Print

Print
________________________________
 
NOW A BUNCH OF SUNDAYS ALL AT ONCE!
SCROLL TO SEE STARTERS FOR DECEMBER 16, DECEMBER 23 AND – AT NO EXTRA COST -- DECEMBER 24/25!!!!
________________________________
 
 
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!
 
December 16, 2007
Third Sunday of Advent
 
First Reading: Isaiah 35:1-10
Psalm 146:5-10
Second Reading: James 5:7-10
Gospel: Matthew 11:2-11
 
 
STARTER ONE: PREACHING THEMES
 
A little good news wouldn’t hurt
 
·         Like a seaside tidal pool, the hunger ministries of your congregation and this church body teem with lively possibilities, wriggly organisms and quickly moving creatures. (For an example, consider how your congregation members responded to the post-Christmas South Asia tsunami a few years back!)
·         Even in the face of horrific suffering around the world and grinding poverty as close as some neighborhoods in any locale, we who are God’s people can’t overlook that good things happen, too, because of God’s love poured through us into the world.
·         Could your sermon today be one of those times when you recount – as encouragement and reminder and perhaps antidote to blue funks – what you have done together to alleviate hunger, poverty, injustice or any of their ugly family. Could you recall what you have done together with gazillions of Lutherans around the world to feed hungry people, bring sight to blind people, open up prisons of all kinds, heal people who suffer from diseases of every kind. Could you hold up what we all have done to stop the quickening degradation of the world’s ecosystems – the source of all food, after all.
·         I can point you in a hundred directions for facts and anecdotes, such as the stories in the ELCA Hunger Packet, or Web sites I’ve referenced scores of times in these Sermon Starters. But maybe this week’s sermon preparation time would be a good occasion for you – and your sermon-study group? – to find those examples close to home. A couple of hints follow . . .
o        Part of what’s “good” about good news is changed attitudes. Any of those around you?
o        Ignorance – of the facts about the spread of hunger around the world or its many causes – might have been dissipated by your work together.
o        Some of your members may have become contemporary versions of John the Baptist – check the clothing references in the Matthew Gospel. (Yes, I’m grinning at you. Sortof.)
o        Other hints are jammed into today’s lectionary like stocking stuffers. Look for them.
·         And when you’ve found the stories and examples, the inspiring people and the hopeful changes – think about how you all might express your thanks and gratitude (to God. to each other, and to this church body).   That could be fun, too.
 
It’s time for a little (more) justice
 
·         Psalm 146 shows up again – last time was September 30th of this year – and once again there’s the voice of insistence coming out of its words, like the sound of a child asking Mom or Dad to stop smoking.
·         During worship time, the voice is small – the dutiful antiphonal reading or softly sung chanting of words between lessons. And yet . . . .
·         In short and easily understood phrases, this psalm (with backup from the Gospel and Isaiah) presents justice and food as co-equals. You probably already know – and wrestle with – the “charity without justice is not charity” equation. Perhaps today’s psalm could be helpful in reminding your congregation about this matter as well. Many questions occur to me . . . .
·         Where does justice show up in a canned-food drive? If God feeds hungry people through us, how does God bring justice through us? What are some “little” justice-bringers in which we engage? How do they gather together to become powerful currents of righteousness? What are the effects of insistent, even nagging justice – c.f. the child above – compared to one-time efforts? Who decides what’s just and what’s not?
·         Why we think about this subject at this time of year: It’s time to repent and to get ready. If we’re the unjust ones, repentance befits us. If we’re the silent, complacent ones sitting on our hands, repentance is required before we meet the Child whose birth and life set the world on fire.
·         Another reason embedded in Advent: There might not be very much time remaining for us to bring justice to the poor. “The end of times” could also be thought of as “the end of a time when people are not fearful” or “the end of the time when generosity characterized the human spirit,” or even “the end of the times when we can repent, seek forgiveness and amend our sinful lives”.
·         A little justice in a little psalm. A little voice in a smoking world.
 
