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!

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.

This week’s Gospel continues narrating Jesus’ conflict with the religious authorities. Jesus has already silenced the Herodians (last week’s text about paying taxes) and the Sadducees (with a question about the resurrection). In today’s Gospel, Jesus will best a lawyer sent by the Pharisees. Jesus’ reply is not entirely novel, some of his contemporaries answered the question the same way.