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!

This passage follows on the heels of Jesus’ long journey to Jerusalem. In 19:47 we are told that Jesus was teaching daily in the temple and chapters 20 and 21 describe the content of the teaching. Jesus has gone to the religious center and will be challenged by the religious leaders. Jesus, in the tradition of the prophets, challenges the conventional ideas of what it means to be God’s people and offers an alternative vision of the reign of God.

In this week’s Gospel, the Sadducees argue that the logic of the levirate law precludes the possibility of resurrection. As can happen with us in our own theological disagreements, the Sadducees are focusing on the idea rather than the people for whom the idea is intended to benefit. Whatever its flaws, the levirate law is about honoring the lives of brothers and serves the function of providing a social safety net for widowed women in patriarchal societies. How often do we engage in passionate discussions about ideas without thinking about how those ideas may impact people? How might thinking about the impact of our ideas on people change how we reach our conclusions?

2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
In the United States, too often we blame hunger and poverty on those who are hungry and poor. We fail to recognize the systems and structures that work to keep people vulnerable and marginalized. Those who are poor are often disparaged as somehow lacking moral character. (As an aside, the recent economic crisis should lay that myth to rest. Big decisions beyond the control of many led to millions of jobs lost and millions of additional people living in poverty.) The present lesson must therefore be read (and commented upon!) carefully and responsibly.

This passage from 2 Thessalonians can be easily misconstrued to justify hunger and poverty. For this reason, a clear understanding of the historical and cultural context of the letter as a whole is essential. In 2 Thes 2:1-2 we learn the problem that plagues the Thessalonian church is a belief that the return of Christ is imminent, perhaps even already present. Because of this, some in the community decided that they no longer needed to take responsibility for their lives. Paul does not want them to be a drain on each other nor to draw attention from authorities. For this reason he encourages everyone to continue working. The final piece to note is that our reading ends before Paul’s final exhortation in 2 Thes 3:15. In this verse, Paul urges the Thessalonians not to regard those who are not working as enemies but to warn them as “adelphoi” (mistranslated in the NRSV as “believers”). No matter how we feel about people who live in poverty, our call is to nonetheless treat them with dignity, respect, and familial love.

In our current context, one in seven people in the United States live below the poverty line. The poverty line in the U.S. is artificially low as well (see this fabulous piece by Catholic Charities on how unrealistic the poverty line is: http://www.usccb.org/cchd/povertyusa/tour.htm). What is worse, the minimum wage in many cases is not a livable wage. In other words, even with an obscenely low poverty line, a single mother with two children who works full time at minimum wage will still be living below the poverty line. So hunger and poverty is not just about someone’s ability or willingness to work. Rather, there are systems and structures that keep people hungry (for further, read this excellent sermon reflection from Bread for the World on the need to advocate for a livable wage in the United States: http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.bread.org/what-we-do/resources/preacher/lectionary/33-sunday-ordinary-time-2010.pdf).

Jesus first enters the temple in Luke 19:45. His first prophetic act is to drive out those who had turned the temple into den of robbers. Jesus then returns daily to teach (how awkward was that first day when he returned?!) and throughout the chapters 20-21 he will draw attention to the ways in which those who are responsible for the temple have forgotten their call to be on the side of those who are poor and vulnerable (Ezek 34 has a fierce prophecy against the shepherds of Israel in this vein). The present prediction about the destruction of the temple follows on the heel of a rather damning picture of the temple. In 20:45-47, Jesus condemns the scribal/religious class for devouring widows’ houses. Immediately following (21:1-4) Jesus observes a widow giving all that she had to the temple. The temple, by implication, is devouring widows as well. It is in this context that Jesus predicts the temple’s fall. The text calls us to question our commitments as a church. Are there ways in which we too are devouring widows and others who are poor and vulnerable? How might Jesus’ words against the temple challenge us today? What is God calling us to be and do?