 
Be like farmers
 
·         “Be like farmers.” An odd thing to think about in the winter, right before Christmas
·         Patient and kind, according to James. That’s a description of farmers. Seems good enough.
·         People who are dependent on what they can’t control – these are folks who understand patience and kindness. People who know how to wait.
·         Be like farmers, James says. For their patience and kindness, but also their ability to withstand suffering.
·         Easy sermon? Not really, because patience and kindness are always in short supply, like seed corn in a refugee camp that’s hungry NOW. Patience and kindness – and farmers? – get eaten up in the urgency of problems or selfishness.
·         Easy sermon?  Not really, if the “farmers” are folks who tend smaller plots of land on which they depend for most of their food. Not if the “farmers” are people in other parts of the world who, like the first-century peasants to which James was referring, are nearly always victims of larger economic systems that steal from their capabilities to grow food. Their patience and kindness can get smushed into the mud of globalized food distribution systems or trade practices. All they may be left with is the ability to withstand suffering.
·         It’s comforting to know that, beyond the easy warm/fuzzy, Christmas-card images of rural life, there ARE still people who can teach us to be patient and kind, EVEN during times of suffering.
·         Perhaps that’s the Advent connection: Times of suffering are on the close horizon. For all of us. (Mortgage crisis spreads to whole economy; global warming kills more people than polar bears; war eats up more than Middle East countries.)
·         Be like farmers.
 
Proof positive
 
·         Your pews may start to fill (again) with folks looking for answers. (The evangelism axiom is true during this time of year: People visiting your worship services come there for a reason!)   Things are getting tough for more and more folks. More and more of us are closer and closer to poverty than ever before. More and more of our nests are fouler and fouler than ever before. More and more of us are disconnected from each other more than ever before.
·         We worship together because we hear (from God’s Word) the wisdom we need to stave off stupidity, to salve guilty consciences, to bind up wounds of body and spirit, to sidestep the effects of our punishable sinfulness. We want more than answers; we want deliverance.
·         We Christians claim that we follow Christ, and that he’s in the salvation business big time. But what’s the proof for pew-sitters, new or familiar? 
·         Today’s Gospel has Jesus engaging in rare self-promotion, proof for John’s disciples that it would be good for them to switch the center of their discipleship.
·         What Jesus does is who Jesus is. (Or is it the other way around?)  This is the center of Jesus’ answers to the querying Baptists. And what Jesus does is observable love for the people of the world.
·         More self-promotion: We Christians (Lutherans in this case) put God’s/our money on the table, our shoulders to the wheel and our eyes to the ground and we get things done. Through the hunger ministries of this church, we do the same things Jesus did personally. People ARE fed, people ARE healed, justice IS proclaimed and lived out.
·         All these actions prove LESS about us, and more about the Christ we follow. We’re not the answers that visiting pew-sitters need; Christ is. 
·         By what he did with his life – it ended in life-giving death and resurrection – Jesus proved to his followers and other answer-seekers two things: His way works, and it works for our lives.
·         The proof has never been in the pudding. It probably was always in the Cook. (Yes, you can mix metaphors in sermons . . . .)
 
STARTER TWO: CHILDREN’STHOUGHTS AND ACTIVITIES
 
1.       Try the “charity with justice” idea by making two simply lettered (paper) banners, one with DO JUSTICE on it, and the other with FEED THE HUNGRY. Ask children to read the banners and explain both. What’s “justice”; who gets it and who gives it? What’s “food”; who gets it and who gives it? How do justice and hunger work together? What would it feel like to a poor person to get only food and NOT justice? What DOES God require?
 
2.       Play around with insistence by holding up a cigarette and asking children what they would do to help someone stop smoking. What if that person was their parent or older sibling? After a few moments, move the focus towards justice: What would children keep doing to help someone stop being unfair to others? At the end of the learning time, crush the cigarette, noting that this is what God does with injustice, and unjust people, too.
 
