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 week’s texts have a strong focus on God’s activity with and for God’s people throughout history. The Old Testament texts focus on God’s promises and fidelity to Israel, the New Testament texts emphasize God’s activity and grace in Jesus. How appropriate that at the new year, as we look forward, we also remember God’s gracious activity. May the memory of this empowering grace encourage us as we strive to do God’s work with our hands.

This passage from Jeremiah looks forward to the future restoration of Israel. Our world is still in need of restoration—the global economy is still struggling to recover (with hunger and poverty on the rise), we are embroiled in a seemingly interminable conflict in Afghanistan, with other pockets of fighting scattered throughout the globe, to name just a couple of examples. How should we as the church respond? How should we pray and act? How might God be inviting us to participate in the work of restoration?

Ephesians 1:3-14
The passage from Ephesians, like that of Jeremiah 31 and Psalm 147, recounts the story of God’s work in and through Christ. Grace informs and pervades the passage. It is God’s grace that empowers us to “live for the praise of God’s glory” (v.12). As happens so often in Paul’s writings, Ephesians begins with God’s activity (chapters 1-3) and concludes with the Christian imperative (chapters 4-6). It is because of God’s grace that we live differently. What might God’s love and grace be calling us to in this new year?

This passage from John, read every year on the second Sunday of Christmas, is often read through a theological lens, with an emphasis on the divinity of Christ. Indeed, it was John’s Gospel that was so central to the Council of Nicea as it struggled to articulate its Christology. The Word becoming flesh is much more than a lofty idea though. How profound is it that God enters into the realities of life and makes a dwelling here? What does that dwelling look like?

In terms of hunger and poverty, it can mean seeing Christ in those who are poor and vulnerable. (In the Baptismal covenant of the Episcopal Church, the sponsors are asked, “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?” Their response is, “I will with God’s help.”)

That God came into the messiness of life—living in it, transforming it—calls us to do likewise (I think here of Philippians 2:5-10, where the hymn of Christ’s humility is used to define the ethic of the Philippian church). In what ways do we resist living fully into the realities of life? In what ways can we make our dwelling in the complexity (and sometimes downright ugliness) of life?

This may sound like a difficult call (and it is!). This is why verse 16 is so key—from Christ’s fullness we have received grace upon grace. It is an empowering grace that transforms us, that gives us the strength and courage to live into our call as Christians. As we think about a new year, and perhaps the things we’d like to be and do, what might God be saying? How can we, empowered by God’s grace, be agents of change?

This Sunday in the Church Year offers a great opportunity to reflect on the baptism of all believers. Some initial thoughts on baptism:

X Baptism is an identity marker—when we are baptized we join the people of God and as such take on a new identity. What will that identity be? The earliest Christians were notorious for their care of widows and orphans (Rodney Stark, in his book, The Rise of Christianity, has an excellent chapter detailing this); it was one of the ways in which Christians were identified. As the baptized people of God, what will we be known as? Can we reclaim this historic identity?

X In the Baptismal covenant and the Affirmation of Baptism outlined in ELW we make commitments to “care for others and the world that God made” and to “work for justice and peace” (pp. 228; 236). The profession of faith (p. 235) includes a renunciation of the “forces that defy God” and the “powers of the world that rebel against God.” We can reasonably include greed, strife, and self-interest in those forces and powers that defy God and leave God’s people poor and hungry. In our baptism we commit ourselves to work with God in the bringing of God’s kingdom.

As noted above, this week invites reflection on our baptism. Some other questions worth exploring from a hunger perspective could include the following:

X What does it mean for Jesus to be declared God’s son? How then do we understand the way in which Jesus lived his life? Here a link to the passage from Isaiah may be particularly helpful: Jesus as God’s son came to bring justice (mentioned no less that four times!). Justice is defined in the passage as opening the eyes that are blind, bringing out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.