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!

· The time of the year for “judgment” themes is upon us. A few Sundays to endure the hot seat before we get shielded from these difficult thoughts by Christmas anticipation. (NOTE TO SELF: The hot seat actually returns during Advent!)

· What makes the seat hot: First, we’re the ones sitting on it. The judgment themes may seem to apply to people who are the generic “them,” but in reality we can easily find ourselves in the condemnations, warning and prophecies of the lectionary for this day. We may be the wicked, we are probably the rich.

· Second, God’s heating up the seat. Fire, destruction, the collapse of human enterprise, punishment for misdeeds --- all part of the heat we can expect to feel when God starts judging.

· Third, of all the judgments we can face, this is the most frightening one to consider, because it’s final. There may have been other judgments in God’s history – the Babylonian Captivity, the Destruction of the Temple – but the world’s calendars also flip forward to the time when there is a final reckoning.

· Matters of hunger and justice figure into this time of year, because God’s judgment is about justice, NOT being good or moral or right. “What about fairness?” is the question that separates goats from sheep, not how kind we were to strangers, orphans or prisoners. (Matthew 25 might not be the übertext for The Final Judgment.)

· “Do we deserve the hot seat?” might come to mind. The answer: Probably yes. Most of us participate as part of the problem(s) in matters of injustice. If only by our silence or minimal efforts to rightside-up God’s world. We are sinners, after all, predisposed to that default setting in our minds.

· The way out? Not by frenetic activity – “Let’s take FIVE mission trips before Christmas!” or by super-sized hunger offerings – generosity is not carried very well on the shoulders of guilt – or even by asking for a reconsideration of our place on the hot seat.

· The way out? Asking for forgiveness, and waiting for God’s gracious “Yes” to follow. Assuredly, fully, finally. God asks nothing except repentance. It’s a place to start.

· And the place that God’s good forgiveness ends? Generosity – thanks for your congregation’s giving to the ELCA Hunger Appeal – and mission trips. Also increased awareness of people who are poor, increased joy about solving this hunger/injustice problem, increased gratitude for God’s continuing gifts.

· Not sure if there’s anything here, but the psalm for this day is a little odd in that the “God is coming to judge” closing is tacked onto a familiar set of verses about praising God.

· Is the order reversed here? (We praise God because God is coming to judge the earth?) Or is the order correct – as we praise God we see God coming to judge the earth.

· Depending on the news this Sunday – sorry, but I’m writing this a few weeks in advance of November 18^th – this “singing before God judges” theme may fit some particular piece of new history hand-in-glove.

· You know the story: The first-century Christians in Thessalonica – silly people – were waiting for Jesus to return, and Paul needed to set them straight about what to do while waiting.

· For them, “Second Coming” was blessed relief, reward, the end of worldly torment, reuniting with Jesus. They thought that they could begin their new second lives with perpetual down-time, Our easy appraisal: They didn’t get the meaning of “what to do while waiting.”

· Here’s a sobering thought: Even a cursory look at any element of contemporary Western culture – or its artifacts – could as easily cause Paul to include us in the “Silly Thessalonians” category.

· Think, for example, about the meaning of “retirement” in many places in our culture, or the ways in which we indulge in leisure-time activities as those that’s the best use of time. Flip through e-Bay or wade through the flood of seasonal catalogs on your kitchen table and see whether “idle pleasure” comes to mind.

· Or consider how any of us – individually or collectively – might be fiddling while today’s Rome burns, frittering away precious time as precious opportunities for doing justice sail by like the flipping of calendar pages.

· Another silliness we could easily adopt: To think that “working for what we eat” somehow makes us better than those who do not work. The so-called Protestant Work Ethic. As though there is a plentiful supply of meaningful work for livable wages, as though those who seek work can easily find it, as though sweat saved any of us like some kind of working stiff’s righteousness.