3.       If this person is part of your fellowship, ask an older adult to talk about the beautiful natural world she or he experienced as a child. Combine this story-telling time with a paraphrased version of parts of the Isaiah text. A kind of environmental celebration.
 
4.       If life is a highway – Isaiah text? – then what is Advent? A stop sign, a highway leveling crew, a paving crew, a parade of returning refugees?   A fence along the highway? Draw pictures as you teach about the value of Advent thinking on folks.
 
5.       About this time of year your congregation may engage children and families in some acts of charity and/or justice. Add some oomph to the process by inviting as guest preacher or teacher one of the clients or beneficiaries of the children’s generosity. If funds are gathered, children might hear from someone taking on the persona of a recipient – of healing, food distribution, clean water, sight, economic justice.
 
 
STARTER THREE: BIBLE CONVERSATIONS
 
1.       With the texts in mind, find (and copy or download) news items that catch your eye as connections (good or bad) to the themes of Advent. Who’s repenting? (Who needs to?) What “highways” are being built? Where’s God’s justice showing its insistent strength? Where’s the proof that Jesus’ example continues into these times?   Who are the forerunners of Jesus today? For fun, ask teams of participants to browse the Sunday edition of a large urban newspaper in order to find these comparisons.
 
2.       If you didn’t do John the Baptist themes last week, think about those possibilities this week, or continue the discussion with more personal questions for participants, such as:
 
 
3.       Talk about this question, with all the day’s texts as references: Why would the lectionary choosers have selected so many “do justice” texts for this time of year?
 
4.       Ask world travelers to tell stories about farmers they’ve met – “peasants” in some places – especially stories about patience and kindness in spite of suffering. Where applicable, reference the work of ELCA World Hunger.
 
 
STARTER FOUR: ACTION STEPS
 
1.       Start an Advent-tide letter- or card-writing group that meets for breakfast or lunch once a week until Christmas. Your work: Ask, confront or congratulate those whom you believe are at the front of injustice or justice work. Use cards from the ELCA Hunger Program. (See the most recent hunger packet, or the most recent SEEDS for the Parish.)
 
2.       Select from the ELCA Good Gifts catalog one project that you believe incorporates many of the elements of today’s texts. (E.g., feeding the hungry, bringing justice to the poor, healing, bringing sight, etc.) Set a financial giving goal and make a poster to invite others to join you in this raising of funds and awareness.
 
3.       Gather a group to view together the new ELCA-produced NBC Television special focused on Uganda. Visit the ELCA Web site to find more information. The topic: Forgiveness in a country torn apart by war. Very powerful evidence that Jesus’ ways work!
 
4.       Add something special to any gift- or food-bags your congregation assembles: A personal invitation to a special event that bag recipients might enjoy. For example, a Mom’s Night Out just for them, or a bus trip to a tree farm (with a free tree thrown in), or a movie night at church, or a Games Night for kids. (Yes, the invitation is only the tip of the iceberg.)
 
5.       Arrange for gifts of magazine subscriptions to families (or children) who are poor. Make sure that your provide for some contact with the families – tailor the subscriptions to what the families might want – and budget the possibilities of extending the subscription for more than one year. Ideas: Anything from National Geographic, Discover, National Wildlife Federation, TIME, Inc.
 
6.       Start collecting candles for Candlemas --- February is coming soon! – so that you can “light a candle instead of cursing the darkness.” Think now how that idea might characterize your congregation’s pre-Lent emphases on poverty and hunger. Stay tuned.

THE SENDOFF
 
Outside the cold is gathering, as rain turns to ice, threatening trees and power lines. Inside, there’s a cold in my head, as my throat and eyes and ears fight back against garden-variety germs. Deeper yet, inside my soul, there’s the possibility that Dreary will win, at least for a moment, and that Despair will crowd in next to this loathsome creature. What keeps me hopeful? Christ is coming again, and much of this lingering battle against evil will someday be over. You’re another part of that hope, by the way. Keep at what you’re doing. Be like farmers . . . .
 
