________________________________
NOW TWO SUNDAYS AT ONCE!
SCROLL TO SEE BOTH OCTOBER 21 AND OCTOBER 28 STARTERS
________________________________
Welcome to Hunger Sermon Starters!
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!
October 21, 2007
Time after Pentecost – Lectionary 29
First Reading: Genesis 32:22-31
Psalm 121
Second Reading: 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
Gospel: Luke 18:1-8
STARTER ONE: PREACHING THEMES
Wounded, named, blessed
· What’s in a name? A story, most likely. Many of us carry names whose origins are storied events or processes. Usually the stories are NOT about us, because we were not part of the process, only receiving the names we were given.
· But in their wonderful complexity, these stories help identify us as connected to the history or hopes of our families and our culture.
· In the First Reading for this day, a wealthy livestock dealer wrestles for his life against an adversary who turns out to be a blessing-giver instead.
· The blessing is simple: A new name and a new wound.
· Oddly, Jacob-now-Israel accepts both.
· I’m not sure, but there may be some hunger- and justice-related connections here. Perhaps as odd as the story itself.
· First, think about the hopes (and wounds?) implied by the names that are carried by people around the world. You’d have to do a lot of work to find name-meanings in Swahili or Urdu, Bengali or Spanish. (I’m thinking you’d have to pull names out of relief and development stories, then Google them for possible meanings.) What would you learn about/from people who are poor, just from their names? How do those meanings compare with the meanings of names in your congregation?
· A connected activity: Collect together the names of the programs, projects, events, organizations or enterprises by which God’s blessing – through the ELCA Hunger Program and its partners – come to people who are poor. What patterns do you notice? How do these names gather together as evidence of God’s love for people?
· Second, when people remain nameless, they can be easily ignored. (See below) This is not just or helpful for anyone, including those who claim that they want to be helpful.
· Third, think of what it means to “wrestle with God” for a blessing, even risking God’s wounding hand. How do people living in seemingly perpetual poverty wrestle with God, even for a small blessing? How do you help them as wrestlers?
· Fourth, what names do you give to the places and ways where you wrestle with God – for a blessing or for meaningful existence? (Jacob is at a junction-point in his life – who he will be and what he will do.) How do those names give you an identity-for-life? How do you carry your name into your work towards God’s will. (For example, my name is Scottish, and it means “bright in fame.” I wrestle daily about whether to fade into the mud or to seek the attention of others as I do God’s work.)
· I can’t come up with much else on this day, but I think there’s more here. For example, “I have a name and I have a face” is one of the strong words I’ve heard from people, poor people, who I might have otherwise ignored. Their insistence – like Jacob of the widow in the Gospel for today – has been a permanent reminder in my brain that I can never let poverty, or the people it crushes, fade into the background.
· I think I’ve wandered enough around this theme. Sorry for not bringing it into better focus.
The protection racket
· In some circles, “protection” might be thought of as coerced compliance. As in, “Wouldn’t it be sad if this store was to catch on fire, know what I mean?” In those relationships, the protector is actually the dangerous one, who agrees – for a price – to refrain from dangerous actions or attitudes. Money greases the relationship to a standoff between supposed protector and supposed protected one. A racket.
· The psalm for today speaks eloquently about the protection that God affords to people that God loves dearly. A different “racket” because real protection actually occurs, and no money changes hands.
· This matter may seem far removed from the life experiences we face every day, because many of us live in places and situations in which safety is relatively well-assured, where fears are usually unfounded and where protection comes with the general civil society and by virtue of our taxes.
· Out there in the rest of the world – where dictators or tin gods oppress people, where jobs are scarce or vulnerable, where ecologies perch at the edge of disasters, where dangerous people roam freely as predators, where food and water are in short supply, where mosquito-borne diseases stalk at night, where overstuffed lifestyles run rapidly toward their eventual (or suddent) collapse – the matter of protection is at the top of the list of “basic human needs”.
· In those places – e.g., a refugee camp in northern Uganda, a homeless shelter in Rockford, Illinois, a village well in Bangladesh, a “ghetto” in South Africa, a state or national legislative assembly anywhere in the world – God’s work as Protector is of highest importance. In those and other places, the people who read this psalm are comforted beyond measure by the notion – and the reality – that this God has not checked out, that this God roams the world, that this God constructs fortresses of safety, that this God accompanies them along their dangerous life journeys.
