SCROLL DOWN FOR SEPTEMBER 7 AND SEPTEMBER 14

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, September 7, 2008
17th Sunday after Pentecost

Ezekiel 33:7-11
Psalm 119:33-40 (35)
Romans 13:8-14
Matthew 18:15-20
 
A prayer, by Walter Brueggemann, from “Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth”
 
With you it is never “more or less”
 
“We will be your faithful people –
                                    more or less
We will love you with all of our hearts –
                                    perhaps
We will love our neighbor as ourselves
                                    maybe.
We are grateful that with you it is
                                    never ‘more or less’
                                    ‘perhaps,’ or
                                    ‘maybe.’
With you it is never ‘yes or no,’
                                    but always ‘yes’ – clear, direct,
                                    unambiguous, trustworthy.
We thank you for your ‘yes’
                                    come flesh among us. Amen”
 
My first entree point with a congregation can well be the call committee. I make the offer to educate call committees, as many have had no opportunity. Sadly when the call process is over and we are well into the first year of a call, one or more members of this committee will leave the church.
 
Why? Because they have had disagreeable words with another member of the committee or with a member of the congregation. The words can be very simple ones. Too often they are words that pack a punch so difficult to handle that the people soon leave the church.
 
I serve this church through the Office of the Bishop. I have found over the last 11 years that I have spent more time teaching Matthew 18:15-20 than probably any other text. Did Jesus give these words to the Church knowing that we would fail in our relationships with one another? Did Jesus give us a process to restore relationships so that we could always find ways to restore the community of believers? Did Martin Luther understand these words in such a way that he felt it necessary to lift up as a means of grace the mutual conversation and consultation of the sisters and brothers? The process is simple, yet so many refuse to take the first step.
 
The first step is that of approaching the one who has “sinned” against you. Tell them of the sin you perceive. Even though the word forgiveness is not mentioned I think that it is implied in this process of reconciliation.
 
Life within community can be difficult. As a church we have experienced this with the “hot button” topic of the day. Seemingly the church has never been void of such topics going back to the early church.
 
Reconciliation can also take another form. Besides the renewal of relationships and that of a community, what about the restoration of the world when it comes to the sharing of resources? The ELCA World Hunger Appeal now teaches us that it is possible for us as the world to feed all of the world’s people. We now have the resources to do so. The question I hear asked most often is, “Do we have the will power to do so?”
 
The prayer that I started with seems to me to be a prayer of reconciliation of the ways of God towards us. Matthew 18 asks us to be reconciled with our neighbors within our community and within the entire world.
 
Rev. Ralph W. Dunkin, Bishop of the West Virginia-Western Maryland Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

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September 14, 2008 - Holy Cross Sunday
18th Sunday after Pentecost

Text – John 12:20-33
 
This feast day commemorates that in 614 the “supposed true cross” fell into the hands of the Persians. The emperor Heraclius recovered it and put it on view at Jerusalem in the spring of 629. Holy Cross Day has its origin as a commemoration of that event.
 
Within the Gospel of John, he teaches in Chapter 12 the necessity of death to bring about new life.
 
Years ago I deliberately team-taught a class of three-year-olds. One Sunday I brought to class sunflower seeds. As a class, we placed these seeds on top of good soil but did not plant them. I promised the class that I would water them during the week and place them in a window where they would get some sunshine. I wanted them to see the seed “die” and to see the new life springing forth.  At the end of a week they could see the seeds decaying. By the second week, new life in the form of sunflower plants could easily be seen growing.
 
In the West Virginia–Western Maryland Synod, I have witnessed the joy felt in congregations as week after week they are challenged to raise $5,000 or more for the purpose of paying for the construction of a well for our companion synod. One of our pastors challenged the Sunday School youth that if they raised the necessary funds they could dye her hair. They raised the funds by the announced deadline. But unknown to the pastor they secretly agreed to dye strands of her hair five different colors.
 
Out of their collective sacrifice came new life springing forth!
 
Rev. Ralph W. Dunkin, Bishop of the West Virginia-Western Maryland Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America