Why This Church? The Parable of the Yeast

A Sermon given for the Bloomsbury Anniversary Service, 21 July 2019

Mark 2.13-17

Jesus went out again beside the sea; the whole crowd gathered around him, and he taught them. 14 As he was walking along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, "Follow me." And he got up and followed him. 15 And as he sat at dinner in Levi's house, many tax collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples-- for there were many who followed him. 16 When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, "Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?" 17 When Jesus heard this, he said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners."

Matthew 16.6

 Jesus said to them, "Watch out, and beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees."

Matthew 13.33

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."34 Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing. 35 This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet: "I will open my mouth to speak in parables; I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world."

Listen to the sermon here:
https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/why-this-church-the-kingdom-of-heaven-is-like-a-virus

One of the most distinctive things about Jesus was that he taught using parables.

            Not many other teachers in the ancient world did this, and not many do it today.

But, time after time, Jesus told short stories that packed a punch.

Certainly, Jesus wasn’t the first person to teach using parables and stories,

            there are both Greek and Semitic examples from before his time.

But there is no evidence of anyone prior to Jesus

            using parables as consistently, creatively, and effectively as he did.

One of P.G. Wodehouse’s characters says:

"A parable is one of those stories in the Bible which sounds at first like a pleasant yarn but keeps something up its sleeve which pops up and leaves you flat."

Some of you may have heard the slightly clichéd definition of a parable

            that it is “an earthly story with a heavenly meaning”

And certainly when I was a child growing up in church

            the parables, well, some of the them at least

            were presented to us as stories suitable for children.

These days, I have to say, I’m not so sure

            I think the parables aren’t nearly as warm and fuzzy

            as they are sometimes portrayed as being

Rather than being short and simplistic stories,

            with two levels of meaning – one earthly and one heavenly,

parables are actually much more complicated,

            and Jesus’ parables are both works of art

            and also weapons he used in the conflict with his opponents,

The parables that Jesus told were always an invitation to see the world differently,

            and they had the effect of polarising those who heard them;

either you entered into the new world that the parable created, or you didn’t.

If you did, you found yourself living the new reality of the kingdom of heaven, w

            here love overcomes evil,

            where the least and the last find themselves valued as never before,

            and where peace defeats violence.

But if you didn’t, you found yourself trapped in a world

            where power is allied to status and outworks as oppression,

            and your heart is hardened as you get drawn ever further

            into the destructive patterns of living that this world demands.

These are not merely stories to enjoy

            rather they hold up one reality to serve as a mirror of another

            the world of the story reveals the world of the Kingdom of heaven.

Parables are avenues to understanding,

            they are handles by which one can grasp the kingdom.

Jesus told parables to confront people

            with the character of God’s kingdom,

and to invite them to participate in it

            and to live in accordance with it.

Last month, when our communion series

            had us looking at the parable of the mustard seed,

I issued a challenge to see write a parable,

            taking something from the world around

            and using it shed light on some aspect of the Kingdom of heaven.

Thank you to those who took shared your parables with me,

            and I thought I’d take a moment now

            for us all to hear some of these Bloomsbury Parables.

The kingdom of heaven is like a strand of DNA, so tiny only electron microscopes can see it. But it gives shape to all the glories of nature: from the eye to the brain, from the rose to the mighty oak.

The kingdom of heaven is like a beautiful birthday cake, which can only bring its true joy once it has been broken into pieces.

The kingdom of heaven is like a light, it is hope that shines in the darkness.

The kingdom of heaven is like the transistor which lies at the heart of all modern electronic devices.

The kingdom of heaven is like swimming a mile: the only way to do it is one length at a time.

The kingdom of heaven is like the New Year’s Eve feast prepared by my non-Christian friend for her elderly, lonely, and difficult neighbours.

The kingdom of heaven is like a rainbow, reminding us of the eternal promises of God.

The kingdom of heaven is like a picnic: once the food is dispersed, a happy satisfied group of people remain.

The kingdom of heaven is like the electron: a tiny, tiny particle buffeted about in all matter. But it bears a charge and as it joins with other electrons it imparts terrific power that can do so much.

The kingdom of heaven is like this. A theatre was putting on a wonderful production; everyone would enjoy it, and the standing ovation would be rapturous. Some people heard about the production early, and quickly bought their seats in the stalls. Some people could not afford the best seats, and instead bought cheap seats on benches up in the gods. Some people left it until the last minute and bought reduced price tickets at the door.

When the performance was due to start, the stalls were not full. So those with cheap seats were moved down to the stalls alongside the rich and the cultured. 

The show was magnificent, but those who had bought their tickets early tutted and spent the performance composing in their heads letters of complaint to the management about how unfair it all was.

And so today we come to the parable of the yeast or leaven,

            and I wonder what challenge we will hear

            in this short and subversive story.

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.

As is always the case when we come to the Bible,

            it’s worth paying attention to the cultural background to what we read there.

