LISTSERV 16.0 - HUNGERSERMONSTARTERS Archives

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!

· Just like the world’s collapse – economical, environmental, political, relational – is surely coming, so, too, might come the collapse of this work we do against hunger.

· It’s a sobering thought – the texts seem to elicit those emotions, hmmm? -- to reckon with melting polar icecaps, dying polar bears, the bi-polar society in which we live. (“Manic/depressive” isn’t all that inaccurate to describe a culture driven to frenetic activity on the one hand, and to sullen/sodden inactivity on the other.)

· The end may be near, but there is no end to the possibilities that we can seek – the ones that come from God’s will for the world – as we keep at this “defeating hunger” thing. As I write these words, the ELCA Hunger Appeal continues to grow in size as gifts stream in. The generosity of people like you and your congregation almost brings me to tears: In spite of the fear-mongers out there – yes, our politicians, our media and those who would sell things to us – the people of God set aside those fears, defy death of all kinds, and write those checks, lick those envelopes, pray about those gifts of stocks and bonds, sacrifice their financial wellbeing for the sake of others.

· (They also teach kids about poverty, visit homeless shelters, rail against institutional evil, pile shame on greedy people, walk alongside immigrants and vote with their checkbooks for products and producers who don’t pollute the Earth.)

· My tears – yours, too? – come because we understand that The End isn’t the end. Before Christ comes again – as bread, like Ghandi hoped? – we have this window of opportunity. It’s open wide – look at the news and see how society is turning away from the brain-numbing stupidity of individualism. We stand by that window and breathe the fresh air and see the bright sunlight. Shades up, curtains drawn open, the window cranked open to its fullest.

· No, I have no idea how this connects with any of the individual texts for this day. I’m thinking about “these times”; the connections to the texts are to individual words – “truth”, “encouragement”, “everyone is alive”, “resurrection”. Hardly the stuff of cogent, interconnected and well-reasoned textual preaching. Forgive me, please.

· The early Church put these lessons into this place in the calendar year – yes, the themes will return in a few weeks during Advent – to match what those ancients surely felt during this season: We don’t live forever. Trees lose their leaves and we lose our hair, beauty or athletic ability. Cold winds suck energy out of our bodies and instinctively we dread coldness in our own souls. Homes and hearths call us in, out of the weather, out of engagement with others. Clouds portend cold rain, cold snow, death-symbols for our death-fearing brains.

· Down deep in the psyche of worshippers today are emotions that circle around the biology of growing older and closer to death. You can assure them of life – Job does a good job in the First Reading – but you can also help them make this time one of deep- and thorough self-examination. Terrors of conscience, confession and forgiveness stand at the edge of the crowd of words on this day, waiting for our attention, waiting to be part of the conversation.

· Perhaps we can confess today, together and specifically, that we have been complicit in the death of others, willing over-lookers as the world’s economies slowly but surely slurp up the world’s resources. Perhaps we can look deeply inside our souls and ask what motivates us each day.

· Perhaps we can avoid David’s self-justifying whining in today’s psalm – WAS he all that innocent, and are WE that innocent, hmm? – and open our eyes a little wider. Perhaps we can think carefully about how we may create the problems that we claim we are working to solve. Perhaps we can ask forgiveness from people who are poor, for purposely not noticing their plight.

· If confession is good for the soul – it purges and resets emotions for a new start – then today’s lessons may be just enough of a gentle push to set us toward some moments of conversion, perhaps regarding our attitudes about people who are poor.

· Every so often I encourage you to approach a text or subject through the eyes and heart of someone who is poor. You might try that with today’s texts, today’s moods.

· Many people who are poor are innocent victims. By birth they are subject to unjust economies, prejudice, environmental degradation, classism. They might read Psalm 17 with the viewpoint of true casualties of large-scale systems that they have inherited. (Think of the refugees from Iraq who flood Jordan and Syria.)

· How might someone who is poor view the comments of Paul regarding the Second Coming? For what would that person hope? Of what would he or she be afraid? How would the lectionary’s little sparkles of resurrection-talk affect people who are poor? Cf. Ghandi’s statement about Christ returning as bread.

· The doctrinal trap of the Sadducees – in Jesus’ day they were the religious conservatives with good connections in the capitol -- could be approached with this question: What were the onlookers thinking during this exchange, especially those who were hoping that Jesus would help them get out from under oppressive social/political realities?

