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!

What fantastic News to folks who were homeless and who lived in the darkness of hopelessness and despair! Their homeland had been destroyed, they had given up all hope of ever being able to return to the land their grandparents had told them about, they were without resources to secure their future. Then comes the Promise! The very utterance of the promise brings its fulfillment from God’s described future into their present, and this Good News transforms their current condition. Suddenly each life is filled with hope and anticipation as they daily watch the horizon for the approaching tangible evidence of God’s love.

O Lord, you’re my last hope, although I probably should have come to you first. I’ve nowhere else to turn, I don’t have the resources to buy justice like I see so many others, so I’m counting on You. Shape the decisions of those who have power over me to be fair, Let all Your creation be my witness and give testimony on my behalf. Refresh my soul like rainfall on parched earth. You’re my only hope.

Free Bread for everyone! In times past, we watched as others seemed to be favored by the God of Israel, but now we hear that God’s care and love is available for everyone, even us! God has revealed this in Christ Jesus, who gives us boundless and unfettered access to God’s ear. We can be confident in God’s favor— that same favor God has for everyone, the high and the low. God’s abundant, mysterious gift of grace that comes through the inexhaustible riches and generosity of Christ Jesus, as God had planned all along.

Those who lord it over others suddenly find their power unmasked as the vulnerable and impotent thing it truly is by God who comes to our hurting and suffering world as weak as a child. All the nations bear witness to how much God cares for our world and wants to save it and us. And the nations are steered by God’s handiwork among the universe. Let’s all give thanks and fall on bended knee before the One who comes in seeming weakness of infancy and a crucified man so that “by his death he might destroy death, and by his rising reveal to us everlasting Life.”

Think of the power of “naming.” Naming expresses the power to form the identity of the named. Now, God’s own voice is telling us that we have not only been “created” and “formed,” but now God is calling us by name. We are Yahweh’s. What follows is a description of baptism (naming as “My Beloved in whom I am pleased”) and the refiner’s fire of Malachi, a declaration of how adamant God is about whose we are, and concludes with a summons of “everyone who is called by MY NAME.” In naming us, God is naming the divine self as One who creates, nurtures, transforms and protects, and in whose presence we have nothing to fear but instead find love and honor. This is an invitation to anyone who feels oppression in any form to see themselves through God’s eyes, valued as God values each one.

This enthronement psalm reflects global, nay cosmic, language and expansive metaphor, as even the “gods” are summoned to ascribe glory and honor, to pay homage to “the Lord, OUR God.” The voice of the Lord has power to produce chaos, but instead reorients the world in re-creation of a new order which “gives strength to Your people and blessings of peace.” Yahweh saves! This Good News provides hope to those who are too often “humbled” by the current world order. Instead, like the fans of a victorious Bowl contender during this football season, we can identify ourselves as privileged because this is OUR God, we’ve been on the winning side all along. And the even better Good News is that everyone is included, no one is left out. Even the opponent is transformed to fan, invited to join the winning side and the blessing is provided. There is new life and new hope under Yahweh’s reign.

As protégés of the Apostles, we as Christ’s presence during this interim between Christ’s comings, have received power through Jesus’ Spirit that is beyond our understanding or control. Yet we are invited to exercise that Spirit upon others who have heard the Word of God. Their lives, and our own, will never be the same. God’s Reign is breaking in!

It’s impossible to picture this event except through the prism of Jesus’ self-sacrifice on the cross and the Father’s sacrifice of “my Beloved Son.” The first steps toward the cross and empty tomb begin here. The depth of such love for us beggars our wildest imaginings. To be embraced by such love calls forth from us our praise and worship, and invites us to participate in realizing Christ’s reign through relieving hunger, nakedness, false imprisonment, disabilities, feelings of abandonment and worthlessness, and instead to share with others the Good News that each is “my Beloved.”