Bob Sitze, Director
ELCA 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!
 
December 23, 2007
Fourth Sunday of Advent
 
First Reading: Isaiah 7:10-16
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19
Second Reading: Romans 1:1-7
Gospel: Matthew 1:18-25
 
 
STARTER ONE: PREACHING THEMES
 
Delivering a nation
 
·         People may suffer alone from hunger – and poverty, its basic cause – but most likely hunger and injustice prevail over entire societies, entire nations. A question from today’s First Reading might be: How does God deliver a nation?
·         Below-Average and Too-Young King Ahaz faced deliverance needs with a political solution, basically an alliance with an imagined super-power. 
·         His face-to-face meeting with the prophet Isaiah – and Isaiah’s aptly named son? – yielded a different oracle from God: Don’t trust in anyone but God. Not what the young king wanted to hear.
·         Isaiah’s “sign” – commentators are all over the map on its exact nature and meaning – is clearly godly, opposed to notions of deliverance that are faithless. 
·         “God With Us” – the king’s coming son, a small- or large-m “messiah” or Isaiah’s boy? – is fairly clear, though: God delivers, not our Assyrian friends. (Oh, by the way: Ahaz DID make the alliance with Assyria and proceeded to set up worship facilities for their wonderful gods. Big A apostacy as the result of little-a alliances?)
·         Thus, faith in God is a pre-emptive or preeminent quality of deliverance. And perhaps the gifts of the Spirit that accompany faith or are derived from it. (E.g., trust, love, patience)
·         You can see this work on in several places in the world, with South Africa as a primary example. (There, forgiveness triumphed over post-apartheid revenge.) A current example is Uganda, where Lutheran World Federation projects are helping that country turn from intra-tribal warfare to forgiveness. Check www.elca.org/readytoforgive to see this amazing story. (Big-w Wow!)
·         How might we learn --- from Ahaz, Isaiah or Africans – how to seek deliverance for our own nation in these times? How do repentance and forgiveness lead us to Jesus, Big-M Messiah?
 
The state of the nation
 
·         Advent comes to an end today, and perhaps it’s the last time to take stock of the nature of things. Perhaps it would be good to see how our nation stacks up compared to the situation(s) in today’s texts.
·         In the Psalm and First Reading, you get the picture of a nation in peril – or at the point of destruction. The Matthew text takes place in an occupied country, and Paul writes to Christians scattered to all corners of an empire.
·         When it comes to social justice, how does our nation compare and how can we be characterized? What percent of our GDP goes to non-military aid? What percentage to humanitarian efforts? How has this nation responded to global warming, peace between warring nations, self-determination? How does our brand of “empire” help bring about God’s will for justice?
·         These are neutral questions about important matters, but our stock-taking may find our nation coming up short in some places. Or perhaps we even find ourselves beset by the same kinds of fears or terrors as confounded Ahaz or the psalmist. 
·         “Turn back to God” is a call to repentance that is never easy to voice or proclaim, but perhaps that’s the word of God on this day, especially when we look face-to-face at a coming Messiah whose birth happened in circumstance of refugee poverty, at the hands of an oppressive empire.
·         Good news? God’s deliverance always happens when and how we least expect it.
 
 
What’s a Messiah for?
 