Whilst human nature hasn’t changed,

            the world in which we live is very different from the world of the first century,

and we need to be alert to the error

            of thinking that things that are obvious to us were as obvious back then,

            and indeed vice versa.

The first thing we need to tease out here

            is the difference between yeast and leaven.

I don’t know if you’ve ever baked bread at home,

            but if you have, you’ve probably bought those little packets of dried yeast,

            which is activated by moisture as you knead it into the dough.

Because we have microscopes and science,

            we know that yeast are single celled microorganisms

            that are classified along with moulds and mushrooms as part of the fungi family.

And we know that it causes the bread to rise

            by converting the fermentable sugars present in the dough

            into carbon dioxide and ethanol.

It won’t surprise you to know that those living

            in the ancient near east of the first century didn’t know all this.

They just knew that if they took a lump of dough from the last batch

            and added it to the new one,

            it would cause the dough to rise when it was baked.

This lump of dough was known as the ‘leaven’,

            and it was more similar to a modern friendship or Herman cake,

            where you pass on a portion of the uncooked dough to a friend,

            that they then use to activate their cake, before passing it on again.

So the ancient Greek word for yeast was the same as the word for leaven,

            and it refers to this lump of fermenting dough,

            that keeps the process going from one batch of baking to the next.

The next thing we need to realise is that

            in the Jewish culture of the time of Jesus,

            leaven is not always a positive image.

The origin of this negativity towards leavened bread

            comes from some regulations in the Hebrew Bible

                        regarding the preparation for the Passover meal,

            which required that people ate only unleavened bread for a week.

            (Leviticus 23.5-8)

The idea was that when the Pharaoh freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt,

            it was believed that they left in such a hurry

            that they could not wait for their bread dough to rise

and that in commemoration of this, for the duration of Passover

            no leavened bread was eaten.

Symbolically speaking, then,

            whilst leavened bread certainly tastes nicer than unleavened bread,

it also came to symbolise being overly settled, too much at ease in the world,

            and being unready to drop everything and follow the call of God.

As we saw in our first reading,

            Jesus also uses the image of leaven negatively

            when he is talking about the Scribes and the Pharisees,

and the point he is making is that they speak words which sound very attractive

            but which are actually working against the kingdom that Jesus is proclaiming.

The thing is, whilst they might not have understood the microbiology,

            the ancient people of Jesus’ time knew that yeast was an infection.

You only needed a small amount of it,

            for it to quickly spread through the whole batch of dough.

And once the dough has been leavened,

            there’s no going back.

You can’t get unleavened bread from leavened dough.

So whilst it might be fine to add yeast to your dough to make it taste nice,

            the dangers of becoming too settled to follow God’s call,

            or of being infected with a virulent ideology,

are also there in the background to Jesus’s parable.

I don’t think this is a ‘nice’ parable.

            It’s one of those which packs a punch,

            and is designed to shock.

And I wonder if one way of getting our heads around this,

            is to play with a few more parables

            that might illuminate what Jesus is trying to do here.

See how you get on with these:

The kingdom of heaven is like a virus, 

        which spreads throughout the body and against which even antivirals don’t work.

The kingdom of heaven is like compound interest, 

         which seems to make millionaires out of thin air.

The kingdom of heaven is like rust, which can eat away even the strongest iron.

In other words, like leaven in dough,

            the kingdom of heaven is unstoppable,

            it increases exponentially,

            and it fundamentally changes the nature of everything it encounters.

I think that if you had asked the Scribes and the Pharisees

            to come up with a parable of the Kingdom,

            using the imagery of leavened and unleavened bread,

they would have told you that Kingdom of Heaven

            is like un-leavened bread.

Bread infected by yeast might be fine for everyday eating,

            but it’s profane, it’s commonplace,

            it is, quite literally, not kosher.

And if you want to be holy, like at Passover,

            you leave the leaven out.

This is because adding leaven changes things,

            it alters them, it messes them up,

and the Scribes and the Pharisees would have been the first to say

            that the path to holiness is found in taking things back to basics,

                        leave out the leaven, discard the infection,

                        get back to purity and holiness.

I have a suspicion that they might have added,

            ‘Make Israel great again’.

So when Jesus comes along, saying the Kingdom of Heaven is like

            a woman who kneads leaven through the flour

            until there is enough risen bread to feed a village,

is a deeply subversive image.

Because Jesus is saying, to those who have ears to hear,

            that the Kingdom is found in things that are everyday,

            in things that are unholy, in things that are profane.

Whist the Scribes and the Pharisees got upset

            about Jesus taking a meal with tax collectors and sinners,

this parable is about the kingdom embracing everyone

            the unholy, the unworthy, and the unexpected.

The Scribes and the Pharisees would have said

            that Jesus was infecting the holy community

                        as leaven infected bread,

but Jesus said that their ideology of purity and exclusion

            was the real infection,

and that the mixing in of the outcast and the sinner

            was what made the kingdom come to life.

