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SCROLL DOWN FOR NOV. 9 AND NOV. 16

Welcome to Hunger Sermon Starters!

• Amos speaks sarcastically to those whom he is entreating to repent, that if they are ‘prudent’, if they are wise, they won’t notice those who ‘push aside the needy’ or ‘afflict the righteous’. Don’t we see others push by those who beg in the streets (and often do the same thing ourselves); or turn away to look the other way when faced with unpleasant images of need in the media or in other places?
• The prophet admonishes the people to seek and to love good, not evil, remarking that perhaps, in that, God might be gracious.
• If our hope is in God’s grace, and it is, then shouldn’t the establishment of justice and mercy and love which is God’s will for humankind be our response?
• Don’t we, as did the people of that time, look to the ‘day of the Lord’ with longing? Yet, according to Amos it won’t be what is expected. Might that not mean that what God has in store may very well look foolish and dangerous to a world intent on conspicuous consumption and the amassing of personal ‘enough’ at the expense of those who are different, disenfranchised, poor, or simply ‘not like us’?
• What ‘gates’ exist in our own daily lives that prohibit the just distribution of wealth, power, and resources? 
• How can one live the faith professed and sung and spoken in the church in such a way that justice does indeed roll down like waters?
• Visions of an ever-flowing stream which continually provides evoke images of Baptism and provide a reminder of God’s never failing provision. We are made righteous in Baptism, through water and the Word which is Jesus Christ. And we are called to rain that righteousness down on others in acts of compassion and kindness.

• How many people today cry for someone to make haste to help them? To feed and to clothe and to rescue them? 
• The psalmist prays to be delivered from enemies. What enemies do we face in our own lives? In the community? In the world?
• We who are spiritually ‘poor and needy’ know the Lord as help and deliverer. Who will deliver those who are the poor and needy around us?
• Who will haste to help them?

• Paul’s response to the question ‘What about those Christians who have died before Christ’s second coming?’
• The purpose being that one might ‘not grieve as do others who have no hope.’
• Yet hunger is a grievous and hopeless thing.
• What might our response be to those today who have no hope, in light of a God who brings ‘with him’ those who’ve died, that we might be ‘with them’ and all together ‘with the Lord’ forever?
• How might we be more ‘with’ our brothers and sisters today? What might we do to encourage them?

• Are our lamps going out?
• Are we ready for the bridegroom to come?
• Parable reminds us to be ready and awake when the Lord comes, to light the way, to make sure we have enough.
• Perhaps part of our own readiness should be to make sure that all have enough.
• Perhaps our light also needs to burn through the dark hours of need and guide our brothers and sisters to the celebration where all might feast.
• There is enough oil. We just need to have it ready and on hand when the time comes.
• We cannot rely on others to do the task.

• The overriding theme here seems to be the end times.
• But the message seems to be on what is needed in the meantime.
• We need to work towards that upside-down kingdom God has in mind – the one where justice, righteousness and hope abound.
• Advocacy for the underrepresented and the disenfranchised serves to both rectify inequality in the world and to encourage our brothers and sister.
• Our reality is that many of those with whom we share this planet are hungry.
• Hope comes in being prepared to serve – to light the way – in making haste to help those for whom the enemy is hunger.
• These with whom we share our temporal home will also be with us in our eternal home where we will join at God’s table. In joyful thanksgiving for that great and promised feast, should we not join together in this time and this place setting a table where none leave hungry?

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• End times again!
• The Lord will ‘search Jerusalem with lamps’ and ‘punish the people who rest complacently on their dregs’.
• All the ‘stuff’ owned by a person will not save them.
• Just how much ‘stuff’ do we need?
• It is easy to rest complacently when we are full to the brim with good things, drunk on our ownership of ‘stuff’.
• It is easy to ‘walk like the blind’, not seeing the need in the world.
• Is it time to get off our dregs and give of our ‘stuff’ so that others might be fed?

• The psalmist asks that God teach to ‘count our days that we may gain wisdom of heart.’
• The tension is between chronos, our time which is fleeting, and kairos, God’s time which is eternal.
• The sins of omission are often the ‘secret sins’ of humankind.
• We pass over, often unintentionally, those of us who have little or nothing.
• We fail to see the pain and suffering in the world.
• Wisdom of the heart would have us bring those things into the light – feed, clothe, shelter, and advocate for those who share with us our span of life, that theirs not be ‘only toil and trouble’.

• ‘Peace and security’ was a buzz-phrase of the Roman Empire, yet we know from history that peace and security were not then, and are not now, an equitable commodity.
• Paul here exhorts the Christians at Thessalonica not just to encourage each other, but to build up each other.
• How might that look in light of the establishment of true peace and security?
• What would it take from those of us who know and await the coming of the Kingdom of God to truly live as children of light and of the day?
• We must be sober in analyzing the needs of the world; put on the breastplate of faith and love by giving of ourselves and our goods to others; and bear on our heads, so that all might see in our lives, the helmet which is the hope of salvation.
• In Jesus Christ, there is peace and security.
• In this world there is not.
• We must live in such a way that Christ’s peace and the security of eternal salvation is played out in all we do.
• In building up our brothers and sisters – caring for their earthly needs – we live in the light.

• God has entrusted to us talents – those things which we have that sustain our lives and those abilities with which we are gifted.
• What do we do with them?
• If one identifies the word ‘talent’ as being those things which one owns, it would stand to reason that one must also ask whether those ‘talents’ are being utilized in a manner which is trustworthy.      
• Some of us are familiar with investing, and expect a return on our money that is greater than that which was originally invested.
• Yet, how are we investing those ‘other things’ God has given?
• Is our investment growing when we sleep well in a warm, dry home while others lie on park benches?
• Is it trustworthy to wash down the garbage disposal more food than many will have to live on for a week?
• Is our faith much, to which much shall be added in the care of our earthly family?
• Growing the investment of faith means living it, giving it to those in need by acting out the self-giving love of Jesus Christ.

• These texts call us to not live complacently but to utilize in the present the talents God has given us in building up the human family.
• There is a need for us to shed our blinders and to really see what is lacking in the world – what precludes peace and security.
• And when we see what is lacking, we are called to provide it, to invest what we have so that all have enough.