Hunger for the Word: Lectionary Reflections on Food and Justice (Year A)

We have all experienced hunger, whether it’s a need for spiritual guidance or physical nutrition. Our hunger for God’s Word can benefit those needing material sustenance. God’s Word calls us to nourish the hungry and poor, just as it nourishes our faith and sustains us in our struggle for justice.

Hunger for the Word explores the Lectionary with a focus on anti-hunger advocacy, social activism, and political issues affecting marginalized people. Using insights, images, and stories from pastors, professors, and laity active in anti-hunger campaigns, this ecumenical book offers devotional connections to inequality issues, as well as themes to help in our struggle to understand and eliminate injustice. Hunger for the Word, edited by Larry Hollar of Bread for the World, brings concern for hunger and fairness into our daily religious life.

With weekly sermon/homily reflections, Hunger for the Word is an invaluable resource for pastors, liturgical ministers, and those interested in justice-oriented Bible study and spiritual growth. Also includes suggestions for musical worship, and ideas for children’s sermons to help spread God’s Word of activism, compassion, and integrity throughout the congregation.

We have all experienced hunger, whether it?s a need for spiritual guidance or physical nutrition. Our hunger for God?s Word can benefit those needing material sustenance. God?s Word calls us to nourish the physically hungry and poor, just as it nourishes our faith and sustains us in our struggle for justice. Hunger for the Word explores the Lectionary with a focus on anti-hunger advocacy, social activism, and political issues affecting marginalized people. Using insights, images, and stories from pastors, professors and lay people who are active in anti-hunger campaigns, this ecumenical book offers devotional connections to inequality issues, as well as themes to help in our struggle to understand and eliminate injustice. Hunger for the Word, edited by Larry Hollar of Bread for the World, brings concern for hunger and fairness into our daily religious life. With weekly sermon/homily reflections, Hunger for the Word is an invaluable resource for pastors, liturgical ministers and those interested in justice-oriented Bible study and spiritual growth. Also includes suggestions for musical worship, and ideas for children?s sermons to help spread God?s Word of activism, compassion, and integrity throughout the congregation.?I would recommend it for all people wishing to study and to reflect upon scripture from the perspective of justice and food. The analyses are connected with daily living, which is exactly what good preaching is supposed to do.? Celebrate!?Hunger for the Word is a helpful resource for preachers who wish to stress the social implications of the readings and are looking for illustrations, statistics and insights.? Grace & Truth?. . .it would be valuable to look at the particular slant given in this collection to the social justice implications.? Grace & Truth?warm, thoughtful, and biblically grounded insights into God?s call to respond to those who are hungry and poor. Each devotion incorporates the weekly readings and concludes with suggestions for children?s sermons and congregational singing. The perfect book for preparing justice-minded sermons or writings.? Sojourners?Hunger for the Word is the kind of resource preachers have been wanting for a long time. The lectionary-based essays lift the justice themes in each text and occasion to the surface where they can be seen and, more important, preached. This book will help make preaching more faithful to the Gospel and pertinent to the issues of our time.? Thomas G. Long Bandy Professor of Preaching Candler School of Theology Emory University Atlanta, Georgia"Fordham?s studies of the country?s ?social health? say we are in a steep dive in matters of hunger and poverty, the lowest ever recorded by the measure of food stamp coverage and income inequality. Beyond our borders the situation is even worse. How timely a lectionary that correlates Scripture with the cry for bread and the struggle for justice! May we in our congregations ever and again hear the Word that calls us to respond to a hungry world. This commentary on our weekly lections is a medium for a Word that speaks both about the abundant grace of the gospel and its claim upon us to reach out to those in the depths." Gabriel Fackre Abbot Professor of Christian Theology Emeritus Andover Newton Theological School"What a needed, helpful, and intelligent collection! Somehow we preachers need to turn information into transformation. Somehow we need to give liturgy a justice perspective. Here are all the resources." Fr. Richard Rohr, O.F.M. Center for Action and Contemplation Albuquerque, New Mexico ?Eating and drinking together, hunger for bread and the living Word, food and justice?these are core biblical themes. Exposure to them at the very heart of worship itself is offered by Hunger for the Word. Insightful links to the common lectionary provide aids for sermon preparation, for children's time and adult education, and for congregational singing. Bread for the World has our gratitude for this new resource on essential motifs in the Christian life!? Larry Rasmussen Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics Union Theological Seminary, New York City?The old evangelical counsel to ?keep the Bible and the newspaper together? is wondrously practiced in this helpful volume. These writers know that the crisis our culture faces is ?on the table? in worship and in the preaching of the church. These expositions intend to stiffen the spine of the church for its bold testimony. I anticipate readers will find courage and freedom for missional faithfulness herein.? Walter Brueggemann Columbia Theological Seminary?An excellent tool helping preachers apply the weekly lectionary readings to the tragedy of global hunger. Provocative and useful with a breadth of contributors as diverse as Bread for the World." Ronald J. Sider President Evangelicals for Social Action?Each of [the writers?] contributions is a unique perspective on the scripture's requirement to the Christian community in the areas of food security and justice.? Hunger News and Hope?It is an exciting book, which calls us, firstly, to reflect on our own lifestyles in a spirit of silence. Only then can we hear God speaking to us, and inviting us to hunger for justice and equality.? PAX?[Hollar] has assembled a wonderful resource for preachers who are seeking to focus on these biblical themes . . . the writers mine a wealth of insights into God's heart for the poor and the oppressed . . . this book gives voice to some of the biblical themes that are often neglected in the modern church. Hollar reminds us that while we might ignore the issue of hunger, God does not.? PRISM ePistle? . . . pastors, organizers, teachers, and anti-hunger workers supply warm, thoughtful, and biblically grounded insights into God?s call to respond to those who are hungry and poor. . . . The perfect book for preparing justice-minded sermons or writings.?Sojourners Magazine