LISTSERV 16.0 - HUNGERSERMONSTARTERS Archives

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!

Life is a struggle. So far I have not met one person who has not experienced suffering. We all know the pain of illness, the suffering of a broken heart. When we go on in our life journey, we experience loss. We know that this world is not a safe place.

No doubt it is a human thing to wish to avoid suffering, and we like to regard the lack of suffering as a mark of special favor or at least good fortune. What we want is a world where all our problems are taken away, a world where our enemies are made to vanish, a world of peace and plenty and happiness, a world where we and those we love can have everything a person desires. We wish a Messiah would make our world better.

But Jesus is not that kind of Messiah. From the time Peter recognized Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must suffer and that he must be killed and that he will be raised on the third day. The emblem of our faith is not a crown but a cross.

We have a cross in front of our church, not a picture of a miracle story in which Jesus feeds the hungry, makes the lame walk, the blind to see, and the dead to live. We are focusing on the cross. In Christ on the cross we see God. God in Jesus on the cross identified himself out of his free will with sinners. He took upon himself our suffering so that we may be saved from sin, death and devil.

In taking up our cross we accept the truth, we learn to see how things are, and we are able to say how we see the truth. Like Jesus. While last week’s Gospel text tells us how pleased Jesus is with Peter, he is not afraid to tell him today that God’s spokesman turns into devil’s advocate. In taking up our cross, we accept the pain of the world. We see what happens. We can say what we do not like about the things going on. We do not have to pretend that everything is nice and beautiful. In taking up our cross we can see suffering and pain, but we do not have to accept them and we do not have to interpret them in a positive way. Through the cross we are able to hear that Jesus will be raised on the third day.

To take up our cross does not mean to be good but to become good. To take up our cross does not mean not to be well but to get well. To focus on the cross is not being, and thus being static, but becoming; not resting but training. The kingdom of God has not yet happened, but it is the way. Not everything shines and sparkles yet, but everything is getting better. To focus on the cross is to know that God participates in our suffering.

When Peter simply does not hear what Jesus is saying Jesus condemns that lack of hearing, that lack of accepting, that lack of understanding. To take up our cross means to hear and accept what Jesus is saying. We are not yet, but we shall be. “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what he has done.”

We know that this world is not a safe place. It was not for Jesus when he entered the world, soon a refugee fleeing to Egypt. It was not a safe place when he entered Jerusalem, where the cross was awaiting him. In more than 150 countries around the world there are over 11 million refugees and asylum seekers in need of protection and assistance.[1]

Many refugees are forced to leave homes without warning. Only half are able to reach refugee camps, and those who do often are exposed to overcrowding, disease, crime, and other harsh conditions. They usually stay in the camps until the U.S. or another country accepts their application for residency and resettlement.

Talk about refugees and choose a concrete example about a child living in a refugee camp. (Google: How to survive a Gaza refugee camp, by Ramzy Baroud)

[1] God’s mission in the world, An Ecumenical Christian Study Guide on Global Poverty and the Millennium Development Goals. For more information, and links to download or order the guide visit www.elca.org/one

My first entree point with a congregation can well be the call committee. I make the offer to educate call committees, as many have had no opportunity. Sadly when the call process is over and we are well into the first year of a call, one or more members of this committee will leave the church.

Why? Because they have had disagreeable words with another member of the committee or with a member of the congregation. The words can be very simple ones. Too often they are words that pack a punch so difficult to handle that the people soon leave the church.

I serve this church through the Office of the Bishop. I have found over the last 11 years that I have spent more time teaching Matthew 18:15-20 than probably any other text. Did Jesus give these words to the Church knowing that we would fail in our relationships with one another? Did Jesus give us a process to restore relationships so that we could always find ways to restore the community of believers? Did Martin Luther understand these words in such a way that he felt it necessary to lift up as a means of grace the mutual conversation and consultation of the sisters and brothers? The process is simple, yet so many refuse to take the first step.

The first step is that of approaching the one who has “sinned” against you. Tell them of the sin you perceive. Even though the word forgiveness is not mentioned I think that it is implied in this process of reconciliation.

Life within community can be difficult. As a church we have experienced this with the “hot button” topic of the day. Seemingly the church has never been void of such topics going back to the early church.

Reconciliation can also take another form. Besides the renewal of relationships and that of a community, what about the restoration of the world when it comes to the sharing of resources? The ELCA World Hunger Appeal now teaches us that it is possible for us as the world to feed all of the world’s people. We now have the resources to do so. The question I hear asked most often is, “Do we have the will power to do so?”

The prayer that I started with seems to me to be a prayer of reconciliation of the ways of God towards us. Matthew 18 asks us to be reconciled with our neighbors within our community and within the entire world.