Jesus The Jester #2 | "Ferment"

0:00 Last week, we began a new sermon series focused on the parables of Jesus. We kicked things off with a basic question. Why does our Lord use these brief, sort of tricky stories to convey God's truth? To answer, we spent time picturing Jesus as a jester, as a storyteller who sneaks past people's defenses to plant seeds of truth. And these sacred seeds invite us to embrace a different approach to living. The parables invite us to pattern our lives according to the realm of God. This morning we continue our exploration by focusing on one of the shortest parables in scripture. In fact, this story could easily flash by unnoticed and that would be unfortunate.

1:05 Because as they say, good things come in small packages. Listen now for God's word to you as it echoes from Luke. Chapter 13, beginning with the 20th verse. And again Jesus said, to what should I compare the kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened. This is the word of God for you, the people of God. Well, it's been an unsettling week out there, in here too. We're going to talk about what has transpired, but first, a parable.

2:09 First, hopefully, perspective. In today's parable, Jesus describes a woman taking yeast and kneading it into three measures of flour. She's preparing to make a few loaves of bread. We know this scene. This parable evokes kitchen, hearth, home. Oh, and by the way, says Jesus, it also reveals something about the realm of God. Picture your mother, says Jesus, measuring out flour. See her adding water and yeast, kneading these elements together. Soon a pottery bowl covered with a damp towel sits on the kitchen table. And under that towel, something magical is happening. The once inert flour is moving, swelling.

3:10 Do you remember watching dough rise in your mama's kitchen? That's how God's spirit enters the world. My mother was a good cook. She combined harvests of fresh produce from her abundant garden with a sense of culinary daring, and we, her family, were eager guinea pigs. Mom was forever pulling stained volumes from her large library of cookbooks and propping them up next to the stove where they would get further splattered. She took us with these books on excursions through stuffed Italian pasta, classic French sauces, and Scandinavian desserts. One of my mother's most memorable forays in the kitchen came in the late 1970s when she was an accomplice to a sourdough bread craze that swept the Midwest.

4:16 One afternoon, she arrived home after a meeting with her culinary sisterhood with a conspiratorial smile on her face and a small Tupperware container in hand. A piece of masking tape stretched across the container's lid, and a name was printed on the tape. This, Mom said, sliding her prize into the refrigerator, this is Walter.

4:47 Now, Walter, you may have guessed, was a lump of dough, sourdough starter to be specific. Walter, my mother explained to us, was alive. And as such, Walter needed to be fed. Every few days, a concoction of sugar and water and more flour was needed into Walter. And within a week, Walter began to outgrow his container. And it was then that my mother took a kitchen shears to her young charge. She snipped Walter neatly in half. Half went back into the fridge. And the other half went into a mixing bowl with flour, water. sugar, salt. Soon a new ball of dough sat on the kitchen counter under a wet towel and there slowly Walter did his magic. Over the next few hours the dough slowly began to bubble and rise eventually lifting the towel and at that moment mom shaped Walter into a round, tossed him in the oven and voila, 40 minutes later, a tangy, crusty loaf of sourdough emerged. My brother and I had to admit, Walter's got game. In many ways, the parable of the woman and her yeast is not complicated.

6:21 Jesus draws our attention to something that seems insignificant, small, and yet when you introduce this magical substance to a ball of dough, it brings about great change. A little leaven can lift an entire bowl of flour. This church's vision statement evokes Christ's kitchen-based miracle. here at Fifth, we vow to be Christ's light, leaven, and salt in New York City and beyond. We seek to sprinkle heaven's yeast on the world. Who knows what will happen when God gets in the mix? Miracles occur. Now that sounds good.

7:15 Maybe too good. Listen again. Jesus asks, to what shall I compare the realm of God? And then he answers, it's like leaven. It's like yeast. And we nod, cool, it's like yeast. Although here a whole gaggle of historians are waving their arms. They want to interrupt our easy embrace of Christ's metaphor. Shelve your quick conclusions, they say. Come. time travel with us just for a minute. You see, in the ancient world, you couldn't buy yeast in neat little yellow packets in the refrigerated section at Whole Foods. People had to cultivate it. Women would take crusts of bread and put them in damp places under their houses. They would make their own Walter. And over time, these crusts would grow ripe and rank and green. In many ways, early leaven was revolting. It smelled strange. It looked bad. And yes, slip these moldy crumbs into a batch of wet flour and that dough would fill with air. It would rise as a dodgy substance with magical properties. All this meant that in biblical times, yeast had an image problem.

8:59 Some in the Bible actually describe yeast as corrupt. Imagine following this recipe for bread. Place three measures of flour in a large mixing bowl. Add two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, a dash of salt, two cups of clear cold water from the well. Stir. Finally, reach under your front porch and locate a mildewed old hot dog bun. When no one is looking, slide a chunk of that into your batter.

9:36 Ew! Are we surprised that the Apostle Paul describes immoral people as malicious yeast? Jesus riffs on the same notion, saying, beware the yeast of the Pharisees. To the ancient Hebrews, it was unleavened bread that was sacred. The bread offered to God at the temple was to be made without this vile additive. In fact, people were told not to use leaven in their cooking during the high holy days. And what's more, they were to remove all yeast from their homes, scouring their pantries of this unclean substance. Now imagine people hearing this parable. The realm of God is like yeast.

