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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 29, 2007
4th Sunday of Easter
First Reading: Acts 9:36-43
Psalm 23
Second Reading: Revelation 7:9-17
Gospel: John 10:22-30
STARTER ONE: PREACHING THEMES
Shepherd Recognition Day
· Not everyone can do the work of caring for sheep. It’s lonely, dangerous and absent any recognition for a job well-done.
· Not everyone can do the work of caring for people who are poor. It’s lonely, dangerous and absent any recognition for a job well-done.
· On this day it would be well for us to recognize—and thank God for—the godly work of relief and development workers who care for the world’s poorest people.
· By this image, we could think of people who are poor as precious to God, worth the sacrifice of his Son for this gritty work. Worth the sacrificial lives of those who give themselves wholeheartedly to relief and development work.
· Protected from danger, well-fed and watered, well-known and well-named, sheep somehow benefit from God’s gracious and outstretched hand through agencies like Lutheran World Relief and Lutheran World Federation.
Dorcas Alive
· This second Peter-in-Joppa story includes an emphasis on the godly qualities of the woman whom Peter raises from death.
· She is known for her care for the poor, including her work in making clothing.
· Considering these details about Dorcas suddenly makes her the model for a kind of “shepherd” for people who were poor.
· If Dorcas is one of the first examples of this godly work, she is not the last. The early Christian church understood that caring for the poor was, according to God’s economy, both necessary and right.
· According to Rodney Stark’s The Rise of Christianity, it was precisely this feature of Christianity that made this offshoot of Judaism so compelling to the pagans that populated the Roman Empire. According to Stark, the church grew because of its treatment of those who were down-trodden, those who were sick, those left to die during the plague, women and children.
· By raising Dorcas from death, Peter reinforced the truth that God has power over death; he also made it possible for her example to prosper and grow.
· A sidebar: It’s easy to forget that “feeding the hungry” also encompasses matters such as clothing, housing, meaningful work, medical assistance and other tangible forms of God’s love. Dorcas’ clothes-making is a signal reminder about “integrated development”, programs of this church’s care that interlock to take care of every facet of human well-being. Your congregation’s offerings always put food into the mouths of people who are hungry, AND they always fill the other needs that come from poverty or injustice.
The Singing Crowd
· Yet another Sunday with echoes of Händel’s “The Messiah,” and another Sunday with loud-singing crowds comprising the choir.
· Something different this time around: The crowds come from everywhere.
· Something really different about this choir: They’ve passed through horrors and suffering.
· Something really hopeful about this singing throng: They’re assured of food and drink, shelter from the elements, joyful lives free from want.
· On this Sunday this vision of John is as real as refugee camps in Africa, well-digging projects in South America, worship services throughout the world—at the very moment your congregation is gathered together!
· Through your gifts to the ELCA World Hunger Appeal, people who have suffered tribulations of unspeakable horror are brought back to life and are assured of life-giving food, drink, shelter and safety.
· Through your gifts to the ELCA World Hunger Appeal, this kind of singing has continued for decades, throughout the world. People brought to life again get to sing praises to God again.
· We join in the singing, too, because we have been brought to life again.
STARTER TWO: CHILDREN’STHOUGHTS AND ACTIVITIES
1. Prior to the reading of the Gospel, try a “sheep-snatching” demonstration with children, thusly: Designate one of the children as someone who God really loves, a “sheep” who is perhaps a poor person. Taking a protective stance next to this child, challenge the rest of the children to try to snatch the child away from you. Using your wits, fend off the would-be snatchers for awhile, then stop the action for a few words of explanation. Ask the children who would try to attack or take away the poor person; ask who would try to protect and defend this person. Ask why anyone would want to protect someone who is poor. Let the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel answer the questions.
2. Tell the children a story about relief and development work in a place like Darfur or Central America, but from the viewpoint of the person doing that work, the relief and development worker. You can find source material by which to imagine your way into the mind or actions of the aid worker at www.lwr.org and www.lutheranworld.org. Tell the children that these people are like shepherds in the Bible.
3. If your congregation sponsors any refugees, or if any of your members have been refugees – people who have “passed through the great suffering” noted in the Revelation text – ask these people to describe that passage, their rescue or their appreciation for the kindness of those who helped them re-establish their lives here. HINT: Don’t forget that Lutheran immigration work started right after World War II! (Some “refugees” may be in their 60s, but they have probably not forgotten their sense of gratitude for the help they received, perhaps decades earlier.)
STARTER THREE: BIBLE CONVERSATIONS
1. The Gospel today requires some context, on both sides of the reading for this day. Think together about Jesus’ reasons for using “sheep” language on city-dwelling folks, his disputations with those who wanted to kill him for his claims, and his delineation of the sheep who were his and those who were not. What is Jesus claiming for himself? What is he offering to the people with whom he is talking? What were they paying attention to that blinded them to his offer?
