Is the Loaf Rising? | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Is the Loaf Rising? | Previous Challenge Entry
By Charles Salmon
01/10/07
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Is the Loaf Rising?
I love to bake home made bread. I revel in kneading the pliant dough into a silky consistency. Watching it rise fills me with anticipation. The glorious fragrance of a baking loaf fills the house and elicits a Pavlovian response. The taste of the hot crusty creation straight from the oven makes me ecstatic. I’m filled with pride when a visitor tastes my product and enjoys it. Oh, you can buy bread at the grocery store, but, when you do, you miss the god-like feeling of creating something ‘very good.”

When time permits, I prefer using the old sourdough method my Grandma used. It involves setting aside a small amount of dough from each baking to use as a “starter,” sometimes called a “sponge,” for the next baking. This starter is taken from the lump of risen dough. It’s stored in the refrigerator in a jar with lots of sugar and fresh flour until a culture of “wild” yeast is formed. Sometimes it becomes very sour, hence the name “sourdough.”

It hasn’t always been easy to keep my sourdough starter. Twice, it was thrown down the drain by well meaning friends who called it “nasty stuff” and claimed it “smelled like something sour.” I figure the Lord was trying to teach me patience and forgiveness. I am a slow learner.

It occurs to me some of the stories Jesus told were drawn from His childhood experiences as a country boy growing up in Galilee. I’m sure He saw farmers planting, cultivating, and harvesting their crops. He observed vintners trimming grape vines. He watched shepherds with their sheep and pulled weeds from the garden.

And I imagine He was a very attentive student when His mother baked bread using her own ourdough “starter.” Commercial yeast wasn’t available in those days and starters were passed down by each generation to the next. In my mind, I can see Him watching with rapt attention as Mary mixed the dough and kneaded it to a silky smoothness. I can almost see the wonder in His childish eyes as He watched the shapeless lump grow into a loaf of bread. I know His delight in savoring the wonderful confection hot from the oven.

Perhaps a cherished childhood memory triggered His thoughts when He related a little parable about yeast: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough." Matt 13:33 NIV.

Each time I knead a lump of bread dough, I am reminded of this parable of Jesus and the way the Gospel of Christ spread throughout the first century world. His homely little parable, one of the shortest recorded, speaks eloquently of the penetrating, permeating, pulsating power of the Gospel of Christ.

The power of the Gospel changed the culture of the first century and Christians know it can and will change our culture. The good news about Jesus is the only hope for peace, justice, and prosperity. Can you see the lump rising?
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