jesus came alive; on Easter that he stayed alive. On Christmas we are grateful and generous; on Easter the same happens, but for different reasons. On Christmas, we’re a little more quiet—don’t wake the Baby?—and on Easter a little more loud—the Baby woke up from death! Enough?
2. If you want to give children traditional Easter goodies as object lessons, try this variation: Ask children to think of themselves as a hungry child somewhere close or far away. What’s “life” mean for them now? What would most symbolize a God who loves them? NOW give each of the children a potato or a cup of water or a baggie of rice. Talk about children’s reactions.
3. Use vegetable seeds as object lessons for the death-into-life message of this day, but with a twist that includes people who are poor: Think about how one seed creates a lot of food, not just a pretty plant. (And think about how the plant benefits the environment, of course!) Imagine with children what happens when thousands and millions of those seeds get planted in other parts of the world where people are hungry. AND THEN tell them how the ELCA Hunger Appeal gathers together the “seeds” of money that buy the real seeds that keep people alive. Give the object-lesson seeds a name, like “Resurrection Seeds”.
4. If your church is called by a lively name—yes, all you “New Hope/Life/Waters” people and you “Living Hope/Waters/Life folks are in the ballpark along with the “Resurrection” church crowd—incorporate your church’s name into the children’s learning today. Don’t forget the banners or the windows or the church logo. And don’t forget how your congregation’s name is replicated in the names of congregations just like yours around the world, in places where most of the congregants are poor. Imagine walking through those churches or worshipping God alongside some of those folks on this day. What would they be saying about their church’s name?
5. Teach children Desmond Tutu’s words, “Goodness is Stronger Than Evil” to the tune in Evangelical Lutheran Worship 721, which closely parallels some of the themes of this sermon starter. Because Tutu’s poem is short, sing the song several times, and do something together while you’re singing. (Take a World Hunger Appeal offering?)
STARTER THREE: BIBLE CONVERSATIONS
Okay, you’re NOT having the obligatory Youth Group Pancake Breakfast in the parish hall during Bible Class time, or you’re taking a well-deserved rest for small groups and/or Bible study time. Still, I’m committed to nosing around in the lectionary for hunger/justice themes, and so I offer you these thoughts, if only for the purpose of the conversations I imagine with my readers each week – as though I were in your Bible Conversations group!
1. The psalm struck me today with its dialectic of mercy and power. It has been noted in the public media that our government has recently taken a softer line towards regimes with whom we had previous taken a hard line. Commentators have used the word “power” to describe the latter approach; perhaps “merciful” describes the possible new approach. But we’re not talking diplomacy here – these starters are about justice. So a similar matter: How DO we approach (or think of) regimes where structural injustice imprisons its own people in poverty? (Zimbabwe comes to mind as I write this.) How about a regime that does the same to other countries around the world?
2. The First Reading could slip by unnoticed—another one of Peter’s long summary sermons—if it wasn’t for the first verse of the text (v.34), in which the hill country fisherman Peter tells how his vision from God has changed his vision about God’s will for the world. “God treats all people alike” is how my Contemporary English Version (CEV) treats the verse, and how I prefer to treat it in my own vision of ministry. “Treat” is not the same as “deals with” or even “cares about.” There’s a sense that the word carries grace in it like tin foil carries chocolate Easter candy. If you are “treated alike”, you are given undeserved favor with equanimity and delighted in the same way. This is a day for being delighted by favor, and for being delighted in being among ALL those who are equally favored!
3. Strangely, Peter wraps into his sermon a reference to the Jewish prophets—hardly an important consideration for Cornelius and household, I would think. And yet, there’s something to be said here about the continuous line of prophetic utterance that includes both warning and promise. Jesus comes to save the world—promise—but also to name and fight the sinfulness that made his death necessary. Notice of this theme in God’s word thus goes back through centuries. Looking forward, what prophetic utterances in these times offer both condemnation for structural sins—ignoring or punishing those who are poor—and the forgiveness of God for this widespread attitude?
