sermon: parable of the Yeast -

“Embracing God’s Story in our Lives”

Q: What did the yeast say to the bag of flour?

A: Come on we Knead to be serious! 

Q: Why did Mama Flour and Papa Yeast tell Baby Bread to get a job?

A: He was just loafing around! 
            I can’t even remember the last time, I personally, used yeast.  Once, many years ago, I did try and make my own bread.  But, after all the work, it didn’t really turn out that great so I didn’t try again.  I do have memories of my mother making bread.  Of setting the dough aside, letting it rise, being fascinated by how it grew in the bowl, and then my mother kneading it, setting it aside, and letting it rise again.  I learned, through the power of observation, that there was something special about yeast.  And I was amazed, that such a small amount of it, could be so powerful.  I still am not sure what yeast is.  It is some sort of microorganism, that is actually alive, so when it is in the right conditions, grows and produces carbon dioxide.  The carbon dioxide it is what causes the bubbles which makes the dough rise.  Archeologists believe people have been using yeast to bake bread for over 4,000 years. 

            As I learned a little more about yeast, it struck me that yeast – breathes.  Well, it doesn’t have lungs so it doesn’t really breathe, but it does convert sugar into carbon dioxide.  In a sense, it does breathe.  Throughout our scriptures, breath is so important.  In the creation story, God breathes into Adam and gives him life.  In one of the resurrection stories, Jesus breathes upon his followers as he offers them peace and sends them out into the world.  Without breath, there is no life.  We even have a method of praying called a breath prayer. 

            Does Jesus know this as he uses yeast as a metaphor for rapid growth?  My guess is that he does.  The Kingdom of heaven is like yeast – that a woman took and mixed with her flour until it was all leavened.  The Kingdom of heaven – God’s reign, God’s peace, God’s presence in the world, just requires a small pinch of an active ingredient that is willing to come alive and breathe, that is willing to come alive and convert the environment around it into something it can use, creating growth.  Is it no accident that Jesus, in this simple parable, speaks of something that can hardly be seen and uses it to illustrate growth? 

            The Kingdom of heaven, this is what is important to Jesus.  He wants his followers, he wants those who will listen to connect to this.  The Kingdom of Heaven.  And then he explains that in something small, growth can happen.  But then, in just a few chapters later, we get another example of yeast:  The yeast of the Pharisees.  Rapid growth can happen in both the positive and the negative.  We have to be careful, we have to use caution, we have to live in this world with both the good and the bad and discern where it is that God is at work and where it is that other powers are at play.    

            And that brings me to the following exercise that we are going to examine this morning.  Last month, I asked you all, what makes you thirst?  If Jesus says to us, I am the living water, come to me and you will not thirst, why is it, that we thirst?  We do, we thirst about so much.  Today, in your bulletin is an insert with a list of where, we, in this particular congregation, are thirsting.  We thirst, we desire, we care deeply about – that is what these expressions are about.  We care for this world, we care for the hurts around us, we care about our community right here in this place.  So, in our care and compassion, when we see things in a way that are not the way in which they should be – we thirst.  As yeast, when we thirst, we are encounter what Jesus calls the yeast of the Pharisees.  We desire the good but we come across the powers that seem to be in contrast to God’s Kingdom, God’s reign. 

            On one side of the insert are the various ways in which you, gathered here in this place, have named as areas in which you thirst.  On the other side is something I have called God’s story.  The Kingdom of heaven is like yeast – that a woman added to the flour until the entire batch was leavened.  God desires us to be a part of God’s story.  As a people of faith, we are called to live into God’s story, we are called to embrace it as our story.   Our call to worship this morning comes from the creation story, where God created the world and called it good and blesses it.  That is our story.  We believe God created this world, and we believe that this world is good.  We also believe that in human free will, not all people choose to participate in God’s story.  And so we live in this tension, we live in this world view that the world God desires is not always the world we encounter.  And that is the list we have before us of where we thirst. 

            The exercise I want us to explore is this:  if we truly want to be the yeast, if we are living into full participation of God’s story then we name and proclaim that God’s story is our story.  We can be the yeast of love, peace, forgiveness, and that we are willing to take God’s story out into the world so the world can be leavened.  All of those places where we thirst, those are places for us to be engaged, to be embedded, to be active participants.  For example:  if we thirst because there are people who are hungry and homeless – learn their story, build a relationship with the other, seek ways to be a resource for those immediate needs.  Being the yeast is messy.  It means losing oneself into the whole in order to produce results.  Once the yeast is mixed into the dough, you can’t pull it back out.  It is in there.  If you thirst for peace in our world, there are so many groups working on ways to promote peace, such as the Rockaway interfaith clergy group that is creating a group called Interfaith Neighborhoods working on building peace in our own communities.  Of course we want war to end, but maybe we need to focus on something right here in our own community.  If we cannot be at peace, how can we expect the greater world to be at peace. 

            And that is the next part of the exercise.  There are two stories – God’s story and the Story of the World.  There is so much anxiety and fear in our world today and we are called to go out and bring God’s story into the mess.  A huge problem exists when we allow the story of the world to come into God’s story.  And that is where some of you named the conflict within our own church family.  We have allowed the story of the world, the yeast of the Pharisees to come into God’s story and we need to address this.  We need to pray about it.  We need to be adult about it.  We need to live into forgiveness and mercy and grace and most of all love.  We need to say, no more, yesterday is gone we cannot change it and from this point on, we will only allow God’s story to be the story we live in this place.  We will be more patient with each other and we will set aside our own fears and anxieties and stress and allow God to guide us as we focus on our role of being God’s yeast. 

            Jesus started small.  He focused his attention on twelve disciples.  He even turned some people away.  If people’s hearts were not ready to be a part of God’s story, he let them go.  Enough people understood what it meant to be yeast that the church grew, enough people desired to encounter the Kingdom of heaven that the Holy Spirit led more and more out into the world and lives were changed and transformed.  We thirst because there is work to be done – so go out into the world and let go of yourself and embrace God’s story as your story as you live your life.  And just like the yeast, you will, by your very nature, convert the environment around you into the Kingdom of heaven.