“God Baking Bread!”
Matthew 13:33 – August 6, 2023
Has anyone here baked bread, from scratch? I have, although it’s been a number of years since I baked white bread and wheat bread. Now, I more often bake sweet breads – banana, zucchini, apple, and other types. Homemade bread is such good bread!
In our short Scripture passage today, we have our Lord Jesus, telling another one of His parables. This one is in chapter 13, which has a number of parables or short stories, all about the kingdom of God. These metaphors and word-pictures are meant to help Jesus’s listeners get a little bit better understanding of this huge concept Jesus taught about!
The topics Jesus used for His parables are down to earth, from real life. For example, Jesus talks about a farmer and his field, and the weeds that grow. Typical of so many in that time, and relatable to so many of His listeners! Remember, we are looking at Bible readings that help us Re-Image God, in a nurturing, feminine way. The parable we highlight today features a woman. Yes, and something typically known as women’s work, in the home.
An unusual topic for a Rabbi to talk about! I am sure there were (and are) men who traditionally and habitually bake bread, but in Palestine as in many other rural-based cultures, but women often did many of the tasks involved with housework and home-making. Including the regular baking of bread. And, in a typical Palestinian house, a lot of bread needed to be baked each week. In the first century of the Common Era, you couldn’t run out to the local grocery store and get a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs and a gallon of milk, after all.
This parable of the yeast is one where our Lord Jesus focuses on work done by a woman. Sometimes, when the Bible mentions yeast in connection with spiritual things, yeast has a negative connotation. Not here! Jesus did something unexpected! He turned the tables on a typical understanding of yeast, or leaven. This parable is unusual and unexpected! In a matter-of-fact way, Jesus lifts up this work of baking, and the work of women, too. And without specifically naming it, Jesus compares God’s work to women’s work.
One of my favorite commentators is the Rev. Janet Hunt, a Lutheran pastor in De Kalb, a couple of dozen miles to the west of us, near Northern Illinois University. She loves to bake bread, and talks about her baking at length in her article about this particular parable. Pastor Janet’s mother used to bake bread, too. According to Pastor Janet, she was told “that our mother’s mother also baked as her mother did before her in a time and place where doing so was not an occasional practice or a hobby as it is with me, but was a necessary part of one’s weekly tasks, for bread was an everyday staple and it was not yet sold in stores.” [1]
Even today, in some rural areas and small towns, baking bread at home is much more common than it is in urban areas. The woman in this parable took a lot of flour – over a bushel of flour! She probably ground that flour with a hand-cranked little mill, too. And then, baked some bread. Jesus said that she mixed the yeast into the flour until it had leavened the whole big batch of flour! In case you are not familiar with the process of leavening, the introduction of the yeast causes a transformation of the dough.
Before the adding of the yeast, before its mixing and incorporating into the whole batch of dough, what do we have? A big pile of flour, and some water to moisten it. Perhaps a bit of sweetener like honey, perhaps not. But, imagine the working and mixing of the flour, water and yeast! As this unnamed woman mixes and kneads the dough, the yeast gets incorporated throughout the whole. As the dough rises, the yeast does its work unseen, quietly.
The woman of Jesus’ parable “would not have had a finely tuned gas or electric oven in which to bake her bread. It would likely have been done in a clay oven over hot coals. And while she certainly could have turned her attention to other things while the bread rose or the coals came to the right temperature, baking the bread would have required her to stay nearby all day long so as to be ready for the next step. For in fact, it is possible to let bread rise too long, making the final product less appealing. And coals need to be at a certain temperature to make the baking optimal.” [2]
I hope I am making the baking of bread sound like a challenging activity, because it was, and is! Let us take a step back, and consider again this short parable of Jesus. He compares the kingdom of heaven to yeast. Could it be that our Lord is saying that “Kingdom work” takes time, energy and attention, just as the work of yeast and baking takes time, energy and attention? That it sometimes requires patience as we wait for ‘yeast’ to rise?
Time after time, I have heard stories and read accounts of the slow or hidden or pain-staking work of the kingdom of heaven finally showing fruitfulness. Finally, good dough baking and bringing forth good, homemade bread, as we recognize the kingdom of heaven at work in our lives or in the lives of those near and dear to us! We can take common things, everyday materials, and have them transformed by God.
God loves to take things as simple as bottles of water given out for free at a farmer’s market, or boxes of cereal or feminine hygiene products brought to a local food pantry to be a part of God’s kingdom. Because, they are! Something as simple and as straight-forward as common, everyday activities or items can be used and transformed into God’s purposes – God’s work – God’s kingdom.
Remembering this parable of the yeast, we can see how God works quietly, confidently, sometimes over a long time. Today, we come before God to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, that meal of common things that our Lord Jesus transformed into a sacrament. We come to meet God in a special way at God’s table, doing what Jesus commanded us to do. As often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we celebrate our Lord until He comes again in glory.
Doing Kingdom work as Jesus told us to do from this parable, we can bring glory to our God in common ways, using everyday things. We don’t have to be extraordinary ministers or missionaries, or God’s adventurers. As Jesus told us? We can use ordinary things, everyday items, common ways. And, this will indeed bring glory to God. Let us take these words to heart, and go and do them. Amen, alleluia!
(Suggestion: visit me at my other blogs: matterofprayer: A Year of Everyday Prayers. #PursuePEACE – and A Year of Being Kind . Thanks!
[1] https://dancingwiththeword.com/a-one-sentence-parable-which-opens-up-the-world/
[2] Ibid.
Pastor, Preacher, Pray-er 