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!

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?

Jesus, our brother, firstborn of the dead: you ate and drank with your disciples after you rose, sharing with them bits of bread and broiled fish. As you used the simplest things to show forth the power of God’s resurrection, so use the pieces of ordinary food we share to reveal the miracles you continue to accomplish. Amen.

Like last week’s passage from Revelation, this week’s text unequivocally affirms the way of Jesus. The one who laid down his life for others, who walked with and worked on behalf of those who were vulnerable, now receives worship from “myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands” of angelic and heavenly creatures. This idea is explicit in Phil 2:4-10.

Again we see the physicality of Jesus’ resurrection—and the implicit affirmation of this physical life and physical human needs. Jesus miraculously fills the disciples nets and then feeds (and eats with) them.

When they finish the meal, Jesus reinstates Peter (we saw last week in the reading from Acts how Peter was transformed). This resurrection story shares many features with the text from Luke 5:1-11 (the Gospel earlier this year on February 7). Like the passage from Luke, it is a clear call from Jesus for his disciples to seek and serve those who are most vulnerable, to “feed” his lambs. The miraculous catch of fish is a reminder that God will equip God’s people to fulfill this high calling. This is God’s work, but it takes our hands. How will we respond?