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!

When life becomes oppressive or stagnant, God steps in and does something new. In the story from Acts 10, a wisdom seeker from Ethiopia (who knows a thing or two about being excluded by the religious elite) is taught by Phillip about the good news of God’s love in Jesus Christ. When Phillip gets to the part about being baptized and included in this new community, the Eunuch asks a bold and simple question, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” In other words, “Don’t we have everything we need? (Water, the Word, each other) Can God transcend our barriers to do something powerful and new?

The answer is a definite “yes”. So when facing global injustice and poverty in which over a billion people live on less than $1 a day; in a country that can find 1 trillion for financial bailout of our banks but can’t find the 10 billion it would take to provide every man woman and child with clean drinking water, can we hope that God would do something new? Can it be that we already have everything that we need to accomplish great things for those in need?

On one of those crystal clear days in Central Oregon a person can actually see the rivers sing and the mountains clap their hands. It happens when the creation appears in all its glory, just as God intended. The waters are clean and life giving. The bugs are hatching. The trees and flowers bud and flower. Things are as they should be.

Yet, Psalm 98’s wondrous imagery is startling because of how often the world is not as it should be. Injustice and pollution keep the creation groaning for deliverance. Species become extinct. Humanity suffers as many hunger and few have too much. We can even forget that rivers and mountains can sing and dance. We no longer claim a vision in which all God’s children are cared for and fed.

For Lutheran Christians, justice works always flows from God’s grace. We are accepted, loved, included, empowered by God. It is from a grateful heart that we accept, love, include and empower others in Jesus’ name. Sometimes those we are called to serve ask impertinent questions like, “You have spoken of Jesus as the Bread of Life, what is to prevent you from feeding me in his name?”

John 17 includes the “high priestly prayer” of Jesus. In it, we hear Jesus discuss his true nature as God’s son. He prays for his followers and for those who would come to believe in Jesus through their witness. In short, Jesus prays for us and our ministry.

Jesus’ desire in this prayer is our faithfulness and our commitment to unity. We are called to remain true to his teachings. We are to avoid schism. We are called to be the body of Christ in the world.

The image of a tree planted by a stream of life giving water from Psalm 1 is useful here. Just as the tree relies on the access and effects of God’s gift of water to thrive, so too we need to remain close to Jesus and what he reveals to us about the heart of God. When we create systems that become unrecognizable to the teachings of the Lord, we are like a tree that has uprooted itself and decided to try its luck 100 yards away from the stream. The result is both predictable and tragic.

If Jesus is the complete manifestation of God on earth, then we would be wise to pay attention to the things that he cared about. What I find when I read the gospels is a compassionate teacher who feeds the hungry, heals the sick, confronts the powers of oppression, includes the outsiders, empowers the disciples, eats with sinners, and invites all to join him in witness to an alternative kingdom. If we would be true to this teaching and followers of Jesus then our lives and our churches should seek to accomplish the same things that Jesus was passionate about. Put more bluntly, if Jesus is Lord then our checkbooks should reflect that claim. Church budgets should be audited according to Matthew 25. Our guest lists for banquets should include the poor. We may invite homeless people into our homes. It is most probable that we will get in trouble. But have heart, we will be in good company.