Doughnuts in the Kingdom of God

By Kathy Luder

Our Sunday School teacher, Mrs. Zaftig, is a high school English teacher with a penchant for pastries. Sunday School is boring like regular school, but Mrs. Zaftig brings doughnuts. So in my world, Sunday School is as good as it gets.

One of the lunch ladies from school goes to our church, too. It is sad to say, but I can’t seem to keep myself from this bizarre fantasy where Mrs. Zaftig has decided to forgo the doughnuts and brings us a leftover ham surprise supplied by our very own lunch lady! Where exactly is Captain Underpants when you need him?!?

Anyway, back to the story. One Sunday, Mrs. Zaftig starts lecturing to us on John 3:16. Now don’t get me wrong, I love that verse. But we’ve heard this thing about a million times. So I start to daydream. In my dream the lunch lady has taken over the Altar Guild and has implemented cafeteria standards of cleanliness and thrift in the sacristy. Eventually, our whole church is wiped out by the Bubonic Plague, caused by the lunch lady reusing the wine left in the bottom of the individual cups for Communion Surprise.

Startled out of my daydream, I hear Mrs. Zaftig talking about Nicodemus, Baptism, and Jesus. Then suddenly I hear Mrs. Zaftig tell Adam, “No.” (Adam is our Bible trivia star and acts like he is the real pastor of this church.) Mrs. Zaftig had asked the class, “Do you know what ‘For God so loved the world’ means?” Adam piped up with what sounded like a pretty standard answer. “It means that God loves us so, so very much that He...”That is when Mrs. Zaftig interrupted with a firm, “No.”

She went on to explain. “In modern English, the way we speak everyday, it sounds like what Adam said, like ‘God loved the world so much’. We don’t usually use the word so the way the King James Bible does here. We most often use it to mean to great extent, such as ‘It is so obvious, or so wonderful, or so true’. But think of the question, ‘Do you really think so?’ There the word so has a different meaning. It doesn’t mean ‘a whole bunch’ or ‘a lot’. In the question, ‘Do you really think so?’, so means thus or in this way. That is the way the word is used in John 3:16. Listen to the verse another way. ‘This is exactly how God loved the world: He gave His only begotten Son so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life’ or ‘The way in which God loved the world was to give His only begotten Son.’”

“Sometimes,” she went on to say, “we have to listen carefully to the words. Because even though we’ve heard these words our whole lives, they are still God’s words and He is speaking to us.”

Well, what can I say? It was good, but not in the way that I thought it would be.

In fact, Adam didn’t mind a bit. He was as caught up as the rest of us. Silence ensued, no shuffling, no gum smacking, just plump Mrs. Zaftig blushing and all of us staring. We all knew that in that moment God had spoken to us in His Word. He had fed us by revealing something of His love for us. And we had heard it. Then Jimmy grabbed the last doughnut and things were back to normal. He grinned with chocolate frosting on his teeth as he wiped his hands on his pants. Adam beamed at the teacher. And I faded back into my daydreams. But all this has got me to thinking that maybe there is more to Mrs. Zaftig’s Sunday School class than just doughnuts.