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!

Of course, this week’s lessons all revolve around the Resurrection and new life! Even our Old Testament choices (obviously recorded well before the time of Jesus) celebrate the new and just things God is doing on behalf of all that God cherishes, in the creative order as well as in human society. Now, often we (and our parishioners) place the highest emphasis on what Easter means in terms of our own eternal destinies as believers. Yet it’s also important, since we’re still living, to consider what Easter means for this earthly life and those with whom we live it in the present age.

Acts 10:34-43 (option 1 for first lesson, option 2 for second lesson)
When Peter encounters a group of non-Jews who are eager to receive the good news of Jesus, he makes the comment, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.” But perhaps Peter’s learning in this context about God’s wide embrace of people from every walk of life indicates a “new partiality” on God’s part – one toward those formerly forgotten, even ignored, by those who consider themselves God’s chosen ones.

Peter emphasizes this universality of God’s compassion when, later in this same passage, he notes how Jesus “went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed.” I would argue, despite Peter’s claim, that God IS partial; partial to all those who have yet to know of God’s impartial grace and abundant providence!

Peter’s willingness to go outside of his own comfort zone into the midst of Gentiles, in order to bring the news of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, provides a model of courage for all of us to share our abundance of good news AND our abundance of daily bread.

Finally, in this passage Peter does not neglect to note that the resurrected Jesus himself “ate and drank… after he rose from the dead.” Physical sustenance was a reality for Jesus every day of his life, pre- and post-resurrection. As Easter people its incumbent upon us to address those hungering and thirsting for both spiritual and physical food and drink.

This prophetic text illustrates perhaps better than many what the implications are of God’s radical intervention into our earthly lives. When God does something new (and as a Christian I can’t help but think: Resurrection), then the usual characteristics of injustice will be toppled. The prophet names many things that, both in his day and in ours, are often coupled with hunger and poverty: high infant mortality rates, untimely death for our elders, low-wage laborers building houses of a sort they’ll never be able to live in, migrant farm workers harvesting crops that they can’t afford to buy to sustain their own families. As people of the Resurrection, how can we help but carry forward God’s intentions for the well-being of all who are without adequate healthcare, under-paid, lacking shelter, and hungering for nutritious food?

“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” This statement of Paul’s certainly has contributed to our tendency of emphasizing the Resurrection’s implications for a life beyond this earthly one. And it’s an essential word of hope and promise in that very sense. But imagine how much more poignant it must sound to those who have had to struggle to have their basic needs met day after day in this earthly life! It’s no longer fashionable simply to try and mollify the destitute with promises of a better life in the hereafter. Jesus’ bodily Resurrection is a resounding “Yes!” to life here on earth – “this life” – and a pitiful existence devoid of adequate food, water, shelter, and, in Luther’s words “all we need from day to day” is not God’s intent. When all have access to what they need in this life, they have a hope-filled foretaste of the eternal goodness God has in store for them in the next life.

Some Resurrection theorists have tried to reason that the empty tomb accounts were fabricated as a way to explain Jesus’ followers’ experience of his profound – but spiritual – presence to them after his death. I’m not buying it! The consistent testimony that Jesus’ actual, physical body was first absent from the tomb, and then actually and physically present to many witnesses is a powerful affirmation of God’s regard for mortal existence. And mortal existence is tied to bodily sustenance and nurture through food and water, touch and emotion.

Again, Jesus’ Resurrection is a resounding “Yes!” to life here on earth, which is best affirmed when those living have their “daily bread”, in all its fullness, as Luther describes it in his Small Catechism.

Mary may not have recognized Jesus immediately, in her shock and grief tomb-side, but she was able to hold onto him long enough, once she did see who it was, that he had to ask her to let go. Jesus’ full-body-experience upon being raised cast him back into the realm where fullness of life requires that one’s basic needs get met. To celebrate Resurrection without tending to these needs of the earthly living is, in my view, hypocrisy.

During the Easter season the lessons all revolve around the Resurrection and new life! Even our Old Testament choices (obviously recorded well before the time of Jesus) celebrate the new and just things God is doing on behalf of all that God cherishes, in the creative order as well as in human society. Now, often we (and our parishioners) place the highest emphasis on what Easter means in terms of our own eternal destinies as believers. Yet it’s also important, since we’re still living, to consider what Easter means for this earthly life and those with whom we live it in the present age.

Lord Jesus, you passed through doors locked by fear and breathed your Spirit upon those gathered, embracing them with the gift of peace and sending them as you had first been sent. As you transformed their fear and sent them onward, so send us to reconcile and bring God’s peace; that violence steal your children’s bread no longer, but unity might do away with war. In your holy name we pray, Amen.

The resurrection and the Holy Spirit changed Peter. At the moment of Jesus’ final self-emptying, when he was most vulnerable, Peter abandoned him. Later reinstated, Peter grew into a key leadership role in the early church. No longer cowering in fear before a lowly slave girl, Peter bravely stands up against the religious (and also somewhat political) powers that be and boldly asserts that he must “serve God and not human [authorities].”

Empowered by the Holy Spirit, Peter recognizes that some human authorities must be resisted. In his context, this meant proclaiming the good news of the resurrected Christ. In what ways do we still need to stand up and proclaim (in both word and deed)? What human laws (not just legal, think also about norms and mores) might God be calling us to challenge? Put differently, what human laws and mores prevent flourishing, or worse, cause harm? How can we as the church stand against them?

The book of Revelation is about God’s final redemption. Note how this final redemptive act does not involve a destruction of this earth but a renovation of it—again underscoring the value of this earth, this life. In the present passage, God vindicates Jesus’ sacrificial act—those who stood contrary to Jesus’ way see his triumphant return (and weep!). This text reminds us that God affirms the way of Jesus—the way of self-emptying, of care for those who are poor and vulnerable, of welcoming the outsider and the stranger.

This passage has much to say about hunger. Just as God sent Jesus, so too Jesus sends us into the world to be his agents. Jesus now commissions us to do the things that he was about in his public ministry (healing to sick, welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, and so on). 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.

As noted at the beginning of this sermon starter, the Easter season is not just about some future salvation. The physicality of Jesus resurrection (emphasized in this passage by the disciples’—and Thomas’!—seeing and touching, and in next week’s Gospel by Jesus sharing a meal) is an affirmation of the physical today. God’s redemptive work includes the physical. The Easter event calls us to work with and on behalf of those who are hungry. This is living into the resurrection.

A final connection to hunger is to be made in Thomas’ response to disciples’ report about Jesus. Thomas often gets vilified in this passage—he becomes “doubting Thomas”—for not believing on the basis of the reports from other the disciples. Given their track record, I’m not sure I would have believed either! More importantly, Thomas is held to a higher standard than that of the disciples. They see and believe, why would he not have that privilege as well? The real hunger connection, though, is in the value of experience. Jesus is right to point out how difficult it is to believe without seeing. In the context of hunger and poverty, how engaged are we in the lives of those who are vulnerable? How often do we speak with people who live in poverty and hear their stories, their concerns? When do we see their scars and touch those deep wounds? It is indeed hard to believe without seeing. What can we do this week to better see and understand those who are marginalized and vulnerable?