Bread That Grows
Bread of Growth
Luke 13:18-21 (Matthew 13:33)
March 16, 2025 Second Sunday of Lent
Lent Series – Bread of Life
Rev. Cynthia Cochran-Carney, First Presbyterian Church, San Rafael, CA
18 Jesus asked, " What is reign of God like? To what can I compare it? 19 It's like a mustard seed that someone took and planted in a garden. It grew and developed into a tree and the birds in the sky nested in its branches."
20 Again he said, " To what can I compare the kindom of God ? 21 It's like yeast, which a woman took and mixed in a bushel of wheat flour until the yeast had worked its way through the whole." Common English Bible
My grandmother made the best cinnamon rolls on earth. We would visit Mom and Pop in North Dakota or see them in Spokane over the summer. And there would come a day, a holy day, when grandma mom made her cinnamon rolls – smell of the yeast dough rising, the kneading, the rolling, the butter, cinnamon and sugar, slicing, rising again and finally the baking. Heaven on earth.
Biblical context
Back in biblical times, of course yeast didn’t come in a foil packet. In Biblical times, people likely used a form of wild yeast, or leaven, by retaining a portion of dough from a previous batch to leaven new dough, similar to a sourdough starter. People in ancient times would have observed that flour and water, when left undisturbed, would naturally ferment due to wild yeasts present in the environment. You could then mix a little of the stuff into your batch of bread-dough and set it aside for an hour or so. That was long enough for the natural fermentation process to cause the dough to rise.
To people of biblical times, the action of yeast must have seemed like some kind of magic. They knew nothing of bacteria, nor the chemical process of fermentation. Bread must have seemed like some kind of gift from the heavens, an everyday miracle.
So, why does Jesus choose this metaphor of yeast for teaching about the kindom of God?
First of all, yeast is invisible. That little lump of dough from yesterday’s baking you throw into today’s batch doesn’t look any different from the fresh dough — but if you forget to fold it in, your bread will never rise. We know, today, you can examine yeast under a microscope. You can watch the bacteria doing the work of fermentation. There was just something different about that lump of starter dough, something you couldn’t see.
In this parable or image, both Matthew and Luke pass use a very interesting word, a word Jesus himself probably used. The word is enkrypto, “to hide away.” Our English Bible often translates it as “mixed in” — “yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour” — but the parable’s literally saying the woman hid the yeast in the flour. https://biblehub.com/greek/2928.htm
That leads us to a second characteristic of the kindom of God. Jesus is teaching us that God’s kindom is everywhere. It’s all mixed up in the world as we know it — though none of us can ever see it directly, with our eyes. We can only know it indirectly: by the effects the rule and love of God has on the world around us. In some miraculous way — as deeply mysterious as the leavening action of yeast — God’s love leavens the world.
The Parable of the Leaven God’s kindom is already folded into the stuff that makes up our world. The leavening process has already begun. Slowly, imperceptibly, God is reminding us of the original blessing and goodness, raising up this deeper truth. Every time you or I do something to make the world a better place, showing Christ’s love, listening, caring, forgiving, healing, we’re partnering with God in this leavening process.
The third thing I think we can say about the leaven that is God’s kindom is that it’s abundant. Here, I need to point you to a small detail in Jesus’ parable you might have missed.
Jesus says the woman takes her yeast. In Luke it is a bushel of wheat flour. Or a bushel. How much is it? The Greek word suggests more like over 60 lbs! Closer to Sixteen 5 lb bags of flour! And when you add in maybe forty-two cups of water to make it come together, you have about a hundred pounds of dough. That’s an enormous amount of flour, enough to bake enough bread to feed a large crowd of people.
That fact would have stood out, for Jesus’ listeners, in a way it doesn’t for us. When they heard him say the woman took her yeast and hid it away in three measures of flour, they would have thought to themselves, “That’s a lot of flour!” Biblical scholar Amy-Jill Levine says it’s kind of like her husband phoning home to her and saying, “Honey, I’m bringing home a few guests for dinner. Can you bake 60 dozen biscuits?”
So, too, God’s kindom is a reign and reality of abundance. It’s a kindom where no one is meant to go hungry. It’s a place of ample resources, and those resources are meant for sharing. The woman in Jesus’ parable isn’t just baking for her family. She hides her yeast away in enough bread-dough to feed a crowd at a wedding feast.
