Sermon: Beware the Yeast
Texts: Exodus 12:14-20, 1 Corinthians 5:6-8, Mark 8:14-21
Date: November 15, 2009
Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church
“Beware” is not a word I usually associate with Jesus. To be honest, the soundtrack of my daughters’ childhood links that word in my mind to Winnie-the-Pooh’s nightmare about heffalumps and woozles in the Disney film version of his story. “Beware! Beware! Be a very wary bear!”
Jesus doesn’t advise his followers to beware of much of anything. The rarity of such a word on his lips makes us sit up and take notice. “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.” He might as well have been issuing a warning about heffalumps and woozles for all the sense that makes. What exactly is the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod of which disciples are to beware?
And what’s the deal with yeast, anyway? I always thought yeast was a good thing. I’d choose a nice soft and chewy piece of leavened bread over a cracker any day. Why does the Old Testament insist that on occasion one is supposed to clear out all the leaven from the house and eat nothing but unleavened bread?
I’ve done a little investigation on these questions. The text we heard from Exodus is from the ancient instructions on how the Israelites are to commemorate the Passover. The night they were preparing to flee from Egypt, they were instructed by Moses to make unleavened bread. They had to get ready to go in a hurry, and they didn’t have time to sit around and wait for bread to rise. So in the future when they re-tell the story and re-enact it in ritual, they should keep the feast by using unleavened bread. That’s one layer of meaning.
There’s another layer of meaning as well. Long ago, the Hebrews regarded yeast as ritually unclean. That’s because they believed it did its work by decaying and corrupting the substance into which it was stirred. Fermentation was equated with corruption. You could bring a bread offering to the temple to show your gratitude for the harvest, but the ancient law prohibited bringing leavened bread—it all had to be unleavened if you wanted to bring it into the temple.
This notion that fermentation equals corruption probably grew out of both crude science and vivid imagination. It is true that live cultures like sourdough or a live yoghurt culture can become contaminated from the various bacteria and fungi that are circulating in the atmosphere. It would have been prudent to clear out leavening agents altogether from time to time and start fresh. This annual practice of getting all the leaven out of your house that was associated with the seven day celebration of Passover likely had some roots in safe food practices as well as ritual memory.
Because human beings are symbol-making creatures, yeast entered into the religious imagination as well as the kitchen. Interpreters of the faith began thinking of yeast as a metaphor as well as an ingredient. Therefore we wind up with a poetic admonition like Paul’s: “Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, as you really are unleavened.” He was harkening back to this old tradition of clearing out that which may have been corrupt and starting fresh. He likens boasting, malice, and evil to the yeast of the old way of life, before Christ. It doesn’t take much of any of those old behaviors and attitudes to corrupt a person’s soul; even a little bit of boasting was likely to spread through the whole personality. Paul wants the believers to throw all that out and be new creatures in Christ Jesus. He wants them to be unleavened, uncorrupted by various characteristics of their old existence.
Returning to Jesus’ encounter with the disciples, let’s ponder what the yeast of the Pharisees and Herod might be. We can guess that it is a corrupting force, whatever it is. We can guess that it might seem small in itself but that it threatens to spread throughout the whole batch, whether it’s a community or an individual soul that constitutes the “dough.” So what is the yeast of which disciples are warned to beware?
I wish there was a simple answer. But there does not appear to be. At one point in the gospels Jesus specifically names hypocrisy as the yeast of the Pharisees. But it’s not clear that’s what he’s talking about here. Since they have recently had an encounter with the Pharisees in which they were demanding a sign, proof that Jesus was the Messiah, the yeast could be construed as their hard-hearted skepticism. It could be their failure to repent and have faith. It could be their willful misunderstanding of Jesus and his mission. It could have been their fixation on legalism. The yeast metaphor is ambiguous in this setting as to its exact meaning.
In a way, that is very liberating to the religious imagination. The reader is left to muse on what the yeast might be. What feature of the Pharisees and the governor’s life or teaching would have been considered corrupt and corrupting? What infectious idea was Jesus concerned might be tainting the disciples’ outlook?
We should pay attention to what set off Jesus’ admonition to beware the yeast in this story. The crew is setting off in the boat. And they have forgotten to bring any bread. Actually, they have one loaf with them in the boat. I suspect someone must have been fussing about it, this discovery that it appears as though they don’t have enough bread for everyone. Seemingly out of the blue Jesus declares, “Watch out—beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.” Is this a non-sequitur? Was his mind still on the encounter with the Pharisees to such an extent that he wasn’t aware of what was going on in the boat? That happens to me sometimes, especially if some interaction was emotional or conflicted—my body leaves the scene but my mind stays behind.
Or did the yeast metaphor really have something to do with the bread or lack thereof? The disciples don’t seem too sure. I don’t think they were used to hearing such a snappish warning from Jesus, and an ambiguous one at that. They are led to speculate about what Jesus is peeved about: “It is because we have no bread.” That declaration seems to make Jesus even more peevish. “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand?” He proceeds to give them a pop quiz about the recent feeding miracles and the numbers of baskets of leftovers. They know about the numbers, but Jesus still seems put out by their lack of understanding what is going on here.