10:32 Can you picture those first century foreheads wrinkling? Yeast? Ew, not in front of the children, Jesus, please. The parable begins like a distasteful joke. And the next four words out of Christ's mouth don't help. It is like yeast that a woman took. Wait a minute. Did the rabbi just suggest that a woman handling an unclean substance, a woman who might be by extension herself unclean, provides us with a clear picture of what it looks like when God goes to work? No doubt about it. In the first century, this parable would have caused a fuss.

11:28 It messes with cultural norms and pokes at stereotypes. Fortunately for us, anti-scientific foolishness and gender chauvinism are ancient history. Hang on to that thought. It's been a troubling week in the world. The world that God so loves. We've been buffeted by worrisome economic reports, a scary military encounter between NATO and Russia, a school shooting in Colorado, and the assassination of a popular right-wing influencer and young father, Charlie Kirk.

12:23 The response from our political leaders has run the gamut, from wise and compassionate to foolish and downright scary. Here I want to commend to you the faithful and forward-looking words spoken by the Republican Governor of Utah, Spencer Cox. Leonard Cox dared to talk about reconciliation in calling Americans to choose a different path going forward. His words provide a kernel of hope in this mess, or perhaps I should say a pinch of yeast for this mixture. Sadly, though, many have rejected calls for reconciliation in this moment.

13:22 What's this strange yeast you want to sneak into our fight? Don't try to introduce any leaven here. We are angry. And we know how to respond in the face of tragedy. We are going to search for and amplify the ugliest things ever attributed to our political enemies. And then we're going to go after them. Here our social media accounts, once again, provide the clearest sign of our brokenness. We are hell-bent, an appropriate word for this time, we are hell-bent on shoveling more fire on the fuels, on the things that fuel our hatred. We point fingers. We vow revenge.

14:14 It was them. It was those folks. They're the ones who caused this. What's the alternative? Let's start with an observation. Deep down, I don't think that anybody and certainly nobody who was ever parented toddlers believes that the blame for our current predicament lies entirely with one political party, political figure or political movement. Ironically, the list of those hurt by our hate is one of the only bipartisan things that we've got going right now. This past summer, we were in Minnesota when a politically motivated attack came against Melissa Hortman, a Democratic caucus leader in the Minnesota House and mother to two children.

15:17 She was killed at her home, along with her husband and her dog. Can we take a breath before we start pointing fingers? Can we agree that it is heartbreaking whenever someone in our society decides that the ideas with which they disagree need to be met, not with healthy debate or sacred vision, but with violence? Can we also agree that when our elected leaders leverage tragic moments to drive even deeper wedges, that they are not serving this country's best interests?

16:10 On these basic points, I think there's broad consensus. In fact, we actually agree on many of the dynamics that have put us in this perilous situation. Although sadly, diagnosing the problem only gets us so far. We need to talk about next steps. What can we do as individuals and as communities to turn down the temperature? This past summer I met with one of our remote members for coffee. Dana joins our live stream from Ely, Minnesota. And she and I talked about how the news of the world is overwhelming right now. We talked about feeling powerless in the face of the rising tide of fear, anger, and violence that threaten to consume this nation.

17:08 And I've had this conversation with a lot of you and with a lot of different folk outside this church of late. In fact, I'm willing to bet that versions of our coffeehouse conversation are being replayed every day in coffee shops all across this country as good people. People of faith agonize over the state of our frayed nation. wondering aloud if there's anything that can be done to help matters.

17:46 This past week, the same concerns were echoed by New York Times columnist David Brooks. In a podcast, Brooks argued that neither of our two major political parties have a coherent moral vision for this country. Yes, the parties have loose collections of values, but neither one is sketching a compelling picture, helping us imagine a promised land, a country with opportunity, compassion, and justice for all.

18:26 And then the pundit made a statement that stuck in my head. Of course, Brooks observed, moral vision never really starts with political leadership. It comes from the ground up. To what shall I compare the realm of God, Jesus asks. It's like yeast that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour. My friends, what if a healthy moral vision emerges only when ordinary people stop waiting for our political leaders to get it right?

19:22 What if it depends on everyday folk, folk who commit to working for a better world? What if cultural change hinges on millions of small acts of goodness? What if it starts when someone grabs a pinch of fermented wisdom from under their front porch and stirs it into the dough of culture? What if the kingdom of heaven is like yeast.

20:03 Now it's true, some people still do not like the look of yeast, or the smell of yeast, or the very idea of yeast. They think, I like my flatbread of a life. And for these folk, well, for all of us, really, this parable conjures up a bit of subversive magic. When heaven gets stirred into the mix, when God's agenda gets needed into life, when neighbors are viewed through the lens of love and not through the hazy goggles of hate, things will change.

20:43 You know, in the end, those first century people were right. Leaven is dangerous. It will corrupt you. It will change you. And along the way, it'll change the world. Of course, you already know this. You know from experience that God is a baker.

21:12 Smudged with flour, the Holy One's muscular arms are forever, kneading hope into us, feeding us with the bread of life, calling us to do the good that is ours to do. in this and every