Starter (Ninth Sunday after Pentecost)
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I love bread! I am one of those people who, when a waiter asks if I’d like more bread, I reply that I’ll keep eating it as long as you keep bringing it!
But during Covid, it was hard to find good bread. And like most people, I was working a lot from home, and it occurred to me that if I could find some good bread flour, I could make sourdough bread. I had done this before, but not in a long time.
And so I commenced to figure out how to make “starter.” The “starter” is basically just flour and water that begins to ferment from the natural yeast that floats around in the air. And it takes a little bit of time to get the starter going. But once you’ve got “starter”, you can keep it going and add it to each batch of bread you’d like to bake.
In doing this, I learned that this is actually an ancient technique for making bread. From already risen dough, the baker would keep out a small amount and use it as leaven to start the next loaf. And this is probably what Jesus is referring to when he uses the image of the kingdom of heaven as “yeast” that a woman took and mixed in to 3 measures of flour. It’s unlikely she had a packet of dry yeast like we can buy today in the grocery store. Instead, like my sourdough starter, she had a small amount of already leavened dough to use as yeast, which she mixed in with new flour and water.
Since Covid, I’ve kept my starter going, and I’ve been able to use it to make loaves, and rolls and even pizza crust. But I’ve learned some things about using this kind of “yeast” to make bread. For example, for the “yeast” to work:
- It needs something to work with – this seems obvious, but starter doesn’t produce bread by itself, it has to have enough flour and water to work with; and indeed, if I let the starter go too long without “feeding” it new flour, the starter itself starts to go dormant; it needs to be fed and watered.
- It needs the right conditions – the starter is relatively dormant if it stays in the fridge. For the loaf to rise, I need to make sure that I’ve got in not only mixed properly, but in a warm and sometimes dark enough location for it to do its thing…
- It takes time – often, this is what gets in my way. I can’t decide at 5 pm that I’m going to make bread for dinner. I have to pull the starter out of the fridge, let it warm up, sometimes feed it for a day, and then let the starter work on the flour, and it’s often best if I let it rise overnight…
And all of this stuff about knowing how to make bread with the starter yeast has given me some insight into why Jesus says in this parable that the kingdom of heaven is like sourdough starter!
The idea is that God’s kingdom is the experience of God’s presence and love and inspiration in our lives. And like the starter, we can’t be God. Only God can give us these things.
But for God’s presence and love and inspiration to actually DO something in our lives, it still requires many of the same things that sourdough starter needs. And sometimes, we’re tempted to skip over that part.
But in fact, for God’s presence and power to work in our lives, the growth requires:
- Something to work with – and that’s us! But that also means making ourselves really available to God. And sometimes, being “really available” to God means being open to listening in ways that allow us to hear things that might initially make us uncomfortable; Being “really available” to God means being willing to do things that aren’t always enjoyable. And being “really available” to God means being willing to get “kneaded” out of our comfortable routines…
- The right conditions – it sounds simple to say that for bread dough to rise, it need to be in the right place to rise. But that’s part of the point of the parable. For God’s presence to grow and make a difference in us, we sometimes have to be willing to be in a different place than we’re at. That “place” may be physical, and it’s why we sometimes need to be in a special setting like a church (not unlike why we sometimes need a gym to get in shape.) That “place” may be spiritual or emotional – which we may find simply by switching off our phones or not dwelling so much on all the chaos that swirls around us. And that “place” may be communal – sometimes I need to be by myself – but sometimes I need to be with others – in order to grow and “rise” in the way God intends…
- Time – If I want the dough to be ready for bread, there is no substitute for time. I need to give dough time. And we need to give ourselves time. Often, people give up on God because they tried listening for a bit, but nothing seemed to happen, so they moved on. And this is a constant temptation for all of us. Growth requires time. And God promises to be with us for the long haul, so it’s important not to give up…
But the point of all this talk about yeast and flour is the bread. In the Bible, bread is freuqently a symbol of life. And that means that Jesus is reminding us in this parable that God is always working to make us into the kind of “bread” that can be the sign and experience of life to others in our world.
Like the yeast that initially forms the starter dough, Jesus promises us that the kingdom of heaven is all around us and waiting to work within us. But for the starter to work – and for us to be the kind of bread God wants us to be in the lives of others – we need to invest ourselves in the process.
And that means that each day, Jesus is calling us to be people who make ourselves really available for God to work in our lives. Jesus is calling us each day to be people who seek to put ourselves in places and situations where we can listen and grow. And maybe most of all, Jesus is calling us to be people who take the time – and who make the time – for the kingdom of heaven to grow in our lives.
Amen.