· Around the world and perhaps in your locale as well, the ELCA Hunger Program offers protection of many kinds to people for whom safety is a precious commodity. There’s no “racket” in this protection, because it comes as a gift to vulnerable people because of your generosity with the ELCA Hunger Appeal. In its worldwide scope – with smart and efficient partners – ELCA Hunger brings “safety” of many kinds to those who are poor, oppressed, without hope, stripped of dignity, starving or ignored. Even a cursive glance at this program – www.elca.org/hunger -- or the work of its major partners – www.lutheranworld.org or www.lwr.org -- will persuade you that PROTECTION is written all over the names for this work.
· For fun, take the words of this psalm and recast them into words that substitute specific contexts by which the ELCA Hunger Program brings God’s protection to people. (“I will look to the food cupboard, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, who made heaven, earth, and this weekly distribution of food.”)
Who’s paying attention?
· Paul’s advice to Timothy – a young man trying to be a pastor – includes assurance of the nature and value of Scripture. A way of thinking of the matter: Scripture as proof that God’s love includes God’s attention to our sorry-yet-beloved state.
· But there’s more: Paul’s advice – somewhat sad – of what to do when attention won’t be paid to Timothy’s messages of correction and Good News.
· Social scientists and neurobiologists have suggested that attention – a commodity in today’s world – is the primal source for decisions, communication and relationships. A corollary: Any time we get or give attention (at no cost), it’s a gift. People don’t “pay attention” only; most of the time they give and take attention without consciously expecting reciprocal behavior.
· Connecting this to hunger and justice? Easy: Poor people are easy to ignore. In our hunger work, we give them this gift: God’s attention embedded in our own attention.
· ELCA Hunger includes this idea in its fifth objective, which encourages ELCA members to listen to the voices of those who are poor and those who produce food.
· In some places, this behavior is called “accompaniment,” a philosophy and practice of global mission or human services that goes beyond patronizing notions of “help.”
· In the work of this church body – and its domestic and global partners – we take seriously the gift of attention. We know how to listen, not only to people who are poor and those who produce food, but also to those who are powerful or rich. We know how to listen for needs, but also for capabilities (assets) from which change can be constructed. We know how to see and hear people as they really are, not as we imagine them.
· In our gift of attention, we offer the gifts of appreciation, face-to-face conversation, hope, courage, solidarity and shared identity. We build friendships, capacity, understanding – all building blocks of long-range development.
· Who gives attention to you? When you correct and when you bring good news? And to whom do you give attention? How could you strengthen your capacity to give and receive this gift? How would the attention of poor people enrich your life? Whose attention do you most desire? How might you get it, for the benefit of God’s will?
The “bothersome poor”
· This parable of Jesus has several legitimate interpretations. What follows is one track . . . . The judge – who, if you look closely, is NOT akin to God -- is a two-bit official who misunderstands his responsibility for justice.
· What’s most noticeable is his disregard for a poor widow. Although she may have still owned the rights to her property – she was clearly a bothersome presence in the judge’s life. Perhaps only because she was close to the bottom of the social or economic system.
· At the same time he disregards the woman, the judge also knows his own soul or lifestyle: He doesn’t want more work, and ignoring the righteously insistent woman will continue to be bothersome work. The truth: It is easier to grant her justice than it would be to endure her legitimate complaints, as well as the likely shame he would garner from the community surrounding this woman.
· The parallels to today’s world may be similar: People who are poor are bothersome. They remind us of nagging problems in the world; they remind us of our own economic vulnerabilities; they raise up guilt and shame about our own inactivity or culpability in their condition; their horrific life stories frighten us. These bothersome attitudes may keep us from meaningful relationships with poor people.
· Along with you, ELCA Hunger doesn’t think this condition should continue. “Love” doesn’t prosper where “bothersome” persists. So we work at justice, alongside people who are poor, in matters such as advocacy and community organizing. In programs and projects around the world, we help people who are poor to claim their rights, working against contemporary versions of the unjust judge. We help urban and rural poor name their assets, collect them together with those of others, and focus those capacities on righteous change.
· Perhaps the biggest change we participate in: Over time, we stop thinking of people who are as the bothersome ones, and instead name oppressors, selfish people, those who ignore poor people, economic overlords and garden-variety pleasure-seekers as the real problem.
