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!

Californians, Floridians and other warm-climate folks welcome you into one of the new effects of global warming: Lent – even this early one -- is likely to feature warm, Spring-like weather. What if your sermons during Lent were all tinged with the joys of Spring, the warm of the Gospel’s compelling invitations and the bounce-in-the-step motivations that come from being among God’s people? Hunger-and-justice matters don’t usually promote those feelings – you’ve seen and heard a lot of Jeremiah-aping thoughts in these starters – but perhaps creation’s response to changing weather patterns might inspire you to stand Lent on its head, shake out of its pockets all the doom-and-gloom that it harbors and then to sit down next to its themes and say together, “Thanks be to God!” Just a thought . . . .

· A slightly scatological expression – does this make it through your spam filter? – is one way to characterize the First Reading. It’s “butt-ugly stupid” (BUS) and describes the condition in which Adam and Eve – the Devil, too, when he isn’t a snake – found themselves.

· They were this way before the legendary fruit-eating episode, hoping to cure their lack of wisdom in one mystical/magical act. Sadly, their act of disobedience yielded even greater stupidity: They were ashamed of the way God created them and scared stupid about God.

· One act of seemingly innocent rebellion – Hey, can’t we be smart, too, God? – and for all of time humans are saddled with brains that are BUS, at least in their lizard and mammalian elements.

· One act of knowledge seeking, and forever after their supposed wisdom lies heavy on all of humanity as a kind of curse. Discernment turns into disgust and disregard. A sad story.

· The naked truths about hunger-and-justice may redeem us from BUS-like lives – as though there are no poor people, as though we don’t cause the economic/environmental collapse of the world’s systems, as though poverty is an idea and not people-who-are-poor.

· But perhaps another naked truth is that discernment – about the causes of hunger, what’s right and wrong, what’s factual and what’s mythical – can sometimes lead to disgust and disregard. Disgust about the lives and hopes of people who are poor, self-loathing that paralyzes us from taking action. Disregard that separates us from the God who most wants to love and empower us. Our knowledge-seeking may, in fact, help us learn more but know less, confuse information with wisdom, and excuse us from acting on what we already know.

· ELCA World Hunger values “hunger education” as one way to inform people about the nature, causes and solutions of world hunger. But the resources and programs of this church’s education efforts also compel us to do something with that information, to probe our own BUS self-images, to take into our hearts our shared humanity with people who are poor, to examine our own lifestyles’ contribution to world hunger.

· Psalm 32 describes in exquisite physical detail what it feels like to be contrite. Nice stuff, and visceral. What makes the psalm “special” – see the annotation at the start of the psalm – is that we can feel our way into David’s soul, and once there can find ourselves at one with him.

· Lent is about confession, certainly, and the lessons for these Sundays can certainly bring on that kind of behavior. At the same time, each Sunday is Gospel-reveling time, a wonderful wallowing of downtrodden spirits in the warm, healing mud of God’s Spirit’s spa!

· When it comes to doing what God invites and requires, there are certainly dumb animals – let’s start with but not end at “mules” as a primary example – and certainly dumb people – let’s start with but not end at Good Old David. When it comes to hunger-and-justice ministries – read here “the world is crammed full of people who will today die because of poverty-related ugliness” – we can find (or typify) any number of stupidities that render others and us as mule-like.

· On this day, water pumps gush out clean water, malaria-infested mosquitoes are unsuccessful, distended bellies receive healthy food, HIV/AIDS-ravaged families receive life-saving drugs, children go back to school, an armed conflict matures into a truce, crops are being planted or harvested, community agencies are more capable of delivering sustenance to elderly residents, unjust laws or regulations are being changed and the outrage of poverty is being challenged.

· Because of God’s kindness we step out of that muck – new use of “mud” analogy here – and clean ourselves up: We are NOT just sinners. (See the simul justus part of that equation.)

· The God who knows about the mud from which we were created – yet another twist of metaphor – also knows what happens when the “gift of kindness” (this is how the CEV Bible translates “grace”) is applied to formerly mud-laden people.

· Instead of wallowing in the mud of our sinfulness – return to previous mud analogy – we find God next to us, washrag in hand, cleaning off what we most dislike about ourselves and start to get a vision of whomelse we really are.