· In all of these exegetical approaches, you can explain the text, but by virtue of the newly presumed interpretive audience – people who are poor – you can turn the text on its head. The question then comes to your own audience: What can we learn from these interpreters that would benefit us? E.g., to be patient in suffering.

1. I’d work with a calendar on this day, perhaps a big one. Show children the calendar, and talk about what would happen if there really WAS only seven more weeks in this calendar year – then the world would end. What would children think or do with that imaginary possibility? Tell them about your own sense of urgency – to get good work done toward God’s will – and how the calendar also makes them happy about what each day brings. Who will they love today, for whom will they pray, who will they help, with whom will they share, who will teach them what’s important?

2. Perhaps you can hand out Advent calendars on this date – a little early, perhaps, but hold on. Ask children to look at the calendar’s forty days of activities/thoughts. (See the new ELCA Hunger Packet for a spiffy new 40-day calendar just perfect for this use.) In whatever format, the calendar can help children consider – in these times – how to give away their lives for the sake of people who are poor. Show the calendar’s features. If you are giving out calendars of your own creation, challenge children to fill in the empty spaces on each day with names or designations of people in need of their prayers and actions in order to combat poverty.

3. If you carried out the “monsters/beasts” ideas from last Sunday, you could complete a two-week sweep by talking about the scary idea that the world might end. So as not to leave last week’s monsters under the bed with their new scary friend, “Parousia”, you might want to emphasize the resurrection and “totally alive” themes of this day as well. We who follow Christ need not be afraid of his second coming, nor of the end of the world, either. We have Someone with whom to go to a new place, most likely even better than this one.

1. I’ve not given you much textual help by which to connect this lectionary with hunger/justice themes. (I know, I know: Lutherans shall live by their shame; by guilt we are saved.) But let me redeem myself -- another non-Lutheran behavior – by suggesting these questions/prompts by which to approach any of the texts:

2. This might be a good day to talk about what motivates any of us to do what’s good, right, beautiful or true. We live in perilous (or interesting?) times, and inside of that context we act as Christians to do God’s will. But what compels us to actions, and what are those actions? How could this congregation help increase the power of those motivations?

Very-late-in-the-season thunderstorms threaten to rumble through the landscape as I write this. Global warming – okay, use the “climate change” euphemism – taps at my brain like a downy woodpecker. On this day I also hear the tapping of the truth that the world – and my life – will surely end. On some days the world’s eventual ending saddens me, but on this day that truth compels me to work while there is still time. Working against evil, injustice and garden-variety stupidity, working for the Jesus who inspires me by his love for the world, working with you as sleeves-rolled-up partners. As the world turns and as it ends, we’re in this together, friends! How good it is not to be alone. . . .

· The time of the year for “judgment” themes is upon us. A few Sundays to endure the hot seat before we get shielded from these difficult thoughts by Christmas anticipation. (NOTE TO SELF: The hot seat actually returns during Advent!)

· What makes the seat hot: First, we’re the ones sitting on it. The judgment themes may seem to apply to people who are the generic “them,” but in reality we can easily find ourselves in the condemnations, warning and prophecies of the lectionary for this day. We may be the wicked, we are probably the rich.

· Second, God’s heating up the seat. Fire, destruction, the collapse of human enterprise, punishment for misdeeds --- all part of the heat we can expect to feel when God starts judging.

· Third, of all the judgments we can face, this is the most frightening one to consider, because it’s final. There may have been other judgments in God’s history – the Babylonian Captivity, the Destruction of the Temple – but the world’s calendars also flip forward to the time when there is a final reckoning.

· Matters of hunger and justice figure into this time of year, because God’s judgment is about justice, NOT being good or moral or right. “What about fairness?” is the question that separates goats from sheep, not how kind we were to strangers, orphans or prisoners. (Matthew 25 might not be the übertext for The Final Judgment.)

· “Do we deserve the hot seat?” might come to mind. The answer: Probably yes. Most of us participate as part of the problem(s) in matters of injustice. If only by our silence or minimal efforts to rightside-up God’s world. We are sinners, after all, predisposed to that default setting in our minds.

· The way out? Not by frenetic activity – “Let’s take FIVE mission trips before Christmas!” or by super-sized hunger offerings – generosity is not carried very well on the shoulders of guilt – or even by asking for a reconsideration of our place on the hot seat.

· The way out? Asking for forgiveness, and waiting for God’s gracious “Yes” to follow. Assuredly, fully, finally. God asks nothing except repentance. It’s a place to start.

