SCROLL DOWN FOR AUGUST 10 AND AUGUST 17
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!
Sunday, August 10, 2008
13th Sunday after Pentecost
1 Kings 19:9-18
Psalm 85:8-13
Romans 10:5-15
Matthew 14:22-33
Why did the disciples cross the lake? To get to the other side.[1] What's on the other side of the lake? What's so important on the other side, that Jesus "immediately forces" the disciples to get into the boat and head that direction?
In the Gospel of Matthew, the lake-crossing episodes illustrate the great problems in the early church of including the Gentiles. When they are in a boat crossing the sea from Jewish to Gentile territories, there are storms.
If we take the boat to symbolize the church, then the sea can symbolize chaos. To the biblical mind, being on the sea is itself a threat. The sea is representing all the anxieties and dark powers that threaten the goodness of the created order. To be at sea evokes images of death, the active power that threatens life. The sea is a barrier that separates the disciples from Jesus. In the midst of the chaos of the world, they are left alone in the boat, buffeted by the stormy winds of conflict.
"Can we believe that Jesus is with us always, even when all evidence suggests he is not?" Can disciples in the midst of their own struggles and chaos and storms believe that Jesus, with all his authority, is with us even though unseen? In the Gospels again and again Jesus demonstrates his supreme power over creation: he is the Lord of wind and water. But his disciples don’t get it.
Like Peter, we lose heart from time to time. Peter's problem was not only that he took his eyes off Jesus, but that he wanted proof of the presence of Christ, and so left the boat in the first place. Peter is a typical disciple. I can easily identify with Peter. His faith is a mixture of courage and anxiety, of hearing the word of the Lord and looking at the terror of the storm, a mixture of trust and doubt.
The message is not "If he had enough faith, he could have walked on the water." The message is not "If we had enough faith, we could overcome all our problems in spectacular ways."
To have faith does not mean that we are able to overcome in spectacular ways the struggles of our ordinary days. To have faith does make no exceptions that we are all subject to the laws of nature. When we are shattered by the realities of accident, disease, aging, or circumstance and we begin to sink, the thought of “if I would have enough faith, this would not happen,” is destructive. It makes us feel guilty because of our "lack of faith."
Through faith we are not able to walk on the water, only God can do that. Faith is to believe, that despite of all the evidence God is with us in the boat. God is made real in the community of faith as it makes its way through the storm, beat-up by the waves.
So what is left when the waters have gone down again? The pictures are devastating. Each photograph depicting almost completely submerged houses. Broken coastal cities, snapshots of the despairing refugees, the pictures signify so many stories of so many people whose lives have been utterly swept away by storm and flood.
It is all so terribly familiar. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s destruction, including the loss of life, the shattering of homes and businesses, the homeless; widespread flooding in the Midwest causes our attention.
And where is God in all this? Among all the other places in the world in which there is much suffering, Christ Jesus is right there in the midst of the chaos along the American Gulf Coast and throughout the Midwest. Christ is there in the chaos, the suffering, and the devastation. And we thank God. God is there for people in and through the chaos, we can find the strength to go on building with him a future where such dignity and hope can take root and flourish.
And we will be there, too, in whatever ways that are helpful. We will give. We open up our pocketbooks to donate to the ELCA Domestic Disaster Response. We will open our hearts, our minds, and our wallets to the heartache and the misery not just today while the story is plastered all over the news but in the months to come. Sometimes we open up our veins to give our own blood to the American Red Cross.
So what is left when the waters have gone down again? Continuing and urgent need and pressure to rebuild, yes; continuing pain and, for many people, still anger and bewilderment; but also a landscape where compassion and practical love have grown. That is why we are here today - why we are here in a place of worship. “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” Mt 18:20. The Christian faith has to be lived in community. We need one another for our prayers. We need one another to experience the presence of Jesus in our midst. We need each other to bear our burdens and to share our joys. We need each other in order to live. Whatever our level of faith or doubt, we need a place where we can affirm the fact that love survives, and so renew our hope.
Children’s Sermon Suggestion
This is a great story to be acted out. Than discuss situation when children have doubts and fear, and what they can do about it. To whom can children turn to overcome doubts and fears.
