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 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!

March 28, 2010 (Palm Sunday)

Luke 19:28-40 Procession with Palms
The scene with the throng of people yelling “Hosanna” carries a joyous connotation for many of us today. It is a moment of celebration. The word in the NT is actually a transliteration of a Hebrew word that means “Save now!” (as in Psalm 118:25). The people are coming to Jesus, seeking salvation, which in the Bible implies holistic healing—physical, emotional, and spiritual.

It may be useful to recall that these people lived in an occupied land, with sometimes hostile overlords. Similar situations persist today—Darfur, Palestine, Zimbabwe, to name a few. These are places where those who are poor and vulnerable need salvation. Even in the U.S., systems and structures are in place that keep certain people struggling just to make ends meet. As God’s people, how can we participate with God in salvific acts? What might God ask us to do on behalf of those who plead, “Hosanna! Save us!” What sort of self-emptying might God be calling us to?

Isaiah 50:4-9a
While this text is often read as a reference to Jesus (and it is easy to do so given how it is combined with today’s texts in the lectionary), the first verse could be used as a nice spring board to a discussion of advocacy with and on behalf of those who are poor and hungry. How might we effectively “sustain the weary with a word”?

Psalm 31:9-16 (5)
An interesting exercise would be invite the congregation to reflect on the Psalm as if they were a poor person (another option would be to think about the Psalm in the context of the current economic situation). If you were poor or in desperate need, what would you seek from God in your distress (v. 9)? How would “God’s graciousness” be manifest in your situation? What would it mean to have your “life spent with sorrow” and your “years with sighing” (v. 10)? How are those who are poor and needy a “horror” to their neighbors (v.11)? What would that feel like? In what ways are people who are poor forgotten, as if they were “one who is dead” (v. 12)?

Philippians 2:5-11
In this hymn, Paul uses the example of Jesus’ ultimate self-emptying (kenosis)as a model for how we are to serve one another. This is radical call. Jesus, whom Paul identifies as divine, becomes a human, but not just any human, a lowly human, a slave who dies a criminal death. If this is our model, what might that look like in our lives? What would self-emptying look like? To what end should we empty ourselves?

Of course, this week’s lessons all revolve around the Resurrection and new life! Even our Old Testament choices (obviously recorded well before the time of Jesus) celebrate the new and just things God is doing on behalf of all that God cherishes, in the creative order as well as in human society. Now, often we (and our parishioners) place the highest emphasis on what Easter means in terms of our own eternal destinies as believers. Yet it’s also important, since we’re still living, to consider what Easter means for this earthly life and those with whom we live it in the present age.

Acts 10:34-43 (option 1 for first lesson, option 2 for second lesson)
When Peter encounters a group of non-Jews who are eager to receive the good news of Jesus, he makes the comment, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.” But perhaps Peter’s learning in this context about God’s wide embrace of people from every walk of life indicates a “new partiality” on God’s part – one toward those formerly forgotten, even ignored, by those who consider themselves God’s chosen ones.

Peter emphasizes this universality of God’s compassion when, later in this same passage, he notes how Jesus “went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed.” I would argue, despite Peter’s claim, that God IS partial; partial to all those who have yet to know of God’s impartial grace and abundant providence!

Peter’s willingness to go outside of his own comfort zone into the midst of Gentiles, in order to bring the news of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, provides a model of courage for all of us to share our abundance of good news AND our abundance of daily bread.

Finally, in this passage Peter does not neglect to note that the resurrected Jesus himself “ate and drank… after he rose from the dead.” Physical sustenance was a reality for Jesus every day of his life, pre- and post-resurrection. As Easter people its incumbent upon us to address those hungering and thirsting for both spiritual and physical food and drink.

This prophetic text illustrates perhaps better than many what the implications are of God’s radical intervention into our earthly lives. When God does something new (and as a Christian I can’t help but think: Resurrection), then the usual characteristics of injustice will be toppled. The prophet names many things that, both in his day and in ours, are often coupled with hunger and poverty: high infant mortality rates, untimely death for our elders, low-wage laborers building houses of a sort they’ll never be able to live in, migrant farm workers harvesting crops that they can’t afford to buy to sustain their own families. As people of the Resurrection, how can we help but carry forward God’s intentions for the well-being of all who are without adequate healthcare, under-paid, lacking shelter, and hungering for nutritious food?

“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” This statement of Paul’s certainly has contributed to our tendency of emphasizing the Resurrection’s implications for a life beyond this earthly one. And it’s an essential word of hope and promise in that very sense. But imagine how much more poignant it must sound to those who have had to struggle to have their basic needs met day after day in this earthly life! It’s no longer fashionable simply to try and mollify the destitute with promises of a better life in the hereafter. Jesus’ bodily Resurrection is a resounding “Yes!” to life here on earth – “this life” – and a pitiful existence devoid of adequate food, water, shelter, and, in Luther’s words “all we need from day to day” is not God’s intent. When all have access to what they need in this life, they have a hope-filled foretaste of the eternal goodness God has in store for them in the next life.

Some Resurrection theorists have tried to reason that the empty tomb accounts were fabricated as a way to explain Jesus’ followers’ experience of his profound – but spiritual – presence to them after his death. I’m not buying it! The consistent testimony that Jesus’ actual, physical body was first absent from the tomb, and then actually and physically present to many witnesses is a powerful affirmation of God’s regard for mortal existence. And mortal existence is tied to bodily sustenance and nurture through food and water, touch and emotion.

Again, Jesus’ Resurrection is a resounding “Yes!” to life here on earth, which is best affirmed when those living have their “daily bread”, in all its fullness, as Luther describes it in his Small Catechism.

Mary may not have recognized Jesus immediately, in her shock and grief tomb-side, but she was able to hold onto him long enough, once she did see who it was, that he had to ask her to let go. Jesus’ full-body-experience upon being raised cast him back into the realm where fullness of life requires that one’s basic needs get met. To celebrate Resurrection without tending to these needs of the earthly living is, in my view, hypocrisy.