Sermon 57 - Leaven
Matthew 13:33
He told them still another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough."
Hebrews 4:10
God rested from his work. Those who enjoy God’s rest also rest from their works.
It was communion Sunday. He said he was going to preach on communion, and on bread.
I am always disappointed when someone says that they are going to preach a sermon on communion. And particularly when they say that they are going to preach about bread. I always get excited when that is announced, because it is an opportunity to talk about yeast. And then they never do. I don't know whether this is because ministers are, generally speaking, men, and therefore don't bake. Or whether it's because most ministers went to theological school, and didn't study anything about biochemistry. Whatever the cause, talking about bread, and talking about communion, is an opportunity to talk about one of the most interesting things that God has given us, and then they never do.
We use yeast to make bread. Bread is pretty universal as a foodstuff. Almost (but not quite) all cultures have come up with some kind of bread. We say that Jesus is the Bread of Life, referring to how necessary he is for our life.
Yeast is used to make bread rise. Bread is, basically, a structure of membranes of the cooked bread dough, surrounding holes that mean that the bread is tastier, and also easier to eat. But there are ways to make bread without yeast. There is, for example, egg bread, where the holes are essentially made physically. You beat eggs into a froth, the froth has holes, and you mix the froth and the dry ingredients together. We can make soda bread, in the same way we make cakes, not using yeast. We use baking powder, a chemical which, when wet, and heated, releases carbon dioxide and making bubbles.
The rising, in both bread and cakes, is due to carbon dioxide. But the processes are quite different. Yeast is, when it's been reconstituted with water, and given a little sugar, and warmed up, living. Baking powder is just a chemical. If you keep it, sealed tightly enough, in the cupboard, it will never go bad. If some moisture gets in there, it will probably release the carbon dioxide, and so it's not going to be as effective, but it'll never go bad. It'll never grow mold. It can't. Mold can't live on it. There's nothing there for the mold to eat. Just a chemical, that's going to release carbon dioxide if it gets wet.
But yeast is different. Yeast, in the right situation, is living. Which gives a rise to the joke: what's the difference between Port Alberni and sourdough? Sourdough has live culture.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Yeast is a type of fungus. Fungi are pretty great. They give us tasty and nutritious things, like mushrooms, and they give us really bad things, like black mold. (Actually, I guess some of the mushrooms can be pretty bad as well. As Terry Pratchett said, all mushrooms are edible. *Some* mushrooms are only edible *once*.)
Actually, yeast isn't just one thing. It's not one species of organism. It's a whole family of organisms that do pretty much the same thing. As a matter of fact, there are quite a few different organisms that can be used as a leavening agent. The yeast that you buy in jars, or in envelopes, just happens to be a particularly convenient variety. It's a variety that eats, and produces carbon dioxide, at a particularly fast rate. And it's also a variety that you can dry out, and store, and conveniently transport, and sell in those little envelopes which will stay viable for a number of years even stored in your kitchen cupboard. But it's not the only type of yeast.
And in fact, when we were talking about communion, the wine is also a product of a very similar process. It's probably a different type of yeast. As a matter of fact, different types of yeast get used in making different types of beer. Different varieties of yeast will give beer a slightly different flavor. It's possibly similar in wine. A lot of different factors go into making beer, and a lot of different factors go into making wine. And, in fact, depending on the process that you use, sometimes you let the carbon dioxide build up in the wine, as it is fermenting, so that it carbonates the liquid. This is how you get sparkling wines, and champagne. So, yeast is involved in both of the elements in communion.
(Unless, that is, you are a Baptist, like I am. We, of course, don't use wine. An awful lot of Baptist Churches have, mostly in the past, frowned upon the use of alcohol in any form. So we tend to use grape juice. And, now, there is a tremendous theological issue among Baptist churches, since Welsh's Grape Juice is no longer available. What the heck are we going to do for communion now?)
But let's get back to the bread. The leaven, that is mentioned in the Bible, was not of the dry, packaged in little envelopes, type of yeast. Not that that type of yeast couldn't have been included in the mix: it probably was. But the leaven that is talked about, particularly in the Old Testament; the leaven that is used as an illustration of corruption; is probably an awful lot closer to what we now know as sourdough.