The Rev. Carla Volland
Pastor of the Clarkstown/Lairdsville Parish
[1] Brian Stoffregen, Exegetical notes, crossmarks.com, Matthew 14:22-33
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Sunday, August 17, 2008
14th Sunday after Pentecost
Isaiah 56:1, 6-8
Psalm 67
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
Matthew 15(10-20)21-28
“Lord, help me.” Mt. 15:25
Since January, rice prices have soared 141 %; last year wheat price rose 77%. These were some of the sharpest rises in food prices ever. Food riots have erupted in countries all along the equator. In Haiti, protesters are chanting “We’re hungry;” people were killed in riots in Cameroon; Egypt’s president ordered the army to start baking bread; the Philippines made hording rice punishable by life imprisonment.[1]
A “silent tsunami” of hunger is sweeping the world’s most desperate nations. Usually, a food crisis is clear and localized. The harvest fails, often because of war or draft or flood, and the burden of the affected region falls heavily on the poor. This crisis is different. It occurs in many countries simultaneously and it is affecting people usually not hit by famines.
“Lord, help me.”
In our human world, abundance does not happen by itself. Abundance is created when we choose to come together to celebrate, remember, and share all that have been given to us. Our weekly gathering in the ministry of word and sacrament is a sign of that abundance.
We need to be humble and respectful of nature, and be aware not to take everything for granted or overstep our limits. We need to ask for a blessing. But we are not used to ask God. When we ask, even in prayer, it is often much more like a request.
We seem to easily forget that God not only created the earth and all that is upon it, but that Creation belongs to God - the land, the water, the animals, the air, the "riches" -- all God's. God is the creator and that creation belongs to God. It begins by saying to the Lord . your hand is open wide to satisfy the needs of every living creature. It doesn't limit the statement to creatures that provide us with food or those that are commercially valuable.
I wonder what God thinks of our modern attitudes toward the diversity of life, where value is measured not in terms of the secrets the creatures may hold, but in dollars and cents. We are usually so buffered from the natural world with our cozy, modern homes, air conditioning, ability to fly through the air and other wonders, that we can easily sentimentalize nature and taking nature for granted. It is rare that nature breaches the walls of civilization and technology we've set up around us.
Floods, droughts, hurricanes, earthquake, fire. We need to be aware that we are not in control of the elements. We need to be aware that we can throw the seeds into the ground, we can water them, and fertilize them, but we can not make them grow. We can not influence the outcome.
With Christmas only being four month away the words; “Lord, help me.” might get a different meaning; might be directed towards us. The overwhelming majority of Christmas gifts in the U.S. go to friends and relatives who, like their givers, are affluent. For many of us the problem is figuring out what to buy for people who already have everything they need. Those truly in need – poor and hungry people, for example – are lucky to get the crumbs from our table.
God’s Global Barnyard is an opportunity to honor Christ this Christmas season. It is a way to give gifts to family and friends AND to help others. Monetary donations to World Hunger Appeal are mad in honor of those we love – to better the lives of those in need.
Children's Sermon Suggestion
(Preparation: get a big stuffed animal, e.g. a fish and wrapping paper)
Who of you likes to fish? Who of you knows someone who likes to fish? Now I got this big fish on a sale last week and thought I give it as a Christmas gift for a friend who loves to fish. I need a volunteer. “Could you please help me to wrap this fish?” Well it turns out that this fish isn’t easy to wrap, and did you notice, it already start smelling. So, maybe this fish isn’t such good of an idea for my friend for Christmas.
A much better idea would have been to give the money to World Hunger Appeal. (Explain about the work of World Hunger Appeal). I could have given money to get a community fish farm started. For $ 10.00 you could get ten chickens, $30.00 would get you a pig, $50.00 a goat. Now that sounds like a lot of money, but if you decide as a family to just give everyone a nice little present and give as well money away you might even buy a cow for $ 500.00. A cow would help people to feed their children and give them education. It would show that we care for our neighbors, and I think that is what Christmas is all about.
The Rev. Carla Volland
Pastor of the Clarkstown/Lairdsville Parish
[1] The Economist April 19th -25th 2008, The silent tsunami, the new face of hunger, p. 32
