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 text 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.

As the lectionary for Epiphany presents the partially continuous installment readings from Mark and Corinthians, these passages give themselves to thematic preaching. The issues of healing and justice are predominant through these passages.

Holy God, you confound the world’s wisdom in giving your kingdom to the lowly and pure in heart. Give us such a hunger and thirst for justice, and perseverance in striving for peace, that in our words and deeds the world may see the life of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen

This Hebrew Bible reading presents Moses’ promise of a “prophet like me” (v.15). This presages the Gospel passage about Jesus coming in to the synagogue and speaking with authority. There is for preachers here also a word of consolation and encouragement when trying to preach prophetically on potentially divisive themes like justice and hunger. God speaks, “I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command.”

The Psalm praises God for God’s works, which are “faithful and just.” (v. 7). This justice includes providing “food for those who fear him.” (v. 5). There is an opportunity in the words of this psalm to discuss in preaching the meaning of the “fear of the Lord” as the psalm carries the famous passage “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” (v. 10).

Here the lectionary shares the complex passages about “food sacrificed to idols.” (v. 1). Scholars suppose that in Paul’s world, most if not all meat available commercially had its source in temple sacrifice. As a contextualization of this curious fact, consider how in the last century, most funeral homes in America functioned also as furniture stores!

The passage shares the question about how one Christian’s practice may upset another’s. “Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as food offered to an idol; and their conscience being weak, is defiled. Food will not bring us close to God.” (vv. 7-8)

This raises for us a question of whether there are today any “tables of demons” from which Christians should be cautious to eat. Could food grown or processed with unjust or unsafe labor practices pose a stumbling block? Could food grown in places and ways that is destabilizing the environment wound our conscience?

This Sunday and the following three Sundays all share stories of Jesus healing. The four healings are four different kinds of healing. Thus a sermon series on healing could be designed.

Jesus enters the synagogue at Capernaum and the people were “astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” (vv. 21-22). Here the issue of prophetic authority is raised but then uplifted even further with the healing that follows. As Jesus rebukes an unclean spirit, the people respond that this increases his authority. “They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, ‘What is this? A new teaching –with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.’” (v. 27).

The healing of the person from an unclean spirit can represent many kinds of healing needed in this world. People need healing from demonic possession, from guilt, from mental illness, from unsustainable lives, and from broken relationships. Jesus shows us that all these are in obedience to his power to heal.

The Rev. Kevin Massey
Director – Lutheran Disaster Response

__________________________________________________

A theme emerges in the passages of this Sunday’s lectionary that healing of God is not a mere gift, it is a gift that transforms us for a purpose. The prayer of the day that underlines this theme, that once healed, we become agents of healing, is as follows:

Everlasting God, you give strength to the weak and power to the faint. Make us agents of your healing and wholeness, that your good news may be made known to the ends of your creation, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen

A preacher may remind a congregation that the verses of this passage from Isaiah are in fact part of the same passage of the Advent verse “A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’ Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low.” (Isaiah 40:3-4).

The way God’s presence makes the high low and the low high is picked up again in the words, “who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.” (v. 23). This is a powerful reminder that God’s justice is a shock to the status quo and another invitation for prophetic preaching.

The theme of God’s healing preparing us for a new purpose is uplifted in the words, “those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” (v. 31)

The theme of healing is furthered through the psalm’s words “He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds.” Many may tend to think of divine healing as being a miraculous and magical thing that happens outside the natural order. Interestingly, the healing words of this psalm speak instead of binding up of wounds, which is a gesture a nurse may do. It is transformative to see God as this kind of healer, who enters our world to treat wounded people not by making the wounds magically disappear but by touching them, cleaning them, and treating them.

This continuation of the reading from Corinthians further develops the ideas of the prophetic burden. “For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission.” (v. 17). Paul concentrates on weakness rather than strength. “To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak.” (v. 22) Paul seems here to paraphrase Jesus’ words to him in 2 Corinthians 12:8, “’My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’”

The gospel reading for this Sunday continues the healing theme with the familiar story of the healing of Pete’s mother-in-law. The story however contains a perfect crystallization of the transformative power of Christ’s healing. “He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.” (v. 31). We are healed by God, saved by God, for a purpose, to love and serve the neighbor.

Beyond the physical ailment of a fever healed in this passage, it may remind us of other needs for healing in the world, such as avarice and addiction.