Donuts

 

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
January 30, 2022

4 Epiphany C

When I was first ordained, I served a very small church on the western edge of this diocese.  The church had maybe 25 people on a good Sunday but worked hard to have a big impact in the neighborhood around the church.  At one point, they did a demographic study of the neighborhood and discovered that a high percentage of the households were single parent households living close to the poverty line.  In front of the church was a school bus stop, where children gathered each morning and invariably left their trash lying around the church yard.  This was infuriating to some of the church members, who thought the kids were being disrespectful and wanted to call the school and complain.  Still others thought the church should just put a trash can out so the kids could take care of their own trash.  But then, who would make sure the trash can was set out each morning and bring it in and empty it each evening so that the church didn’t wind up with trash all over the church yard anyway.  Then one person, with four children of her own, came up with the brilliant idea to put donuts and orange juice out for the kids each morning and begin to build a relationship with them, or at least make them feel welcome in front of the church.  She wanted to show the children the unconditional love of God.  Some in the church who disagreed with this approach, thinking the church would be spoiling the kids and encouraging them to loiter in the church yard in the morning.  Really, who gives away donuts to random children? And besides, who was going to pay for the donuts?  But the woman with the idea was willing to do the work and buy the donuts, so the church began to leave donuts, juice, and a trash can out for the children each morning.  I left the congregation not long after this, so I don’t know how long the donut ministry lasted.  But I do know that even something as seemingly innocuous as demonstrating the love of God with donuts and juice can cause quite a controversy!

This morning, both Jeremiah and Jesus will cause controversy and infuriate the people. We hear the call of Jeremiah this morning and learn that God is sending Jeremiah to pluck up and pull down, to destroy and overthrown, to build and to plant. That is 4 verbs about destroying and 2 verbs about building up. This is our first clue that Jeremiah’s ministry may not be a happy one. Jeremiah will tell the people that worshiping idols, neglecting the poor, and believing false prophets are not what God had in mind for God’s people, and that the consequences of their actions will be dire. The people are furious with Jeremiah, and for the prophet’s efforts, he will attacked by his own brothers, beaten and put in stocks, imprisoned by the king, thrown in a cistern and threatened with death. Clearly the people were not interested in the words God put in Jeremiah’s mouth.

Jesus also causes controversy in his hometown synagogue and infuriates the people. Last week we heard Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor." Today we hear Jesus say "Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." All the people in the synagogue are amazed at the words coming from Jesus’ mouth. They marvel that this is Joseph’s son. If Jesus had just stopped there, he could have gone to coffee hour and gone home in peace. But, good rabbi that Jesus was, he wanted the people to understand the words he had just spoken. The long awaited Messiah was not coming just for them. The chosen people were not the only people God loves. Jesus reminded the people in the synagogue of two Biblical stories in which the love of God touched Gentiles: the story in which Elijah, the foremost prophet of God, was sent to the widow of Zarephath during a severe famine to provide a miracle of food for the widow and her son, and the story of Naaman the Syrian, who was not just a Gentile, but an enemy of the Israelites, and who was the only leper cleansed. The people in the temple, who just a moment ago were speaking well of Jesus, are now furious and try to throw him off the cliff because Jesus is telling them they are not God’s only beloved people.

Why are the people so angry? Neither Jesus nor Jeremiah are telling the people that they are not loved by God, even though that is what the people hear. Both Jesus and Jeremiah are challenging a people who want to define the love of God on their own terms. Jeremiah speaks to a people who want the love of God to allow them to behave as they like with no consequences because they are God’s chosen people. Jesus speaks to a people who wants to believe that God loves them and no one else. Both speak to a people who are furious because they cannot, or will not, hear God challenge them to understand the love of God in new ways. Both speak to a people who are afraid because their basic assumptions about their faith have been challenged.

By partnering the stories about Jesus and Jeremiah with the reading from I Corinthians, we are reminded that the most basic commandment of God is to love God and each other. When asked about the greatest commandment, Jesus will quote the book of Deuteronomy and say "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself." Paul writes "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth." Both Jeremiah and Jesus are challenging the people to this kind of love- of both God and their neighbor, and to understand their neighbor as all people, not just people like them.

What the people in that small congregation came to realize is that the love of God is meant to be given away, broadly, creatively, and well beyond the membership of the church.  They embodied that love with the gift of breakfast to children they did not know, who many of them had wished would just catch the bus somewhere else.  They learned to understand the love of God in new ways.  The love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things, the love of God, extends to all people.  Our job as followers of Jesus is to make that fact known to the world, using donuts as necessary.

Amen.