by Gary Neal Hansen
I’ve been baking my family’s bread for quite a while now. It is mostly self-serving: home-baked bread is a sensual pleasure. It is also contemplative: I get to watch miracles as dry ingredients change, first into a bubbly living mass, and then into a tasty crusty loaf.
It starts simply: I weigh out flour, a bit of salt, a small measure of powdered yeast.
I can see the little pile of yeast on the flour.
I stir with a whisk. It is hidden.
Jesus tells me this bit is kingdom work: “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).
Other translations bring out a useful detail about what she did with that yeast. She “hid” it in the flour. The root of the Greek word here is crypto, just like “cryptography,” where meaning is hidden in a code.
In my faith, as in my baking, I’m much more impressed with the later steps. I enjoy biting into the crunchy chewy bread. And I look for signs of the kingdom in changed lives and thriving ministries.
And yet Jesus says the kingdom, the real sign of God’s reign, is in the hiding of the yeast.
Once the yeast is hidden all through the flour, the rest is natural processes. Apply the right conditions and you’ll get bread: Pour in water. Knead the dough, stretching and pressing till it is firm. Wait while it rises. Bake it.
Unfortunately, when you carry those metaphors over to the Christian life this does not sound pleasant.
Water seems good, until you remember Paul compared baptism to drowning. Resurrection too, but first comes death. (Romans 6:3-4).
Then there’s kneading. I do grow though experiences that stretch me. Pressure makes me accomplish things. But getting shoved around and folded and squeezed like dough sounds like a beating. (Romans 5:3-5).
Waiting? I hate waiting. Ask a woman who has been pregnant for eight months or so and she’ll tell you about waiting. There is a miracle happening, but slowly. Waiting is hard work. (Romans 8:18-24).
And then there’s the baking. I’d rather not spend 40 minutes in a 450-degree oven, thanks – but it is fire that transforms dough into bread. (Matthew 3:10; 1 Peter 1:6-7).
Another surprise masked by the NRSV is the sheer volume of this operation. She hid the yeast in some 50 or 60 pounds of flour. This is baking on an industrial scale. This is about all of us together.
God, the busy baker, has hidden something – in me and in you, in each congregation, in the church in the world. We dream and hope, we plan and execute. We strive for our goals. But what matters, the kingdom, is in secret. God’s hidden yeast.
So a couple times a week, after I hide some yeast, as I knead and wait and bake, I contemplate these things. I am turned away, again, from my accomplishments. I am turned away, again, from the successes of growing innovative congregations. I am turned away, even from the changes Christians seek to bring in the world.
I am turned instead, in gratitude, to the God who hid the yeast. I pray, soberly, for the conditions to turn me, and us, into bread worthy of being called Christ’s Body. And I pray that somehow we will survive the water, the pressure, the waiting and the heat it takes to be transformed into something so very good.
Gary Neal Hansen is author of “Kneeling with Giants: Learning to Pray with History’s Best Teachers,” is a writer, teacher and retreat and conference speaker. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife and their two children. You can connect with him and get a free copy of his book on classic lectio divina at garynealhansen.com.
