Grandma’s Sunday Candy
By Rev. Jazmine Brooks, Contributing Writer
Grandmothers are often the life-giving force that keeps a family alive. Hers is the home we visit when we need warmth, wisdom, and a womb of comfort. Yet, we love her most when our mothers say “no” and she offers consolation in butterscotch candy from a purse too worn to carry much else. Wrapped in plastic for safety from perishing, the sweet treat is her way of giving life. She offers us a piece as she shares stories of our history and we swallow every word. It is a temporary shelter until we can get it for ourselves. It is soul food when we are hungry. It is our medicine. It is our primary source of advocacy, quieting us while she speaks. It is a small glimpse of hope when all else gives us grief. Grandma’s butterscotch is our salvific Sunday candy, keeping us alive when everything around us was built for our death.
So it was with my most wholesome experience in the church. Surrounded by a community that was dying, both literally and figuratively, the church became Grandma’s salvific Sunday candy. It gave life to all those who were willing to look past the artificial wrapping that we knew as our sheltering parish.
Unwrapped, the church was present. The pastor showed up in rehab centers and courtrooms. The missionary society hosted annual health fairs that addressed the health challenges most commonly affecting our community. The church took seriously the plight of people with economic challenges, buying several houses on the same block and offering reduced rent for families in need of assistance. Neighborhood kids gathered in the fellowship hall year-round for tutoring and their parents came for GED prep courses. Many of those who received the church’s aid were never members of the congregation but they were members of our community and they came because there was an extension of God’s grace through service, advocacy, and mercy for both the body and the soul. What drew people into the space was the presence of the congregation in the community.
In the same way, what drew people to become followers of Jesus was humble servitude in relationship with the community. People heard that there was someone who could heal, resurrect, feed multitudes, and give water that would quench their thirst forever. People heard what he had done for others and they sought that experience for themselves. Following His death and resurrection, the stories of Jesus’ sacrifice garnered an endless trail of witnesses for centuries to come.
When the church sacrifices itself in service to the community, both locally and globally, they are mirroring the Christian gospel, whereby operating as the most effective witnesses of the same. When the church sacrifices itself in service to the community, it draws out the bitter taste life leaves on our pallet and instead soothes our buds as grandma’s butterscotch would.
While recognizing the symbolism of God as substance, I redirect to God’s infinite relationship entering into all of creation in a special way. What makes the gift of Grandma’s Sunday candy salvific is not the substance itself but the relationship we share with the one who gives it. Likewise, the church is not a substance. It does not exist for itself nor to save itself; rather, the church exists to be in relationship with the community by which it is surrounded. Without such a relationship, there is only a building of brick and mortar operating under the guise of being God’s own. What makes the church salvific is its relationship with the community.
In its most effective existence, the church is God’s people being transformed by God’s revelation and, consequently, transforming the world around them. Being saturated by God’s trinitarian power, the church becomes the hope found in Jesus’ resurrection, the metanoia found in God’s presence, and the strength we glean from the fire of the Holy Spirit. In its most effective existence, the church is grandma’s salvific Sunday candy.
The Rev. Jazmine Brooks is aMaster of Divinitystudent at Wesley Theological Seminaryand is a member of New Union Chapel AME Church of Norfolk, Virginia. She currently serves as a ministerial intern at Metropolitan AME in Washington, DC. Throughout her matriculation, Jazmine has maintained occupation in the DC Public Charter School system as well as the Army Reserves. Sheis committed to the workof creating spaces for the innovative engagement of intergenerational ministries, justice, and community as an investment in the life of the embodied gospel of Christ.