·         I often wonder how well-dressed, self-sufficient and comfortable Christians can honestly sing “Amazing Grace” – unless, of course, they HAVE been lost and were found. Possible, but perhaps not true for most of us.
·         The same dynamic may operate with “messiah” – the one who saves. If we already save ourselves, what meaning does the word messiah have for us. If we’re already comfortable and secure, what deliverance do we actually seek?
·         (There’s a dark side to that question in some communities, filled with shuttered homes and protected by walls and gates: We seek deliverance from all the poor people out there, who terrify us by their desperate state and frighten us with their needs that won’t go away after we distribute the Christmas baskets.)
·         Perhaps King Ahaz teaches us the folly of self- or other-reliance. Perhaps we need the same kind of terror that afflicted the people singing Psalm 80. Perhaps we need saving from our addictions to possessions, to pleasure, to “more”.
·         People who are poor, oppressed, suffering, hungry, and beaten down? They understand the question and yearn for its answers: A home to call their own, a community that welcomes them as more than “illegals”, a job that pays a living wage, food on their table that doesn’t make them sick, recognition of their rights, power to make their own decisions, a nation that rallies around their gifts instead of their needs.
·         A subsidiary question, then, might be this: Who, then, is the Messiah really for?  Does Christ come to closed doors and wait to get in? Does salvation sit, like an unopened present, never used by over-fed and over-stressed people? Does God’s deliverance drill through our complacency, our self-dishonesty, our fears until we realize our own poverty?
·         Hard questions, even for a messiah . . . .
 
 
STARTER TWO: CHILDREN’STHOUGHTS AND ACTIVITIES
 
1.       On several large pieces of construction paper, letter a small, medium-size and large letter M. Show the children these wonderful letters, talk briefly about some “m” words, and then introduce “Messiah” as a word from today’s lessons. Explain the idea of “little-m Messiah” (Hardly any need for deliverance), and “Big-M Messiah” (Oboy, we really need some big-time help here!) Middle-size m is in-between. Now portray some situations in which rescue is needed, and ask children what kind of salvation/rescue/deliverance they think is needed in that situation. Think of situations that are concrete – I got lost in the market; someone who has lots of toy and wants more of them; a kid whose parents have been killed in a war; people with only enough food for one more meal – and move quickly through the “voting” about the size of Messiah needed. (Be sure to include one or more situations where people are self-satisfied and might not need any rescue.) The Big Point: When it comes to rescue, Christ is the Big-M Messiah, who delivers entire countries and lots of people. He also can accomplish the big deliverances when it comes to individuals, too. End with a prayer of thanks for every rescue God brings about; perhaps even praying for a rescue/deliverance that’s close at hand for your congregation,
 
2.       Demonstrate the idea of a nation pleading for deliverance by herding the children together into a big group, wrapping a rope (snow fence?) around the entire group, and then telling them that you are completely in charge of them, are NOT going to feed them or let them sleep or have any friends; and they may not talk unless you ask a question. After a few moments of silence, your questions: How’s it feel in there? How are you going to feel when Christmas comes? Any problems? Do you need anything? (You keep saying “NO” to all their requests.)
 
In the middle of your oppressive behavior, a member of the congregation comes up, pushes or leads you aside, and frees the children. You act surprised, and ask two questions: First, “What’s your name?” (Answer: Messiah) and “Do you have any other name?” (Answer: Jesus)
 
End the demonstration right there. Proceed directly to the texts or to your sermon. In the absence of either, spend time talking about the nature of “deliverance” and “messiah.” Where does this take place in the world, and how might our hunger offerings help this happen for people who are hungry or poor?
 
STARTER THREE: BIBLE CONVERSATIONS
 
1. The Isaiah text is extremely rich for conversations of a deeper kind. (When you do your exegesis on this text, you’ll find that Isaiah 7:14 is the most written-about verse in interpretive scholarship.) Where to go with a Bible conversations group? These thoughts:
 
1.       You might follow the general direction of the sermon starter more-or-less devoted to the Isaiah text.
2.       You might explore more deeply the idea of “Messiah rescue,” the view of life in which we hope for a miraculous rescue by an heroic figure. How would that play out in matters of world hunger or justice? Who are “messiahs” in today’s world? 
3.       Where is it legitimate (or legal?) for faith communities to be involved in civic matters? Political matters? How are they the same or different? How might this conversation connect with your congregation’s involvement in ELCA World Hunger.
 