Is it possible that the yeast of which disciples should beware has something to do with scarcity? Is the idea that there is not enough to go around the corrupting notion that is defiling the disciples? I think that might be it. Notice how the one loaf they do have seems to vanish when the disciples respond to Jesus’ warning. We know they have one loaf because it has been carefully accounted for. Food supply in the galley of the boat? One. Loaf. But when they talk about the situation, the claim they make is “It is because we have no bread.” Those darn disciples. We know they wanted more bread and were annoyed with themselves for forgetting to stop at the store on the way to the marina. But that’s no reason to exaggerate the shortage, is it?
Isn’t that what we human beings do, though? If we’re worried about there not being enough, even what we do have seems to shrink in significance. Wishing we had more makes what we do have look so small we might speak as if it is next to nothing.
Well, I guess I don’t know for sure what Jesus had in mind that day. But I think it is safe to say that the myth of scarcity is one idea that has corrupted human society from the first day until now. It is a yeast to beware of, because the idea that there is not enough bubbles and fizzes all through our stories, our advertising, our practices, our very thoughts. It’s practically part of the air we breathe. Nelson Rockefeller, an heir to the Rockefeller fortune, was once asked, “How much is enough?” Rockefeller paused for a moment, smiled and replied, “Just a little bit more.” An honest answer. Whether we are rich or poor, one thing we can never seem to get is enough. Arthur Simon suggests that the myth of scarcity makes “prisoners of mammon” out of both rich and poor. [1]
That’s prisoners of mammon, not prisoners of manna (mammon being a nickname for money). Manna is sort of a nickname for what God provides. It wouldn’t make sense to talk about being a prisoner of manna, would it—because those who are able to stay “unleavened” by the yeasty myth of scarcity are liberated. Truly liberated. By seeing God’s abundant provision and shedding anxiety about our needs we experience great freedom. What a blessing it would be to stop coveting excess altogether. What emancipation!
God’s liberal provision for the world’s needs (needs, not wants) is true reality, what’s really real. Biblical scholar Walter Bruggeman points out that when Jesus fed the multitudes “he demonstrated that the world is filled with abundance and freighted with generosity. If bread is broken and shared, there is enough for all.” [2] Jesus was demonstrating what God has tried to demonstrate from Day One. He could well have been irked with the disciples because they had just been to the demonstration and had already had their vision clouded by their worry about scarcity. It had taken no time at all for the fizzing myth of scarcity to pollute their minds. Fast- acting yeast, I guess.
Bruggeman says that there is a kind of tug-of-war between the world views of Abundance and Scarcity. God is all about abundance, but fear of scarcity rears its ugly head throughout the human story. An important element of being a faithful person is believing that abundance is real and scarcity is a myth. Scarcity is a powerful myth, so it’s hard to see through. I found a few paragraphs from the writings of Henry David Thoreau that are apropos. He wrote, “Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous.” I think Jesus was trying to teach us about the fabulous reality of God’s abundance, but we keep on getting distracted by the delusion of scarcity. Thoreau went on to say, “I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface of things.” [3] Jesus asked the disciples, “Do you have eyes, and fail to see?” That may be one of those perennial questions it would do us good to ask ourselves daily. Are we failing to see the abundance of God’s provision for the needs of our planet? Are we living a mean life because our vision has not penetrated the sham of “not enough”?
It may be that we need to live as though abundance is really real in order to come to fully trust in it. There’s a story about Mullah Nasrudin in which he was once asked to perform a miracle. “Never mind,” said Nasrudin as he commanded a tree to come to him. The tree did not move. “Never mind,” said Nasrudin again as he stepped forward toward the tree. “You said you are holy,” said one of the audience, “and yet the tree did not budge.” “Oh, there is no haughtiness in holy men,” said Mullah Nasrudin. “The tree could not come to me for some reason, so I went to it.” [4]
If for some reason we feel that abundance is not coming to us, it’s possible that we may go to it. By that I mean that if we are generous, we will probably discover that abundance is indeed the fabulous reality of this world. We step toward abundance by being abundantly generous. Going back to Brueggeman’s article on the liturgy of abundance and the myth of scarcity, he reminds Christians that “the creation is infused with the Creator's generosity, and we can find practices, procedures and institutions that allow that generosity to work.” The way he put that really appeals to me. It’s not that I must somehow manufacture generosity within myself; it’s that I need to find practices, procedures and institutions that allow God’s generosity to work. Living mean, living stingy, living anxious obstructs God’s work. Living abundant—even if it seems like I had to step toward abundance before it came to me—opens yet another channel for God’s embodied love.
I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. I bet each and every one of us has had an experience of sharing with someone that left us positively drenched in blessing. When you succeed in being a channel for God’s abundance, some always sloshes over onto yourself. It’s real, and it’s fabulous.
So please, if you find yourself all squinched up with anxiety about not enough to go around; if you find yourself reflexively underestimating what you do have because you are busy wishing it was more; if you find yourself blind to God’s steadfast generosity—Beware! Clean out that old yeast so that you may be a new creation.
[1] Simon, Arthur How Much Is Enough? Hungering for God in an Affluent Culture Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2003, p. 113
[2] Bruggemann, Walter “The Liturgy of Abundance, the Myth of Scarcity” Religion Online, originally published in Christian Century
[3] Thoreau, Henry David Quoted in The Enlightened Mind: An Anthology of Sacred Prose Stephen Mitchell, ed. New York: HarperPerennial, 1991, p. 182-83
[4] “Mullah’s Miracle.” Daenecke, Eric. Tales of Mullah Nasir-ud-Din: Persian Wit, Wisdom and Folly. New York: Exposition Press, ©1960. p. 31.