4. The Resurrection story carries great metaphoric weight on this day. Too much, perhaps, for us to push aside so that we can talk honestly about our emotions. But try these questions that might come from the lessons:
· What is it about God on this day that might make you shout?
· What, really, is your attitude about being alive? Still, in spite of . . . .
· How do you bring life to others? Take it away?
· What’s so good about the good news?
· What in your life desperately needs resurrecting?
· How do you think of your growing older, or moving toward death?
· To what part of God’s good and holy will are you giving your life away?
· Who do you know whose poverty and hunger compel you to action to ensure their continuing life?
THE SENDOFF
I’m part of a generation that’s passing. (Actually I’m part of a no-name, in-between-generations cohort whose transition-enabling function has been all but lost in most generational theory.) There’s a kind of “death” in seeing the power of my spring-stepped youth pass toward the next generation. But there’s life there, too! Resurrection, even. The legacy I inherited—the power of ideals and the passion/energy to put them into action—now is embedded inside the minds of people younger than me, smarter than me, now more powerful than me. THAT resurrection is a wonder, too, and a reason for me to praise God. As you preach powerfully this day, accept my thanks for being a sign that God’s power never goes away. It just transfers between us. I am alive because of you. And Christ. . . . .
God keep you joyful!
Bob Sitze, Director
Hunger Education
Welcome to Hunger Sermon Starters!
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!
April 15, 2007
2nd Sunday of Easter
First Reading: Acts 5:27-32
Psalm 118:14-29
Second Reading: Revelation 1:4-8
Gospel: John 20:19-31
STARTER ONE: PREACHING THEMES
The texts for this day can move toward hunger and justice ideas such as the following:
Fearful forgivers
· Jesus gives his followers some “keys”; in the Gospel today they enable forgiveness.
· Oddly, this gift/responsibility is given to people in hiding!
· So what do fearful people do with the power to forgive? Do they sortof stand around and congratulate themselves, or try it out on each other to see if it works? Or do they pocket it for a rainy day, like a roll of antacids?
· Or perhaps fearful people are the best forgivers, because they have nothing to lose when they stop out of hiding. Perhaps they are willing to walk out into the sun and start forgiving really bad people? Even those of whom they’re afraid? Or those who want to do them harm?
· I’m imagining here people, Christian folks like us, who live in utter poverty, in places where death stalks them like a hungry animal. I’m wondering how they forgive their oppressors.
· I’m wondering whether in some church in a faraway country, some group of very poor Christians is offering prayers of forgiveness for us in this land.
· I’m not sure what happens when the Holy Spirit breathes on them like this.
· I’m pretty sure that when they become forgivers, they stop being fearful.
· I’m also pretty sure we have something to learn from our sisters and brothers in these places.
· A good way to learn: Putting my hands into their sides, looking at their wounds, walking alongside them, being in the same once-fearsome “rooms” they live in.
Who kills whom
· The Jerusalem authorities are miffed – or worse? – because Peter and the Brave Ones have insinuated that they are killers. (This would be an unclean act, and religious authorities were Thoroughly Clean Guys.)
· Peter and the apostles can’t stop talking about what they’ve heard and seen. While part of that truth-telling is about Jesus, another part of their message is about who’s killing whom. A Messiah killed for the supposed sake of the nation. A Savior killed by those he wanted to save. A poor man killed by rich men for their own benefit.
· Peter-like truth-telling is part of our post-Easter glowing: A risen Savior whose death counts for something AND lingering evil that kills not just one person.
· Sometimes we call this work “advocacy” and other times “preaching.”
· Neither is safe, and neither is confined to the process of “shaping up the authorities”. Advocacy and preaching start in our families or maybe in front of our morning mirrors: Who is it that we’re killing, and who is it that saves us for life?
· There’s a wonderful mixture of Law and Gospel in affixing blame for death. Hard to see, certainly, but there’s good news when blame slides on by, caught and held by a Savior who takes our sin—our killings of people in small and large ways—and covers it with his own life and death.
Do we have to do this again?
· In a fast-paced world with “new” plastered all over everything, it’s easy to ask, “Can’t we move on here?”
