DOUGHNUTS ARE NEVER BIG ENOUGH
Last Tuesday night my wife and I had both been at work all day long, then gone to a volleyball game at Maplewood, and I’d just gotten home from working out at the Y.M.C.A. It was probably 9:00 p.m. as I flopped into my chair in the living room. I was literally down for the count. That’s when my wife reminded me that we were out of dog food. She said, “Let’s go get the dog food, then let’s go to Tim Horton’s.”
Now normally I’m the one to suggest going to Tim Horton’s – and it may have been a ploy just to get me to go along – but out we both went just the same. We got the dog food and then we went to Tim Horton’s. We were graciously served by our church’s own Andrew Bartoe, nattily attired in his best Tim Horton’s brown. I had a cup of coffee and a doughnut and my wife had a carton of milk and a doughnut. Okay, I had a bagel and cream cheese too, but that’s beside the point. As my wife finished her doughnut, she wistfully sighed and said, “Doughnuts are never big enough.”
Doughnuts are never big enough. As she said that, I thought of two things. First of all, I thought: What a great sermon title! And second: What an intriguing philosophical statement! Doughnuts are never big enough, just as the most precious and sacred moments of our lives are far too fleeting. They are here for but a short time, and in an instant they are gone.
I think of my mother’s reaction every time we leave Arizona. As you know, my parents live in the Phoenix, Arizona area. My mother’s health is such that she and my father can no longer travel to Pennsylvania. And Phoenix is so far from here that my family and I only get down there about once a year. Every single time we get ready to leave Arizona and travel back to Pennsylvania, my mother says the very same thing. She says, “I can’t believe it’s been a week already!” Ah, doughnuts are never big enough. Doughnuts are never big enough, and the most precious and sacred moments of our lives are far too fleeting. They are here for but a short time and in an instant they are gone.
That’s probably a good summation of how the disciples felt in the passage we read from the gospel according to John. They had just finished sharing what would come to be known as their “Last Supper” with Jesus. Soon they would head to the Garden of Gethsemane where he would be arrested, and you know what happened after that. Three years they had spent with the Master – not a lifetime, to be sure – but it was time enough for him to have grown on each and every one of them. They watched as he healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, and mended the lame. They listened as he spoke of a kingdom that had no end. The more they saw – the more they heard – the more they came to love this man called Jesus with a love they had never known before. Only now he would be leaving them. Doughnuts are never big enough. Surely they, too, felt as if the most precious and sacred moments of our lives are far too fleeting. They are here for but a short time and in an instant they are gone.
Like I said, the disciples had just finished sharing what would come to be known as their “Last Supper” with Jesus. During that last supper, Jesus instituted what we now know as the sacrament of communion. After giving thanks to God, Jesus broke the bread and said, “Take, eat, this is my body broken for you. This do in remembrance of me.” Then in the same manner after supper Jesus took the cup saying, “This cup is the new covenant sealed in my blood. Whenever you drink of it, do so remembering me.” In this simple act Jesus revealed something to the disciples that they did not understand at the time. Jesus was showing them that spiritually, he would always be with them. That very same promise is ours when we partake of the sacrament of communion as well.
Interestingly enough, we find the institution of the sacrament of communion in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. John does not tell us of the sacrament of communion. Instead, John paints a different picture. After supper, Jesus filled a basin with water and girded himself with a towel. Then he began to wash his disciples’ filthy, dirty feet. As you heard me say a couple of weeks ago, this was a task that was typically reserved only for the lowest of the low. Yet here was the Lord of life, washing his disciples’ feet. After he had done so he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord – and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought also to wash one another’s feet.”
The passage we read from the gospel of John occurs shortly after the foot washing. There Jesus says, “Now is the Son of man glorified, and in him God is glorified.” At last Jesus’ hour had come. “Now is the Son of man glorified,” Jesus says, and because the Son of man is glorified, God will be glorified as well. How was Jesus to be glorified? Well, what was about to happen? Jesus was about to be crucified, was he not? In other words, it was through Jesus’ crucifixion that he would be glorified, and through him, God would be glorified as well.
We need to take a look at what it means to be glorified. The Greek word for “glorified” is “hedoxasthay.” It means literally, “to make visible.” Thus, in this context, to glorify God is to make visible the presence of God. Jesus’ crucifixion makes visible the presence of God.
