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! The texts 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. Sometimes we 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.

Mahatma Gandhi famously said, “There are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” When celebrate the Eucharist we remember God’s gracious and abundant provision. We gather around the table and our eyes are opened to recognize God’s way as revealed in Jesus. We take the bread and see God and understand that we when are fed we are also sent forth to feed.

In today’s reading from the book of Acts, we hear about people of faith “eating with glad and generous hearts.” Even while taking care of their own needs, they also cared for the needs of those who were the most vulnerable. Widows, orphans, and all others who were in need received the basic necessities. Today in many organizations, and in many systems of government, the needs of the most vulnerable within that community are not met. Children, as well as others are abused. Those who are physically challenged or who are members of minority groups are not treated fairly.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about the need for the Christian community to exercise social responsibility in his Letters and Papers from Prison:

The church is the church only when it exists for others. To make a start, it should give away all its property to those in need. The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary life, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell people of every calling what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others. It must not underestimate the importance of human example (which has its origins in the humanity of Jesus and is so important in Paul’s teaching); it is not abstract argument, but example, that gives its word emphasis and power. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, edited by Eberhard Bethge. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1972)

Since the book of Acts is assigned throughout the Easter season, you may want to read Rita Halteman Finger, Of Widows and Meals: Communal Meals in the Books of Acts (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007). She offers many helpful insights into the early Christian practice of commensality. A review of the book is available at http://www.elca.org/What-We-Believe/Social-Issues/Journal-of-Lutheran-Ethics/Issues/June-2010/Review-of-Of-Widows-and-Meals.aspx.