2. If “sheep” might be thought of as “ordinary people who are ordinarily poor” – a thoughtful description of most of Jesus’ audience – how would the Gospel be thought of differently in terms of economic justice or deliverance? Or criticism of the social system? What would his accusers have hoped for from a Messiah? How would that be different from the hopes of “the sheep who were his”?
3. The Revelations text is astounding, enough that it conjures up a phantasmagorical scene that’s almost beyond imagination. What’s even more astounding is that this mass choir is comprised totally of people who have suffered greatly and been protected and rescued by God. To say that another way, the great crowd is actually a bunch of poor, oppressed people who’ve passed through their time of suffering. They’re singing not only because the Lamb is worthy of praise, but because they remember how things used to be, before they were rescued! A hard question: What right do any of us have to join that choir? Another question: If we counted all the “rescued people” who’ve been helped by our church body’s relief and development work over all these decades, what would be the size of the crowd? Still another: Who would we be in this story/vision? One last question: For what do we praise God?
4. Psalm 23 looks at God through the eyes of an individual sheep. (Many popular recreations of this psalm take that viewpoint to some detailed depth.) In your imagination, though, keep the sheep as an essentially need-filled creature, totally dependent on the work of the shepherd to stay alive. Now go through the verses of the Psalm to see the places where, in the contemporary world, people who are poor today might be in analogous situations --- e.g., in need of protection from enemies, looking for clean water, rest, comfort. How does the psalm speak to a poor person today? How do you help “shepherd” through your contributions to the ELCA World Hunger Appeal?
THE SENDOFF
In the summers of my younger years I enjoyed watching lots of sheep in their natural surroundings in the Sierra Nevada of California. They were munching anything they could see, following their mouths to food. They seemed oblivious of what was around them, except for other sheep, the shepherd and his dogs. These Basque shepherds—in later years Mexicans and South Americans—were stalwart, lonely figures, heroes for us young boys watching them manage several hundred sheep with only whistles, staccato commands and hand motions. On Good Shepherd Sunday in these latter days of my adulthood, I think of Jesus in the form of a short, tanned and weather-worn Hispanic man walking through sagebrush with a few talented sheepdogs, so devoted to his work that he has forsaken his family and his country for a long while to do this solitary good work. Not a bad image, I’m thinking, for any of us who claim to follow Jesus’ example. God keep you joyful!
Bob Sitze, Director
Hunger Education
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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!
May 6, 2007
5th Sunday of Easter
First Reading: Acts 11:1-18
Psalm 148
Second Reading: Revelation 21:1-6
Gospel: John 13:31-35
STARTER ONE: PREACHING THEMES
They will know we are Christians by our love
· In the 1970s – in the days of “far out, dude” and “groovy”, this song became an oft-sung staple of “contemporary worship services.” Sung into the ground, actually. (The same phenomenon exists with some of our current Christian songs.)
· The theme, though, doesn’t go away!
· If there is a Great Commission, it may be trumped in importance by this Great Commandment here.
· “They” in the song must certainly be the people of the world who see the love of Christ’s people for all others, regardless of their place in the world.
· We show love for the world in the hunger programs of this church – and its partners – which offer Christ’s own love to people regardless of their ethnicity or religion. Think of Lutheran Disaster Relief in this country or the Asian tsunami relief in Indonesian and India for examples. (See www.lutheranworld.org for current news about Asia and www.ldr.org for information about Lutheran-related relief in the Gulf Coast.
Unwashed and unloved
· What made Peter’s report so striking is that, like Jesus, he was able to damage terminally the “purity code” leftovers from Judaism that threatened to make Christianity into a class-oriented religion.
· Why? The Gentiles were as much known by the not being “clean” as by their imagined apostasy. While the designation appears to the religious, it may in fact be related to class, as in “No Low-Class Dirty People in This Church”.
· As we minister to and among people who are poor, we stand with Peter, inspired by a different vision than “self-cleaning righteous ones deserving of and earning God’s favor.”
· We say, “Come as you are, friend.”
· Our hospitality – in Christ’s name – is seen not only in handshakes and smiles, but in loving service – food and shelter; love and conversation; jobs and justice – that we extend to people who we might previously have thought of as “different from us.”
· Class consciousness in Christianity has no class.
Nature gone wild
· The psalm portrays a phantasmagorical vision of nature running amuck: Every element of nature – including previously dangerous aspects of nature – setting aside natural activities to engage in praise of God.
· The vision – a preview of “The Peaceable Kingdom” – is worth noting, simply because of its portrayal of the natural world as in synch with God’s created will.
