Hoarding

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
January 31, 2016

4 Epiphany C

Just before Lent last year, I saw a Lenten discipline on Facebook called "40 bags in 40 days."  The idea was to clean out one drawer, or closet, or under a bed or any other hiding place for clutter and collect one bag each day and give that bag away.  This discipline sounded like a great idea on so many levels.  I would get rid of some unnecessary clutter in the house, and that sounded a whole lot better than giving up chocolate!  Letting go of stuff turned out to be much more of a spiritual discipline than I ever imagined, and about half way through Lent, I asked Don to remind me to just give up the chocolate next year.  I didn't throw away much-I'm pretty good about throwing away what needs to be pitched on an ongoing basis. I was letting go of things-giving things away-that I no longer used, or in some cases had never used.  Now, I do not consider myself a hoarder.  I just keep things in case I need them again sometimes.  However, the likelihood that I will ever find what I am looking for in 10 years worth of stacks of Time magazine is slim.  The likelihood that I will ever fit into clothes I wore 20 years ago is non-existent.  Giving away things was not always easy, but it was liberating.  Forty bags later, I found myself wondering why had I kept all those things to begin with.  Do I find security in having lots of stuff?  I wonder if those of us with plenty tend to hold onto things because, despite all evidence to the contrary, we cannot trust that we will always have what we need.
This morning, both Jeremiah and Jesus will infuriate people who are trying to hold onto or hoard something far more valuable than anything we have in our closets.  In different ways, both Jeremiah's audience and Jesus' audience want to hoard their status as God's beloved chosen people.  We only hear about Jeremiah's call in our first reading this morning.  First God says "Today, I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms."  I wonder how the rulers of those nations and those kingdoms are going to feel about that!  Then God sends Jeremiah to pluck up and pull down, to destroy and overthrown, to build and to plant.  That is 4 verbs about destruction and 2 verbs about building up.  Somehow I don't think this is going to go very well for Jeremiah.  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.  Their status as God's people is not permission do whatever they like.  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 unwilling to let go of their understanding of their identity as God's chosen people.

Jesus also infuriates the people in his hometown synagogue.  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 chose.  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 hoard the love of God and define that love on their own terms.  Jeremiah speaks to people who want the love of God to allow them to behave as they like with no consequences because they are Gods's chosen people.   Jesus speaks to people in the synagogue who want to believe they have an exclusive claim on God's love.  Both speak to people who are furious because they can not, or will not, hear God challenge them to understand the love of God in more expansive ways.  Both speak to people who are afraid because they are being challenged to let go of their perceived hold on God's love.

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."  That reading reminds us that there is more than enough of God's love to go around, and no need to hoard something that is infinite.

In this season when so much seeks to divide us, whether in politics or in the workplace or in church on anywhere else, we can easily jump from "I disagree with you" to "you are wrong" to "God only loves those who think like we do."  We move from hoarding the truth, which is a problem in itself, to hoarding God's love.  God may not like some, or a lot, of the things we humans do.  But the overwhelming evidence of Scripture is that God has more than enough love to go around.  And when we can love our neighbor with the love Paul describes, whether we agree with or even like that neighbor, we participate in the abundance of God's love.  The great theologian Fred Rogers, also known simply as "Mister Rogers" said it like this: "I believe that appreciation is a holy thing--that when we look for what's best in a person we happen to be with at the moment, we are doing what God does all the time.  So, in loving and appreciating our neighbor, we're participating in something sacred."

Amen.