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!

· Treasures and hearts, accompanying each other on life’s journey. Perhaps shy, like a pre-teen boy and girl taking a walk. Perhaps hand in hand, like a couple in love. Perhaps arm in arm, like an older couple supporting each other.

· Many hearts are lonely, though, hunting for treasures – of meaning and purpose – to spur them into action. Not finding treasure, these hearts cannot find themselves.

· These hearts may be filled with other treasures – stuffed closets, garages, billfolds and schedules -- that have no real heart to them. In these cases, hearts yearning for intimacy find only the empty promises of “more,” empty relationships with things.

· In the work of this church’s hunger program, people find treasure – doing something important with their lives – and so their hearts get to take that slow and intimate walk with what is truly treasured: the chance to offer help, support, voice, understanding and friendship with those who are poor.

· “What cannot be seen turns into what can be seen.” This describes the work of your congregation when you enter into the work of the ELCA Hunger Program. You contribute money, offer prayers, write letters, give of yourselves in myriad ways – and most of that work cannot ever be seen. (Sometimes the generosity of Christians is very quiet and very invisible to others!)

· When you contribute to the ELCA Hunger Appeal, you believe the premise and the promise that your faith(fullness) will eventually find itself transformed into something tangible.

· Believe these scratchings on this page: Dollars turn into changed lives; prayers strengthen believers for their prophetic work; speaking up leads to speaking out leads to speaking with. This church’s hunger work is more than a promise; our covenant with each other is that lasting, positive and manageable change occurs because of your generosity.

· Or what if all the knowledge and experiences you had accumulated about hunger suddenly disappeared, with no one else to pick them up and make good use of them? What then?

· This is what Abram faces when he realizes that, should he remain heirless, all the blessings that God has showered on him will accrue to his servant. (Should you want to play with the obvious pun – how could Abram also the realization that he might remain hairless?)

· It’s hard to imagine this happening within the church, though, because we leverage our synergy and maximize or assets. (Like the high-faluting language?) Simply stated: Any two of us forms a multitude!

· Part of the good work your congregation does – to be exact, the good work God does in your congregation – is to form those multitudes of believers whose legacy continues into generations beyond them, to places they can’t see (by faith or otherwise).

· And so on this day, together you ensure that children will take up where their parents leave off; that teachers will never help students learn without continuing effect, that sermons will leave marks in brains, that “mission trips” will accomplish much more than befuddled satisfaction of the need to feel good about our teens.

· So who are your heirs, real or metaphorical? How will they receive the heritage of your insistence on righteousness, respect, acceptance and knowledge of people who are poor, changes in the way you consume material goods and material time.

· God knows that might and strength don’t always win. God protects people from starvation. God watches the machinations of the world and always signals a preference for the reign of justice.

· Do we really think that we can fool God – with offerings or Sunday morning behaviors? Do we really think that we can hide from God our despairs and inferiorities, our worries and our selfishnesses, our secret hoardings or our need to surround ourselves with things that make us feel renewed or safe?

· The end of all things may very well be like a thief in the night. It may also sound like the last tree falling in the forest, the last bird dying, the final gasp of the last person to die in battle, the last gasp of a person choking on polluted air or the silence of the last manufacturing plant closing down.

· Giving away our goods and money (and the long-lasting moneybags, too) to people who are poor is a way to serve God and avoid the temptation to rekindle our self-serving attitudes and behaviors.

1. The concept of heart following after treasure is an important one to illustrate for children, and for watching worshipers as well. Use a puppet and a desirable object as the foil for a short story in which the puppet gets all caught up in finding, getting or holding this desirable object at almost any cost.

2. The story of King Midas may fit here as well. An illustrated children’s book version of this timeless story might serve as the tool for your retelling of the story as a parallel to the Gospel lesson for this day.

3. You could illustrate the idea of “handing on the gifts” with a little object lesson demonstration. Label a set of boxes – gifts? – with tags such as BEING KIND, FORGIVING, BEING GENEROUS, HELPFUL, FAIR, TELLING THE TRUTH, CARING ABOUT POOR PEOPLE, or any other personal attribute that might lie at the heart of hunger and justice ministry. Pretend to “pass on” this trait as a sequenced set of hand-offs from one child to another. Name the generations for children – parents, grandparents, etc. – and then name the generations that will follow them as they grow older. A prayer of thanks is in order.

4. Use the new DVD from the ELCA Hunger Appeal – “Go and Do Likewise” as a simple way to describe how what’s not seen – the generosity of children and their parents – becomes something that can be seen – lives saved here and in other parts of the world. You might make up your own narration to this or some other hunger interpretation story.

1. The First Lesson begs some questions, among them the concept of “passing on one’s riches to heirs.” How strong is that wish among members of the conversation group? Talk about the concept of “family foundations”, a financial planning method that controls the process of passing on riches from one generation to another, a kind of conditional legacy. How does that correspond to today’s lesson? What about parents who “want their children to have what they never had?” What, really, gets “passed on” in that kind of mindset?

