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 lesson from Genesis recounts God’s call to Abram. The fivefold blessing throughout the passage reverses the curses and punishments of the primeval history. What is of particular note is the purpose of the blessing: so that through Abram all the families of the earth may be blessed. When we think about this passage from the perspective of those who are hungry, two ideas are worth noting. First, the blessing of God is intended to be passed on to others. The blessing is a gift (received by faith as this week’s lesson from Paul’s letter to the Romans reminds us), but it is not ours to hoard. We are to share the goodness of God. Our material blessings can be included in this. Second, although the blessing is given to Abram, it is clear that the blessing is intended for the whole world (see also this week’s Gospel, John 3:16, “God so loved the world…”)—“In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 95 (1)
Romans 5:1-11
John 4:5-42
Today, in the Global South, women and girls spend hours fetching water from wells. Like the women and girls who travel for miles for clean, drinkable water, the Samaritan woman who meets Jesus at the well is on the margins of society. Her vulnerability is particularly acute—not only is she a woman, but she is a foreigner who is divorced and without husband. Ostracized, Jesus offers her living water and then sends her to bear witness in her hometown. Her faithful proclamation brings belief and salvation to her townspeople.

Likewise, today, women are great multipliers in the struggle against hunger and poverty. In the Global South, they produce as much as 60-80 percent of food crops and they are more likely than men to invest their income on their families by purchasing healthy foods, paying school fees, and so on. Learn more about the amazing impact of women at www.girleffect.org. Support an ELCA World Hunger water project today and see women use life giving water to bring healing to their communities.