· And so, instead of berating ourselves for NOT thinking highly of people who are poor, for NOT considering the state of the world’s environment, for NOT giving sacrificially to change the low estate of people trampled by oppressors, we stand next to God, and ask “What can we do now?”

· God’s kindness begets kindness, and instead of slinging mud at each other – still another mud analogy – for our shortcomings and selfishnesses – we seek others as washed and redeemed partners in God’s work.

· So ELCA World Hunger cannot be described as a set of propositional truths that feel all muddy and difficult to understand – are we EVER going to run out of analogies here? – but as a clear and consistent reminder that because of God’s kindness we get to be kind, we get to be joyful, we get to clean up the world.

· Yes, this is Temptation Day in the church’s calendar. And yes, you could preach about the hunger-and-justice connections to the temptations Jesus faced, temptations not unlike those we face.

· But let’s look at the helper angels instead, and think of their role in comforting and sustaining a nearly dead-from-hunger Jesus. (Yes, 40 days is a long time to go with no or little food.)

· What exactly did these angels do? Certainly NOT flutter around with harps, singing songs or blowing trumpets. (Those are another group of angels called The Fluttering Harpists.) Did they speak kindly to Jesus, peppering him with atta-boy’s? Did they affirm his worth as a human being? Did they help him remember the allegorical meaning of each of the temptations so that his biographers would get that part right?

· It’s easy to take for granted – or even to forget – that one essential element of ELCA World Hunger is plain-and-simple providing of foodstuffs to people with food. It’s called “direct aid” and it can consist also of oral rehydration therapy – look it up! – clean water or simple things like sheltering tarps or ground-covers, fuel for fires or warm clothing on a winter night

· We do this part well, and it’s important for us to remember: We are like those food-bringing helper angels, sent by and powered by God’s Spirit, when we provide immediate relief to people suffering from hunger or disease or natural disasters.

· You can visit www.elca.org/hunger and see how that works all over the world – likely including your own locale! – and how efficient and effective those short-term angel-deeds can be.

1. Imagine with children what “famine” (fasting?) means. No food or little food, meager meals with minimal quantities. No choice about what kind of foodstuff you will eat; eating things that you would never have otherwise consumed. Eating infrequently rather than regularly. Eating desperately, not knowing when your next meal with take place, or of what it will consist. Can children imagine themselves into the mind (soul or body?) of a child enveloped in a famine? Can they understand how fasting can be a helpful exercise in solidarity?

2. If “dumb mules” is something kids can understand and accept – Hey, PITA-like folks would argue that point, or at least point out how humans can also be mule-like – then think together how stubbornness – about helping hungry people – is really dumb. Invent a character – a puppet? – who doesn’t want to help poor folks – they’re always asking for more, they probably deserve it, they’re lazy, they just waste what we give them – and move the story towards the eventual dawning of this dumb character’s discernment about what’s REALLy true about people who are poor.

3. If angels show up anywhere within children’s immediate circle of vision during your time with them, spend some moments thinking together about what angels are and what they do. (Be careful to confine your conjecture to what Scripture – not pop culture – says about angelic behaviors.) The likely feeding of Jesus in today’s Gospel is a good place to start. The connector: How might children be like angels in the large and small tasks they undertake to alleviate or eliminate world hunger? You might here connect to the wider work of your congregation or this church body. Angels abound!

1. The temptations of Jesus ARE a good place on which to center conversations about hunger-and-justice. Each of the temptations can be thought of as a marker for the human condition, especially the condition in which we all imagine ourselves to be godly, in charge of what we do, responsible for what we get, deserving, lovable and capable. How do poor people view these temptations? Do they even get tempted in the same ways? What about the notions of “power” or individual self-sufficiency, and their corrupting influence on our kindness towards others?

2. If you didn’t spend time on contriteness during Ash Wednesday, use the psalm for this day – especially the first part – as a kind of quiet shared confessional, but with hunger-and-justice sins as the special focus. How do participants feel, down deep, when they sin against people who are oppressed. (NOTE: “Sins” are known both by what we do and by what we fail to do.) People who are hungry? People who never get a real chance?

