7-25-17 - Yeast

On Saturday, I baked bread to be blessed, broken and consumed at my last St. Columba’s “Live@5.” I was grooving with Jesus:  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.”

How could the kingdom of heaven be like yeast? We appreciate the homey metaphor, and props to Jesus for getting a woman into the picture, but what might yeast have to do with the realm of God? Well, let’s do some wondering about yeast – and some pondering between paragraphs.

Yeast, like the mustard seed, is a tiny thing that generates a large outcome. Yeast must be activated by liquid and a sweetening agent of some sort, sugar or honey. So there is interdependence, as in the community of God. Once yeast is added to those other agents, it begins to bubble and move – we call that proofing. If the yeast is worn out, it won’t come to life, but if there is any life there, a little sweetness and water will bring it out. Sound like anyone you know?

Yeast is a catalyst. Just as it cannot achieve its “yeastiness” by itself, it does not work alone, but helps other ingredients to become a whole new creation, a loaf. The woman in the story adds it to three measures of flour. Hmmm – I see some parallels to community in Christ, the way different elements combine to achieve a greater result. What do you see?

Yeast works from the inside out. You can’t just sprinkle it on top and hope it “takes.” You must knead it all through, working it into every part of the dough – just as our formation as Christ followers needs to become internal and organic, not just surface, one-hour-a-week-on-Sundays.

And the dough goes though some turmoil in the kneading process, as the baker smooths out air pockets and gets all the ingredients evenly distributed for a nice, fine grain. Sometimes, turmoil is how the leaven of the Holy Spirit gets worked all through us. When has that happened in your life?

And then there’s the result – the bread. At the point at which the loaf is baked, the yeast has ceased to be. It has become one with the dough, one with the loaf. Didn’t Jesus say, “Whoever loses her life for me and for the gospel will save it?” And the loaf itself cannot live out its destiny unless it is broken and given away. That’s what we enact as the Body of Christ each week – a making whole, a re-membering, and then a breaking apart again to feed the world.

Yeast as the Life of God works as a metaphor in several ways. We can see it as the Spirit’s presence in us, a seemingly indiscernible force that heals and transforms and empowers us from within, making us finest bread. AND, turning the parable another way, we can see ourselves as the yeast Jesus is talking about, the leaven that works through the dough of the communities in which we find ourselves, sacred and secular, to bring life and air, transformation and healing.

How are you experiencing the Spirit of God as yeast in your heart, mind, spirit? In your life?
How do you find yourself serving as leaven in the world around you? 

Are you willing to offer yourself in a particular context? That’s a prayer for today.

Without yeast, we would have no risen bread, a tragedy to those of us who love bread. Without the Yeast of Christ, we could not become Risen Bread – a tragedy for a world in need of resurrection life.