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!

The texts this week deal directly with the problem of sickness and death. While the understanding of sickness and death in the passages may make us a bit uncomfortable (see the comments in the passages below), the promise in each of them is that God is gracious (in the words of this week’s Psalm, God’s steadfast love endures forever) and offers new life in the face of death. May we cling to that hope in our struggle to be God’s hands and feet in a world marred by hunger and poverty!

This is one of those texts that can be used to keep us from work among those who are poor and sick. Implicit in the account is the idea that God brings disease and death on people as punishment for sin. If people are ill or dying on account of their own sin, then they are simply receiving their due. Fortunately, this is not the only text in our Bible that deals with the problem of evil. Other books (e.g., Job) and passages (e.g., Matt 5:45) stand in tension with this perspective and offer helpful correctives. What is especially beneficial from this passage is that God heals those who are sick, that sickness and death is something over which God has power. Healing is God’s work, we have the joy and privilege of partnering with God in God’s healing activity.

Psalm 107 in its entirety reminds God’s people that God’s steadfast love endures forever. Verses 17-22, which are assigned for this week, have a clear echo of the serpent story in Numbers. The Psalmist (perhaps somewhat paradoxically) underscores that healing from sickness, even if it is a divinely orchestrated one, is yet another evidence of God’s covenant fidelity.

The passage from Ephesians provides an excellent hermeneutic through which to read the serpent account from Numbers. It highlights God’s saving activity that is graciously granted to all of God’s people. In a hunger context, I especially appreciate verse 10, which ties God’s grace to our active response. God has graciously prepared for us good works in which to walk. What good works is God calling us to today?

This text can be easily misheard or entirely unheard on account of its familiarity. It is, of course, a profound statement of God’s care for and consequent action on behalf of the world. The reference to the serpent on a pole and Jesus’ own being “lifted up” is a motif throughout the Gospel of John that may be worth exploring in your sermon preparation (the motif is repeated in two places: John 8:28 and 12:32-34). In this passage, we are reminded again that God is in the business of saving, in the most holistic sense of the term.

In terms of hunger, I especially appreciate verses 20-21 that underscore how believing and doing are one and the same (much akin to what James, who penned that wonderful “epistle of straw,” meant when he wrote, “Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.“). In a world with so much need, and our own sense of security being threatened, in what ways do we need to show our faith by our works?

Related to this text (and all the texts this week) is a short prayer from Bread for the World. You may want to use the prayer in your service or give it to your parishioners to pray and reflect on throughout the week. It reads, “O God, you lift up your Son Jesus on the cross so that the whole world might be saved. Sustained by your steadfast love, may we not grow weary in seeking an end to hunger. Amen.

“…But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people…”

What does your heart have to say when you see that people are going hungry? What does your heart have to say when you learn that there’s plenty of food – it’s just that millions of people—nearly one billion—can’t afford to buy it?

Note: Article 25.1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says, “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

George Bhengani used to struggle with hunger. He and the other farmers in his village in rural South Africa struggled to produce enough food because of occasional drought periods. Several times farmers lost entire fields of crops. Losing crops caused food shortages, and it also meant that no seeds were produced for the next planting season. Planting seeds was a risky investment. People were going hungry. At times, George felt hopeless.

Your gifts to the ELCA World Hunger Appeal helped this community end hunger. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa—one of our ELCA World Hunger partners—met with George's community to talk about how they could work together to reduce hunger. Together, they designed a community development plan that centered around building a rain water reservoir and irrigation system. When the rains fell, the reservoir would fill up. If the rains failed for a few weeks, the water in the reservoir would get them through. They wouldn't lose the crops.

"The project changed our lives," says George.

Thanks to the reservoir, George’s crops are doing well. He and the other farmers are producing corn, beans, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, and leafy greens. They can count on that water to keep their crops alive, even if the rains fail. The water helps farmers have faith that their investment of seed and sweat won’t be in vain…it will bear fruit.

Even though times are tough—in fact, because times are so tough for so many right now, Jesus is calling us to do more to help end hunger. Every seed we water can bear fruit. Hunger is a problem we can solve—just ask George.