Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Lessons Learned From Making Pizza


My dad has been making pizza for about 66 years. He learned what has become the Radosti family recipe from his mom, my grandmother who was born in Calabria, Italy. I watched dad make pizza for many years and learned how to make it myself a couple of years ago. Now my brother John is also learning how to make it. While I was visiting New York recently, together John and I made pizza. We have a tradition in our family to make pizza during the Christmas holiday season. I heated up about sixteen ounces of water and when the temperature was just right, added the yeast with a small amount of sugar. I mixed it with my hand until it was silky smooth. John rubbed a little olive oil in the inside of a very large pot. He then added the flour to the pot and I added some of the water mixed with yeast. Then John began to knead the dough with his hand. I added more of the water mixture and after some time the dough became more uniform. It had many rifts and cracks, so I added more water and John continued to knead the mixture with his hands. It became sticky and it was harder for John to mix so I added some more flour to dry it out and then some olive oil. Within minutes the dough had become consistent. It was now one big lump. We then covered it with a lid and my mom took it into the bedroom and covered the entire pot with a blanket.

The body of Christ is a lot like a lump of dough. In Christ we are one lump. Our identity is in Christ the living bread which came down from heaven (John 6:33-51).When we all work together we are like one lump of dough, uniform throughout. Unfortunately, we sometimes forget that our identity is in him and we end up like the pizza dough that is not yet consistent with cracks and rifts caused by comparing one another, jealousy, envy and showmanship. To get to that uniform lump of dough it takes the right amount of water, flour and oil. And for the body of Christ to be uniform it takes Christ living within us by the Holy Spirit. The love of Christ is what makes us uniform. We need to lose our identity in him. Our identity isn't in our denomination, nor is it in our talents or gifts or anything else. It's in Christ alone the Living Bread which came down from heaven to give life to the world.