2.   What in these texts moves you toward solving the problem of world hunger on this Sunday?
 
3.       The Psalm intrigues me, if only to talk about the question, “What causes you to grieve for our nation?” Keep the question neutral so that participants can bare their sorrows. Make sure that “grief” doesn’t morph into “grievances” – different subject. Ask good followup questions, and reference today’s psalm as a connector. Another tack: What WAS the situation in which the psalm writer – or the Isaiah writer – wrote these words? How are those situations similar to those we face today? What’s new about our grief-bringing situation.
 
 
STARTER FOUR: ACTION STEPS
1.       If you are collecting Christmas baskets, include a special gift in each one of them, something that will be “rescuing” for more than a few meals. How about a small dictionary, a phone card, a supply of multivitamins, or something long-lasting?
 
2.       Distribute slips of paper with the names and phone numbers of congregational members who are home-bound, who will work on Christmas Day, who are at war, who are in the hospital. Distribute them as part of the offering, asking volunteers to bring the “deliverance” of a kind word.
 
3.       Spend time in prayer together, thinking about who needs deliverance – be specific – and how they and this congregation brings God’s rescue to bear on their lives. For a variation, pray for yourselves and the rescues you might need!
 
4.       Write holiday letters to legislators – state or national – or civic leaders whose work has been helpful in bringing people out of poverty, rescued from oppression of any kind, or otherwise kept safe and secure. Make sure that these appreciative notes are as specific as those you might write when advocating for a change in these folks’ behaviors!
 
5.       For a special Advent offering, gather clocks and watches of every kind – Advent is about time, after all! – and bring them to an agency where they might be useful.
 
 
THE SENDOFF
 
This time I’m not talking about the weather or the moods it engenders. Let’s think about you and the gift that you bring to this nation. Let’s think about how your prayers and deeds add oompah and oomph to God’s Good News in Jesus. Let’s think how you become small-m messiahs to people in need. And then let’s be grateful for Jesus. Over and over and over again. What a happy Advent this has been!

Bob Sitze, Director
ELCA Hunger Education
________________________________
 
 
 
Welcome to Hunger Sermon Starters!
 
The lessons in the church year proclaim God’s grace in Jesus Christ. Also derived from a set of 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!
 
December 24/25, 2007
Nativity of Our Lord
(Christmas Eve)
 
NOTE TO PREACHERS: I have not for the past three years ever included sermon starters on the occasion of Christmas. This year I have broken that tradition because the times seem to warrant a change. Perhaps we live in another “fullness of time” and hunger- and justice-related matters deserve proclamation, even with one-time-a-year folks filling the pews. Or perhaps not . . . .
 
First Reading: Isaiah 9:2-7
Psalm 96
Second Reading: Titus 2:11-14
Gospel: Luke 2:1-14
 
