Third in a series on the parables in Luke

The Challenge of the Leaven
Texts: Exodus 12:14-15,18-20; Luke 13:10-21

I've been preaching a series of sermons on the parables in Luke, and want to focus today on one of the shortest parables - the parable of the leaven. But we have read from verse 10 in Luke 13 to remind ourselves that Jesus didn't live by other people's rules. A person always came before a principle, especially a needy person. And in this case, he didn't even wait to be asked. He saw a woman bowed down by illness, and healed her. And for that he was criticised - not that he healed, but that he did so on a Sabbath. After all, there were six days of the week when he could heal whoever he liked and no-one would complain. But the law said healing was work, and the Sabbath was for rest, not work. I suppose we could understand the objection - she'd been afflicted for 18 years, what would one more day matter? But it did matter to Jesus, it mattered that a person would be seen as someone worthy of God's concern - a daughter of Abraham no less, not just a woman given even less consideration than an animal. So Jesus' actions were a challenge to those watching him, and so were his words.

There is a radical school of contemporary critical New Testament scholarship known as "The Jesus Seminar". One of the aims of this group is to determine which of the many words recorded as Jesus words might genuinely have been spoken by him in his lifetime. While the gospels preserve the teachings of Jesus, it has long been recognised that his words were often reshaped in the light of the experience of the early church. In general the parables have a good standing amongst the Jesus Seminar, but some have obviously been added to - such as the parable of the sower and its explanation. But the two single verse parables found in Luke 13 (and in a very similar form in Matthew) are thought to be very close to the probable words of Jesus. This isn't only because they are brief but mainly because they are such surprising and perhaps even shocking images to use.

We are a bit too familiar with lots of the biblical images, and the startling nature of such metaphors are easily lost. But as I've mentioned before, the power of the parables' message is in its twist, in the part of the story that makes you sit up and take notice. People from all walks of life listened to Jesus' teaching, and saw the things he did. These verses are set in the midst of what is sometimes called the Travel Narrative - the journey Jesus took to Jerusalem where we are told three times in Luke "he set his face to Jerusalem." And as he went he visited different towns and villages, healing and teaching and sitting down to meals with others. But we also know that he attracted the attention of the religious leaders, the scribes and the Pharisees, so whatever he taught was noticed by them too. All of his listeners would have been startled to hear him say "the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed a man took. The Kingdom of God is like leaven a woman took."

Did you realise Luke champions the feminist cause? Quite often in his gospel we notice that men and women are paired - Elizabeth and Zechariah, Anna and Simeon at the beginning of the gospel, other paired parables such as the widow and the judge followed by the pharisee and the tax collector, and the appearances of the Risen Jesus to both women and men at the end of the gospel. And again here men and women a paired: a farmer and a housewife.

Jesus' parables weren't only egalitarian in their even-genderedness, they were often about ordinary people's experience. Because of that they could be understood by everyone Jesus came in contact with. He didn't give lectures, he told stories. He didn't write treatises, he painted pictures. Even his sermons were short, easily remembered sayings. So an ordinary housewife listening to Jesus would have been drawn into the image of the Kingdom of God being like a woman making bread but that would have surprised her too. "That's like me! That's what I do every day!" Jesus didn't ask his listeners to withdraw from their everyday world to understand the truths of faith. For Jesus, God was in the common things of life. Even though the some branches of the church have made our ceremonies quite elaborate at times, the central symbols are very ordinary. Bread, wine, water. The things of everyday life. So the woman listening would be drawn in. "The Kingdom of God has something to do with me, a woman, a wife, a mother. It's not just for the scribes, the educated, the priests."

Do you remember that scene in Fiddler on the Roof when Tevye is lamenting his poor state in life. "If I were a rich man, I'd have all the time I liked to sit in the synagogue and pray. to study the learned books both day and night." But Tevye, the ordinary farmer, the simple believer, in my mind does have a powerful relationship with God, a relationship that is lively and life-giving in the midst of the ordinary things of life.

So the woman is drawn into the story, but must have been surprised by it. The images are ordinary but the language is strange. "The Kingdom of God is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour". Now three measures of flour was about 100 kilos - enough for a whole truckload of bread and certainly too much to fit in one woman's ordinary tiny clay oven. It was a ludicrous image, laughable. But it would make her think. Jesus might have been using everyday images but he was speaking of something much bigger. Even the term "leaven" instead of "yeast" is significant. For us yeast is predictable, it comes in little sachets and as long as we don't make the water too hot when we mix it in the dough generally rises when expected. But the leaven spoken of in this parable is something quite different - it was a piece of dough kept in a dark place until it went mouldy so that the bacteria would work to leaven the next batch of flour. And then there is the description of hiding the leaven in the flour - why use that word "hid" instead of "mixed" - a word we might expect, and the translators of our bible clearly assumed? It sounds somewhat surreptitious. But maybe there is an ordinary explanation behind it. I received a letter recently from a friend who has lived in Afghanistan, and who was reflecting on the use of leaven by Afghani women. This is what she said:

In the village where I lived women baked every day, or if their family was small, every second day, keeping a small portion of dough which they carefully "hid" until they next made dough and left it to rise. They hid the lump of dough from children, from goats and chickens and from ants and mice. They could not use the same hiding place constantly because it would eventually be found, if not by children then by mice. And if the lump was spoiled, they'd need to borrow some from a neighbour to make the next batch of bread. In summer, the dough also required protection from desiccation and overheating which would kill its organisms. In winter it needed to be kept warm enough for the organisms to multiply. Some women would secrete the lump somewhere on their own bodies to incubate in the colder months. And sometimes, a batch of bread would taste terrible, bitter or sour, and the woman would declare that her saved lump must have gone sour. In this case the lump she had hidden would be thrown out and she'd be given a new lump by a neighbour whose bread was still sweet. And with the lump would inevitably be a lecture about hiding it somewhere appropriate! (Letter from Deborah Storie, 27.4.04)

So the hiding was something to do with preserving, enabling the Kingdom to come even though it will be in surprising ways. When leaven is mixed with the dough, it can't be seen any longer. But its effect can be seen over time if it is sweet, if it has been well preserved, if it has been cared for. This is an encouraging word for an ordinary woman. She can't necessarily see the Kingdom of God at work in the world around her. Wars threaten, money is tight, the kids can be unbearable at times. Actually I read during the week that motherhood is full of frustrations and challenges, but eventually they move out. Where is the kingdom of God? But just as when she mixes leaven into dough and it disappears, the leaven nonetheless permeates the whole batch. It is a process that she must trust in until the effect is seen. The work of hiding and kneading and waiting goes on until all is leavened.

That is something perhaps of what that ordinary housewife heard.

But what of the scribes and the ruler of the synagogue? What of the adversaries of Jesus, ready and waiting to hear something that they could use against him? what would they have heard in this parable of the Kingdom of God?

Their knowledge of leaven probably wasn't the hands on experience of the ordinary housewife, but they knew the tradition of leaven in the writings, one of these traditions was read to us earlier. For them, leaven was impure, unholy, negative. It was a process of corruption that didn't sit easily with the understanding of holiness. Every last trace of leaven had to be removed from the house to prepare for the ancient feasts of Israel. Leaven was a word of disrepute. Even Jesus had used the term negatively - at the beginning of the previous chapter in Luke Jesus says to his followers, "beware the leaven of the Pharisees." In other New Testament writings leaven isn't a positive image either - several times the proverb is used "a little leaven leavens the whole lump" in reference to a negative influence in the church, in the same way as we might say "one rotten apple spoils the whole barrel". So when Jesus chose to speak of the Kingdom of God in terms of leaven he was being at the very least provocative.

Not only that, the word for three measures of flour in the parable is ephah - a biblical word with important connotations. An ephah of flour in the Old Testament is associated with the sacred - it was used for offerings in the temple or made into bread to be served to divine messengers. This disreputable leaven was to invade the sacred measure of flour, and the whole thing was connected to the Kingdom of God. Was Jesus message to the defenders of the law that the Kingdom of God is good news not for those who have all the answers, but for the ones on the edge? The tax collectors, prostitutes and sinners who were outcasts from the synagogue but welcome at Jesus' table? The sick and infirm and less than whole who were an embarrassment on the Sabbath but the focus of Jesus compassion? The children and women and peasants whose lives were considered second class citizens and unimportant in the annals of history but who were the object of Jesus' storytelling?

What is the message of the parable then? Let me quote from an article David wrote where he reflected on this parable along with some other gospel stories. He said:

The reader is left with an image of a massive loaf, thoroughly infused with leaven. This points to the dynamics of small becoming large, hidden becoming open, subversive becoming transformative. All of these dynamics evoke the language of hope. It is probably fair to say that this language appeals most to those who struggle to believe, those who are short on hope, those who sense that forces of the world threaten to overwhelm them. (David Hunter, "Parables, Miracle Stories and My Journey Towards Healing" in St Mark's Review 2004(1) 39-46)

Jesus said to his critics more than once: "truly I tell you, the tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the Kingdom of God ahead of you."

The parable of the leaven ought to trouble us, as it did them. I suspect our vision of the kingdom of God is in fairly glowing terms, something like the description that we heard from Revelation in last week's readings - a myriad of snowy white saints offering incense and well harmonised worship around the golden throne of the Lamb. The saints are righteous people, true believers, who have lived their lives committed to the church and its message. But according to the gospels, when Jesus was on earth he made a point of opening the kingdom of God to the impure and downtrodden. In fact the early church was probably made up mostly of the underclass, and even the ones closest to Jesus in his lifetime had failed miserably in their faith when it really counted. As the NT scholar Jeremias has said: "How differently the Messianic Age announced by Jesus appeared than was commonly expected. Could this wretched band, comprising so many disreputable characters, be the wedding guests of God's redeemed community?" But Jesus had hidden his good news into the world and then kept working until all was leavened. After all, an ephah of flour was enough for a huge banquet! As we've noticed before, Jesus' table fellowship was a parable of the Kingdom of God in action on earth, as well as a foretaste of the Kingdom to come. If we are the ones gathered at the table, we may need to recognise our place as one of the wretched band, one of the disreputable characters, but we will also be surprised at the generosity of our host. God's table is large enough to hold all humanity. The parables of Jesus offer the language of hope to all peoples at all times. May we be an echo of that language.

Jeanette Mathews
09/05/04