· In today’s lectionary last week’s themes show up again – the victory poetry of St. John and the psalm repeated from last week – like leftovers from the Easter dinner. Good leftovers.
· One leftover that’s still good, still preachable, still emotionally front-and-center: Easter (season) is about LIFE. How it comes, how it triumphs, how we help it happen in places where DEATH wants to win.
· Once again: hunger and poverty are about death. We aren’t that kind of folks because our Savior is not that kind of folks. We do life . . . .
· Let’s commit this season to bringing Christ’s victory over death into the lives of people who are poor, wherever they are. Let’s make it a long season!
STARTER TWO: CHILDREN’STHOUGHTS AND ACTIVITIES
1. With some care, you can explore the idea of “wounds” and their healing. (Not the center of the texts, I know, but bear with me while I try this on for size.) Wounds cause the body to start its natural healing process. Healing wounds are a sign of life. Jesus’ invitation to Thomas is offered not only to cure his doubting, but for him to see life in the making, life repairing itself!
Hungry and poor people around the world carry “wounds” with them all the time. Like Jesus, though, they invite us to look at their distress as well as their healing. Healing that takes place because of a life-giving God AND the life-giving properties of hunger-related work by your congregation and this church body.
Perhaps you could use BandAids or ask kids to show their scabs or wounds, and then launch into something like the above? Perhaps this is more for the adults? Perhaps I need a less-wild imagination?
2. Try something interesting with Psalm 118:18, the idea that God prevents “death from laying its hands on me.” A slightly different idea than resurrection, this “death-prevention.” And so you might show photos or tell stories of death-preventing work that happens because of your congregation financial gifts to the ELCA Hunger Appeal, in places in the world where people die of bad water, preventable diseases, injuries or weakened bodies. For example, how does a well become God’s way of keeping death from laying its hands on people?
STARTER THREE: BIBLE CONVERSATIONS
1. It would be good, now that Easter is upon us and “the grass is riz” that we go back and consider all the “deaths” from which Christ’s resurrection frees us. Certainly real death, dirty and ugly. Slow death-in-waiting, like HIV/AIDS in Africa or the starvation of citizens of Zimbabwe or North Korea, or on farmlands in the U.S. or China. Spiritual death, relational death, deaths of hope or purpose. Reviewing the Psalm for this day, especially verse 18, helps us understand how God’s lively claim on our lives helps prevent—or save us from--the deaths which plague humankind. Chronicling the presence of the whole gamut of deaths can also be helpful in our realizing what great and godly good comes from the ELCA Hunger Program around the world. What death-defying work!
2. Kindness and peace show up, over and over again, in the Revelation lesson. (At least in the Contemporary English Version-CEV.) Along with a triumphant Jesus, the All-Powerful Alpha and Omega, these twinned blessings perhaps summarize the over-arching effects of hunger work in this church. A question to talk about: How do any of us bring kindness and peace to others? Or perhaps a question about the places in which kindness and peace are in short supply. A third question: How does a conquering hero assure kindness and peace?
3. Explore the idea of “healed wounds” that is hiding in the John text. (See the Children’s section for this Sunday for some thoughts.)
4. Explore Jesus’ “breathing” the Holy Spirit into his fearful disciples. Talk together about your fearfulness or dread about the general state of the world. What “breath of Jesus” would help allay or dissipate those fears?
THE SENDOFF
Long ago, in a far-off galaxy, this used to be called Quasimodo Genitii Sunday. (“In the manner of new-born babes,” from the Epistle for that day.) I think to myself often, “In what manner do I present myself to the people I serve.” As a sincere, milk-desiring babe? As a seasoned veteran of death-defying ministry? As a hopeful proclaimer and encourager of God’s people? As a life-giver or a life-stealer? As hopeful mentor or cynical colleague? I’m never quite sure of my quasimodo, but I am sure that Easter has also “riz” and that what’s coming next are more life and newbie-ness. I look forward to that, as well as to joining you next week for another set of hunger sermon starters. God keep you!
Bob Sitze, Director
Hunger Education