· And the place that God’s good forgiveness ends? Generosity – thanks for your congregation’s giving to the ELCA Hunger Appeal – and mission trips. Also increased awareness of people who are poor, increased joy about solving this hunger/injustice problem, increased gratitude for God’s continuing gifts.

· Not sure if there’s anything here, but the psalm for this day is a little odd in that the “God is coming to judge” closing is tacked onto a familiar set of verses about praising God.

· Is the order reversed here? (We praise God because God is coming to judge the earth?) Or is the order correct – as we praise God we see God coming to judge the earth.

· Depending on the news this Sunday – sorry, but I’m writing this a few weeks in advance of November 18^th – this “singing before God judges” theme may fit some particular piece of new history hand-in-glove.

· You know the story: The first-century Christians in Thessalonica – silly people – were waiting for Jesus to return, and Paul needed to set them straight about what to do while waiting.

· For them, “Second Coming” was blessed relief, reward, the end of worldly torment, reuniting with Jesus. They thought that they could begin their new second lives with perpetual down-time, Our easy appraisal: They didn’t get the meaning of “what to do while waiting.”

· Here’s a sobering thought: Even a cursory look at any element of contemporary Western culture – or its artifacts – could as easily cause Paul to include us in the “Silly Thessalonians” category.

· Think, for example, about the meaning of “retirement” in many places in our culture, or the ways in which we indulge in leisure-time activities as those that’s the best use of time. Flip through e-Bay or wade through the flood of seasonal catalogs on your kitchen table and see whether “idle pleasure” comes to mind.

· Or consider how any of us – individually or collectively – might be fiddling while today’s Rome burns, frittering away precious time as precious opportunities for doing justice sail by like the flipping of calendar pages.

· Another silliness we could easily adopt: To think that “working for what we eat” somehow makes us better than those who do not work. The so-called Protestant Work Ethic. As though there is a plentiful supply of meaningful work for livable wages, as though those who seek work can easily find it, as though sweat saved any of us like some kind of working stiff’s righteousness.

· For people who are poor – not unlike the Thessalonian Christians? – this text may not be a condemnation of their lifestyles – “Stop being lazy beggars” – but perhaps encouragement to demand meaningful employment. For those who are poor, this text may be as much about their rights as it is about the Second Coming. Paul’s semi-scolding could also be one way of describing justice. (People who work should have the right to eat, too.)

· You can be proud as a Lutheran Christian that “food for work” programs have long characterized the way we have done relief and development projects around the world. People capable of work – to dig wells, water crops, build irrigation systems, tend herds – are offered food in trade for their hard work. Their hard work helps create sustainable systems of food production. A nice cycle, inspired by the Thessalonian text here.

· You can connect this text to the Micah text fairly easily – you could think of Luke’s words as the click here button on Micah’s shorthand version. Another way to think of the relationships: if you want to know what Micah’s hot seat feels like, listen as Luke records some specifics.

· The text also stands alone as a reminder to Jesus’ disciples of the horrors they would see – particularly the destruction of Jerusalem – within a few decades after his death. (Some Lucan scholars suggest the writer/redactors might have already been looking back at those events as they recalled Jesus’ warnings here.)

· In that reading of the gospel text, you might think of Jesus’ words in the light of contemporary history: you might count how many of the continuing signs of destruction, near-at-hand or final, are already evident in the world around you.

· That’s right: “Around you.” In a globalized world where information about everything flows into our brains like gravy on a slice of turkey, these signs Jesus notes are close at hand, familiar, and frightening. Right here in River City.

· Wars scare us; so do earthquakes. Especially frightening: people who are starving. Right in our living rooms, on our plasmagoric television screens mounted in altars of spewing information. Right here in River City.

· Perhaps most frightening for any of us are the hucksters of hope, Harold-Hill-like folks who promise the way out of our fears by asking for us to believe in them. “Be rich,” they say, “and be like me.” These folks may osteenate and trump their ways into our lives, and then frighten us even more when their false promises don’t pan out. Forty days after our days of purpose have run out, we may be back where we started: Desperately afraid of a judgment coming our way, a steamrollering punishment that flattens us into the pavement.

· Still, here in River City there’s also a good word: “Don’t’ be afraid.” The Savior of the World says that to us, not from a tower of power, but from the ground where he walks alongside us, in the middle of the fearsome realities we face. “Don’t’ be afraid of poor folks,” “Don’t be afraid of wars.” “Don’t be afraid of terrible diseases.”

· This may be the time of year during which you have been encouraging the dutiful generosity of your congregation’s members. You may have taken offerings for ELCA World Hunger; you may have sent members out on “mission trips” to do good things. (No, I don’t like that phrase because of its gentle implication that “mission” is about trips, out there and far away.)

