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!

Many of this week’s passages speak about water—Isaiah 55 offers a call to all who may thirst, the psalmist speaks of his thirst for God, and Paul recounts God’s care for the people of Israel in the desert. Since Lent is also a time of preparation for baptism, it may be an ideal week to speak about global water issues. Some facts worth noting:

X People (usually women and girls) in Africa walk on average 3.6 miles to obtain water. This stat is directly related to development—girls cannot go to school if they spend hours a day fetching water.

X 3.575 million people die each year after getting sick from water that is not clean. This does not count the millions of others who get severely sick from dirty water and lose significant productivity as a result.

X 2.5 billion people around the world do not have access to adequate sanitation and 884 million people do not have access to clean water.

X Water problems are not limited to the Global South. In the U.S. there are serious water rights and water contamination issues in several states, including Montana and West Virginia (for a story on the work of ELCA World Hunger in West Virginia, cut and paste the following link into your browser: http://www.elca.org/Our-Faith-In-Action/Justice/Poverty-Ministries/Domestic-Hunger-Grants/Feature-Stories/West-Virginia-s09.aspx).

X Internationally, every $1 spent on water and sanitation generates $8 as a result of saved time, increased productivity and reduced health care costs (see ONE.org).

Isaiah calls to all who are thirsty to come and drink freely. The water issues noted above tie in nicely. Many are thirsty, both in a physical and a spiritual sense. Isaiah offers a picture of the reign of God, when all are fully satisfied.

This passage from 1 Corinthians is part of a larger argument (encompassing chapters 8-10) in which Paul is giving his perspective on food offered to idols. The gist of Paul’s argument is that table fellowship, in which all are welcome (and, dare I say, comfortable), is so vital to Christian community that squabbles about what one may or may not eat must take the back seat. This is a lesson to us in our welcoming of the stranger to our Eucharistic table.

In the present passage, Paul makes an interesting turn. He allegorizes the real food and drink that God provided the Israelites as a spiritual food and drink, i.e., Christ. Paul in this way ties the physical and spiritual together very closely. We often tend to think of the two as distinct but perhaps they are more closely linked than we usually allow. In what ways can giving or receiving food or drink be a spiritual experience? How are both the giver and the receiver enriched by sharing?

In the first five verses of this passage Jesus tackles the notion that one’s physical health and well-being is directly tied to their piety. The passage falls in the context of many exhortations to watchfulness for God’s eschatological kingdom. The gist of the passage is all are equally wicked and in need of repentance. The last four verses allude to the fruit that is borne out of repentance. Implicit in the passage is perhaps a critique of violent zealotism—Galileans were notoriously restive, the fig tree is often a symbol for national Israel, and so on.

The clear message is to live our lives in such a way that they reflect God’s values. A key component of this (of course!) means caring about the plight of those who are poor and vulnerable and struggling with them for justice. The part that may be lacking from this passage is the message of God’s gracious empowerment. We know what we ought to do, but we struggle to live into the reality. May we seek God faithfully as we strive to “bear fruits worthy of repentance”!

A strong theme in this week’s texts is the abundant goodness and provision of God. Each of the texts recounts God’s gracious nurturing of God’s people. As a result, God’s people are sent to feed and nurture the world. We give out of our abundance.

In this text Joshua and the Israelites conclude their wondering in the desert with a final Passover feast (of manna?). The next day, the manna ceases to appear and the people of God feast on the bounty of the land. This is a fulfillment of God’s promise, to bring them to a land flowing with milk and honey. We see then provision both in the desert wandering (which then became a basis for welcoming the stranger) and the gift of fertile land.

In this passage from 2 Corinthians (one that is arguably one of the clearest distillations of Pauline theology) Paul tells his audience that as a result of God’s reconciling us in Christ, we are now sent out as ambassadors of that reconciliation. The basic message is one Lutherans are very familiar with—God has given us grace, we live and act out of that grace. So, what might reconciliation look like? How can we live fully into that ministry? What role does advocating for justice and food play in reconciliation?

This familiar parable again reiterates God’s lavish (and prodigal!) love for human beings. It is a message of acceptance and love that Jesus uses to defend his open table to the sinner and the outcast (to eat with someone in antiquity communicated a certain level of respect and acceptance). This is a challenging message to us and our Eucharistic celebrations that too often exclude.

The story Jesus tells includes a lot of food imagery as well. One could take several elements from the story and draw connections to world food issues. The already mentioned table fellowship—with whom do we eat? Who is welcome at our table? A famine thrusts the boy into poverty, he is paid an unsustainable wage, he longs to eat food he knows he should not, he returns home to feast, and so on. All of these have modern corollaries that are worthy of reflection.