3. Ask participants to think out loud together what was happening to Jesus’ mind and body as he slowly starved towards death. If there are medically trained participants, ask them to describe, in stark medical terms, what “starving to death” actually means. How the body literally eats itself, how brain cells stop working, how systems shut down, how self-awareness dulls way past “dumb” to an atrophied sentience that is almost animal-like. If they are present, ask participants who are fasting – or who have lived in poverty – to describe “food insecurity” – a subset of starvation is which the hungry person has little or no clue about the nature or source of his/her next meal. An interesting/compelling thought: Jesus and starving people have a lot in common; they may even look alike.

1. Help stock a food pantry with significant amounts of food. If possible, DON’T conduct a “canned or packaged food drive.” Instead, bring in a food pantry operator and ask what specific products they need and provide those. Or gather funds in significant amounts so that the food pantry can purchase foodstuffs and other items at extremely low cost from area food banks.

3. Write notes or send cards to “helper angels” in your congregation, whose ministries keep people alive or well. (Think “nurses” and “doctors” for sure, but how about supermarket clerks, hospice volunteers, mothers/fathers, people who drive the trucks that bring food, workers in factories.)

· Political hate-mongers aside – remember that “mongers” were street peddlers in crowded medieval cities, hawking their wares door-to-door – God really does love the whole world.

· (Aside about putting aside: God help us if the political rhetoric of fear of terrorists is now replaced in our civilization by a political rhetoric of hate of immigrants of any kind. Who’s going to be left to love, alongside of God, except people just like us?)

· Having put aside what deserves no mongering at all, let’s look instead at the implications of “whole world” for the way we work alongside of God in this “loving” thing.

· The bumper sticker, “God loves the whole world, no exceptions” pretty well summarizes how ELCA World Hunger thinks and works pretty well everywhere. If you were to journey to any part of the world, you’d see food and development aid, advocacy for change, education and insistence on justice. And you’d see if being offered to everyone/anyone, regardless of their race, creed or gender. Yes, even to people whose race, creed or gender are the targets for mongerers. No exceptions.

· By some accounts, Abram and his kin were big city folks, successful cattle dealers in Ur, where the business of supplying sacrificial animals for moon god worship could fetch a tidy sum.

· Yet, on the basis of a spiritual calling, they left the business behind and headed for a frontier location, out in Canaan, where they could start over. As landless nomads.

· Is it possible that in their own ways they were running away from what was wrong, evil and ungodly? Is it possible that their faith was in God’s ultimate power toward righteousness? Is it possible that they understood more deeply what it meant to serve God than the rest of their urban clan? That they saw in the whole idolatrous economy of Ur the seeds of its ultimate destruction? That in getting away they were staying pure and focused?

· It’s also possible in our urban-oriented culture, there are embedded idolatries that are the seeds of our own destruction, ungodly economies of injustice that keep poor people down on the farm. (Interesting expression in this context.) How DO any of us participate, implicitly, in the idol worshipping of our own times?

· But wait. There’s more – the good stuff. Abram starts over. God makes big promises (that will be kept soon enough). Abram’s not alone. Abram stays in contact – and worships – the real God.

· If you’ve ever started over – hit life’s RESET button – or experienced very large epiphanies or gone through very large catharses, you know the feeling of coming to that new way of thinking. You know the feeling of a bright and sunny day, of the bracing wind of God’s Spirit in that new calling and God’s presence in that new place, of being born again.

· Two directions that might bring this home to hearers: 1. How might God be calling any of us to rethink our life priorities again/still, so that we truly make God’s will central in our own lives? (And how might that new calling bring us to take up the plight of people who are poor?) 2. Our work together in this church’s hunger ministries makes “Run Away!” a viable option for refugees and immigrants who seek asylum, safety, possibility for their lives.

· Only this far into the start of Lent, we already start to see how Jesus is ramping up for his eventual suffering, death and resurrection. Laying out the propositions, taking on the powers-that-be, figuring out how to inject his wisdom into the lifeblood of a few followers. For Jesus, having come off the helpful transfiguring mountaintop experience, setting his eyes towards Jerusalem was the most logical – joyful? – thing to do next.