· For people who are poor – not unlike the Thessalonian Christians? – this text may not be a condemnation of their lifestyles – “Stop being lazy beggars” – but perhaps encouragement to demand meaningful employment. For those who are poor, this text may be as much about their rights as it is about the Second Coming. Paul’s semi-scolding could also be one way of describing justice. (People who work should have the right to eat, too.)

· You can be proud as a Lutheran Christian that “food for work” programs have long characterized the way we have done relief and development projects around the world. People capable of work – to dig wells, water crops, build irrigation systems, tend herds – are offered food in trade for their hard work. Their hard work helps create sustainable systems of food production. A nice cycle, inspired by the Thessalonian text here.

· You can connect this text to the Micah text fairly easily – you could think of Luke’s words as the click here button on Micah’s shorthand version. Another way to think of the relationships: if you want to know what Micah’s hot seat feels like, listen as Luke records some specifics.

· The text also stands alone as a reminder to Jesus’ disciples of the horrors they would see – particularly the destruction of Jerusalem – within a few decades after his death. (Some Lucan scholars suggest the writer/redactors might have already been looking back at those events as they recalled Jesus’ warnings here.)

· In that reading of the gospel text, you might think of Jesus’ words in the light of contemporary history: you might count how many of the continuing signs of destruction, near-at-hand or final, are already evident in the world around you.

· That’s right: “Around you.” In a globalized world where information about everything flows into our brains like gravy on a slice of turkey, these signs Jesus notes are close at hand, familiar, and frightening. Right here in River City.

· Wars scare us; so do earthquakes. Especially frightening: people who are starving. Right in our living rooms, on our plasmagoric television screens mounted in altars of spewing information. Right here in River City.

· Perhaps most frightening for any of us are the hucksters of hope, Harold-Hill-like folks who promise the way out of our fears by asking for us to believe in them. “Be rich,” they say, “and be like me.” These folks may osteenate and trump their ways into our lives, and then frighten us even more when their false promises don’t pan out. Forty days after our days of purpose have run out, we may be back where we started: Desperately afraid of a judgment coming our way, a steamrollering punishment that flattens us into the pavement.

· Still, here in River City there’s also a good word: “Don’t’ be afraid.” The Savior of the World says that to us, not from a tower of power, but from the ground where he walks alongside us, in the middle of the fearsome realities we face. “Don’t’ be afraid of poor folks,” “Don’t be afraid of wars.” “Don’t be afraid of terrible diseases.”

· This may be the time of year during which you have been encouraging the dutiful generosity of your congregation’s members. You may have taken offerings for ELCA World Hunger; you may have sent members out on “mission trips” to do good things. (No, I don’t like that phrase because of its gentle implication that “mission” is about trips, out there and far away.)

· However phrased, the good work of these good people has drawn together attention, time, energy and money and sent them on their way to fulfill God’s will. These are good things.

· Weariness does creep in, though, and so this one little verse – the stuff of stitched samplers? – gently encourages all of us to keep at this hunger-and-justice stuff.

· It’s a word of grace in the middle of Paul’s own wearied life – think of it! – and something we could all say to each other, both as thanks for what we’ve done together so far, and what we hope yet to do together.

1. “Not giving up” is a good theme for children, and it can apply to the matters of justice and hunger. You might tell the Tortoise and Hare fable, or find a contemporary equivalent of that timeless story. (“The Energizer Bunny?) An application to children’s interest in people who are hungry: Personal advocacy for what’s right, as in “pestering and reminding and telling people about what’s not right.” Our culture is alive with stories of kids who did just that, and convinced businesses or government or families or churches to do something important or just. (Or to stop doing what was frippery or unjust.) What would happen if the kids in this congregation picked a cause or an injustice and did not grow weary in well-doing? Hmm….

2. I’m bold enough here – Bob the Pest – to wonder whether you’d consider having children “meet” people who are poor, for the purpose of getting over their nascent or actual fear of people who are starving. Could you:

3. This is a good Sunday to note the presence of persecution in the world. Children understand how it feels to be looked down on, bullied, ignored or unappreciated for being odd or at odds with people around them. Maybe this is one of those times where you tell some of your own life story, some of what it feels like to be out there in the world, always trying to do good and taking your lumps for it. One of the “lumps”: Being ignored or pushed at for insisting on justice or eliminating hunger in more than cursory ways. Add final words of encouragement.

