SCROLL DOWN FOR August 25, 2013
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 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!
August 25, 2013 Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Isaiah 58:9b–14
The verses leading up to this passage contain rhetorical questions about the sort of fast that is pleasing in the sight of God. That content, reiterated in conditional terms, focuses on fasting that is more social and public than privately devotional. The removal of blame and a neighbor’s burden, feeding the hungry and caring for the afflicted are all necessary in order for the peoples’ “light shall rise in the darkness.”
In light of these actions God promises guidance, strength and refreshment, restoration of land and healing of the city.
The passage ends with an appeal to observe the Sabbath, with the promise “I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob.” Feeding the hungry is one of the behaviors called for, but it is also one of the gifts that God provides. This invites us to see hunger in a more holistic way- looking both at physical hunger and a hunger for restoration and connection to a community of faith. This challenges notions of feeding in which the giving of food yields self-congratulations within the givers. It challenges us to place feeding and hunger within the context of restoration and healing.
Luke 13:10–17
This could be a passage with which we could find easy agreement. There is an unfortunate person, Jesus comes to the rescue, then makes the opposition look like fools. End of story. But the exchange between Jesus and leader of the synagogue reveals more. While Sabbath observation is the chief complaint against Jesus in this passage, it is hard to read this without believing that power doesn’t have any role here. Jesus heals a woman from her ailment, something that for eighteen years the authorities or religious leaders either couldn’t or wouldn’t do. Jesus isn’t one to be instructed about the ins and outs of the religious observance, and his rebuttal doesn’t just attack their interpretation, but also their use of the customary observance of not working on the Sabbath.
The power of customary observance, whether unspoken or subtle, is not something to take for granted. It is within this context that we can learn to act or accept without recourse. Otherwise the afflicted stay afflicted, the hungry stay hungry, and the poor stay poor, because that’s just the way it is. In healing the woman Jesus is calling us to be attentive—look what God is doing in the world and be willing to become part of that work.
Henry Martinez
ELCA World Hunger
