Texts: 1 Kings 3: 5-12; Matthew 13: 31-35
Many of us when we first tried our hand at baking yeast bread had the same experience: our first loaves of bread were like bricks. I used my first loaf as a doorstop for in the first small apartment I shared with my late husband Bob. That's because not being sensitive enough to yeast, we often killed the yeast with water that was too hot or too cold. Our grandmothers would have laughed, of course, because many of them learned the secret of keeping yeast alive while they were yet children.
Yeast, or leaven, as it is called in this morning's text, is really a marvelous part of our natural world. Properly understood, yeast is a form of unicellular fungi – yes, think mushrooms, growth on plants in particularly swampy areas. Yeast are – the word is the same in the singular and plural – used in brewing beer, fermenting wine, and, of course, in baking bread.
Archaeologists have evidence that the ancient Egyptians discovered the secret to using yeast as a leaven as early as 2700 BCE. So easy to kill, it must be cared for from starter dough to bread, a portion of the dough always being saved for the next batch. The leaven that is saved gives bread a slightly sour taste.
The ancients had many methods of making bread, of course, such as what we call flat breads, cooked on a flat surface rather than baked. Think tortillas or the South Asian chapati. Other breads are roasted. The bread of Jesus' day was made with combinations of grains, such as barley, spelt, and a coarser kind of wheat and was often unleavened. It was nothing like the soft white bread first introduced in 1921, known as Wonder bread. During the 1940s the parent company Continental Baking began adding certain vitamins and minerals to the bread as part of a U.S. government program to combat certain diseases such as Beriberi and Pellagra, caused by thiamine and b-12 deficiencies. Remember those commercials about how Wonder Bread built our bodies strong in 12 ways?
The real secret to most breads, of course, is the leavening agent, whether it's yeast, baking powder or soda, the latter products not really developed commercially until the early nineteenth century. Although yeast and baking power/baking soda cause breads to rise in different ways, both are just as susceptible to being killed, as it were. I remember my deaf mother wanting everyone out of the kitchen while a cake was baking or some calamity such as noise or shaking could cause the cake to fall, just as liquid too hot or too cold could kill the yeast.
One of the problems with these two metaphors about the kingdom developed as the result of our faith is that they are so well-known and used so commonly that in some respects we have almost lost their meaning. What is it about a seed or leaven that is like to the kingdom? Seeds and leaven occur all around us in nature.
The Synoptic Gospel writers also have Jesus compare the religious establishment of his day to the leaven of corruption, leavening being that agent that allows something to bubble and grow. As is often the case, it's just as easy for evil to develop from the leavening agents of hate, fear, and prejudice as it is for the kingdom to develop from the seeds and nutrients of faith.
What are the leavening agents occurring in the world around us to help us build the kingdom? They are much like the nutrients of faith, which require care to grow and develop. Trust is certainly an essential leavening agent, but how do we learn to trust and whom should we trust? Several nights ago I was talking with a psychologist I regularly use to evaluate victims of domestic violence; he made an interesting comment about trust. As children we were taught to trust certain kinds of people, sometimes without question. It’s the reason that children are molested by those they trust and never tell anyone that trust has been broke Children exposed to a wider world acquire enough savvy to make essential judgments about trust. When we live in a bubble, we are smothered; yeast requires air to grow.
Learning to trust and grow beyond the familiar are essential to the leavening of faith and the kingdom. The bubbling of the yeast requires exposure to the outside world. Garrison Keillor in one of his more serious moments commented that rather than discouraging Congressional junkets, we should actually encourage them so that Members of Congress would have some idea of what the world outside their corner of the world is really like. Travel is a great educator even when not intended to be.
Another important leavening is doubt. At first, it may seem strange to say that we must learn to trust and learn to doubt, but rather than being in opposition to each other, one develops from the other. Trusting does not mean believing everything we hear. Trust involves judgment, discerning judgment. Doubt is one of the instruments of discernment. People who believe everything they hear aren't trusting; they're just plain gullible, simply accepting statements that reinforce their prejudices, for instance the flap over whether Obama really was born in Hawaii.
The leavening can be easily killed off by not being properly nurtured. The study that leads to questioning is well and good; that is clearly one part of the nurturing of faith. But without the part of love leading to action, the yeast will not live.
Just as democracy is not a spectator sport, neither is faith a mere intellectual exercise. It requires action in order to truly grow and live. That action can take a variety of forms, of course, from shopping for school packs for homeless kids to standing up against an army. We're particularly fortunate here in the United States that we aren't usually put into that more drastic form of action, that we have a representative government with which we can communicate.
The leavening of love into action covers many fronts. Not only does it include protecting the social safety net of services for the poor but stewardship of our environment; it includes basic justice issues such as a living wage and the protection of due process in our judicial system. And we haven't even touched the questions of prejudice, racism, or the unequal treatment of disfavored groups.
The story goes that around 1450 there was a terrible famine in Westphalia, a part of Germany, due to the failure of the wheat crop. A local baker figures out that he could make bread by using rye, barley, spelt, and a few other items and it was called bonum paniculum, or good bread. The phrase was corrupted into pumpernickel by the locals who did not understand Latin. The local baker who came up with this solution for hunger did so because they used the leavening of love into action. He nurtured the yeast, kneaded the bread, probably a bit unsure of what would result, and the community trusted the baker to feed them. The baker did just that. And although we do not live by bread alone, it is an essential element of the kingdom. Jesus knew that and so should we.
Let us come to God in prayer: Holy One who helps us to leaven our lives with love, guide us as we learn to knead the bread of justice baking it to perfection as we build the kingdom that Jesus came to share with us. Amen.