Yeast and Faith

Whenever I bake bread (rarely), I always have trouble getting the dough to rise, which I blame on the frigid nature of our old granite house. I do everything I can to raise the ambient temperature but am usually disappointed that it takes at least two or three times as long as it should to rise about half as high as it should. (Maybe I need to invest in a bread-maker.)

Yeast requires a certain environment in which to react and begin to work on the dough.

I was asked recently what I thought of loud, sometimes repetitive worship music in a service. I think there would have been a time when I would have found it boring or tedious. But over the years, I have come to love the privacy this sort of corporate worship affords: I drop in and out of the written lyrics, communing privately with God and then rejoining the congregation. It can offer times of profound worship and a real sense of the presence of God. 

Stay with me here because all these thoughts will coalesce. 

 Jesus warned his followers to be careful of the yeast of the Pharisees... the sincere religious types who really knew their theology. We are products of the Enlightenment and the age of reason, and so we are encouraged to rely on our brains and to be suspicious of our heart intelligence. 

I read the other day that faith is the expectation that God is always good and he will work in every situation. 

Worship music, repetitive or not but certainly sung from the heart, is the warmth that gets the faith rising in my heart. It is from that position of faith that I expect to see God to act – to see miracles. 

My fear is that in churches which rely on prescribed worship where the theological accuracy of the lyrics is the measure of its relevance, we miss out on that mystical faith-raising element which then releases hope and expectations.

Jesus told the man with leprosy who wanted to be healed and couched his request in a weak ‘if you are willing...’, ‘I am willing!’ Worship is the yeast that helps me recognise who it is I am asking for help, and know that he is willing.

Yeast

Been working on our traditional Christmas morning Potica. I bake a bread product with yeast once a year. Every Christmas finds me trying to make the equivalents from an American packet of yeast to a British one, figure out how to translate an old-fashioned recipe direction for dissolving the yeast first in warm water into using the new fast-acting yeast which just gets mixed in. 

Then there is the temperature in my home. Baltic at the best of times. So on this one day of the year I need to throw caution to the wind, push the ON button on the heat and enjoy the warmth.

Got started a bit late today and so, well into the evening, I am still waiting for the wreath-shaped potica’s to rise the second time, now filled with the yummy ground walnut mixture. I’ve got pans of boiling water in the oven with the two potica’s, hoping they will do the trick. 

I don’t plan to stay up all night waiting, so at some point I will just call time, turn on the oven and go for it, hoping that this will be a good year for it.

Funnily enough, Jesus mentioned yeast a few times as he taught his disciples. He described the Kingdom of heaven as being like yeast, which, when worked into the dough, caused the bread to rise.

He also said that the Kingdom of heaven is within you when Jesus is Lord of your life, so the hope – no, the expectation – is that as you work through the ‘dough’ of your life, that ‘yeast’ will touch every aspect of your life and affect it for the better.

I don’t know how far we can carry this analogy, but today I think that I failed to have the liquid warm enough when I added the yeast to it, and that has slowed down the action (and I wondered for awhile if it would prevent it from working at all). If we don’t keep the flame of love for Jesus fanned and burning brightly in our hearts, the yeast of the Kingdom may not be very effective.

Despite the hectic nature of the season, take time to fan the flame of love for Jesus in your heart, so that as you socialise and worship and celebrate this year, the Kingdom of heaven will affect all those with whom you party.