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!

Today millions of people in the United States rely on social safety nets to care for their families. While many organizations (governmental, not-for-profit, church, and otherwise) do their best to stem the tide, the current economic climate has threatened the livelihood of too many.

Similarly, in first-century Palestine the flimsy safety nets, mostly alms, were inadequate in providing enough food for families. The unemployed and underemployed fell through these damaged nets and were assailed by hunger and poverty. It is into this context that Jesus tells a parable that proclaims that the reign of God will flip human systems of power upside down. God favors those living with poverty, unemployment and hunger and invites them to the feast. God has blessed us with bounty and calls us to live by those same kingdom values. Whom will we invite to the feast?

The Old Testament reading and the Gospel for this week compliment each other well. Both speak to God’s use of the mundane to accomplish God’s purposes. In Isaiah, Cyrus is declared to be God’s anointed (messiah or christ!) who will work to bring about God’s purposes. This strong statement about Cyrus is in the context of one of the Old Testament’s strongest affirmations of God’s total reign over the world (see esp. vv. 5-7). Civil government is one way in which God can execute justice in the world.

In the Gospel, Jesus is challenged by the Pharisees about paying taxes. (It should be noted that Jesus’ answer may have come with a bit of a wink. If I may paraphrase, Jesus could be saying, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s, on oh by the way Israel is God’s, so back off Caesar.”) Taxes are in the headlines today. In our reeling economy, there is a debate about whether or not to raise taxes, and if they are raised, who should bear the greatest burden. The ecumenical Christian community (the ELCA included) has been emphatic that out budget is a moral document and that when we are making decisions about revenues and spending those who are poorest and most vulnerable should not bear an unnecessary burden. We need to protect those programs that support those who are poor. We often think about the burden of taxes (especially around April 15, but the topic has been in the news quite often of late), but what if that burden is one of the ways in which God’s justice can be realized? Can God work through our tax code like God worked through Cyrus?

As an aside, Samuel Torvend’s Luther and the Hungry Poor discusses at length Luther’s understanding of the role of civil society in addressing the needs of those who are poor and vulnerable. His book would be good reading for a sermon that takes these passages in this direction. He cites Luther’s writings extensively and offers many helpful insights and illustrations.