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.

In this passage from 1 Corinthians Paul reminds us that our gifts have been given for the common good (v. 7). At Pentecost God sent the Holy Spirit, undoing previous divisions (see the lesson from Acts). Empowered by the Holy Spirit, to what end are we using our gifts?

Later in the same passage, Paul tells us that we are one body. His point is to encourage unity, and to challenge the notion that one person or group may have distinct access to the Spirit. In a hunger context, we might ask how well we are doing at tending to the whole body of Christ. If one person is sick or hungry, the whole body is sick and hungry. How might we use our gifts to work for the good of Christ’s entire body?

The Gospel lesson from John 20 reminds us that just as God sent Jesus, so too Jesus sends us into the world to be his agents. As has been noted throughout this Easter season (of which Pentecost is the last day), God’s work in Christ did not only bring spiritual wholeness. In Jesus’ public ministry he also fed those who were hungry, healed those who were sick, welcomed the stranger, and so on. Jesus now commissions us to do those same things. 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 ministering with and to those who are poor and vulnerable.

When Jesus commissions the apostles, he tells them to make disciples of all nations. We often stop reading the passage at this mandate. Jesus goes on, however, to tell the disciples to teach others to obey his commands. This hearkens back to Jesus’ teaching throughout Matthew, conveniently divided into five blocks of material: chapters 5-7, 10, 13, 18, and 24-25. A brief survey of the teaching reveals an eschatological ethic that is rooted in a deep concern for those who are poor and vulnerable. Jesus tells his followers not to worry (Matt 6) but to feed those who are hungry, give water to those who are thirsty, welcome the stranger, and so on (Matt 25). We will be much more effective teachers if we live by the values we are called to proclaim. As Holy Trinity Sunday reminds us, this is all done by the power of the Holy Spirit.