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 Christmas story reminds us of how God is incarnated in the world. In the incarnation God acted decisively in and through those who were poor and marginalized. A young unwed woman (there are few people more marginalized in antiquity) has a child in the backwoods of Rome. The incarnation did not take place in the seat of power among nobles but in the margin, with a powerless woman. The first to hear the good news are shepherds, another marginalized and lowly group. Jesus’ ministry was characterized by feeding and healing those who were vulnerable, and his consistent stand against those in power ultimately led to his death.

In the context of hunger, we are reminded of the dignity of those who are marginalized in our day. In the Bible, these are just the types of people through whom God acts. We are called to walk alongside and work with those are poor and hungry.

The lesson from Isaiah opens with the conclusion of one oracle (the beginning of which Jesus uses to inaugurate his ministry in Luke 4—“the spirit of the Lord is upon me…”) and the beginning of another. The first prophecy promises good news for those who are poor and freedom for those who are oppressed. It concludes with the beautiful promise that just “as the earth brings forth its shoots… so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations” (Isaiah 61:12). In many Christian traditions righteousness (Heb., tsedaqah) is understood as a personal and pietistic category. As Isaiah 61 shows us, the term is much more relational, and refers more properly to justice (i.e., right relationships). God is working to make the world more just and this text assures us that righteousness is a foregone conclusion. We have the privilege to work with God in this work.

In today’s Gospel reading, Luke emphasizes that the work that God was doing in the incarnation is in line with what God had already been doing in Israel. The boy Jesus is circumcised as a Jew, his parents bring him to the temple at the time of purification, Simeon and Anna are faithful witnesses, and everything is “finished as required by the law of the Lord” (Luke 2:39). God is still seeking just and faithful relationships today. How might we join in that work? Where might God be calling us to seek justice in our time and place?