· The good news for people who are poor: They are honored for their capacity, helped to name and claim what is justly theirs, and given the blessing of this church in their escaping from poverty.
· The good news for us: We are freed from thinking of those who God loves dearly as “bothersome.” We confess our own complicity in injustice, we seek forgiveness, and we join together with poverty-affected people to bring God’s justice to bear on the world.
STARTER TWO: CHILDREN’STHOUGHTS AND ACTIVITIES
1. Heroes abound in children’s cultural contexts. Many of them “super”, the stuff of games, T-shirts, television cartoons and feature-length movies. Some of kids’ heroes are closer to home, and perhaps more deserving of their attention: Parents, siblings, friends, teachers and even local notables. Today’s lessons include likely heroes – Jacob the Wrestler – and unlikely heroes – a poor woman who nags her way into justice. It might be fun to talk with children about their own sense of heroism – bravery in the face of bullies, telling the truth when lying is easier, giving precious time or money to help bring food, safety, shelter to people who are poor. Without getting distracted by perhaps-too-cute recitations of children’s admiration for men who are spiders or super, women who are cats, hulks who are green or dogs that can fly – ask children about their sense of the heroic or heroes. If you can, make a transition to the “heroes” – like Mother Teresa or medical missionaries or relief and development workers – who help combat poverty in today’s world. Good luck.
2. Use a puppet – as foil or teacher – to tell a “nagging for justice” story that might be closer to home or to events in your community. (Example, where I live, a coalition of churches, teachers, community activists and parents persuaded and pressured local officials to install a child-friendly safety bridge over a dangerous railroad.) BTW, this church’s hunger work includes lots of stories like this, some of them focused on legislation, some of them on corporate social responsibility. Oh, and give the puppet a name.
3. Not a theme we pursued above, but still nesting quietly in the Second Reading: How does God help us pay attention to people who try to correct us? And how is that good news? When it comes to injustice or poverty – or all their causes – perhaps we need to know how to listen to those who correct us. Stories of parental or filial correction would work well here. So might stories of how this congregation tries to tell the truth about what’s wrong.
STARTER THREE: BIBLE CONVERSATIONS
1. For some Bible conversation fun, read the First Reading and ask folks to invent names for organizations or people by whom God might bless the world. Write the perhaps-fanciful and perhaps-serious names on a chart so that others can enjoy the creativity. Bring the activity closer to home by asking how the meaning of participants’ names connects them to the elimination or hunger, poverty or injustice in the world. Conclude your session with a blessing, if only that people can live out their names.
2. The 2 Timothy lesson contains the famous “inspired Scripture” passage. But what follows also is important: Why does God inspire or give words to God’s people? (Hint: look at verses 16-17.) How do God’s purposes extend past just being known and praised as God? How might those Word-giving purposes benefit people who are poor?
3. If folks in this group can be emotionally honest, ask them to talk about the ways and times in which they think about people who are poor as dangerous, disgusting, bothersome, guilt-producing or worse. What is the source for those feelings? What do participants do – or NOT do – when they feel this way? How could this congregation help them change to a different way of thinking?
4. A corollary set of questions could be asked about the Gospel lesson, these focused on the matter of motivations for giving to the ELCA Hunger Appeal. HINT: Be careful not to be too quick in condemning motives.
5. Ask participants to describe their own “wrestlings” with God, especially in matters of lifework, life purpose, working against injustice or “making a difference.” How does this congregation help them be Israel’s – people who wrestle with God successfully? How are they “wounded” by those times of wrestling? (What permanent difficulties remain with them?)
THE SENDOFF
I’m sitting in a car dealership here in my local suburb, waiting for my auto to get fixed so that it doesn’t endanger me and my carpool friends. The television blares out a game show that honors people’s abilities as price-knowing materialists, another channel with soapy stories of messed-up lives frothing with selfishness and punishments. Still, Fix-it Guys outside this waiting room are repairing what I could never understand or accomplish. Their work redeems my own; their lives keep mine running, literally.
The diversions from this writing have been overwhelming. Or perhaps the diversions are the message . . . .
Bob Sitze, Director
Hunger Education
__________________
Welcome to Hunger Sermon Starters!
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!
October 28, 2007
Reformation Sunday
First Reading: Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 46
Second Reading: Romans 3:19-28
Gospel: John 8:31-36
STARTER ONE: PREACHING THEMES
Calm down?
