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 text 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.

January 25, 2009 (Third Sunday after Epiphany)

The passages in the lectionary this week all underscore the imminence of God’s judgment/call and the decisive response of those who were faced with that reality. On the one hand, the passages can present a challenge to my understanding of God’s grace. The underlying assumption in all four is that we need to do something to avoid wrath (the passages from Jonah and 1 Corinthians are exemplary). On the other hand, if we understand that it is God’s grace that enables us to respond, the passages encourage us to live out God’s call with abandon. In a world filled with poverty and strife, what might that look like? How might the church today answer the call to radical discipleship?

Prayer of the Day (ELW):

Almighty God, by grace alone you call us and accept us in your service. Strengthen us by your Spirit, and make us worthy of your call, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

Jonah is a curious little parable. Though the author gives us little indication of the precise nature of Nineveh’s transgressions (we are only told that they are evil [1:2] and the king issues a decree that the people should repent from their “evil ways” and “the violence that is in their hands” [3:8]), what is clear is that God is about to overthrow the city. In Jonah 3:1-5, 10, Jonah delivers the message, and upon hearing the warning, the people repent. God then decides to withhold judgment. As noted above, the imminence of God’s judgment provokes a response. What does it mean to repent? What sins do we need to repent of? We have assurance that God will forgive us, do we have courage to confess and change our destructive behaviors?

Psalm 62:5-12 (6) encourages us to put out trust in God. God’s fidelity is assured, in what ways do we need to grow in our faith? In these turbulent financial times, can we reach out to those in need, trusting that God will continue to provide for us?

1 Corinthians 7:29-31 is one of those tricky passages that I’m not quite sure how to handle. The calloused rejection of one’s spouse, the stoic refusal to mourn or rejoice, and the willful disregard for one’s situation in life aren’t exactly virtues in my mind. What the brief passage does underscore, however, is the imminence of Christ’s return. Many of the first Christians believed that the Christ event inaugurated the new age and that his return could happen at any moment. Because of the proximity of Christ’s return, Christians lived radical lives (see the comments on Mark below). Nearly 2,000 years later, and still without any sign of the parousia, it is hard to live with that same urgency. How would we live differently if we truly believed that Christ could (or perhaps even would) return at any moment? If we knew that it would all end momentarily, what would we be sure to do? What would be of value to us? (Is thinking in this way at all beneficial?)

Jesus’ call of Simon, Andrew, James, and John in Mark 1:14-20 invites all sorts of speculation. In this tersely narrated pericope, these two sets of brothers are abruptly inserted into the story, with apparently no previous contact with Jesus. Why did they so quickly drop everything to follow a man that they had never met? Was it Jesus’ magnetic personality? His authority? Did Mark forget to inform us of a previous meeting? We’re not the first to find this scene strange—even in the first century the author of Luke’s Gospel felt a need to switch a few events around to make the narrative coherent (see Luke 4:38-5:11).

I think that Mark is intentionally laconic in this passage. Like so many other places in his Gospel (see esp. Mark 8:22-10:52), Mark wants to demonstrate for us his understanding of discipleship. Jesus calls and we respond. But what are we called to?

In Mark’s Gospel, discipleship involves taking up our cross (8:34), losing our life (8:35), becoming the servant of all (9:35), welcoming children (9:37), becoming like a child (10:15), giving up possessions to help the poor (10:21), and so on. It is by unequivocally responding to God’s call and living out of kingdom values that the kingdom of God is truly at hand (cf. 1:15). Again, what would that look like today?

As the lectionary for Epiphany presents the partially continuous installment readings from Mark and Corinthians, these passages give themselves to thematic preaching. The issues of healing and justice are predominant through these passages.

An appropriate Prayer of the Day uplifting themes of justice and hunger from the choices is below.

Holy God, you confound the world’s wisdom in giving your kingdom to the lowly and pure in heart. Give us such a hunger and thirst for justice, and perseverance in striving for peace, that in our words and deeds the world may see the life of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen

Deuteronomy 18:15-20

This Hebrew Bible reading presents Moses’ promise of a “prophet like me” (v.15). This presages the Gospel passage about Jesus coming in to the synagogue and speaking with authority. There is for preachers here also a word of consolation and encouragement when trying to preach prophetically on potentially divisive themes like justice and hunger. God speaks, “I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command.”

The Psalm praises God for God’s works, which are “faithful and just.” (v. 7). This justice includes providing “food for those who fear him.” (v. 5). There is an opportunity in the words of this psalm to discuss in preaching the meaning of the “fear of the Lord” as the psalm carries the famous passage “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” (v. 10).

1 Corinthians 8:1-13

Here the lectionary shares the complex passages about “food sacrificed to idols.” (v. 1). Scholars suppose that in Paul’s world, most if not all meat available commercially had its source in temple sacrifice. As a contextualization of this curious fact, consider how in the last century, most funeral homes in America functioned also as furniture stores!

The passage shares the question about how one Christian’s practice may upset another’s. “Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as food offered to an idol; and their conscience being weak, is defiled. Food will not bring us close to God.” (vv. 7-8)

This raises for us a question of whether there are today any “tables of demons” from which Christians should be cautious to eat. Could food grown or processed with unjust or unsafe labor practices pose a stumbling block? Could food grown in places and ways that is destabilizing the environment wound our conscience?

This Sunday and the following three Sundays all share stories of Jesus healing. The four healings are four different kinds of healing. Thus a sermon series on healing could be designed.

Jesus enters the synagogue at Capernaum and the people were “astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” (vv. 21-22). Here the issue of prophetic authority is raised but then uplifted even further with the healing that follows. As Jesus rebukes an unclean spirit, the people respond that this increases his authority. “They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, ‘What is this? A new teaching –with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.’” (v. 27).

The healing of the person from an unclean spirit can represent many kinds of healing needed in this world. People need healing from demonic possession, from guilt, from mental illness, from unsustainable lives, and from broken relationships. Jesus shows us that all these are in obedience to his power to heal.

The Rev. Kevin Massey
Director – Lutheran Disaster Response