· The stark reality in today’s world, however, is much different than the psalmist’s hopeful vision: A world where pollution (start with carbon and work up the chain of chemicals) threatens our survival, where nature is being raped and pillaged in order to feed non-sustainable lifestyles.
· By our own complex, materialistic and overwrought lifestyles – and our resulting complicity with rapacious appetites for possessions and pleasures – we could be mocking the vision of this psalm.
· We may also be decreasing greatly the world’s capacity to feed its people, as arable land disappears or is rendered useless by depletion of water or drought or erosion that may be the result of the global warming caused by our appetites for carbon-spewing technologies.
· Those people who live close to and respectful of the land – including people who are poor, indigenous peoples and farmers – may be crushed by our demand for products and services and comforts that ruin the earth and its creatures.
· How would the earth’s creatures praise God in these times?
God lives in the neighborhood
· A message from one of my hand-made Christmas cards years ago: God is great; God is good; God lives in our neighborhood.
· But it’s a “new heaven” and a “new earth” that God lives in. How in the world would God live with us in a world that we continue to foul and abuse?
· If we were to understand that God lives in this neighborhood, we’d behave differently towards the neighborhood.
· God deigns to live with us – and those who are, like us, poor in many ways – for no apparent reason other than God loves us.
· When God shows up in the neighborhood, God gets to work on healing, comforting, taking care of people.
· Perhaps God ALREADY shows up in “neighborhoods” around the world, in the faces and work of the people of this church, volunteers and contributors to the work of the ELCA Hunger Program.
STARTER TWO: CHILDREN’STHOUGHTS AND ACTIVITIES
1. A collection of animal puppets of every kind – one per child? – could enhance the message of the psalm. After some singing together of a praise song, you might announce that there wasn’t any rain for three months and some of the animals died. (Take away those puppets.) Another group was poached or hunted into extinction. (More puppet disappear.) Continue until one or more of the children objects. Then ask a series of questions about the place of animals in God’s world, and our responsibility to preserve creation for its capability to feed, clothe and shelter the world’s people.
2. How would children react if they knew that God would be moving in next door to them? Talk about the question using other questions:
- How would you get ready?
- What would you stop doing? Start doing?
- What would you ask if you met God?
- How could you help God (with the wiping away of tears, getting rid of suffering and pain, comforting, providing water)?
Announce to children that, in a way, God does show up in other places in the world, where the godly activities of the Revelations text take place every day through the work of the ELCA Hunger Program and its worldwide partners.
STARTER THREE: BIBLE CONVERSATIONS
1. Each of these texts connects to some part of the ELCA Hunger Program that may seem peripheral to the “real task” of feeding people. Today might be a good time to do some connecting of hunger to other areas of concern and opportunity, among them:
- The relationship of a degrading environment to the probable starvation of large numbers of people in the world.
- The “isms” that prevent Christians from considering others as worthy recipients of God’s love. (For the 1st century Christians, the “ism” might have been “Gentilism,” but for us today it may be “terrorism” or “classism.”)
- Our lack of understanding of God’s presence as “neighbor”, and how this ignorance contributes to our lack of regard for people different from us.
- God’s neighborly activities – wiping tears, getting rid of suffering, providing water, etc. – are available to us as likely tasks or ministries in our lives.
- Whatever causes poverty causes hunger.
- Whatever keeps people from providing for themselves and their families in a sustainable way is a cause of hunger.
- Although not explicitly noted in these texts, “oppression” and “injustice” also top the list of ungodly behaviors that cause poverty and hunger.
2. The questions of classism implicit in Peter’s report to the Jerusalem Council are worth exploring:
- Is classism illegal in our country? (Nope.)
- Then why is it wrong?
- What would have been the history of Christianity if the Jerusalem Council had rejected Peter’s argument?
- How is Christianity perceived – in terms of class – in other parts of the world? How does the hunger work of this church body contribute to that perception of Christianity’s primary identity?
- By what means do we eventually break down the subtle (legal) barriers between people of different levels of education, income, cultural upbringing, etc?
- What does it mean to “walk alongside someone who is poor?”
3. The psalm for today offers a delightful picture. Spend some time with participants imagining the scene the psalm paints, as though it is actually happening simultaneously. What would you hear and see and smell? What would you want to do because of this experience? Now contrast this vision with an experience of pollution or environmental disaster? (Ask an experienced participant to describe his or her experience while others listen.)
THE SENDOFF
The days of Spring are upon us, and eternally springing hope hops up to me, wiggles its nose at me and says, “Hey, want to take a walk?” And so I do, seeing God in the hopeful signs of blooming tulips, budding trees, rabbits eating the blooming tulips and omnipresent Canadian geese chewing my lawn down to its lowest ebb. God in the working of nature! I am fortunate to be alive. And hopeful!
Likewise for you, friends!
Bob Sitze, Director
Hunger Education
