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!

In this radical passage, Paul undercuts many of the divisive labels that keep humans from living in healthy relationships. Classism, sexism, and racism (and the many other “-isms”) often conspire to keep people in poverty, both literal and figurative. The truth of the Gospel challenges anything that limits human flourishing. What –isms do we as a church need to address?

This powerful story recounts how Jesus restored a marginalized man to community. He was homeless, tormented, and isolated. His plight in some ways does not sound too different from the plight of modern homeless people. Jesus heals the man and brings him into fellowship—instructing him to return to his home.

The way in which Jesus performs the healing is full of political overtones as well. When Jesus addresses the man’s affliction he makes a political statement—the demons tormenting the man are named “Legion,” a Roman military unit; the demons are driven into swine, an unclean animal; the pigs then insanely commit suicide by running off a cliff. The anti-Roman sentiment is quite clear. In many ways, working for justice, whether it is for those who are homeless (a very easy connection to this week’s Gospel) or for anyone suffering indignity, can be a political statement (issues around immigration come to mind here). Indeed, politics will be necessary to address some of the deep seated problems in our society and our world.

What does it mean to be set free for freedom? In the United States we recognize the value of liberty, but often it means we are free to do whatever we want to, no matter the impact it may have on another person. Paul’s idea of freedom is a bit different. Paul sees the power of sin limiting human ability to choose to do what is right. The freedom that Christ has offered us is a freedom to live into God’s ethic (“Do not submit again to a yoke of slavery!”). Paul then goes on this passage to explain what such freedom will look like as it is lived out: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control. Freedom is expressed in love for our neighbor (5:14). In the context of hunger and poverty, what will love look like? Can we say we love our neighbor if we are not working with on behalf of them?

Today’s Gospel offers two messages related to hunger and poverty. The first half recounts the unwelcome reception Jesus and the disciples received in a Samaritan village. The response of the disciples is a desire to call down “fire from heaven” as a punishment but Jesus rebukes them. In light of the historic conflict between Jews and Samaritans, the disciples’ response is not all that surprising. How often do we respond in similar ways to people we struggle to love, let alone like? Some of the historic racial and ethnic tensions in the United States allow us to be complacent (or sometimes even complicit) to the horrors of hunger, poverty, and other forms of injustice. Would Jesus rebuke our complacency (he certainly would have some choice words for our complicity!)?

The second half of the passage underscores the urgency of the kingdom. In the lesson from 1 Kings, Elisha is allowed to bid farewell to his parents. Not so in the Gospel passage—“No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Jesus’ attitude in this passage is in many ways discomfiting to us today. I know that I, for one, am uncomfortable with the severe tone and apparent lack of grace to people who want to follow but have a few loose ends to tie together before joining the movement. It is true that part of the urgency expressed in the passage reflects the mood of the early church that was a small band of faithful followers in a sometimes hostile environment. Christianity was not for the faint of heart. In our context, where over one billion people are hungry and more than 25,000 people die every day from preventable causes (such as hunger, disease, and lack of clean water), could we use a bit more urgency? What would it look like for us, as God’s hands and feet, to think and live with the resolve of the early church?