SCROLL DOWN FOR NOV. 16 AND NOV. 23

Welcome to Hunger Sermon Starters!

• 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.

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• God gathers and feeds us with good things and rich things. In fact, so well are we fed that according to USA Weekly.com more than 100 million Americans (37%) are overweight; 30 million of those are obese; and being overweight remains a health risk for 71% of Americans.
• Yes, we are indeed God’s lucky bunch of sheep.
• But here the prophet declares God will seek out the lost and strayed; care for those who are hurt; and strengthen the weak – the fat and the strong will be destroyed, fed with justice.
• That’s rather a scary image when the statistics for American obesity are taken into account.
• It’s uncomfortable to imagine that we might be, by sheer virtue of being born in a certain place, one of God’s flock which has pushed aside others that we ourselves might be fed.
• Yet the prophet tells us that God will indeed save God’s flock by giving them a shepherd, a servant to feed them.
• We, as members of the body of Christ – the Good Shepherd of all – need to respond to the needs of others as a servant.
• We need to seek the lost and care for the hurt and strengthen the weak and feed the hungry – after all, that’s what Christ did.
• Christ, King of the universe and servant to all. 

• We are the people of God, ‘the sheep of his hand.’
• We can sing because God has generously provided everything necessary in creation.
• God is king and Lord of all.
• Comforting imagery.
• What joyful noise might we raise? Might it be the noise of advocacy that all God’s wealth be distributed adequately? Might it be the noise of thanksgiving coupled with that of the work of our hands in providing for others? Might it be truly bowing down in humility and stooping to help those in need?

• Paul commends the Ephesians in ‘faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints’.
• One might try a fill-in-the-blank exercise: The saints are…….? Love looks like….? And go from there.
• Paul also prays that a spirit of wisdom and revelation enlighten the hearts of the Ephesians.
• How might our hearts need enlightening with regards to helping those who are without – food, shelter, clothing, adequate health care, justice, and/or viable drinking water?
• What should it say to us that the One who is immeasurable power chose to live among us, to die, and to rise again so that we might have life and have it abundantly?
• How should we respond to those whose lives lack not just abundance, but the necessary?

• Text speaks right to the issues of caring for others as if they were God among us – what we do to the least ones, we do to Christ.
• We often ask the same questions, ‘When did we see you…?’
• The answer should be that we see ‘you’, we see God in Christ, everywhere and in everyone we meet and respond in such a way as to treat all humankind as we would treat Christ.
• Jesus tells those with whom he is speaking that those who serve others are ‘blessed by my Father’. It is our blessing to share with the least ones all that God has done, is doing, and continues to do. Sometimes words are not enough and what we share needs be more tangible – a bologna sandwich, a place to stay, something to wear, a well from which to drink, a kind word or a phone call.
• We who are truly the ‘least’ have been blessed to be called children of God. Who are the ‘least’ around us? For what do they hunger and thirst? How are they sick and alone or in prison? How might they too ‘see’ Jesus?

• It’s Christ the King Sunday – we celebrate Jesus as Lord of all, creator, redeemer, God!
• Yet these lessons portray a king unlike anything one might expect – a ruler who stoops to serve.
• Christ’s Kingdom is that place and time where the rule of God is done.
• In light of these texts, that looks like the self-giving love of a shepherd who seeks out the lost and the strayed and cares for them. It looks like a joyful song of thanksgiving which raises voices to speak of equity for all. It looks like a love which builds up even the least of the saints.
• In that is true power to change the world, to live ‘Kingdom’ lives in the here and now.