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!

The psalm speaks of the blessings that follow a righteous person—those who keep the law will prosper in concrete ways. The marks of a righteous person are honesty, generosity, and justice (v. 5). They also give freely to those who are poor (v. 9). Is this how we understand God to be at work today (blessing with material things when we are living our lives as just and faithful people)? Are there any challenges to such an outlook?

Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Throughout the book of Hebrews, the author has exhorted the hearers to stay firm in the faith. In this final chapter the author spells out what staying faithful to God will look like. The characteristics are in many ways tailor-made for an anti-hunger message. (This fact in and of itself is noteworthy—according to Hebrews [and really just about any New Testament author], the ethics that flow from the life of a faithful Christian bring healing to the world.) The author encourages mutual love, hospitality to strangers (what does this mean for Christians as we engage in the debate about immigration?), and remembrance of prisoners (many times a forgotten population). The author reminds us to be content with what we have and to not neglect to do good and share. How would our lives look if we lived fully into these values? In what areas do we, as both individuals and as a church, have room for growth?

Meals in the Roman Empire were filled with meaning. With whom one ate, where one sat, how one behaved were all scrutinized. Your place in society was mirrored at the table. If you ate with questionable people, you would be labeled as a questionable person (“a friend of gluttons and drunkards”). When you arrived at a meal, you were told where to sit; those who sat closest to the host were the most honored. Jesus flouted table norms. He used the potent symbolic value of table fellowship to turn conventional values on their head. He ate with people otherwise spurned (sinners and tax collectors) and encouraged his followers to do the same: “But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” What conventions might God be calling us to challenge today? How (or where) might we invite into our fellowship those who are otherwise poor and marginalized? Does today’s Gospel in any way challenge our contemporary Eucharistic practices?

This week’s lesson from the Old Testament spells out the traditional Deuteronomistic understanding of how the world (and God) works. If one lives rightly they will be blessed and all will go well for them. If one does not follow faithfully they will find hardship and struggle. This is how evil in the world is explained—if one is suffering then they have clearly done something wrong. This perspective is echoed throughout the Bible (see today’s psalm!) though it is by no means the only explanation for evil—Job and Ecclesiastes, for example, argue forcefully against any such idea.

When thinking about hunger and poverty it can sometimes be easy to slip into a Deuteronomistic point of view. We might think that the person who is poor or hungry must have done something wrong. If we can blame a poor person for their plight it relieves some of our obligation to them. Such a perspective is challenged by several other passages (I think of Jesus’ teaching on healing—“Neither this man nor his parents sinned…”), and by the clear call for us to help those who are poor and vulnerable, regardless of their merit (is this not how God has acted towards us in Christ?).

Philemon 1:1-21
Like the lesson from Deuteronomy, in some ways this text is disquieting. Paul is apparently endorsing (however reluctantly) the institution of slavery. This raises tough questions about how much we are to participate in unjust systems (for the sake of keeping the peace or saving face or because we are simply unaware of the injustice present?). God’s work in Christ inaugurated the kingdom, but we still wait for its fulfillment. What unjust systems do we participate in? What ones should we perhaps challenge? What will grace look like while we figure it out?

This difficult text from Luke is hard to follow. Jesus tells his followers that to be one of his disciples they must, like a wise builder or warring king, count the cost. The cost will include hating one’s parents and siblings as well as their spouse and children. The passage concludes with the odd assertion that none can be Jesus’ disciple without first giving up all of one’s possessions. One may suspect hyperbole—that Jesus is simply warning his followers that the road will be difficult. Luke may also be taken at face value: the 2^nd century story of Perpetua and Felicitas demonstrate how families were in fact torn apart by the nascent faith and Jesus, especially in Luke’s Gospel, does seem to depict wealth and possessions in a generally negative light.

Whatever the case, today’s Gospel message can be used as an opportunity to think about the priorities in our lives and how we may better live into God’s kingdom here on earth. What possessions can we do without? How can we transform our excesses into something that will benefit others, especially those who are most vulnerable?