Bread

 

Mark 8:11-21 (Daily Office Reading August 2, 2021)

¹¹ The P’rushim came and began arguing with him; they wanted him to give them a sign from Heaven, because they were out to trap him. ¹² With a sigh that came straight from his heart, he said, “Why does this generation want a sign? Yes! I tell you, no sign will be given to this generation!” ¹³ With that, he left them, got into the boat again and went off to the other side of the lake.

¹⁴ Now the talmidim had forgotten to bring bread and had with them in the boat only one loaf. ¹⁵ So when Yeshua said to them, “Watch out! Guard yourselves from the hametz of the P’rushim and the hametz of Herod,” ¹⁶ they thought he had said it because they had no bread. ¹⁷ But, aware of this, he said, “Why are you talking with each other about having no bread? Don’t you see or understand yet? Have your hearts been made like stone? ¹⁸ You have eyes — don’t you see? You have ears — don’t you hear? And don’t you remember? ¹⁹ When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?” “Twelve,” they answered him. ²⁰ “And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?” “Seven,” they answered. ²¹ He said to them, “And you still don’t understand?”

 

I couldn’t figure out the connection between the need to guard themselves from the hametz (leavened bread) of the Pharisees, and the amount of bread left over after the crowds had been fed.

My first thought was that Jesus was comparing the spread of the Pharisees’ influence to the spread of yeast through dough. (He likes that metaphor…) Then I thought that he might have been talking about the multiplication of bread through the crowds, and comparing the bread of the Pharisees to that circumstance.

Then the light went on over my head, at the exact moment that I connected this reading with the saying from John’s gospel: “I am the bread of life.”

There’s more than one kind of bread, is what he’s saying. Any leavened bread is the result of the action of yeast. Yeast is amazing stuff, but it doesn’t have a conscience. It will spread its influence regardless of whether that influence has a good effect or not.

If this whole bread thing is a metaphor, then every time Jesus talks about bread he’s talking about the Way of God and the Territory of Heaven, and not about the literal materials of flour, salt, and yeast!

Then it all makes sense! If Jesus was saying that the bread of the Pharisees was this conniving desire for signs and wonders, for no other reason than to trick him into painting himself into a theological corner, then Jesus was trying to tell the disciples that they too could be infected and spread that kind of idea like yeast through bread, until they ended up with baskets of leftover broken pieces.

If that’s the case, then the bread that fed those crowds, the bread that was given with Jesus’s blessing, was the understanding of the meaning of the Way of God that Jesus taught them. When Jesus asked the disciples how much food they had, and they answered, “5 loaves and 2 fish,” they were talking about their own limited understanding of the Word and the Way. But Jesus blessed that understanding nevertheless, and said “Go on, share it anyway,” and then sat back and watched the understanding spread until it overflowed; until the crowd got the picture so thoroughly that the disciples ended up having their own understanding expanded by the basketful.

So, Jesus is saying that the Pharisees can do the same thing. They can take their understanding; their skeptical, conniving, double-think ideas about how the world works and spread them in exactly the same way— until the yeast of them bubbles up in people’s minds as suspicion, hostility, fear, and violence. That’s the way people are, and the disciples are no exception.

The disciples need to guard themselves from that spreading yeast of self-serving contempt.

Well, that changes everything!

Every time we are tempted to take Scripture literally; whenever we insist on putting words in God’s mouth; then we can look back to this lesson:

 

Why are you talking about bread?

Don’t you get it?

You have eyes— don’t you see?

You have ears— don’t you hear?

Don’t you remember?

You’ve watched it happen!

You’ve seen an idea spread like yeast in bread; like ink in water; until there’s nothing left of the old understanding, and even the people who started it understand more than they did in the beginning.

Any idea can spread just like that!

So watch out!

Be careful what kind of ideas you go around spreading!

Make sure to spread the yeast of the Bread of Life,

and not the yeast of self-serving complacency and scorn.