Leaven
Unless you part of the popular sourdough resurgence, know someone who is steeped in sourdough culture or attend an evangelical church regularly, you probably don’t hear or use the word “leaven” often. Leaven, to the bread maker, is the live yeast taken from your starter-another quirky sourdough word-and pumped full of extra flour and water to excite it and get it ready to flex its digestive abilities in order to ferment an entire loaf’s worth of dough. Basically, it’s the equivalent of a getting their hands taped up and throwing warm-up punches in the locker room, hyping up for a big fight.
Leaven, to the church goer, is often used in the Bible as a symbol of sin, malice or evil that creeps into, and grows in, our very being, or communities at large. It illustrates the dangers of ignorance and tolerance. The principle of leaven should remind us of that all mindsets or actions, no matter how small or seemingly harmless, will always grow, and grow and grow, and if you are not CAREFUL, if you are not AWAKE, then they can and will manifest into monsters that will consume you before you know they are even a danger. The leaven should remind us that whatever ideas we come across, be it from friend or foe, news media or internal conscience, professor or pastor, it should be held to the highest scrutiny before we hold it near and dear and embrace it with the core of our being; Before we allow it to partake of our lives, living off the fuel of our relationships, imagination, skill, pleasure, fears, commitments, agendas and health.
You can’t undo the actions of the leaven. You can’t make yeast reverse it’s process of converting sugars to gas. You can’t make a yeasted dough into an un-yeasted one. You must throw out the whole lump and start again.
Or the leaven can grow and consume all the fuel it has until exhaustion. It will fester and become sour. Repulsive. Moldy. It will separate from itself into layers of unusable waste. Fit only to be thrown out from toxicity.
But Jesus goes and says something astonishing.
“And again he said, "To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened."”
Luke 13:20-21 ESV
https://www.bible.com/59/luk.13.20-21.
(As an interesting side note and hyperlink, Sarah makes bread from 3 seahs (measures) of flour in Genesis 18:6 when she was preparing food for God.
1Then the LORD appeared to Abraham by the Oaksa of Mamre in the heat of the day, while he was sitting at the entrance of his tent. 2And Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he ran from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground. … 6So Abraham hurried into the tent and said to Sarah, “Quick! Prepare three seahs of fine flour,b knead it, and bake some bread.”(Genesis 18:1-2,6)
Sarah was the matriarch of the chosen people of God, the wife of promise. Is the passage in Luke asking us to recall Sarah as well? Most likely, Sarah was not using leaven, as she was making the Three Strangers (the Lord) something quickly to “refresh them” and as we all know leaven takes time. Sarah most likely served them unleavened bread (think naan, tortilla, flat bread). I’d be curious if there was a connection between these two passages. )
Anyway..
The point I wanted to show in Luke is that Jesus compares the kingdom of God/Heaven to leaven!
So, that means the kingdom won’t be complete overnight. It may be very slow growing.
And since He’s says “until it’s all leavened,” we know the kingdom won’t stop until it’s complete!
If given just a small amount, a toehold, a teaspoon...it will overcome; it will do the work. It will do it!
That gives me encouragement today, knowing that God’s good Kingdom is unrelenting and far reaching. It doesn’t shy away from the darkest places or most remote corners. It is effective and irreversible. I just need to allow His Way to infiltrate my life and let it rub off on others along the way.