Jesus’ parable is about bringing the margins to the centre

            it’s about taking those whom the Scribes and Pharisees would cast aside

and instead mixing them in,

            transforming both them and the kingdom in the process.

For yeast to be successful it has to be kneaded into batch,

            it has to spread throughout to infect the bread,

            to transform it into something else.

And there is a real challenge here for all those of us

            who already find ourselves on the inside, so to speak, of the Kingdom of Heaven.

How can we avoid becoming like the Scribes and the Pharisees,

            mentally excluding those who we think will mess up our holiness and purity?

If I think back a couple of weeks,

            to the angry Christians standing beside the Pride Parade,

            telling people that they are going to go to Hell because of their sexuality,

I become ever more convinced that those of us who go and stand in front of them,

            offering messages of love and acceptance and welcome

            to people who have been excluded from church after church,

            are closer to the kingdom than some might think.

But we still need to guard ourselves.

This is why our monthly series this year on inclusion,

            building on our registration as an Inclusive Church congregation,

invites us to consider not just sexuality,

            but also gender, disability, poverty,

                        mental health, and ethnicity,

as markers of exclusion that we need to be alert to.

We must never become complacent

            in our assumption that we are already embodying the kingdom,

because that way lies the leaven of the Scribes and the Pharisees.

Rather, we need to remember that yeast is an agitator,

            it mixes things up,

and in Jesus’ parable it thrusts the holy and the profane together,

            because in that mixture is found the Kingdom of God.

And like the leaven, Jesus was an agitator.

            Nothing and no-one touched by Jesus remained the same,

his ministry was one of radical transformation,

            and of finding the holy in the most unexpected of places.

This parable asks us to look for the kingdom in surprising places,

            to seek the kingdom in the mundane,

            to search for the kingdom even where we would never expect to find it,

            even, dare I say it, in those places we would consider unholy.

And we see this time and again the ministry of Jesus,

            as he called people to follow him who you wouldn’t expect.

And he didn’t expect them to follow from the margins,

            he didn’t say, ‘you’re welcome this far, but no further’.

Rather, the unholy became his inner circle.

Churches can run the risk of becoming the kinds of places

            that know what is holy and good,

and then because we are open and inclusive,

            we are kind and allow people to come in and join us,

            even people who don’t fit our understanding of what a good Christian looks like.

But do we allow them to become a part of us, to integrate, to mix in,

            to leaven us, to transform us into something different?

The risk is that we might not be quite as obviously holy as we were before,

            but then we might find that we end up

            looking a lot more like the kingdom of God.

But the bread that needs the leaven is not just our church communities:

            What if we think of ourselves, individually, as the bread?

            What if we allow ourselves to become infected?

            What if we invite the virus of the Kingdom into our lives?

This is a tough challenge,

            because I don’t know about you,

but as a Christian of many years,

            I’ve heard a lot of sermons telling me to keep myself pure and holy;

            I’ve put a lot of effort into learning to resist sin,

            and in repenting when I fail,

Many of us will have been conditioned to expect

            that our lives, if we live them rightly, will be analogous

                        to the unleavened bread of the Passover,

            that with enough prayer and holiness,

                        we can be ‘pure and free from sin’s alloy’,

                        as the old Christmas carol puts it.[1]

But that way, of course, lies the path of the Scribes and the Pharisees,

            who invested so much in ensuring

                        that their lives were pure and holy

            in ways that the lives of others weren’t.

And here we just need to be honest about our sin,

            and we need to stop kidding ourselves

            that any of us have, or ever can,

                        attain purity or holiness by our own efforts.

Because once we have acknowledged this,

            we are ready to receive the infection of the Kingdom of Heaven,

            which takes all our aspirations, and all our dreams, and messes with them,

taking us into places we never thought we would go,

            and transforming us irrevocably in the process.

Now don’t hear me wrong here. I’m not saying that sin doesn’t matter.

            We all know that there are infections which are destructive.

We can become infected with bad teaching, or destructive theology,

            we can become infected with gossip and hatred,

and these things destroy individuals and communities.

But there are infections that change us for good,

            like the viruses used to deliver the cancer treatment.

We need to learn to recognise and resist the leaven of the Scribes and the Pharisees,

            who would cast out all those unworthy of the kingdom,

and to welcome the infective yeast of the outcast and the sinner,

            who infect us for good.

We need to look for in the kingdom is the good yeast

            that makes itself known in unexpected places.

And then we can be part of spreading the contagion.

            This is the glory of the Kingdom: it spreads in us, and through us.

In a moment we will be sharing communion,

            in memory of the Passover meal that Jesus ate with his disciples

            on the night before he was crucified.

And the bread we share will be leavened,

            and we will pass it one to another.

We do not keep the kingdom to ourselves,

            we pass it on, and we take it with us,

and in doing so we recognise that no one is more important than any other,

            and that at the table of Christ, everyone is welcome.