· Is the psalmist crazy? Calm down? Me?
· God knows that the world is in a crazy state, things going to hell in a handbasket. The environment tanking – poor baby polar bears! – and the world’s economies bound up in globailized greed. Wars increasing, United States power diminishing, people hating us just for being ourselves. People die of hunger-related causes every 3.2 seconds – every time I blink – and most of them are kids!
· God also knows that the hunger ministries of this church suffer when people calm down then evil triumphs.
· Just like the Good Friar Martin Luther would have asked, we question ourselves and the rest of the church: Where’s the outrage? Where’s the anger at injustice? Where’s the prophetic voice, railing against the powers-that-be? Where’s the passion and fire in eyes and voices? We don’t need calm – we need rebellious fomentings, frothings-at-the-mouth, poets who know how to zing, rhetoricians who can inspire and inflame, godly demagogues who can incite and envision. Calm? Piff and balderdash!
· And yet . . . .
· The rest of the psalmist’s enjoinder puts the “calming” thing in perspective: “Calm down, and learn that I am God!” (Contemporary English Version) The two halves of the statement work together like an old married couple dancing at their grand-daughter’s wedding.
· Here’s how that might work: I can be calm only when I know who’s God.
· As rotten as the world might be – excuse me, “as oxidized as the world might be” – it’s still a world in which God is operative as The Decider. Not me.
· As hell-bent toward its own destruction as the world might be, it’s still a world that God chose NEVER to destroy.
· As hungry as the world might be, it’s still a world in which Jesus is Bread of Life.
· As devoid of civility as the world might appear, it’s still a world in which justice, mercy and love undergird the truest, most lasting, most powerful relationships.
· And as much as the world’s welfare depends on my work in hunger and justice, it’s still a world over which God’s Spirit broods, a world in which my influence is backed-up by God’s influence, a world in which the span of my life and talents will ripple out only because of God’s love in Jesus.
· Calm down, indeed! Fumings begone on this Sunday! Thanks be to God that God is God, and not me . . . .
We are not yet saviors
· “Salvation Unto Us Has Come.” So pens Luther in this longish explication of soteriology. And so it has. And so it does. We are saved. By grace, through faith. No deservedness. No acceptance on our terms.
· It is an easy thing for we hunger folk to think of our work as salvific. We are, after all, trying to save the world. From starvation, from pestilence, from greed and its effects, from a host of isms, from itself.
· We easily become like unto fanatic facists, though, if we think that by this good and godly work we somehow redeem ourselves. As though “working against hunger” was a free pass into God’s favor, the most noble deeds to be admired by the most notable people.
· Perhaps an avocational or occupational hazard – the morphing of “saving the world” into “saving ourselves” – the notion that we are somehow more righteous, more acceptable and more worthy is an easy thing to engage in.
· Especially during this observance of the Sacred Day of Salvation Properly Understood, we easily miss the wispy sniff of grace, wafting its way through the Spirit’s breeze, coloring noses and whispering into our eyes: God has saved you, friend. Also the world. Rest assured that you don’t need to do this by yourself.
· Our salvation has come already, by God’s free grace and favor. We proclaim and live that salvation in our hunger-related work, and by our offerings and talents we bring redemption of all kinds into the lives of people who are hungry for food and meaning, water and forgiveness.
· Saved, we are not yet saviors.
· Saved-but-not-yet-saviors, we still participate as junior partners in God’s continued salvation.
· So that it can come unto others. Thanks be to God.
Freeing truth
· The Hunger Program of the ELCA – like that of other denominations and godly enterprises – includes the proposition that people who learn about the causes and solutions of hunger and injustice will be more likely participants in the alleviation of these twinned evils.
· Reformation Sunday’s texts plop googobs of truthful statements and big-picture concepts onto our plates. Like the overloaded buffet tables that many of us will unload right after church today, the lessons are chock-full of good things to chew and digest.
· More than morsels, the solid-rock truths of the Reformation are sometimes more than we can handle. (Think, for example, of the evidences of “grace” just in the hunger program of this church; how ineffable, how deeply-engrained, how effective!)
· What can we say when we’re confronted with so much truth, when we have more than enough of it in our brains? That it frees us.
· Truth that constrains is cultic and controlling; masterminds of truth wield power over those who seek life-organizing truth.
