(This was published on The Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on July 28, 2014. The link can be found here: http://www.episcopalcafe.com/thesoul/sunday_lectionary_readings/letting_the_bread_rise.html)
“He told them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is
like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour
until all of it was leavened.” (Matthew 13:33)
Yesterday’s gospel reading from Matthew, chapter 13, included the
parable of the yeast, or leaven, to use a more antiquated term. This
little nugget of scripture sang out to me in light of several events
going on at this time.
First, we are approaching the 40th anniversary tomorrow of the
ordination of eleven women to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church,
which happened on July 29, 1974 at Church of the Advocate in
Philadelphia. Second, it was recently announced that the General Synod
of the Church of England had approved legislation for women to be
selected as bishops, twenty years after the Church of England admitted
women to the priesthood in 1994. Third, and at nearly the same time as
we received that news, several hundred Episcopal youth were raising the
roof at the Episcopal Youth Event in Philadelphia—some of them even got
to visit the church in Philadelphia where that first ordination took
place. Further, I write these words today from Camp Phoenix, which is
the summer camp for youth operated by the Diocese of Missouri.
What does all this have to do with this parable?
I would bet that most of us have experienced times when we have been
discounted or overlooked for some reason, regardless of our capability.
Maybe it was due to our age—either being too young or too old. Maybe it
was due to our gender or sexuality, especially when we try to do
something that traditionally has not been stereotypically within our
sphere of activity. Maybe it was because of our body shape, or our
accent, or the credentials we hold or do not hold, or perhaps because it
was feared that our admission into a role would diminish that role’s
prestige or traditions. Nonetheless, sometimes the most discounted or
overlooked things have the most to offer us. One such person was Jesus.
He didn’t have the right pedigree, the right accent, the right
credentials. Even his neighbors disregarded him and his authority to
teach.
That’s part of why Jesus told this little parable—he was explaining
how something that could be discounted, that could even be considered
unclean, could actually do great things. If you’ve ever made bread from
scratch, you know that yeast is tiny little granule-looking things that
are actually alive—they are micro-organisms classified as a fungus. But
if you had lived at the time of Christ, you would not have thought of
yeast as something found in cute, sterile little packets in the grocery
store, but was instead you would have had to cultivate from old bread
that was allowed to decay. Something that appeared to be useless
provided the starter for something good: leavened bread.
Add yeast to flour, water, and salt, and the entire mixture rises and
becomes what my more rural relatives used to call “light bread” (as
opposed to biscuits). Over time, it grows in size: yeast added to three
measures of flour created enough bread for a feast, or so my
commentaries tell me. It’s a sometimes messy process, but it’s also
amazing. Another facet of this short parable is that Jesus can be
compared to the woman in the story, and it is one of the places in
scripture where feminine imagery and “women’s work” is used to describe
an action of God—in this case, revealing to the world the realization of
the reign of God in our lives and in all of creation in the leavening
and rising of that bread. Bread that feeds the soul, and the world.
For the last fifty years in the Episcopal Church, the leaven that
women provide as laity, deacons, priests, and now bishops—even presiding
bishops!—has been allowed to rise, and continues to evolve. Now the
Church of England itself is moving further toward an fuller embrace of
that same truth. At the same time, we are steadily evolving in our
understanding and celebration of the role that our youth can play within
the Episcopal Church and the greater church in the world.
We are all leaven. Each of us—male, female, transgendered, old,
young, gay, straight, bisexual-- may look like an unlikely source of
enlightenment to the world at large, but each of us has a part to play
in the Kingdom of Heaven. It may take time and patience but also
perseverance for this to come into fullness. When all are encouraged to
come fully into the gifts and talents we all have, the entire Body of
Christ and the world is lifted up and rises toward a fuller realization
of the Kingdom of Heaven right now. May we all have ears to listen!
