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!

Just after denouncing the faithless city, the prophet imagines a new desire within the people after God brings redemption. The vision is of a people who, instead of running after bribes and ignoring the defenseless (1:23), desire to visit the house of God, to learn of the ways of the Lord and to walk in God’s paths (2:3). The anticipated change is beyond inner transformation. The scene that unfolds is one where instruments of war are put to agricultural use and war is no longer an option. War is one of the root causes of poverty, hunger and displacement, so the idea that energy and resources would be transferred from war machines to agricultural production is particularly powerful.

If Advent is a time of preparing for the savior of the world, this passage reminds us of the forces we need to be saved from, and what part of that salvation looks like. It is also worth noting the scale of change. The text doesn’t specify the scope of this vision but the prophet imagines “many peoples” on this path. This reminds us that God’s teaching and vision is not limited to personal self-help lessons.

This exhortation to awake from slumber comes right after the command, “love your neighbor.” In this context, acknowledging the needs of a neighbor and responding to them is one of the signs of waking from sleep and putting on the armor of light. The living-in-the-light behaviors Paul lists in verse 13 concern an ethic that sounds like it deals with personal morality. But within the context of loving the neighbor and not passing judgment (Romans 14), it is possible that the instruction has strong social implications as well. This shifts our attention from thinking about how we personally live in the light to how our worshiping congregation is treating our neighbors and witnessing to the new life that God gives.

In this gospel lesson Jesus presents a few images and places them in the dramatic setting of the coming of the Son of Man. This day, or at least the suddenness of it, is presumably on a similar scale as the flood of Noah’s day. The images feature people engaging in ordinary activities: eating, drinking, marrying and working and there is assurance that it won’t be any different on that dramatic day. This should not ignite fears, encourage detachment from communal life, or provoke a sense of despair. Instead, the only behavior Jesus encourages the audience to have is readiness. This requires a sense of evaluation and reflection, to be sure, but also awareness. It is fitting as we enter the season of Advent, but also as we consider how we live as a people of faith in the world. It is anticipation of a future event, but not without a firm affirmation of doing our work faithfully and fully wherever we are.