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!

Amos consistently decries the injustice of Israel, specifically the wealthy of Israel, on behalf of the poor. For Amos the faith of the people of Israel is intertwined with their economic life. In his estimation the wealthy have profited at the expense of the poor, which runs counter to the way God would have it. It comes as no surprise that Amos envisions God’s action as retributive. Since more faith has been placed on the people’s ability to profit in the economy, that is precisely where they will be hit the hardest, thus the vision of houses that will not be lived in and wine that will not be drunk by Israel.

Retributive justice is understandable: there is some payment or suffering for injustice done to others. However, the argument against retributive justice gains some ground when we ask how much and what type of suffering or punishment is required before the situation is again made just? So how does this text inform our economic life, or how we think about wealth and poverty in our context? Furthermore, can this passage even be brought up without venturing into the territory of redistribution and other politically charged terms?

Though we may come to these questions, these are not questions in the text. Amos seems more concerned with the restoration of justice as a whole to where it was absent (hence the plea that justice roll down like waters in 5:24). The indictment takes a slight turn in verse 15, where Amos offers the possibility of another way by revealing “it may be…”. This prophetic perhaps leaves room for God to be gracious to the remnant of Joseph. Still, there are significant interventions which need to be made, indicating the parallel admonitions “Seek the LORD and live” (v.4, 6) and “seek good and not evil” (v.14) are not to be taken lightly. Implicitly, seeking God leads us to seek justice in our communities and economic life. This may begin by asking who are the poor in our midst and how would God have us respond to establish justice.

The prayer that God’s work be made manifest among God’s servants (v.16) and the petition that God would prosper the work of our hands is necessary as we seek to respond to the poor among us. The tone of the psalm is generally a reflection on the magnitude of God contrasted with the fragility of humanity. So when the petition comes at the end of the psalm it puts some perspective on the requests, for it asks that no less than the everlasting work of God enter into the world through us.

When wondering how to respond to the poor and hungry, or how to live in God’s mission here in the world, this prayer allows us to place our endeavors properly. The value of prayer and worship in our response to the needs of the world should not be overlooked.

This passage comes at a point in Mark’s gospel where the disciples have been learning about the challenges and risks that come with being a follower of Jesus. The first part of Jesus’ response would have been familiar to the disciples… the way to life is obeying the commandments. But Jesus’ command to sell possessions and give to the poor distinguishes between treasure on earth and treasure in heaven and creates a problem. This challenges any suggestion that wealth is a blessing from God (though this is the consensus view of wealth in the OT). Wealth is now something dangerous, and when Jesus addresses the disciples as “children” we make the association that wealth may even be a stumbling block (9:42).

For the man in this passage who goes away grieved, his wealth was something that prevented him from following Jesus. Many commentators point out that the man asks what he must do to inherit eternal life (v. 17) but Jesus ends up talking about receiving eternal life now and in the age to come (v.30). The shift in emphasis is not subtle, but made ever more central by the announcement that all things are possible for God. The inclusion of the present reminds us that the reversal of last being made first is a current reality and sign of God’s kingdom.