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!

One of the little clans will produce a great ruler. Not only a ruler, but God’s own anointed one. In modern day Bethlehem there is a small group of Christians and an even smaller group of Lutherans that do great things—provide schools and staff hospitals and build community centers and gardens. These Palestinian Lutherans are a “little clan” hanging on by their wisdom and courage and their hope in the promise of God. They bring stability through daily help to real people—food, clothes, education, clean water: human flourishing, anti-terrorism…

The ELCA bishops, on a trip last January, stopped to plant trees not far from Bethlehem by the modern wall as a sign of hope that the trees would outlast the wall. As our bus passed a last group of houses en route to this rural site, one of a group of Palestinian boys threw his shoe. It bounced off the bus but made an impression. When we stopped I went to talk with them. Through a translator they were surprised to know that I wasn’t angry but interested. I told them what American Lutherans were and why we were visiting Lutherans who live in Bethlehem. They came with me over the brow of the hill to plant trees. Mostly because it was quite a scene, but I like to think the Spirit worked that day among one of the little clans of Judah—perhaps to bring forth from one of these youth a new ruler, a leader to be “one of peace.”

Who has not prayed with these feelings? As the days get longer toward the solstice (December 21) the image of God’s shining face really keeps me going. The first major snow of the year hit northern Iowa and southern Minnesota as I write this. In the middle of our advent season, our expectation and the realities of this world and of what human beings do to each other continue to stand in tension. But in these realities of hunger, poverty, war, changing weather—and also loneliness, broken relationships, deaths and separation—in these realities the seed of our hope is already planted. We look for God there, and God appears in these realities, because that is where God promises to be. The song I’m listening to just asked “How can you love me from way up above me?” The manger, the homelessness, the wandering, the migration, the healings, the betrayal, the denial, the scattering, the cross: these equal God with us. The Resurrection allows us to add—for always—and here and now on December 20-21 as the days, having shrunk, will begin right through Christmas Day to expand again.

There is a lot of “law” being thrown around Washington, D.C. where I work as our church’s advocacy director. “Law” is a good thing, Martin Luther (the former law student) reminds us when people of faith remind law-makers that law is meant to help us live together in peace, order and protective of the common good. But Luther mentioned other “uses” for the law. Law, either for good society, or to prescribe sacrifices and codes, does not (it cannot says the writer of this letter) save us.

Having been saved—“Done!” as my super-organized Lutheran Disaster Response colleagues would say when presented with a challenge. “Salvation?” we ask, frantically, despairingly, neurotically. “Done!” says God. It is past tense—it has happened and opens our futures to sanctification—turning again from the altar of sacrifice, believing in God’s one-time sacrifice, and opening our arms and hands and giving voice to our neighbors, in God’s new holy, generous, compassionate presence of solidarity.

After seeing her own vision and knowing that God was doing something new and particular to fulfill the ancient promise, Mary went to her cousin, little did she know that her relatives also had a story for her! Luke is such a good story-teller that we have these interest-building scenes (ref. Elizabeth and Zechariah) before we get to the main event.

So much of both stories has to do with the recognition that comes with believing—taking a promise on faith and then seeing that promise fulfilled. There is even recognition between the two babies carried by Elizabeth and Mary. Elizabeth puts it well, “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord”. It reminds us of what Jesus says later to Thomas- “Blessed are they who have not seen and yet come to believe.” God’s promise is fulfilled anyway for those who are initially skeptical (Zechariah) and those who find strength to believe (Elizabeth, Mary).

Mary and Elizabeth see the immediate promise kept: one’s child proclaims it as no other, and the other is the very fulfillment of that promise that God will send a Messiah. We believe, we “re-wait” each advent. How do we see the promise?

Mary tells us, “He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty…”

These are the signs of God’s appearance: then, and now, this week. This is God’s value: reversal of the world’s business in favor of those who are not heard. Do you want a purpose-driven life? A Joel Osteen life? Forget the pop-psychology and feed and clothe your neighbor. Not out of guilt or secular civility but because you recognize that the Messiah has come, blessed are you…