I worked with sourdough for many years. Recently, an awful lot of people have started experimenting with it. Lots of people started sourdough cultures, and experimented with it, during the pandemic. An awful lot of people did a lot of fancier cooking than they would normally be used to, because there was nothing else to do, and everybody had to stay home. So, they started experimenting with different types of cooking. And, a lot of people started experimenting with sourdough culture. You can start your own sourdough culture. You just mix up some flour and water, or flour and milk and water, and leave it exposed to the open air for a while, and, hoping that it doesn't actually grow visible mold on it, you then cover it up, and let it start fermenting, and bubbling, and increasing away. It is possible to do this. Spores of yeast drift around in the dust in the air. Number Two Daughter did it. The thing is, it takes a while. It takes a while for the population, of different types of yeast, to settle in on the optimal variety that will, number one, raise your bread, number two, not grow visible mold, and number three, raise your bread quickly when you need it, and grow enough in the few days between when you make loaves of bread.
Just as a side issue, it's probably easier to get sourdough culture from somebody else. At least, as long as you're not all locked up in your own houses, during a pandemic, and you can go and get sourdough culture from somebody else who's got some. But even at that, your culture is probably not the same as the sourdough culture even from the person that you got it from. It depends how often you make bread, it depends on whether you are making bread, or biscuits, or pancakes, and it depends what type of flour you use, and whether you add milk to your culture, and a few things like that. You are going to get used to using sourdough culture, but the culture, itself, is going to get used to you. The population of yeast in your culture is going to be a population that is best suited to the way you use the sourdough culture.
There is another aspect to bread. This aspect doesn't refer to unleavened bread, because it refers to the bread rising. But then, we've been talking about yeast, and leaven, so far.
When you are making bread, you mix it into a dough. And then you beat, and fold, and stretch, and pull, and fold over, and beat down the lump of dough. Bread making, if you have a sufficiently strong table to really work at it, is excellent therapy if you are angry. You can imagine that the lump of dough is the person, or the problem, that is distressing you. You can just beat the ... well you can beat, and roll over, and fold, and squish the dough as much as you like. You cannot over-beat bread dough. The more you beat it, the more the proteins in the flour mix together into chains. Those chains make the thin membranes of bread that cover the holes that the carbon dioxide generates, stronger and more able to withstand the rising and the baking process. If the bread dough membranes are not strong enough, then the membranes will break, and you will have bread which, instead of having lots of little holes in it, has a few very large holes in it. This has to do with physics and something called surface tension. And because it has to do with physics, almost none of you will be interested in it. But it's a fact, just like the fact that the more you beat the bread dough, the better the end result bread is.
Anyway, when you have sufficiently worked out your frustrations, or when you are just plain tired of beating up the bread dough, you cover it, and you let it rise. This period of rising is known as resting. And I recently saw a meme, traveling around the Internet, as memes do, and it said this about the term "resting" as used to describe bread when it is in this resting and rising phase. If you want light bread, you let it rest. For quite a long time. Generally at least a few, and sometimes several, hours. And so, this person said, when it looks like they are doing nothing, and that they are just resting, that they are, in fact, bread. And bread is better for a good, long rest.
And that is something that we should sometimes remember: we have to rest, to rise.
And, having pointed out all of this, I have to admit that none of this is relevant to the bread that was actually used at the Last Supper. Because the Last Supper was at Passover, and at Passover they ate unleavened bread.
The story of the Exodus tells us that the Israelites had to leave in a hurry, and their bread hadn't had time to rise. But there is another aspect to yeast, or sourdough, or leaven that is a theological point, and that has given rise to the modern tradition, as Passover, of having a game where the children search all over the house trying to find any yeast, and making sure that it is discarded or destroyed.
Yeast, as I said, is a fungus. It is a living organism. If you have sourdough culture you have to make sure you use it, and feed it, regularly, because it is alive. And, because yeast is a fungus, some varieties of it can cause infections and other problems.
Because of all of this, leaven, in the Old Testament, became a symbol of corruption. This is probably why Jesus warned against the leaven of the Pharisees. They had corrupted the intentions of God's Law.
Jesus also used this in a different illustration. And, like He so often did, He turned the idea upside down. He said that the Kingdom of Heaven was like yeast.
Just think about that for a second. Think about it the way a Jew in the first century would have heard it. What do you mean that this symbol of corruption is the Kingdom of Heaven? Are you saying that God is corrupt?
And Jesus goes on to show what leaven does. It's alive. If you put it, even a small amount, into a huge pile of flour, it is going to start eating that flour. And growing. Until the whole pile is just one huge pile of leaven.
The point being that God's message is not just a story printed in words on a page. It's alive! If you let it, it will take this dead pile of cereal dust, and turn it into a living force.
OK, you can go for lunch, now. Have some bread. And think about it.
Sermon - Garden series
Sermon 2 - Broad Beans
Sermon 3 - Blackberries
Sermon 33 - Transplanting
Sermon 57 - Leaven
Sermon 59 - Corn
Sermon 83 - The Years the Locusts Have Eaten