2. Take time today to talk about the actual/factual ways in which the domestic and international partners of the ELCA Hunger Program protect people from starvation, as the Psalmist intimates. From what are people protected, really? From what other phenomena do poor people need protecting? Who does the protecting, and how do they/we become protectors? Tell stories of actual protection happening among congregation members. (E.g., the food cupboard protects from starvation, but the homeless program protects from the outside elements.)

3. I’m often struck by the feeling that I’m a stranger in a strange land. Science fiction notwithstanding, how does this self-identity occur among conversants in your group? How do we maintain our “strangerness” in the face of a culture that wants to co-opt our values or lifestyles or futures? How does faith enable us to maintain our sense of purpose or identity in the face of our wanting NOT to be strangers?

4. What, really, does it mean to “be ready for the Master to come”? Is this metaphorical or realistic? (Think of the Mormons who store a year’s worth of food as a way of preparing for cataclysmic circumstances.) How ready for the Second Coming are those who suffer from poverty? How unwilling or unready are we, who by comparison with the rest of the world are very, very rich? What would have to change for us to be truly ready to accept, yearn for or participate in Christ’s Second Coming?

This past week I could have died and gone to heaven – a hunger leader’s event and the annual ELCA Global Mission Event took place in Columbus, OH. My faith would have been fulfilled, my willingness to accept the good news of Christ’s return to Earth would have been at its strongest. Why? When you plop yourself down in the middle of a throng of believers and practitioners of mission, you meet the people of God at their brightest and best. Old and young, people of all races, from all over the world. Inspiring guest speakers and “ordinary” people whose lives are witness to the way the Gospel changes lives. What a privilege it is to be joined together in this part of the family of God!

· In Old Testament times, the gods of the nations surrounding Israel were essentially house gods writ large. For example, small statues of Baal in the fields – for good weather/good crops – were supplemented by larger representations housed indoors in magnificent edifices.

· The effect and the intent were the same, though: A god you could please by virtue of your virtue. Offerings of any kind – some of them sexual, some material, some horrific – would perhaps please one or more of these gods towards your desired ends: more children, fertile fields, victory in battle, rain.

· The god of Israel was different, though. This was not a god to be bought and sold, a god made to order, cut down to size, malleable as to purpose or behavior. “Whimsical” and “capricious” did not describe his preferred decision-making method. This no-name God was bound by covenant and other forms of loving promises

· Because this god could not be bought and then housed as one’s private deity, Jeremiah’s somber thought – you can’t hide from God – was intended as somber warning for false prophets and those who paid attention to them.

· In our time, false prophets abound and their presence in our lives is pervasive. They expound on electronic street corners, from pulpits, in conversations close at hand. They may even talk to us from our own mirrors. One of the falsities that they may expound: Don’t worry, be happy. A persistent non-truth: Prosperity will continue until morale improves. Another: You don’t have to pay for what you get. Still another: Poverty is not our fault. A capstone lie: God isn’t paying attention to you or the world.

· Although we do NOT engage in hunger and poverty ministry for reasons that turn God into probing bogeyman, it is still important to recall that lies are exposed and punished, that we must exercise probity in our perceptions of truth, that we just can’t buy our own brand of God to please our own brand of living.

· If you live inside of an earthquake fault during an earthquake, you know the terror of this kind of dangerous darkness; Treating the poor poorly has consequences. (If you would like the location of some of my personal earthquake faults in California, please let me know here.)

· This word of judgment is very clear, making this psalm as hard to swallow as the MDG’s of current fame. (MDG = Millennium Development Goals). However complex the particulars may seem, the core truth is pretty simple: God desires, commands and invites justice for all.

· God also empowers us as basically selfish beings to transcend our fears and desires to consider the lives of others as worthy of our attention and emotions.

· As for the heartless people who rob the poor at the same they ignore the poor: They are living between the moment the verdict is pronounced and the day the punishment is meted out.

· Good news: This judgment need not apply to those of us who have heeded both the implicit warning here as well as the implicit invitation: Love as Jesus loved. We have another choice of how to live.

· Somewhere inside the cloud of witnesses that surrounds us – there’s some godly good news we can put in our emotional banks – we can find Jesus as lead runner (yes, the metaphor is mixed, but I didn’t write Hebrews . . . . ) for a race we’re running whether we like it or not.

· “See, I did this,” Jesus says. “Watch me run,” yells Jesus from over his shoulder. “Want to see how ‘faithful’ works?” queries this long-distance harrier.

· And now we look around – inside or outside the clouds of history – and see a string of other runners. Leaders like Moses and quiet examples. Rich people and beat-up, worn-down people. Lessons from life, walking/runner poster people who exemplify what a Christ-like life can be like.

