SCROLL DOWN FOR OCT. 19 AND OCT. 26
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!
October 19, 2008
Isaiah 45:1-7
Psalm 96:1-9
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Mathew 22:15-22
· “Render unto Caesar…” is a well-known line. How often have we given deeper thought into what Jesus is saying to us in these passages in Matthew where the Pharisees try to “trick” Jesus into making a “mistake” in terms of interpretations of “the law” or orthodoxy?
· Jesus answers in such a way that he amazes and surprises them. He not only sidesteps their “trap” but transcends the pettiness of the argument.
· When we are amazed our mind is in the state of what we could call “divine confusion,” where we are forced to struggle with what we assumed or took for granted. To surrender our safety zone of the familiar, “the way it is,” and to come to a larger, greater, brand new grasp of reality. It is as if we are surfacing from the depths, sparkling and streaming with crystal clear water, gasping for breath.
· Jesus, if we let him, constantly throws us into this state of breathless resurfacing after a plunge into divine confusion.
· How can we welcome this gift of the Gospel in 2008? How can we surrender our safety zones, our stuckness, with the “way it is” that allows us to continue to accept the injustice of the poverty of billions of people and allows us to remain blind to how we participate in that injustice?
· When we are blind, however unintentionally, in economic or other types of injustice, we are powerless to act against the injustice. The painful plunge and breathless resurfacing of clear sight frees us to participate in the Gospel call.
· What might we see anew in that painful plunge? The poorest of the poor—those whose reality we would rather not grasp? Those to whom we are called in our common ministry through the World Hunger and Disaster Appeal to minister in Jesus' name?
· For me it is the mental picture of a story in a Mennonite cookbook of a mother holding the child who has been “chosen” to be sacrificed to starvation in a family that cannot afford to minimally feed all of their children.
· But if I refuse to see this horrifying image, to be a witness to this mother's awful choice, I cannot be transformed and I cannot respond.
· Poverty makes us vulnerable.
· Who is most vulnerable in the paths of Hurricanes like Katrina, Ike, and Gustav? The poorest of the poor who lack resources to do for themselves. Who must rely on the present or absent kindness of strangers or neighbors? Those whose homes are already in disrepair, not built to code, cobbled together like those homes in the slums on the outskirts of Cairo that flattened when the hillside collapsed. Those whose income allows only for hand-to-mouth living, which doesn't include a savings account or insurance policy premiums, or an emergency supply of food and water laid in for hard times. Those who have no car to evacuate in or money for gas to fuel their car.
· This month we have seen their sad, distressed, agonized faces on the U.S. Gulf Coast and in Texas. There are many in the U.S. in need of our assistance. Less often seen on our TV screens are the faces of the people of Haiti and neighboring countries, unbelievably, even more vulnerable.
KRISTIE NEKLASON serves the NW Washington Synod on the synod hunger committee and is a member of Gift of Grace Lutheran Church, Seattle, WA
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October 26, 2008
Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18
Psalm 1 (2)
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
Matthew 22:34-46
- “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus cuts right to the center of things with “. . .love the Lord your God . . .”, and “. . .You shall love your neighbor as yourself” “On these two . . .hang all the law and the prophets.”
- In a conversation with my twelve-year-old daughter about writing these “ideas” or “prompts” to help connect the scriptures to the issues of hunger, poverty, and justice, we agreed that it could all boil down to: What else is the Bible about anyway except hunger, poverty, and justice? ----duh!
- I think it is Jim Wallis of Sojourners who tells the story of himself and a friend as seminarians making a point about this “duh” by laboriously cutting out every mention of hunger, poverty, and justice in the Bible and watching the book literally crumble in their hands.
- At our synod assembly this June, I spoke about the “new” headlines regarding Hunger--”Global Food Crisis—The Silent Tsunami” as devastating in impact as the India-Indonesia-Thailand tsunami that elicited an outpouring of generosity to those undone by the storm. Yet while skyrocketing food and fuel prices hurt the poorest among us the most, they also stir up our own fear of going wanting and can elicit self and family protectiveness. A turning in and closing off rather than the turning out and opening up of generosity.
- Sadly, in my perspective, while mere moments were spent on our reflection on hunger and God's requirements of us during our assembly, hours were spent on the type of legalistic quarreling over matters of less biblical importance (judging by the amount of press received in the Bible). Kind of like the Pharisees and Sadducees in Matthew 22 whose attempts to show Jesus up in the petty details of superficial ethics and righteousness lead ultimately to Jesus making it simple and taking it deep: Love God. Love your neighbor. Do it with your whole heart, mind, and soul.
- So right now—especially and particularly—is the time to live our faith, to ask God to soften us, to keep us walking the path of generosity. To ask what God requires of us and to respond.
- The media message about hunger may have changed from trumpeting the optimistic and realistic possibility of ending hunger in our time to the pessimistic and disheartening pictures of people rioting over food that has become suddenly too expensive to allow them to purchase their daily bread—but the Gospel message to love God with all our hearts, all our soul, all our mind, and to love our neighbors as ourselves—Jesus' commandment to “Go and do likewise. . .” has not!
KRISTIE NEKLASON serves the NW Washington Synod on the synod hunger committee and is a member of Gift of Grace Lutheran Church, Seattle, WA