Yeast and Transformation
Transformation lies at the heart of these parables about God’s reign. Jesus offers a woman baking bread as an image of the reigning presence of God in the world. Hidden and unseen within the bread lies the source of its inevitable transformation. Flour and water changed.
If it is not evident at first, the change is nevertheless coming. The parable intimates that the world is being re-made, God’s reign at work, even when it doesn’t appear to be so. It is up to the church today to bear witness to that work of God, and itself to embody the transformation in its own life and practices.
I had a close encounter with bread dough. Jeffrey and I were serving a church in Wausau WI. Every year the youth group did a fundraiser to sell fresh cinnamon rolls in the spring. Orders were taken and then company delivered frozen dough ready to bake. The boxes of frozen rolls would be distributed to people after worship on Sunday. So when truck arrived, Bernadette one of the staff, received it and told the delivery people to go down to the kitchen and put the boxes in the large freezer. Except when they unloaded the cinnamon rolls they mistakenly put them in the fridge instead of the freezer. A few hours went by and when Dave custodian went down the kitchen, he let out a yell and we all came running. All 200 boxes of cinnamon roll dough had started to thaw thawed and started rising and pushing doors of the fridges open. Oh my gosh. We had to start baking them or we would lose the whole batch.
The kindom of God is like bread dough in a not too cold refrigerator, no matter how hard you try to contain it, it just spills out and invades the lives of all those who encounter it.
Kindom of God
Remember what Jesus says about the kindom. It’s all upside down:
· What is greatness in the kingdom of heaven? To become like a small, trusting child. (Matt. 18:4)
· Who is first in the kingdom of heaven? The last. (Matt. 19:30)
· Who receives the blessings of the kingdom of heaven? The poor in spirit, the meek, the peacemakers, and those thirsty for justice. (Matt. 5:3-9)
In God’s kingdom, there is no room for any kind of arrogance, self-promotion, or violence, because it comes from the Divine, source of Love. And that kindom is not located on a distant cloud out there. It is here. In us. It is the very quality of life for which Jesus teaches. This is what grows. This is what rises. Not the accomplishment or the arrogance of humanity, but the rule of God over all life. Love looks like Divine Love and Mystery, justice, shalom, grace, abundance for all.
Here is that truth, as far as I know it: we are part of something so much greater than we can understand. Call it whatever you can, even though none of our words will ever contain it completely.
Jesus calls it the “kingdom of heaven.” It comes in the assurance that nothing will ever separate us from the love of God. Nothing at all. God’s love is already planted like a little bit of yeast in a great big lump of dough. Just wait – everything will rise. the work of the leaven, God is at work even though we might fail to see it or perceive it.
For those who baked bread every day during the time of the Roman Empire, I wonder if hearing the kin(g)dom of God described with yeast—such a seemingly small thing—is uplifting. For once in their lives, a kin(g)dom is not described with might and power; instead, the kin(g)dom of God is described with the mundane, small, ubiquitous, and life-giving. This small yeast illustrates how the church began with twelve disciples and other followers who grew, or leavened, the church. Their love for God and others grew the church, and we are enjoying the sustaining bread of life they have baked for us
Maybe we are called to be the yeast, the leaven and participate in this rising and multiplying and offering the bread of life. Together the parables, the metaphors, invite us to participate in the Beloved Community.
Piece by Maren Tirabassi
Come to me bird-watching God, you will find the branches for nesting. A mustard seed of faith grows to a place of many wings.
Come to me pearl-hunting God, dive my deep depths, open my shell. Find the place of past intrusion where translucent beauty forms layers around sharp pain.
Come to me bread-baking God, give yeast for my rising, knead the warm dough. Bake the sweet smell that always sings the end of hunger.
Come to me parable-telling God, metaphor-lavish with images to say you love me, until your word-palette paints new meaning into my life.
From “Prayer of the Heart” by Maren C. Tirabassi & Joan Jordan Grant. An Improbable Gift of Blessing: Prayers and Affirmations to Nurture the Spirit (Cleveland:
United Church Press, 1998).
Resources
Materials from the Lenten 2025 packet by Illustrated Ministry - Bread Of Life
https://www.illustratedministry.com/breadoflife
Rev. Bill Carter, “Catholic,” 7.30.2017 Bill Carter Sermons
https://billcartersermons.blogspot.com/2017/07/catholic.html