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 process of thanksgiving outlined in this chapter might sound a little more prescriptive than we are used to. In the middle of the passage (vv.5-10) is a statement of faith that recalls when God heard the cries of the people and delivered them from bondage, ushering them into the land of promise. The final verse is a reminder of how the bounty is to be shared, “with the aliens who reside among you.”

It is a reminder that when we lay claim on the gifts God has given, the process by which we express our thankfulness is a communal one. It is a process that also involves hospitality, specifically with those who may not directly receive the harvest from the land. What might be the “first of all the fruit” that we experience in our lives? How might we share with others what God has blessed us with?

Who lives in the shelter of the Lord and calls the Lord their refuge? It is likely that all who trust in God are not well off or comfortable in this life. They may feel the scourge of hunger creeping in on their tent. So how do they experience God’s care and protection? This psalm reminds us that angels are at the command of God. Angels are synonymous with messengers, or emissaries of God. What does this passage mean if we were to consider ourselves as messengers of God’s promise? How might we see to the fulfillment of this psalm with those in need around us?

Picking up on the theme from the psalm of calling upon the Lord for salvation, this passage raises the issue of how faith in God is experienced in the lives of believers. If indeed no one who believes in God will be put to shame, what does that say about the shame of poverty that lives quietly in our midst? This challenges how we respond to shame and witness to God’s deliverance in our lives.

Of all the settings, a wilderness seems the most appropriate for loneliness and hunger. It is the place where the Israelites wandered and where Elijah goes on the lam. In both those stories God not only provides food for the journey, but proves to be present for those in need. But in this story it is Jesus who finds himself famished and who is challenged to make bread from stones. Yet Jesus sees through the plot and tells satan that it is not by bread alone that we live (Deuteronomy 8:3).

As we respond to hunger in our communities and in the world, we remember that it is not bread alone that will be the answer. So we are called to look beyond just providing a meal or can of food, and learn that hunger and poverty are very real wildernesses in our midst. And we see that these wildernesses are places where God meets us, providing more than we expect.