doughnuts and jesus

Have you ever had a Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut fresh off the conveyer belt at 6 in the morning? No? Go ahead and set your alarm now so you can drive to the closest Krispy Kreme—in Columbus—and try it. I'll wait.

How was it? No, I don't expect you to have actually driven to Columbus, but I do expect you to try it next time you're in a city with a Krispy Kreme bakery. You won't regret it. Let me paint the picture for you. When you walk in, your nose fills with the scent of baking dough and hot glaze. You can see through several large glass windows the machinery which makes the doughnuts: mixers, shapers, some sort of tall, rise-inducing rack, the oven or vat or whatever it is that cooks them (it's been a while for me), and the conveyor they arrive on, doughnuts freshly drenched in sweet glaze. At this point, you may think, "So what? It's a commercial baking enterprise." If you were there, you would only be thinking that until you ordered your doughnut, had it handed to you, still hot, from the conveyor, and taken your first bite.

My friends, this is what heaven tastes like. It's hot but not uncomfortably so, sweet but with a strong undertone of yeast, and literally melts in your mouth. It is not, though I may try, a taste that can really be described. And it is, much to my disappointment, almost completely unlike the taste of the same doughnut several minutes later. Once it cools, the glaze hardens, the dough firms up, and the taste of heaven dissipates like smoke on the breeze. The doughnut we buy at the store bears no relation to this newly-minted, fresh, passionate doughnut.

That's right, passionate. Because I'm not just waxing lyrical about breakfast foods in my second-trimester state, I'm talking about the Gospel, too. How often have we heard the Gospel preached and it sounds nothing like what Jesus actually said? Or it has no taste, no yeast, no passion? Or it's gone stale? And how often do we ourselves feel that way about it, ignoring the scandalous implications of Jesus' words and the drastic measures he wants us to take to change the world? Jesus offers us the Gospel—the fresh-off-the-conveyor, melt-in-your-mouth, taste of heaven doughnut—and we receive or offer the world the day-old, store-bought version.

To be fair, we've always quite liked the day-old, store-bought version—it's sweet and a little salty and satisfies what we think we want. But there's more out there—there's challenge to live better, there's powerful comfort in grief, there's unnamable joy when you search for it and get up early and wait for a glimpse of the kingdom. But the kingdom isn't really like a doughnut, friends. There is a cost to discipleship. We are charged to sacrifice our sleep and our wealth and our comfort for the sake of others and for the sake of God. It is not easy to follow in Jesus' footsteps and we all too often decide to sleep in and go to the convenience store instead. But the reward for following is passionate life and a taste of heaven.

What is your passion at Redeemer? How is your faith evident in what you do in the world? What are you sacrificing for the sake of heaven? And what have you tasted as a reward?

Thoughts on How Things Work

Remember when you had to hand-crank your car window down? It wasn't just a small button that quietly lowered the window with no effort on your part. You had to work to get that sucker down.

I'm only thinking about this because, in a dazed moment late on Saturday night while finishing up my sermon for the next morning, I noticed a similar device on Loving Husband's laptop. You'd think that on such a technologically advanced machine, there'd be a password or a cyberspace-related mechanism. There should at least be an electrical catch. But, no, it's just a little lever that catches on another little bit. That's all that holds the thing closed.

Weirdly, I felt smug when I noticed this little catch. There is comfort in knowing that I can operate that catch. That I, technological simian that I am, could understand and possibly even fix it if it broke. There's satisfaction in knowing, what, that I'm in control? That this is understandable?

Honestly, when was the last time you fixed something yourself? And did it work well, the thing you fixed? It seems to me that, more and more, the things we have require specialists to service them. I'll admit I'm something of a luddite, but don't you sometimes long for the days when you could not just understand that something worked but see how it worked? Take the Krispy Kreme doughnut shops: if you go to the right one, you can see the actual process of making a doughnut, from the racks where the dough rises to the conveyor through the glaze. It's amazing--so that's how they do that, I say. And I do say it out loud. Ask Loving Husband sometime.

In my business, you don't see a lot of the workings. You rarely see the results of your labors. I won't get to see how the kids I hang out with now will turn out. The education, the fellowship, the empowering--I see some of it pay off, but most of it will really show up in 5, 10, 20 years. And when what you do and say are not received well, they're not often fixable. There is certainly no sense of being in control. Church work is hugely complicated with millions of interconnected wires and relationships. And it's as simple as a small catch.

How do I do what I do? How do you? What makes you frustrated? What gives you energy? What makes you see the interconnected wires and think, "Wow, so that's how they do that"?