LISTSERV 16.0 - HUNGERSERMONSTARTERS Archives

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!

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.

I hope that every congregation in the ELCA will read Ezekiel 37 on this Sunday. We are so quick to jump to the exciting events detailed in the Pentecost story of Acts 2 that we risk missing the powerful story of dry bones coming back to life.

This story is literally inspiring. A valley full of bones would suggest a battlefield. Many people have died violently and have not been given a proper burial. Like the Killing Fields of Cambodia, it is a place of horror where the reality of human cruelty is evident. God asks the prophet a challenging question, “Son of Man, can these bones live?”

Can the dead come back to life? Can the systems that oppress and kill be undone? Can hope return to hopeless places made desolate by the thirst for conquest and power? Ezekiel takes the easy (and best) answer, “O Lord, you know.”

God does indeed know. In this vision, the process of decay works backwards. Bone connects to bone. Flesh and sinew return. The corpses, now apparently recently deceased, lie on the field. Then God breathes on them with breath from the four winds. These dead are “inspired” and they rise again to new life.

I see this as a wonderful metaphor for the church. We are too often lying dormant, victims of our own brokenness. We are scattered like bleached bones due to our attempts to create a world in our own image instead of the image of God. We have been called irrelevant because too often we have been exactly that. Now God stands before the church and asks us, “Can these bones live?”

May God “inspire” us again. May we rise to new life and act as the early disciples did in Acts, chapter two. May we proclaim mercy and grace. May we heal those who suffer. May we share all things in common so that there is no lack of anything for anyone.