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!

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?

This week we continue our journey in Lent, a time of penitence and self-reflection. The season thus lends itself to reflection on injustice in the world and the role that we play in perpetuating unjust systems and structures.

The so called ten “words” (see Exod 20:1) in this passage focus on God’s covenant with Israel. The Mosaic Law reminds us that as God’s people we have duties to both God (vv. 2-11) and fellow human beings (vv.12-17). The Gospels (and other ancient Jewish interpreters of scripture) summarize the Law in the affirmation that the two greatest commands are to love God and love people. If we frame the ten words in this way, we find a natural connection to our Christian call (duty?) to walk alongside those who are most vulnerable in the world, always remembering that it is our relationship with God that empowers us to live out that call. What does loving your neighbor look like in the face of widespread poverty and hunger? How is love of neighbor worked out in that context?

In this opening passage to the Corinthians, Paul draws out the distinction between human wisdom and the wisdom of God. In speaking of the crucified Christ, Paul asserts that “the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” While this is a fundamentally theological, or more precisely, a Christological affirmation, I think the idea can also apply in a moral sense as well. Christians are called to act in ways that do not always make sense: to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek, to give without expecting anything in return. In our stressful financial context, when conventional wisdom would tell us to hunker down for the long haul and to protect our own assets, would it not be complete foolishness to give generously for the good of others? Could unfettered generosity be one way in which the power of God will be revealed in our time?

This episode (recounted in all four Gospels, though uniquely in John at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry) can make us a little uncomfortable. What are those religious rites and rituals that we practice would Jesus feel compelled to “cleanse” today? What well-meaning church practices today make our places of worship a “marketplace”? (Note that the Synoptics use the much more disparaging phrase, “den of robbers.”) Implied in this critique is the idea that worship (perhaps even some forms personal piety) can be oppressive.