A Powerful Ingredient

A Powerful Ingredient

A Woman Making Bread

Read: Luke 13:20-21

One day as a newlywed, I decided to make chicken and dumplings. I carefully mixed the flour, baking powder, and other ingredients for the dumplings, then dropped spoonfuls into a saucepan of boiling water. After leaving the kitchen for a couple of minutes, I returned to find the dumplings pushing the lid off the pan and trying to crawl out. I transferred them to a larger pan, only to have the same thing happen. Finally, I cooked the dumplings in my largest stockpot. The next time I made the recipe, I spooned in smaller amounts of the dough, since I knew how much it would expand.

Jesus told a parable about the leavening power of yeast. He said that the Kingdom of God is like the yeast a woman used to make bread. She mixed only a little yeast with a large amount of flour, but the yeast permeated every part of the dough and made it expand. This illustration has been interpreted in different ways. Since the Bible often uses yeast as a metaphor for sin, some people believe that Jesus referred to the power of evil to influence whatever it comes in contact with. Others interpret the yeast as the gospel, quietly spreading through the world and transforming people’s lives.

If we think of the yeast as sin, the parable warns us not to tolerate even what we consider an insignificant sin, since it can spread and become pervasive in our lives. If we think of the yeast as the gospel, the parable reminds us of the gospel’s power to transform our lives in every respect. Our faith may seem small at times, but God’s presence will permeate and transform us. When we understand how much we “knead” God’s truth instead of our own half-baked ideas, we will rise to any occasion.

[Jesus said,] “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move.”

Matthew 17:20