4. String nylon line around and through the space where you are gathered. A long line. Children can follow you – and help you – as you walk and talk about “not being weary” results in good things continuing to happen over a long period of time, involving lots of people along the way. (The string can wind its way among congregation members.) Use short vignettes familiar to children in your congregation – e.g., the offerings you’ve collected and the stories of how kids contributed those funds.) Leave the string where it lays, a reminder of where “not being weary” can lead.

1. These are frightening texts, which makes them worthy of heart-to-heart conversations. You can start the sharing time among conversants by asking them to talk about their own imaginings or fear about the Second Coming.

2. Here’s a hard question perhaps hidden in the Lucan text: Why would Jesus bring up such a negative subject in the middle of an otherwise-positive or appreciative conversation? Bad manners? Warnings? Love of the conversants? HINT: Check the context of this reading, both before and after.

3. “Donor fatigue” plagues some people in matters not only associated with the giving of money, but also in the more generic “doing good.” Talk honestly about that feeling in people’s minds, and how they combat it. Specific examples might be matters of caring for people who are chronically homeless, dealing with people who are immigrants (of any kind), or what to do when “all the church does is ask for money.” How do participants experience those feelings, how do they counteract those feelings? Why would the feelings arise in the first place? Where do they find themselves in verses 12-19 in the Lucan text? How willing are they to keep “doing good” all the rest of their lives?

4. In the meat company where I once worked, we would sometimes say about every human enterprise, including meat plants, “You got your workers, and you got your shirkers.” When it comes to doing good, why do people just NOT do any work? What DOES it mean to be “lazy” when it comes to eliminating poverty? In terms of hunger and justice work, is there a punishment or judgment against people who shirk their responsibility to care for people who are poor?

5. If this subject is important where you live and work, talk about the prejudices we have about poor people who “don’t work.” “Welfare queens” also comes to mind as another epithet born of ignorance. For fun, work through this question: What does it take in our locale for people who are “the working poor” to work here? (Think of transportation, child care, affordable housing, cost of food, etc.) A followup question: How hard do you work for the money you call “yours” or the food you eat? Another: What does it mean to “deserve” or “earn” your wages – and thus your food?

In an unnamed western airport today, I met a government employee who works on the hot seat of combating terrorism. Although our conversation was bounded by necessary propriety, I found out that this person works with integrity, questions fear as a motivator for anything or anyone, wrestles with difficult questions and serves God as one who understands and protects civilization against danger. Right now I’m thinking I met an anonymous prophet in jeans, one of the invisible kind that God offers us as reminders of the real world in which we live, and who keeps us thankful about our own sense of dogged determination to do what’s right. Two questions come to mind: For which prophets are you thankful today, and for whom are you a prophet? And your answer is . . . .?

This is the Sunday when Christ is celebrated as “king” in every way. “Crown Him With Many Crowns” and all the rest of the glorious remembrances are usual ways of thinking on this day. The lessons suggest two other views as well. I share them with you for your consideration, not to dim the glorious specter of Jesus as King of the World, but to offer some balancing thoughts.

· No, not that one. He looks out of his window on a cold December St. Stephen’s Day and sees a beggar who’s having some trouble in the deep snow. THAT king is celebrated because he’s a king who exercises charity, born of pity. A caring kind of guy, and worthy of praise.

· The Jeremiah lesson suggests another kind of king, another view of who Jesus was. This king’s name is Good King Justice Guy. He’s not just looking out of the window of his mighty fortress castle at the poverty of the world below him. This kind is out in the world setting things right, even wreaking some havoc with his justice.

· Both Christ’s are out in the world, granted, but we do our King injustice if he’s never King Justice. If he’s always kind and considerate in reaction to whomever wanders by, he’s hardly the kind of king who manages by walking around.