· One of the strange-and-wonderful things about this savior and lover of people is that he engaged in behaviors and attitudes that put him at risk for his eventual death. (Look at the verses at the end of John 2.) He knew that questioning the false religiosity of his day would get him in trouble, that attracting attention toward a repristinated Judaism would steal attention from the religious authorities, that rousing the rabble of society – the poor and oppressed peasants – would make him dangerous. And yet he kept at it.

· Abram followed no rules – c.f. Romans lesson for today – and so struck out, with only the light of his own calling in front of him – to be a faithful devotee of the True God. Certainly the promise of greatness – a great legacy that would continue unabated over centuries – motivated Abram, but that tiny light of faith – in a God he had yet to meet face-to-face – compelled his actions, his change in lifestyle, his giving up what had been normal or rewarding. He had nothing but the promising voice of God as assurance, and yet he did what he felt called to do.

· In the lives of many of your congregation members, the question, “What are we supposed to do?” sits in the gut of their souls like a piece of chicken fat. The question won’t go away, and its answers aren’t digesting the nagging query very well. Although the question about “supposed to” might be wrong, it does suggest that your pews may very well be filled with people looking to do God’s will in their lives, but still coming up short.

· The examples of Abram and Jesus are powerful, because they show that the answers God gives – especially those flavored with the spice of hunger and justice – are not always easily engaged.

· And yet – remember that we’re trying to find “spring-ish joy” in these Lenten lessons – there’s something exciting and energizing that comes when any of us finally accepts the realization that God calls us to give our lives away. That we can sidestep dull and brutish existence by taking on the extraordinary mission of Jesus. That we can accomplish something more in our lives than dying with the most toys.

1. Use pictures from hunger materials to examine together ALL the kinds of people that ELCA World Hunger helps, honors and changes. Ask children to tell you what they notice about the people in the photos. Summarize the experience with notions about God loving the whole world. (John 3:16 is a good passage to memorize.)

2. Examine the altar together. (Abram builds a lot of them.) Note the presence – on or off the altar – of offering baskets, and all the symbolism that connects this table or pillar with notions of sacrifice, generosity, blessing. If your congregation is conducting a Lenten emphasis on hunger, think together with the children about other places – other altars – where sacrifice, generosity or blessing occur in the lives of poor people. Or where those matters are noticed.

1. Themes during Lent have a way of drilling down deep into people’s lives. Today’s lessons are good examples. With Bibles in hand, talk together about the idea of relocating one’s entire family to a new place, a new way of thinking or living. Who’s done this recently, or who’s considering it? Where do God’s purposes enter the decision-making processes?

2. In the current economic climate, how many families will become internally displaced persons, and how might this congregation be part of God’s rescuing hand as these folks live vulnerable lives close to the edge?

3. Look at some representative hunger ministry materials, with John 3:16-17 in mind. Can participants find how ELCA-related programs and efforts deal with the world in a non-excluding way? Another way to ask the question, “What racial, ethnic, creedal groups are being served by this program?” Another: “With whom are we cooperating to get God’s larger work accomplished?” Or possibly, “Can you find a group that’s being left out?”

1. In the Prayer of the Church today, see if you can balance the usual prayer emphases of needs and difficulty with “whole”, thinking of people who are actually whole, doing well, looking for ways to carry out God’s will, grateful not for what they have, but what they get to do with it. Pray for more than sick and dying people, adding the lilt of joyful thanks to what can sometimes be a limiting exercise in reciting dismal difficulty. Example: Whose lives are changed because your congregation is part of ELCA World Hunger?

2. If it is seemly, write down your own thoughts about retooling your life, repurposing what you’re about, remembering why you got into this business in the first place. Share what you write with someone who loves you.

3. Take a brisk walk outside in the globally warmed air. Breathe deeply, and use the cadence of your stride to engage in quick, one-step prayers that celebrate the people you know who are doing something positive to end hunger.

Build – or assemble – a small shrine/altar in your home or office. Use it as a visual or physical centering point during Lent. During this season, place small artifacts as symbols of the ways you are living as Jesus did. Make the experience a joyful one!