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!

From what Luke tells us about Tabitha, she was known for her good works and charity (v.36), apparently so much so that her death deeply touched a number of widows for whom she had made clothing. Even though Peter’s resurrection of Tabitha takes center stage in this passage, Tabitha’s witness as a disciple also shows the power of the Holy Spirit at work in community. Scholar N.T. Wright notes that Tabitha’s contribution to her community might not have been anything as exciting as what the apostles were doing, but that people like her “form the heart of the church.” He writes, “And do not forget to celebrate, as Luke does here, the fact that the apparently ordinary people are not ordinary to God…” In this spirit, we might ask what ministries are in our congregations that might seem just ordinary, and how might the story of Tabitha change how we see them.

The image of the table provided in the presence of enemies comes at the end of this psalm of trust. We hear this psalm against the background of the Easter story of Christ, not just the shepherd, but the victorious shepherd who has been through the darkest valley. As we identify the dark valleys of this world we are able to point toward the shepherd who wants to welcome us with a prepared table, not just in the life to come, but the presence of affliction.

The vision here of God’s renewal for those who have endured hunger and hardship strikes a common tone to the language of today’s psalm. In God’s victory and continual reign hunger, thirst and tears are just things of the past. This imagery is echoed elsewhere in Revelation (21:4-5) and invites us to imagine how this reality of God’s reign affects our relationships with one another and life in community. This vision takes place at the throne of God, but we are reminded that though Heaven is God’s throne, earth is God’s footstool (Isaiah 66:1).

One particularly powerful image here is that the sheep that Jesus has received from the Father cannot be snatched from his hand. Jesus’ role as the good shepherd takes on not only relational significance, but an abiding quality as well. How do we make it known to those in our communities that Jesus is the abiding shepherd, especially when we know all too well the reality of things, people or relationships being snatched from our hands? For those who live in food insecurity and have trouble providing meals for themselves or their families, what does it mean to know Christ the shepherd?