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!

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
The first verses of this passage are well known to us—they are the words Jesus reads when he begins his ministry in Luke’s Gospel. This text reminds us that God has long been about bringing justice to those who are oppressed. The tone of this passage, and throughout much of the final third of Isaiah, is one of hope and promise. The author uses imagery of a fertile field to describe God’s last act of causing justice and praise to spring up for all the nations. In the meantime, while we wait for God’s decisive act, we too are called to work for justice.

The Magnificat, Mary’s song, is often recited at some point during the Advent season. Her song describes God’s way of doing and being in the world. This beautiful song about God’s redemptive activity in history actually carries with it a dangerous message. Mary does not speak of a leveling but of a reversal—those who have power will be toppled and those who are rich will be sent away empty-handed. Do we think that this could still be God’s message? If God acts in this way, how might God’s people be expected to act? In what ways do our priorities need to be more aligned with God’s? What would the world look like if we lived by these types of priorities?