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!

Lent is a time of penitence and confession. This Sunday’s readings, especially the texts from Genesis and 1 Peter, are oriented around the theme of baptism (even the passage from Mark is very much connected to Jesus’ baptism).

As I noted in an earlier Hunger Sermon Starter, in the Baptismal covenant and the Affirmation of Baptism outlined in ELW we make commitments to “care for others and the world that God made” and to “work for justice and peace” (pp. 228; 236). The profession of faith (p. 235) includes a renunciation of the “forces that defy God” and the “powers of the world that rebel against God.” We can reasonably include greed, strife, and self-interest in those forces and powers that defy God and leave God’s people impoverished, hungry, and ill. In our baptism we commit ourselves to work with God in the bringing of God’s kingdom. This may be a good Sunday to renew our baptismal covenant, repenting of the ways in which we have failed to live out our commitments and seeking God’s grace to live as God’s people in the world.

Another theme in the readings is that of violence and danger—in the flood waters, in the passion, with the wild animals, and so on. We live in uncertain times. The economy is faltering, we feel less and less secure. Those who are poorest and most vulnerable have already been dealing with these insecurities. Indeed, for many of them it is all they have ever known. Noah, the people of God (represented by the audience of 1 Peter), and Jesus, all empowered by the Spirit of God, resisted those forces. It was not an easy calling, but they rose to the challenge. How will we respond?

This passage recounts God’s covenant with all of creation, not just human beings (see esp. v. 10), never to destroy the earth again by flood. As a reminder of the promise, God sets a bow in the clouds. This is good opportunity to speak about stewardship and care of creation. We face environmental degradation of all forms—emission of hazardous gases such as CO2 and methane, deforestation, solid waste, and so on. These pose serious threats to the health of our planet and those who are the poorest and most vulnerable are impacted most severely. Environmental degradation is thus also a justice issue.

In the early Christian movement, the flood in Gen 6-9 was often read typologically as a reference to baptism. While the ark later came to be associated with the church, it appears as though the author of 1 Peter sees the flood waters themselves as salvific (Noah and his family were saved through water). The chaotic, destructive waters prefigure life-giving waters.

The way in which the waters become life-giving is not through the removal of dirt from the body (literally, “putting off the filth of the flesh,” perhaps making a distinction between baptism and circumcision). Rather, it is by the “appeal to God for a good conscience.” This rather difficult phrase (and the Greek is horribly complex) might be better translated as “a plea to God for right consciousness.” The gist of the idea, then, is that baptism is life-giving and transformative inasmuch as in the act we ask God to make us fully aware of God’s intentions. Not only to be made aware, but also to be empowered by the grace of God to live out that awareness. What that will look like is described in 1 Pet 4:8-11.

As is typical for Mark, this is a vivid, visceral scene (Matt apparently felt it was too vivid—see his version in Matt 4:1-2). The Spirit “drives” Jesus into the wilderness for forty days, where he is tempted by Satan. Jesus is with the “wild beasts”, and angels attend to him.

I see two connections to hunger in this brief initial scene. First, God’s kingdom is coming in a very real, tangible way. Jesus is confronting nature itself (untamed wilderness and wild animals), and the angels aid him. What are the real and tangible wildernesses in which God would call us to proclaim the kingdom? Of course, my thinking is drawn to the structures and systems that keep people poor and hungry. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, we must endeavor to confront these wildernesses through both individual and corporate decisions. Second, the task at hand is not easy (and without the grace of God, it may not even be humanly possible). The untamed wilderness and wild beasts in our day take the form of more than 1 billion people living in poverty, an imminent environmental crisis, and a global economic downturn, to name a few. In this wilderness, how will we be the people of God?

Jesus returns from the wilderness calling people to repentance. What do we need to repent of? The “good news of God” and the announcement that the kingdom of God “has come near” are both political statements that challenged the status quo. How does the status quo need to be challenged today? What does the Church have to say about the many pressing issues? How will the Church look different than the world around it? What risks do we need to take?

This week we continue our journey through Lent with our ancestors in faith, Abraham and Sarah. We also hear a very theologically rich passage (especially for us Lutherans) from Paul. The Gospel reminds us of what discipleship truly entails. Each passage on its own has something to teach us about hunger and together they remind us of our identity and call.

This is the third and final account of God’s covenanting with Abram and Sarai in the book of Genesis. It is only in this account that God actually changes their names to Abraham and Sarah. The covenant is reiterated immediately following one of Abraham’s failures, namely, the attempt to fulfill God’s promises on his own (through the Egyptian slave-girl, Hagar). This passage also lacks the line that was so important to Paul from Gen 15:6, “Abraham believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness” (see Romans 4:9, 22).

In the verses between the assigned reading (vv.8-14), the sign of the covenant is identified as circumcision. This is about identity, how the people of God are known. Paul went to great lengths to explain why circumcision was no longer required, but the issue of identity still remains. How will the people of God be known today? What is the mark of God’s people? I believe that the Gospel reading from Mark at least in part answers that question.

The opening verse of Psalm 22 is uttered by Jesus on the cross in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In verse 24 of today’s reading of the Psalm, we are assured that God hears the cry of the afflicted and does not abandon them. In verse 26 we are told that the poor will eat and be satisfied. God’s work is to feed those who are hungry (see also Matt 6:25-33). By God’s grace we participate in that work with our hands.

I find 4:17-18 to be the most enriching verses in the reading. Paul explains that Abraham’s hope (a “hope against hope” that flies in the face of earthly realities) was in God who recreates and creates, “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that do not exist.” In our context, the realities of hunger and poverty can be overwhelming (the statistics speak for themselves). We against all odds put our hope in God’s creative and re-creative power. We ask, even plead, for God to do what cannot be reasonably expected. And we partner with God in creative and re-creative acts.

This teaching moment comes on the heels of the climax of the second Gospel, Peter’s confession that Jesus is God’s messiah. Jesus responds by explaining to Peter and the disciples and the crowds nearby what God’s messiah was sent to do and what it means to be one of his disciples. Jesus models for us self emptying (expressed in that wonderful theological term, kenosis) and calls his disciples to follow him in self emptying for the sake of others. The chapters that follow (through chapter 10) explain what it means to follow Jesus. In these chapters, Christian identity is defined as being a servant, welcoming children, and giving up possessions to help those who are poor. What might this look like today?