· When it comes to hunger-and-justice, the cloud gets comforting – like a pillow? – when we consider that part of Jesus’ presence (then and now0 is to help us transcend the notion that we lead the pack, we decide the course of the race, we get to be the winners. Stripped of any notion of our athletic prowess and disabused of the possibility of flying through life in a daring solo flight, we show up on this morning ready to get at the tasks first begun by God millennia ago, and ministries most dear to Jesus’ own heart.

· One of the true gifts of being among God’s people – and a quiet blessing of this church body’s hunger program – is the continuing invitation and equipping for discernment about the true state of things.

· We learn about ourselves internally – we are redeemed sinners still worthy of God’s mission. We internalize what we know externally – we live in a world heading toward its cliffs or toilets. Whether economically, spiritually, environmentally, politically --- we know the times in which we live.

· But – here’s the good part – we don’t crawl down into the darkness of our earthquake faults (see earlier) to hide from evil, God or the call to justice. Somehow our discernment sidesteps despair and depression; somehow we’re still willing to beat back hunger (with dollars, prayers and, where necessary, “sticks” of many kinds). Somehow we’re still able to love others even though we can discern that they may not be able to love us. Somehow we assay the death-dealing realities inside of us and in the wider world and we defy them.

· In Christ’s name and by his power, we confront the world of evil and evil people. We discern not only what time it is, but what time it will soon become. And with the time we have left, we get to work!

1. Given the implied heroism of the Hebrews reading – especially the listing of kinds of unknown saints – this would be a good day to find and read heroic stories from the Hunger Appeal. For example: Missionaries who spend their whole lives in a single place; children who risk ridicule to take up a funding challenge; medical personnel who minister to seriously ill people even at considerable risk to themselves; indigenous churches who proclaim and live forgiveness even while being surrounded by their former torturers. Through your retelling, make the stories vivid and larger-than-life. Some of these saints are on a par with those of Hebrews 11. A variation: Listen to some members of the congregation tell their stories of courage and heroism – hopefully about social justice.

2. Demonstrate the difficulty of trying to live the Christian life – a “running” – while being weighed down by stuff. Ask two children to race down and back the aisle. But before the race, give one of them some “gifts” – cool things like dolls or toys or a big wallet or something big and heavy and awkward. Most likely “the race” will be won by the child who travels light. Make obviously application of this true-life lesson (and Hebrews-inspired truth) towards the matter of living simply.

3. Gather a bunch of pillows – or pillow-like things like beach balls and air mattresses – and surround children with them. As children lounge in these protective comforts -- just like the Children of Israel were protected by two kinds of clouds during their journey – talk to them about how good it feels to be surrounded and comforted. Think with children how it might feel to be on the receiving end of someone else’s love and care in a big way. This happens, of course, because of their gifts to the ELCA World Hunger Appeal. But there is also care and love that comes back to comfort them, from the people who they surround. Perhaps we’re all comforted AND comforting pillows?

4. Just to make the point – for children who haven’t experienced these phenomena and thus may lack experiential referents – use a sledge hammer or blowtorch to completely pulverize or melt an item that represents “evil.” And yes, consider all the possible ways you need to make sure that the demonstration is conducted within the bounds of safety!

1. With a newspaper or newsmagazine in hand – and with participants’ knowledge of the current local/national/international situation in mind – talk seriously about the idea that we will be judged by our response to the people who are poor. Avoid debating about nationalism or patriotism – these matters are important, but not the stuff of these texts – and prepare for an outpouring of emotion about our supposed righteousness or piety. One important question: Why would the leaders who first chose todays set of lessons consistently spotlighted this theme?

2. Unpack the Hebrews text, especially noting how many of the unnamed individuals are poor, trampled, pushed-aside people. This gallery of faithful saints presents an astounding idea: Invisible people are notable examples for us. Who might participants name, from their own lives, as this kind of saint? Talk specifically and talk personally.

3. “Shedding whatever keeps you from running” is another way to say “simplify your lifestyle” and/or “Become who you really want to be.” At first these two ideals may seem to be self-serving, but in fact they are not about individual “winning” but about service to others. A connected question: How does the cloud of witnesses in your own life – do they have names? – help you keep on running. (What a cool mixed metaphor: People running a race, even though they’re inside of a cloud! Perhaps this text was the impetus for the first “Bay-to-Breakers Race” in the San Francisco fog|?)

An airport seat is my writing venue at this moment. The presence of other weary travels tempts my eye toward self-pity – I, too, am a weary traveler. But in the distance are clouds filled with the promise of rain, waiting to remind me that I, too, am surrounded and pillowed by the presence of saints all around me. It’s a privilege to be in this race, yes? And a privilege to have you as part of the cloud around me. Thanks for that!