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!

In Acts 4:32-35 Luke offers idyllic picture of the early church. Historical accuracy aside, this passage nonetheless gives us a picture of Christian values—a community in which there is “not a needy person among them.” A community such as this gives testimony with great power (v. 33). George Johnson offers a reflection on this passage at http://www.bread.org/get-involved/at-church/2ndsundayofeaster-b.doc.

As I noted in an earlier sermon starter, I think it is a worthwhile question to ask “In what are we unified?” This week we repeat the refrain, “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!” What will we be unified towards? The early church was renowned for its care of orphans and widows. They were unified in their care for those who were most vulnerable. Can we follow their example today?

In our modern context sometimes we can find it uncomfortable to speak of sin. In this passage, John forcefully asserts that all of us have sin, and we deceive ourselves if we think otherwise. This invites an opportunity to both acknowledge (confess) our complicity in systems and structures that inhibit human flourishing, in practices that exacerbate poverty and hunger. In the U.S., the true cost of goods is often hidden. A good example of this is our cheap groceries (though you could really talk about any of our consumer products). The average U.S. household spends about 10% of their income on food, compared to about 30-40% in other industrialized nations. Those cheap groceries come at a cost—to the migrant workers who are paid low wages and suffer through less than ideal working conditions, to the environment that is struggling with overproduction, to our own health being impacted by additives such as high fructose corn syrup. This line of thinking could be further developed with more facts and figures from the ELCA World Hunger blog, Hunger Rumblings (www.blogs.elca.org/hungerrumblings), search “simple living.”

Two points are useful in reflecting on hunger. First, as expressed in verse 21, just as God sent Jesus, so too Jesus sends us into the world to be his agent. The things that Jesus was about in his public ministry (healing to sick, welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, and so on), he now commissions us to do. But we are not sent out without any help. In verse 22, Jesus breathes on the disciples and gives them the Holy Spirit. It is by God’s grace and power that we can do God’s work of looking after those who are poor and vulnerable.

This week’s reading tosses us right into the middle of a story. Peter and John healed a man crippled from birth in the name of Jesus at the gate called “Beautiful.” The man gets up and goes about “walking and leaping and praising God,” causing a bit of a stir. The reading begins with Peter’s explanation of what the healing means. One key point to note is how God cares about the whole person. We sometimes separate the physical from the spiritual, but the two are in fact intricately intertwined. God calls us to care for the whole person. Note also how this all takes place in the Temple. How can we be like Peter and John in caring for the whole person? How can our places of worship better care for those who are spiritually, emotionally, and especially physically needy?

In this passage, the author marvels at the love that God has for us, that we should be called children of God. Raymond Brown, in his commentary on the Johannine epistles (pp. 388-91), explains how being a child of God is both a beautiful expression of God’s grace and love, and also carries definite moral connotations. He surveys OT and intertestamental literature that may be useful in your preparation, showing how divine “childship” brings a moral obligation to live for justice and to care for those who are most vulnerable.

When Jesus presents himself to the disciples, he offers the simple phrase (often repeated in our liturgy), “Peace be with you.” Peace in the Bible implies wholeness, peace for the whole person (as we already saw in the first reading from Acts 3:12-19). Again, I think it can be underscored that God wishes that humans be whole, and this includes the needs of the physical body.

One thing that the present passage underscores is the physicality of Jesus’ resurrection. True, the physicality is somehow different that what we are used to (Jesus simply appears in their midst, they think they are seeing a ghost, the still disbelieve and wonder). But by narrating how Jesus ate, the author shows that Jesus was physically raised. This has implications on how we think about the physical needs of others. Just as creation and creatureliness was declared good at the beginning, so too God’s raising of Jesus fundamentally affirms our humanness. The needs of those who are hungry call us to action.