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 readings from last week and this week devote specific attention to Christian love. It is clear in these passages that this love does something, and it is not just held or believed. Instead, the love we are called to live is practical, having visible characteristics. The epistle reading and Gospel makes some bold claims about love that should challenge us.

This passage depicts a scene that is as much for Peter as for the early Christ-confessing community. Earlier in this chapter Peter meets Cornelius, a Gentile, and comes to truly understand that “God knows no partiality” (v.34). Then, in a movement echoing Pentecost he witnesses the scene of Gentiles reception of the Holy Spirit by the Gentiles. The inclusion of the Gentiles was crucial to the theology of the emerging church. We may well ask what is crucial to our theology as we explore Christian discipleship, witness, and the action of God in the world. We do well to make connections between theology and our daily lives.

Throughout this epistle the author has lifted up the love of others as the commandment by which the followers of Christ must live if they are to abide in God. In this passage the plural commandments may seem like a subtle switch, but it comes back to the theme of obedience as a marker of knowing God. Here can be an important opportunity to once again make the connection between belief/trust/faith and loving others. The inclusion of obedience reminds us of how important it is to connect trust/belief with action. This is perhaps more explicit in today’s Gospel passage.

Given the placement of this passage in the gospel and its content, it seems as if the entirety of this passage and the next is a good bye speech. In verse 12 the commandment to love one another is repeated (from 13:34), and we see that Jesus has invited his followers into his life not merely to teach them some good principles to live by, but so that their joy may be complete (v.11) and that they may bear fruit (v.16). The “love one another” command has been getting a lot of air time in the lectionary readings the past couple weeks, and there is always the risk that it becomes something obvious and sentimental rather than a life practice and struggle. This would be a good opportunity to make some clear distinctions between the kinds of love we see and hear about in the media (even the ones we normalize), and the kind of love that God calls us to live.

In the sermon starters for this week I will consider the passages assigned for Easter 7 and the Ascension. The corresponding day will be listed next to the passage. Power is a major theme in today’s readings. The ascension imagery is often dominated by the power of resurrection leading to a heavenly life, yet the language of Jesus reveals a power yet to come, and that is clearly for life and ministry here.

Jesus comes into the world humbly, and aside from a visit by some shepherds, with little fanfare. His leaving is quite the juxtaposition, with a crowd of onlookers and disciples who wonder what to make of this. Yet he leaves with a promise of the coming Spirit and imparts them with the task of witnessing “to the ends of the earth.” This text reminds us that we are leaning toward Pentecost where we celebrate the gift of the Spirit given to Christ’s followers.

We are reminded that the work we do in the world, the ministries in which we participate are done in community by people who have been given the Holy Spirit in their lives. This promise of the Spirit does not lead us into timidity when considering such forces as hunger and poverty in the world. Rather, it is sufficient for our witness, wherever that takes us.

It comes as no surprise that the imagery used here (and throughout the scriptures) for the faithful followers of God is one of growth and fruitfulness. It would be hard to imagine this imagery having any effect if the blessing of fruit and harvest were not a reality. The connections between blessing and abundance hardly need explaining, but for the faithful who live without abundance, especially of the agricultural or economic kind, texts like this one may well be difficult to hear. But through the resurrection we see the economy of God is different— making alive that which is not, and making hope flourish in the most unlikely of places.

Knowing that God has called us to a new hope and inheritance is at the core of the gospel. One of the ways our evangelical message connects with justice is in the proclamation of this new hope for all people. Hunger (especially chronic hunger) and poor nutrition are enemies of hope. The naming of these allows us to envision what the power of the resurrection and ascension means for our life in the world rather than our life apart from the world.

In these epistle readings for the past few weeks we have been following the theme of connecting theology to practice. The certainty of the testimony of Christ to which the author urges the audience to cling should give us the rationale we need to respond to hunger in the world. We need no other theology. Still, we will need to continue to connect theology with our action in the world, confident that this life we have in the Son is a life that is lived now.

Following Jesus’ death his disciples were under the power of sadness and fear. Luke notes the dramatic shift when the disciples encounter the resurrected Christ and are told that they will be “clothed with power from on high.” It is no secret that we live in a world of competing powers and we only need to look at what we buy and how we spend our time to be aware of how the powers of this world affect us.

Do we see ourselves as being clothed with the power from on high? What does this power do in the world, or through what acts/behaviors is it made known? These questions should draw our attention to our lives of discipleship and our understanding of injustices in the world. Jesus reminds his followers of the promise that is for all nations. The good news of Christ stands in stark contrast to the power hunger has on people’s lives. One way to preach the ascension is to de-emphasize the “up there” direction of a future-oriented heavenly existence and to instead focus on the power shift which the good news of Christ proclaims. The latter is concerned more with the powers of this world, how our lives are lived in the midst of it, and what becomes of our life together.

Jesus has his followers in mind in this prayer. He prays twice for their protection (vv.11,15) and also for their sanctification (consecration). This works in a couple different aspects: 1) Jesus imagined that his departure would leave them vulnerable, in need, and without a shepherd, 2) he had been sent into the world and was now sending them (v.18). Sanctification and sending go hand in hand, so once again we have an opportunity to make the connection between mission and discipleship. The preacher is then prepared to delve into the “how then shall we live?” question that speaks to the shape of our weekly lives in response to the world.