· Where might you portray Good King Justice Guy in the work of this church’s Hunger Program; where can you see charity morphing into justice? HINT: Think of advocacy, think of education about hunger’s root causes, think of our UN Office.

· If you were to be “political” in your sermon, how might you compare and contrast the king in Jeremiah’s conceptual framework with the political leaders of our time?

· The Gospel for today puts our glorious king on a cross. Tortured, wounded, bloodied, sweating, dying. Surrounded by scum-of-the-earth people. An ugly sight.

· And what of us, supposed disciples who follow in this man’s footsteps and emulate his actions? What about our own ugly pictures, the places we live, the ways in which we don’t try to save ourselves?

· Or are we more content to hide inside of Mighty Fortresses, crowing about our Protector and blithely thinking that the whole world is likewise saved from its own varieties of ugly death?

· Or are we more interested in saving ourselves, to prove to ourselves and others that we are somehow more worthy of God’s love, God’s protection, God’s blessings? That we are actually miniature versions of Messiahs.

· On this day, the Messiah we name as Glorious King is also the God/Man who refused to save himself, refused to escape the ugliness around him. This Messiah stayed on that cross, with dying criminals.

· The “Save Yourself” Test probably works best right-side-up: We become more Christ-like as we take on his version of kingliness and give our lives away for the sake of those who are poor.

1. Could you scare up a picture of a relief worker or a group of poor people who are being helped by some kind of hunger work? Could you talk about how what seems to be ugly (or at least not pleasant) in the photo is more about Jesus than we think?

2. Could you show a picture of the glorious Jesus – lots of those around – and ask children to tell you what they see? Then read the Gospel in a kid-friendly version, now contrasting the picture of that scene with the glorious Jesus drawing. What kind of a King is this, anyhow?

3. Because of the Jeremiah lesson, this might be another time to talk about what’s fair in the world, and what’s not. Ask children for comments about what’s unfair when you’re a poor person. Assure them that this Jesus King is more than aware of what’s unfair. Reread parts of the Jeremiah lesson so that they see Jesus as this kind of king.

4. Make up a fable about two kings: One who stays in his fortress castle and occasionally helps wandering beggar-like people; and one who puts on his coat and goes outside to work alongside the poor people. Ask children which king seems more likeable and more effective. Assure them that Jesus is the Second King.

1. This second time around on the Mighty Fortress themes from Psalm 46 might be a good time to question the analogy if it goes too far. For example, what if we think of ourselves as Fortress Church; what then? Or what if we extend “God as Protector” so far that we think of danger and risk as bad things? What would happen if the “fortress” was a coffee shop or a flower cart, or maybe even a food cupboard? What makes a fortress “mighty” after all?

2. Political considerations could easily enter into the Bible conversations time. In that case, how might you approach the political news of the day with these texts in mind. Where would Christ be crucified in today’s political climate? Who out there in the political realms are merely trying to save themselves – as though that marked a Messiah/King/Political Leader? How can participants tell whether that’s true? Who’s willing to be crucified to save others?

3. Ask participants to talk about their imagined visions of who Christ Jesus is? Perhaps they can contrast childhood (or immature) versions of “King Jesus” with those they hold today. Which images are most accurate, which most helpful, which most worth emulating? How does our image of Jesus as King affect our behaviors when it comes to people who are poor?

I’m a Lutheran Christian, so I refuse to get rid of the cross, even on this day. In the work of eradicating hunger, ugliness is all around us and inside of us. Being crucified with Christ – there’s the rub and there’s the challenge of a hunger ministry. What, for example, would we think of a per communicant Hunger Appeal goal of $25 per person, or what would happen if we would frame our “mission trips” as times of conversation with people who are poor. What if we asked for sacrifices that were risky – speaking out against governmental policies that favor the rich – instead of mere study or “awareness”? I think about these things on this day, and I’m thankful for more than turkey. I’m thankful for you . . . .