I think of a line from what we call The Shorter Catechism. The Shorter Catechism is taken from what we call The Westminster Confession of Faith. The Westminster Confession of Faith was written in 1646 by a group of Calvinists and Puritans trying to establish the Protestant faith in England and Scotland. The Rev. John Wallis – also a geometry professor at Oxford – later wrote The Shorter Catechism to help children understand The Westminster Confession. Sorry to muddy the waters here, but that’s what The Shorter Catechism is. Like I said, on the subject of glorifying God, I think of a line from what we call The Shorter Catechism.
The question is asked, “What is the chief end of man?” Pardon the sexist language, but remember the era in which it was written. The question is asked, “What is the chief end of man?” In other words, “What is the role of humanity in the world?” or even, “What is the purpose of human life?” The answer is, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” The chief end of humanity is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. In other words, the purpose of our very lives is to glorify God. The purpose of our very lives is to make visible the presence of God. And when we do so, we will enjoy God forever.
So just exactly how do we glorify God? Just exactly how do we make visible the presence of God? Do we, too, have to climb up on a cross and die? Actually, I think Jesus tells us how that is done in the next few lines of our passage. There Jesus says, “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Thus, Jesus has commanded his disciples to love one another, and he has given them the perfect example of how to do so. The perfect example of how to love is first revealed in Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. And the perfect example of how to love is further revealed by Jesus willingly going to the cross for our poor sakes. We might go so far as to say that love is modeled in the foot washing and enacted fully in his crucifixion. In any case, what Jesus is saying is this: Love is the way that God is glorified, and love necessarily implies humility and self-sacrifice. Again, love is the way that God is glorified, and love necessarily implies humility and self-sacrifice.
Now since Mother’s Day is next week, and since we have our annual Mother’s Day musical and I don’t get to preach, let me give you a “motherly” illustration of this. Once upon a time, a man stopped outside a flower shop to order some flowers to be sent to his mother who lived 200 miles away. As he got out of his car, he noticed a little girl, sitting on the curb, crying her eyes out. He asked her what was wrong and she replied, “I wanted to buy a red rose for my mother. But I only have 75 cents and a rose costs two dollars.” The man smiled and said, “Come into the store with me. We’ll get a rose for your mother.” He bought the little girl a rose and ordered the flowers to be delivered to his mother. As they were leaving, he offered to drive the little girl home. She said, “Thank you very much. You can take me to see my mother.”
The little girl directed him on where to drive. It wasn’t long before they arrived at a cemetery. There the little girl placed her rose on a freshly-dug grave. The man returned to the flower shop and cancelled the flowers that were scheduled to be delivered to his mother. Then he picked up a bouquet and drove the 200 miles to his mother’s house. Love necessarily implies humility and self-sacrifice. How sad it is that we must so often learn these things the hard way.
Yet it is through such love that God is glorified.
The purpose of our lives is to glorify God, and we glorify God by loving one another. Jesus said to his disciples, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.” Yet there are many kinds of love, are there not? There is the love of a husband for a wife. There is the love of a mother for a child. There is love between best friends, and then there is the love of which Jesus speaks here. I think Frederick Buechner describes the love of which Jesus speaks quite well in his book, The Magnificent Defeat. He writes:
The love for equals is a human thing…of friend for friend or brother for brother. It is to love what is lovely and loving. The world smiles. The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing…the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor; the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world.
The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing…to love those who succeed where we fail; to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice; the love of the poor for the rich, or the (servant for the master). The world is always bewildered by its saints.
And then there is the love for the enemy…love for the one who does not love you, but mocks, threatens and inflicts pain. The tortured’s love for the torturer. This is God’s love. It conquers the world.
Thus far, we’ve pretty much been speaking on an individual level. It occurs to me, however,
that maybe there’s more to it than that. Maybe that’s the purpose of the Church as well. The Church is called to glorify God. And the Church glorifies God when it learns to love the ones it is called to serve. And that’s what we’ve got to figure out. Who are we called to serve, and how can we best love them?
But before we get to that, I think we need to look at our lives as if they were a cup of water. The cup contains half a cup of water. The question is: “Is the cup half full, or is the cup half empty?” It’s a very important question. When our cup is half full, we are grateful to God for what is in our lives. Yet when our cup is half empty, we will always feel that we’ve been short-changed. We will always be seeking to have or to gain more. One of these ways is the way of God. One of these ways is the way of the world. I’ll let you decide which is which.
When we learn to see that our cups are half full…when we come to love not just those who love us in return, but also the poor, and the successful, and those who actually oppose us, then God is glorified. Those are precious and sacred moments. Yet in reality, moments like this are far too fleeting. They are here for but a short time and then they are gone. Ah, doughnuts are never big enough, are they? So do what I like to do. Order two. Amen.
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