"What Yeast Does"--August 6, 2019

"What Yeast Does"--August 6, 2019

"He told them another parable: 'The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened." [Matthew 13:33]

There's a lot to learn from the experience of baking bread.

At one level, of course, it's simply the practical skill of learning how to take a short list of ingredients and turn them into something hot and delicious.  Knowing how to bake your own bread is one of those things that will pay dividends over and over again in a lifetime, in terms of cost savings over time, the good smell that will waft through your kitchen, and of course, having freshly baked bread at supper time or to give to the new neighbors as a housewarming gift.

But there's something more to be learned, even before the first bite.  Jesus says there is a glimpse of the Reign of God, if we dare to catch it as it mixes in with the flour and oil.

Everyone in Jesus' audience had seen dough made before.  Chances are, they had grown up learning how to mix the ingredients and helping at the hearth, and they had all taken their turn in making bread countless times.  So Jesus can assume that his hearers already get the point of his metaphor in ways that we might need spelled out to us.  This passage, after all, is almost impossibly short. We are used to parables of Jesus that play out like five-act Shakespearean plays: the drama of the Prodigal Son, the plot twists of the Good Samaritan, or the build-up and reversal of the Laborers in the Vineyard.  But this scene from Matthew 13 barely qualifies as a story--it's a snapshot in time more than a narrative.  And to Jesus' hearers, that would have been enough, because they "got" the metaphor of what yeast does from daily life.  We who buy our loaves of bread pre-slicted in plastic bags from the grocery store might need a little bit of remedial help.

So let's slow the video playback down a bit and see what Jesus might be calling our attention to when he says that God's Reign is like a woman mixing yeast into flour to make dough for bread. For one, it's worth noting that Jesus gives a positive meaning to the yeast here--sometimes in the imagery of the Bible, "yeast" is seen as a negative thing and used as a symbol of sin or worldliness, and sometimes it is a positive image.  So before we misread this parable by automatically inserting a negative "spin" (from, say, the Passover story, where there is a requirement that the people eat unleavened--that is, without yeast--bread), let's just work with what Jesus has given to us.  And all we have is that the way God rules the universe is like yeast being mixed into flour (and maybe salt and oil and water) to make bread.  What exactly is that all about?

If it seems hard to see what Jesus is getting at here, maybe that's actually the point.  Yeast, as an ingredient, doesn't call attention to itself.  A small amount of it can leaven a large batch of dough (and that is surely part of Jesus' idea, too--that the Reign of God appears to be small and hidden but will turn out to permeate everything), but the yeast doesn't show up as a star ingredient in the bread.  You don't (or at least you shouldn't) take a bit of your fresh-baked loaf and say, "Mmmm, you can really taste the yeast!"  Its presence shows up in the way the air bubbles given off by the yeast makes your loaf light and fluffy, but the yeast isn't there to highlight its own yeasty flavor.  Yeast doesn't seek its own glory.

In fact, the yeast isn't there for its own sake at all.  The yeast gives its life up so that the bread can be eaten by others.  Its presence makes the loaf better and makes the bread more enjoyable for the eater, but it is not there for its own sake, its own glory, or its own gain.  Yeast gives itself away as it is worked into the whole batch of dough, so that the loaf that comes out of the oven can be more fully what bread is supposed to be.  We who buy our bread from the last aisle on the left at the grocery store might forget it's even there--but yeast gets mixed into the dough in order to give itself away to make the whole better, without fanfare or applause.

And that, it would seem, is what Jesus wants to lift up for us. The Kingdom of God, or if you like, the "Yahwheh Administration," is like the surprising, self-giving presence of yeast in dough.  The way God reigns in the world isn't about God attracting attention to God's own self.  God doesn't need to advertise, in other words.  God's Reign shows up under the radar, mixed in to the ordinariness of the day. The "Yahweh Administration" is at work all the time without calling attention to itself or needing to promote its own "greatness."  And, we might add, it is the defining feature of God's Reign that, like yeast, it gives itself away.  Sometimes you'll hear folks make a big fuss about wanting to have more public symbols and signs and monuments of religion around, as ways of making it clear (they think) that God is there, wherever they set up a monument or chisel the word "God" in stone.  But I just don't think that takes seriously the way Jesus teaches us to recognize God's Reign--humble and hidden, vital and yet without fanfare about itself, and happening right under our noses like yeast getting mixed into dough.  

There, at the microscopic level of a one-celled organism being mixed and then baked into the dough, God has left us a calling card.  The way yeast offers itself up and does its work on the whole batch, without drawing attention to itself, that is the way God reigns in the universe.  And the reason God doesn't need to toot the old divine horn is that God is the real deal.  The ones bellowing about their own greatness or calling attention to what a big deal they are? Those are the sure fakers and frauds.  The living God doesn't need to seek credit; instead, God's administration over the universe is built on self-giving that doesn't need to brag.

Today, keep your eyes open for little signs of that kind of God all over your day.  Keep your eyes open for the God whose calling card is yeast getting mixed into flour, whose way of ruling the universe is hiding and behind the scenes, whose greatest power comes from giving itself away.

And then, with our eyes wide open, let's look for ways to live the same way ourselves.

Lord Jesus, help us to see your presence in the small and the ordinary, and let it transform us now.