It’s Time to Make the Donuts…

First Congregational Church in Auburn UCC, January 21, 2024

Mark 1:14-20    After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” 

As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him. 

When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.

I bet I’m not the only person here that remembers those Dunkin commercials – the weary and wearier baker heading off to work in the middle of the night muttering “time to make the donuts”.

He couldn’t sleep late.  He couldn’t even sleep until a more normal time…. Those donuts had to be ready for the first customers … if he didn’t start on time, there’d be no food for the hungry.

In today’s Gospel lesson, we hear a story about time, not time to make the donuts, but another right time to act:  Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.  The time has come!  Jesus was saying NOW IS THE TIME…. Now is the time to do what needs to be done.  And for an example of what he means, he calls James and John to leave their work and follow him.

It’s time to follow Jesus.

But here’s the question – just what does it mean to get up and follow Christ?

The most radical way to follow Jesus is to get up from our work immediately, but that’s just not practical for most of us, and I wouldn’t want anyone to think that just because we’re not following James and John’s examples, that we’re not following Christ.  There’s more than one right way to follow Jesus.

Shakespeare wrote, in the play Julius Caesar:

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.”

The speaker is Brutus, and he’s talking about the readiness of preparations for a battle.  And I think it’s something we need to hear.  Following Jesus is not just about jumping up and running down the road; it’s about thinking, observing, making plans and following Jesus in ways that make a difference.

That leads us to today.

Today is the day of our church’s Annual Meeting, the time when we formalize our plans for the coming year.  We look at our finances, think about what we need, where God is calling us, and lay the outline of our plans for 2024.  

There’s so much in our world that seems so urgent.  It’s not always clear which thing should get the priority among all those competing calls — me! No Me! == they call out, and what do we do first?  And in the midst of all those voices comes the voice of Jesus saying – well, the Greek word for repent has overtones of “all right!  Let’s get up and going”… this is not some kind of quiet, rational invitation, but more of a raucous call.  

There are times when the call of faith changes our lives right then and there, but there are also times when that change takes longer.  Those decisions are not the end of the story, though.  Over and over, throughout our lives, we need to re-examine and re-make that decision.  From time to time, we’ll need to correct our direction, sometimes in little ways, sometimes in larger ones.  

God’s call is a call to put everything on the line, even those things we’ve been sure we knew.  Everything is open to God’s voice, you know.  God turns the traditional values of much of our society – might makes right, the one with the most marbles wins – upside down.  

Now is the time – the world outside our doors needs the community we offer more than ever.  Our world needs to learn how to live with differing opinions, how to balance the needs of the many with the wants of the few, how to share equitably…. 

It’s time for us to make our donuts.

Amen.

© 2024, Virginia H. Child