 
STARTER ONE: PREACHING THEMES
 
The war is over
·         No, not that one. THIS one:
·         The war of abusers vs. their victims, of oppressors vs. the downtrodden, of rampaging leaders vs. mindless citizens. It’s a universal war, and it continues, unabated, throughout the world.
·         On this night/day, organized and armed conflict will continue, of course. In Afghanistan and Iraq, in clandestine operations in Columbia, Mexico and Congo. Regular soldiers and soldiers of fortune will strap on their weapons and armor, and go to battle against evil – or perhaps on behalf of evil.
·         A deeper and more pervasive war continues throughout the world: rich against poor.  That war may be as obvious as slavery, Or it could be invisibly surrounded by the wrappings of the market economy, international relations or inter-religious conflict. However it happens, this war is a battle of justice against injustice, food against famine, some rich people against most poor people.
·         At its deepest level, this war takes place inside our souls as well.  We have a choice:  Will we side with the evil and selfish part of our human natures, excluding and excoriating those we perceive as different. (Here I am struck by the newest psycholinguistic trick of spiteful people, to use adjectives as nouns – “Illegals” -- and thus name people by their righteously despised traits.) 
·         Or will we follow God’s example – cf. the Isaiah text – and tamp down our egos and fears, disregard the voices of selfishness and pleasure-seeking, push away temptations to never forgive those we believe are harming us or our way of life.
·         God’s people are as involved in these wars as God himself/herself. No one stands to the side and merely observes this war, whose ultimate end may be the destruction of us all. On this night/day, each of us has to reckon with our own involvement – or complicity – in God’s battle against injustice, wherever it takes place – and perhaps especially inside our own souls.
·         God will win, of course, and that comforting eventuality is part of the Good News on this night/day. Isaiah looks back at God’s victory, when the lights get turned back on and the results of God’s triumph can be seen. His many-named child is “victor” in every way. Paul writes – almost as though a letter to a pastor embedded in a war -- about the big picture of Christ’s reign. Luke Christmas-cards this simple truth: The really powerful one is born.
·         For those who authorize or promote war against people who are poor, this night/day is a fearsome one, and the signs of God’s powerful victory are ominous. A baby is born, hiding as a child of poverty. “Deliverer” by name, he will grow up to end the power of evil forever.
·         For those of us who live after Isaiah and Jesus, we may very well be engaged in a “mopping-up operation” for a war whose end is known. This might require us to be vigilant and steadfast in resisting the pockets of evil that God has conquered in Christ.
·         On this night/day, we will celebrate a Jesus whose babyhood is less important than his mature love for all humankind, his low estate at birth less important than his powerful presence as ruler of all the world.
·         For those who worship here this night/day, the announcement of the war’s end comes with an implicit invitation: Join with the rest of us – however and wherever you can – to bring God’s justice to bear on all the world. In this place and among these people, all who attend can find solace, comfort, forgiveness and courage to keep doing God’s will, especially God’s intent for people who are poor.
·         And peace? It will last forever. Once the war is really over.
 
 
At the edges
·         On this night/day, “the true meaning of Christmas” will be bandied about like a new-born baby gets passed among admiring relatives. Finally, the child tires of being a football and sets up a cry. Perhaps “The True Meaning of Christmas” should also cry out.
·         Perhaps, like many elements of life, “true meaning” is found at the edges – not the core – of a thing’s qualities. How might that work, looking for Christmas-meaning at the edges of the lectionary for this night/day. Some thoughts follow. . . .
·         In the Lucan birth narrative, Mary and Joseph are living at the margins of sustainability. No job, no home. Lots of people will on this night/day be living in the same circumstances. Almost everywhere in the world they will face what the Holy Family faced. 
·         Some contemporary at-the-edges people won’t find lodging or food. They’ll die tonight/today. As quietly as snow falling, their last breaths will escape into the air and their bodies will lie still. A strange connection to “all is calm, all is bright” as well as to “sleep in heavenly peace.”
·         Mary and Joseph – parents of the coming Prince of Peace – went to Bethlehem to register for Caesar’s pseudo-census. Strangely, “Bethlehem” can be translated in its earliest version as “house of the Philistine god of war.” What an irony.
·         Verse 14 of the Titus text – in its Contemporary English Version – includes the phrase, “He wanted us . . . to be eager to do right.” Is this part of what drives people toward church on this night/day? To do what’s right? Would a sermon on hunger and justice meet that need?
·         What will be the use of tonight’s/today’s offering? Given that the texts are soaking with peace-and-war themes, where in the world might the ELCA Hunger Appeal be making peace possible?
 
