SCROLL DOWN FOR SEPT. 28 AND OCT. 5
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!
September 28, 2008 -- 20th Sunday After Pentecost
Matthew 21:23-32
- Have you eve had a change of heart? My wife and I were blessed with two sons. Our assumption was that we would teach them so very much about life. Our surprise, our change of heart, came with the recognition of how much they taught us!
- A change of heart….could that be the same as remembering our baptism daily? Could it be that we are faced with change-of-heart situations more often than we wish to admit? I falsely believed that seminary would teach me all that I would need to know and I could finally quit going to classes. My change of heart tells me that I will never stop learning.
- A changed heart….One year ago during our Synod Assembly we focused on social ministry. Every congregation was invited to bring to the Assembly on poster board a listing of their outreach. During the Assembly we made use of one of the segments from the “Just Neighbors” activity kit. Hearts were changed when two groups encountered the poor who serve on Church Council and worship in “our churches.”
- This text from Matthew also questions by whose authority, or better yet, who is the authority in our lives?
- Matthew is the Gospel that speaks the most about bearing fruit. By Jesus’ authority we are called to bear fruit that befits repentance. Bearing fruit and showing mercy are signs of a phrase that I like…because, therefore. Because we are the saved children of God, therefore we want to respond to this good news with acts of mercy, with hearts that are changed and by bearing fruit.
- Former Presiding Bishop George Anderson said that if we do not care for the poor, then God will give that call to someone else. We are called to feed the hungry, cloth the naked, visit the imprisoned.
- One year ago I attended the World Hunger Leadership Gathering. The emphasis was on water. The prediction was that by 2040 this world will see severe shortages of water, especially in third-world countries. Since that training I have worked to be a better steward of my use of water. By whose authority? Because of Jesus’ authority in my life, therefore I want to respond for the sake of my sisters and brothers.
Rev. Ralph W. Dunkin, Bishop of the West Virginia-Western Maryland Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
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October 5, 2008
Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:7-15
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46
· Convicting scriptures! The time and cultural distance between Old and New Testament times and our time seem to disappear in a parable that speaks directly to the commercial and economic realities in which we live.
· Scriptures that speak directly to our everyday struggle to hear and live out God's commandments to love and worship God, to live in gratitude for what has been given to us, and to love our neighbor with the culture's commandments demanding self-sufficiency, self-responsibility, self-realization.
· Headline stories of “Teetering Banks and Houses of Finance” dragging down the economy here and abroad brought on by…?
· Spiraling food costs, people losing their homes in the ongoing mortgage crisis.
· We might well ask: “Here in our vineyard, how goes Our tenancy?”
· The murderous greed of the tenants in the parable elicits the anger of the landlord.
· The prophets cry out against the people as Isaiah does to Israel and Judah: “…He expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!”
· The outcry continues in line eight to warn that those who join house to house and add field to field until there is room for no one else will be left to live alone.
· What is God speaking into the realities of our day in these scriptures? One thinks of “McMansions” gained and lost, loneliness in our modern Western culture and the breakdown of community, our continued inability to live in right relation with one another and the gift of creation.
· What is God's justice in our day?
· How can we be the people that “produces the fruits of the kingdom?” God's gifts that feed and nourish all of us physically and spiritually?
· October 5 is Lutheran World Federation Sunday, recognizing 68 million Lutherans worldwide, including you and me. Our contributions to the ELCA World Hunger Appeal are effectively, efficiently, and ethically put to work by the international Lutheran World Federation (and other partners) to meet the needs of our hungry, poor, and displaced neighbors, from over 90,000 refugees from Sudan and neighboring countries that make Kakuma Refugee camp in Kenya a home to the people of Haiti, the poorest country in our hemisphere, where over 500 women have been trained in veterinary care for pigs and other farm animals in a successful sustainable hunger relief-and-development project.
KRISTIE NEKLASON serves the NW Washington Synod on the synod hunger committee and is a member of Gift of Grace Lutheran Church, Seattle, WA