SCROLL DOWN FOR JUNE 24 AND JULY 1
Welcome to Hunger Sermon Starters!
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 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 assuming you have already done your exegetical work on the texts). God bless your proclamation (and teaching) of what is most certainly true!
June 24, 2012 (Fourth Sunday after Pentecost)
Job 38:1-11
Job’s story is long and complicated. It is also a familiar story to many people. Job is a righteous, faithful, rich man. Owing to a test between God and Satan, Job looses everything: his family, his fortune, his health, his way of life. Three of Job’s friends come to offer comfort and make sense of his tragic predicament. Rather than comfort, Job’s friends end up searching for what Job did to deserve his ill fortune. They imagine that he will die as punishment for sin. The story reveals the folly of imagining that good fortune reflects God’s favor and bad fortune reflects God’s punishment. Job realizes that health, well-being, and opportunity are not distributed on the basis of God’s favor or dissatisfaction. Life is much more complicated than that, and God is much more just and gracious than that theology reflects.
There are several possibilities for a sermon to link Job’s story with hunger and poverty. Consider the following:
- The idea that people who are poor some how “deserve” to be poor is prevalent in our society. Often this sentiment is masked, but it lurks just below the surface of our collective thinking, our attitudes, our giving patterns, and our social policy. The story of Job calls this idea into question. A sermon could explore the many factors that combine to produce and sustain domestic and global poverty, refuting the myth that those in poverty have somehow “earned” it.
- If we refute the notion that people deserve to be poor, we must also confront the idea that wealth is a reward bestowed by God. The patterns of wealth and want are in our world are quite complicated. The preacher could explore the way in which the accidents of birth combine to dictate much about the opportunities of our future.
- A sermon on Job could also assist the preacher in exploring the question of why the innocent suffer and where God is to be found in that suffering.
Psalm 107:1-3; 23-32
2 Corinthians 6:1-13
Mark 4:35-41
This lection is an example of a miracle story. It gives an astounding account of Jesus stilling the winds and the sea demonstrating his power over nature. A preacher’s time will not be well-spent trying to convince a congregation that this event “really” happened, even if that were possible. The only details available to us are what is recorded in ancient text, and it seems clear that Mark was more concerned with considering the implications of Jesus’ power than with understanding the power itself.
There are several ideas to consider when proclaiming this text:
- The text does not just show Jesus’ power is but also tells that Jesus’ calming of the waters was an act of redemption. The miracle serves the purpose of rescuing people from chaos and fear in order to live a restored life.
- The boat has long been a symbol of the church. I am reminded of a picture my father had on his desk through three decades of parish ministry: “A ship is safe in a harbor, but that is not what a ship was meant for.” Indeed. A church can very easily live within calm, safe waters, but is that what the church and its people are called to do? Is not the church called to venture into the chaotic waters of political and economic reform; into advocacy; and into the places of never-ending hurt and hopelessness? This story tells us that when we do find ourselves in such chaotic places, Christ is a redeeming presence, bringing order into chaos, and balm for our fear.
- A worthwhile idea for a preacher to consider is our tolerance for chaos and our willingness to trust that Christ will help us through the chaos. Working to address the world’s ills is complicated, chaotic business. Those daunted by discomfort, disorder, and distress will not accomplish the demands of discipleship. They also will cut themselves off from the life-giving, life-preserving word of Christ that brings meaning and order into chaos and fear.
Stacy Johnson
Author of ELCA World Hunger’s curriculum, Taking Root: Hunger Causes, Hunger Hopes
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Welcome to Hunger Sermon Starters!
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 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 assuming you have already done your exegetical work on the texts). God bless your proclamation (and teaching) of what is most certainly true!
July 1, 2012 (Fifth Sunday after Pentecost)
Lamentations 3:22-23
The book of Lamentations was composed during the fall of Israel and the subsequent exile in Babylon. Lamentations employs powerful words of lament and despair. It also offers quiet but confident words of hope.
Some ideas to ponder:
- This text will not offer an explanation for the world’s trials. It does however invite readers to think about how they and others can respond to difficulty, suffering, and God’s seeming absence. Lamentations will not tell us why children suffer and millions die of starvation in a world of plenty. It will encourage us to reflect on how we will respond to suffering and starvation.
- During the days of exile in Babylon, many, many people wondered why God seemed silent. Certainly some stopped wondering, and simply assimilated themselves to life in Babylon. Others maintained the hope that God would continue to be faithful. In time their hope was vindicated when Israel was rescued and returned to her homeland. Maintaining hope is often a very difficult task. Despair is certainly an attractive, easy option. How do we maintain hope that hunger can end even when all evidence seems to the contrary? Where do we find support for the conviction that the “Lord will have compassion” (verse 32)? How do we respond to the Lord’s compassion? How do we become a vehicle for the Lord’s compassion?
Psalm 30
2 Corinthians 8:7-15
Mark 5:21-43
In Mark 5:21-43 the evangelist very skillfully weaves together two narratives into one: the story of the hemorrhaging woman and the account of the raising of Jairus’ daughter. These two stories are not put together by happenstance, but because each one of them informs the other. On the one hand there is the story of a frantic father, desperate for Jesus to heal his daughter. Jairus sought Jesus out and boldly requested his help. The father’s direct approach in the first story is in contrast to the second story in which a nameless woman timidly approaches Jesus, intent on only touching his clothing. In the balance of the narrative we hear two accounts of Jesus’ healing. This is a wonderful text, full of possibility for preachers to engage congregations in an exploration of the nature of healing.
Some ideas to ponder:
- Mark tells us that when Jesus felt the woman’s touch, he immediately wanted to know who she was. This suggests that Jesus’ concern was for individual people. He was not only generically concerned about those in need. Jesus sought out the faces of those in need. He wanted to know them and attend to them as individuals. Are we content to know about the poor and the hunger, the vulnerable and those with great need, or do we seek them out to meet them and get to know them as individuals? Statistics are one thing, putting faces to need is quite another. One of the great benefits of working at a homeless shelter, or serving at a soup kitchen, or visiting developing communities is to meet the people. It is important to know that people pushed to the margins of society have hopes and dreams, fears and anxieties that are a remarkable match for our own.
- The Markan text pushes us to explore the nature of miracles. Marcus Borg’s work is helpful for such a study. It is important for people of faith to be open to mystery. There simply are things that happen in our world that go beyond our common, usual expectations and explanations. Perhaps we cannot imagine that hungry people can be fed and escape poverty because we understand how complicated that would be. Perhaps our unwillingness to see beyond what already is to what could be prevents us from seeing God’s miraculous work. Then of course, if we fail to see, we fail to lend our hands to furthering what God’s is doing in the world.
- A careful preacher will address the issue of what precipitated the healings. Were the woman’s faith or Jairus’ faith responsible for the miracles? It is important for people to realize that healing comes about because of nothing more and nothing less than God’s grace and power.
- A sermon exploring miracles could challenge our usual notion that miracles are much like magic. Perhaps miracles are more rooted to daily life than we often expect. How can clean water be a miracle for a struggling community? How can a place to sleep be a miracle for a homeless family? How can a community’s escape from diseases of poverty bring miraculous possibility for life? What if we agreed that ending hunger were an obtainable goal and the human family pooled its efforts toward that goal? What miracle could God work within such a reality?
Stacy Johnson
Author of ELCA World Hunger’s curriculum, Taking Root: Hunger Causes, Hunger Hopes