· It is not so among us who see and proclaim a truth that liberates people from the traps they construct and those that others smash down around them.
· In our hunger program, we also proclaim truths, but they are delectable, digestible meals that last: We feed people, we help them reclaim self-worth. Resettling refugees, we literally free captives. Offering education and means of employment, we help people escape the bonds of dependency. Promoting self-help projects (e.g., “food for work” programs), we give back the dignity that some people have lost as their lands and livelihood collapsed around them. As we monitor and encourage legislation that prevents injustice being piled on the backs of the poor, we free them from the life-diminishing task of battling evil alone.
· Today we celebrate freeing truth. In this church’s hunger program, both “truth” and “freedom” become tangible and tasty. A good meal to eat. Thanks be to God.
STARTER TWO: CHILDREN’STHOUGHTS AND ACTIVITIES
1. Illustrate the freeing elements of the church’s hunger work in this way: Build up around the children a wrong-headed “mighty fortress” out of children’s cardboard blocks. Talk about the supposed fortress as a “poverty prison.” Describe to children what it means to be trapped inside poverty, using examples from your own locale. “No food” is the least of the problems that captures people who are poor. No car to get to work; expensive housing, schools that don’t educate well, low-wage jobs – these are easy-to-understand descriptors of the prison we call “poverty”.
Now, as you slowly remove blocks, explain how an integrated program or organization your congregation funds works to cut down the effects of poverty to a manageable size. As you remove blocks, give them names. (Like “job-training program,” “nutrition education,” “tutoring program”). As the blocks are removed, “free” some children. Note that the offerings of this congregation to the ELCA World Hunger Appeal helps make possible this kind of “freeing”. And that this is a good thing!
2. To be even truer to the truth of the “fortress” metaphor so thoroughly explored in this Sunday’s lessons, use the same blocks as ensurers of safety, and name how the programs of this church’s hunger ministries protect people from their enemies, from hunger and injustice. Same drill as before, only more textual . . . .
3. Here’s a weird one: Children who are young and who learn about hunger may start to worry about their own poverty or eventual hunger. (Not all that wrong, given a variety of factors in the world.) We don’t want kids to grow up being fearful of people who ARE hungry, so today concentrate on the calming notion that God is in charge, and working to calm and comfort people who are hungry. Tell some simple stories – two or three at most – of places and ways in which children in other parts of the world are being calmed and comforted by the hunger work of this church body. After each story, say together this wonderful verse from Psalm 46: “Calm down and learn that I am God!”
STARTER THREE: BIBLE CONVERSATIONS
1. The themes of this day can overwhelm just about every other thought, especially for we Bible-toting, Mighty Fortress-singing Lutherians. (Or was it Lutherns?) You might connect the day’s intellectual, biblical and doctrinal themes to some personal, hunger-related matters with discussion/sharing questions such as these:
- If “salvation” is about more than eternal life, from what have you been saved? From what would you hope others might be saved? How are you helping get that godly work done?
- What are “the freeing truths” about combating hunger and injustice in the world?
- What are the “mighty fortresses” inside which we live today? Which are good and which not-so-good? How can you tell the difference?
- What happens to hunger work when we all retreat inside of our “fortresses”?
2. “Truth” gets big play today, and in many ways it eats itself up when “truth” can’t answer the question, “So what?” So try to connect “this is most certainly true” (Luther) with matters such as these:
- How do Reformation truths instruct us in terms of helping people who are poor?
- For people dying from hunger or grinding poverty or untreated diseases, what’s “true” about Reformation themes such as grace, mercy, forgiveness, salvation, freedom?
- What makes “feed the hungry” more or less true than “help the hungry people get organized” or “turn on the microphones so that people who are hungry can be heard?”
- What’s the most biblically based way to combat hunger? Most true to the Scriptures?
THE SENDOFF
The short version of my personal mission statement is to finish the Reformation. I think I probably share that with you who read and use these sermon starters. Years ago, “finishing the Reformation” had to do with re-instilling in the church the notion that we are, all of us, called to vocations that bring God’s will to bear on the world. In these latter years of my formal ministry, I’m thinking that the Reformation will be complete when the church forsakes its fear of institutional death and instead gives its life away for the sake of the world, especially those plagued by poverty. That’s my mission statement story, and I’m sticking to it. You . . . ?
Bob Sitze, Director
Hunger Education