· However phrased, the good work of these good people has drawn together attention, time, energy and money and sent them on their way to fulfill God’s will. These are good things.

· Weariness does creep in, though, and so this one little verse – the stuff of stitched samplers? – gently encourages all of us to keep at this hunger-and-justice stuff.

· It’s a word of grace in the middle of Paul’s own wearied life – think of it! – and something we could all say to each other, both as thanks for what we’ve done together so far, and what we hope yet to do together.

1. “Not giving up” is a good theme for children, and it can apply to the matters of justice and hunger. You might tell the Tortoise and Hare fable, or find a contemporary equivalent of that timeless story. (“The Energizer Bunny?) An application to children’s interest in people who are hungry: Personal advocacy for what’s right, as in “pestering and reminding and telling people about what’s not right.” Our culture is alive with stories of kids who did just that, and convinced businesses or government or families or churches to do something important or just. (Or to stop doing what was frippery or unjust.) What would happen if the kids in this congregation picked a cause or an injustice and did not grow weary in well-doing? Hmm….

2. I’m bold enough here – Bob the Pest – to wonder whether you’d consider having children “meet” people who are poor, for the purpose of getting over their nascent or actual fear of people who are starving. Could you:

3. This is a good Sunday to note the presence of persecution in the world. Children understand how it feels to be looked down on, bullied, ignored or unappreciated for being odd or at odds with people around them. Maybe this is one of those times where you tell some of your own life story, some of what it feels like to be out there in the world, always trying to do good and taking your lumps for it. One of the “lumps”: Being ignored or pushed at for insisting on justice or eliminating hunger in more than cursory ways. Add final words of encouragement.

4. String nylon line around and through the space where you are gathered. A long line. Children can follow you – and help you – as you walk and talk about “not being weary” results in good things continuing to happen over a long period of time, involving lots of people along the way. (The string can wind its way among congregation members.) Use short vignettes familiar to children in your congregation – e.g., the offerings you’ve collected and the stories of how kids contributed those funds.) Leave the string where it lays, a reminder of where “not being weary” can lead.

1. These are frightening texts, which makes them worthy of heart-to-heart conversations. You can start the sharing time among conversants by asking them to talk about their own imaginings or fear about the Second Coming.

2. Here’s a hard question perhaps hidden in the Lucan text: Why would Jesus bring up such a negative subject in the middle of an otherwise-positive or appreciative conversation? Bad manners? Warnings? Love of the conversants? HINT: Check the context of this reading, both before and after.

3. “Donor fatigue” plagues some people in matters not only associated with the giving of money, but also in the more generic “doing good.” Talk honestly about that feeling in people’s minds, and how they combat it. Specific examples might be matters of caring for people who are chronically homeless, dealing with people who are immigrants (of any kind), or what to do when “all the church does is ask for money.” How do participants experience those feelings, how do they counteract those feelings? Why would the feelings arise in the first place? Where do they find themselves in verses 12-19 in the Lucan text? How willing are they to keep “doing good” all the rest of their lives?

4. In the meat company where I once worked, we would sometimes say about every human enterprise, including meat plants, “You got your workers, and you got your shirkers.” When it comes to doing good, why do people just NOT do any work? What DOES it mean to be “lazy” when it comes to eliminating poverty? In terms of hunger and justice work, is there a punishment or judgment against people who shirk their responsibility to care for people who are poor?

5. If this subject is important where you live and work, talk about the prejudices we have about poor people who “don’t work.” “Welfare queens” also comes to mind as another epithet born of ignorance. For fun, work through this question: What does it take in our locale for people who are “the working poor” to work here? (Think of transportation, child care, affordable housing, cost of food, etc.) A followup question: How hard do you work for the money you call “yours” or the food you eat? Another: What does it mean to “deserve” or “earn” your wages – and thus your food?

In an unnamed western airport today, I met a government employee who works on the hot seat of combating terrorism. Although our conversation was bounded by necessary propriety, I found out that this person works with integrity, questions fear as a motivator for anything or anyone, wrestles with difficult questions and serves God as one who understands and protects civilization against danger. Right now I’m thinking I met an anonymous prophet in jeans, one of the invisible kind that God offers us as reminders of the real world in which we live, and who keeps us thankful about our own sense of dogged determination to do what’s right. Two questions come to mind: For which prophets are you thankful today, and for whom are you a prophet? And your answer is . . . .?