 
(NOT) walking in darkness
·         I’m struck by the quiet and sad possibility that today’s texts speak most directly to the lives and the redemption of refugees, especially those escaping wars.
·         In ancient times, “people who walk in darkness” were not engaging in usual patterns of travel, commerce or relationships. Darkness was paralyzing – unless moon and stars lent luminescence – and so walking in darkness would be treacherous.
·         There’s a logic to walking in the darkness, though. In times of war, refugees hide during the day and travel at night. Over the centuries, night-walking people have always been safer than day-walking people.
·         Perhaps you might preach the entire sermon in darkness, as though the members of the congregation were refugees. Tell new and old stories of narrow escape from danger – Rwanda, Central America, Sudan. Ask former refugees who are now part of your congregation to tell the stories. At the end of the sermon, a single light – a candle? --  appears and symbols of joy (safety, lodging, food?) are made available to the congregation – as ornaments for their trees. You proclaim a word of hope. The offering is taken with full light.
 
 
STARTER TWO: CHILDREN’STHOUGHTS AND ACTIVITIES
 
1.       Children understand the dynamics of “escape from danger” and so will understand that the Christmas story may also be about the plight of first century refugees. Try paraphrasing the events from that point of view, perhaps within the context of today’s world.
 
2.       Use darkness – shut off all the lights except the Christmas tree? --- to help children understand that darkness limits activity, and encourages people to draw in on themselves fearfully. Turn the lights back on, and talk about all the generous activities in which your congregation participates at this time of year – the ELCA World Hunger Appeal? – and how your work brings light to people who might otherwise be imprisoned by darkness.
 
 
STARTER THREE: BIBLE CONVERSATIONS
 
Just in case you might actually conduct Bible study or conversation on this night/day, these few thoughts:
 
1.       Look together at some other places where Scripture deals with what happens during darkness or night. Why might the ancient writers have connected darkness/night with fearsome things? How does “fear of the dark” still operate in today’s world? In participants’ lives?
 
2.       As difficult as it might seem, talk about some elements of the Iraq War, as they might connect with this text. Without sidetracking towards political questions that arise during this kind of discussion, focus on the plight of Iraqi Christians on this night/day, on the varieties of “darkness” that prowl among the hearts of people beset by this war. Think about the nature of “deliverance” if you’re an American soldier, an Iraqi civilian, a government leader, someone who prays for this country and its citizens.
 
3.       One more? Together rewrite/retell the Luke 2 story as though it took place in your locale. Without being too insistent on analogous connections, think why a pregnant woman and her husband would be traveling through your locale. Who would give them lodging? Where would the baby be born? Who would the shepherds be? What would the angels tell them in these times?
 
 
STARTER FOUR: ACTION STEPS
 
1.       Make “The war is over” ornaments and distribute them after the sermon. On one side of the ornament include a short prayer for peace.
 
2.       Invite families of soldiers to dinner or breakfast this night or morning. Allow time for conversation, gratitude, prayers.
 
3.       Set up a “Sudden Generosity” collection station in the narthex. At the end of service, announce a specially targeted destination or purpose for donations “that dispel darkness.” Perhaps there is a family burned out of their house or an armed forces veteran in difficult circumstances. Perhaps you know of a refugee family in your town who might be otherwise overlooked or under-served. Characterize this special offering – on the way out of church – as evidence of the “light” that suddenly appears for Isaiah’s darkness-walkers.

 
THE SENDOFF
 
Yes, it’s hard to write about hunger and justice on this night/day of culture-crusted sacred celebration. I’ve never thought that there was one “true meaning of Christmas” and for years have wondered how, on this night/day, we could all be led gently into the deepest core of our being, drawing the edgy places of our lives into the center of our being like a warm blanket. 
 
An example: On this cold, snowy night, I am waiting for the warm, toasty light of undeserved forgiveness from someone I've wronged. Without forgiveness, my heart and my sense of mission may get frozen hard, immovable, useless. For now, I walk in darkness but trust the light of Christ. And you, preacher-person? May your walking be well-lit; may your wars be over . . . .
 
Bob Sitze, Director
ELCA Hunger Education