I know, eh? It's a thing of beauty. And it wasn't quite as easy as all that. Because taming wild yeast is a tricky thing.
The yeast that leavened this bread is wild yeast that lives in the flour and in the air. In the right circumstances, it propagates and forms a happy colony in the flour and water mixture. It eats the sugars in the flour and produces, as one of the by-products, the carbon dioxide that causes the dough to rise. It's the only leaven that most people before World War II used, because it wasn't until then that the dried yeast that comes in little brown jars became widely used. But once those little brown jars became available, the ability to capture and tame wild yeasts became a lost art. Baker's yeast produces consistent results in relatively quick order. But wild yeast is, well, wild - a little unpredictable, somewhat demanding, fairly finicky, and definitely working on its own schedule.
I didn't even know you could make bread without the yeast from the jar.
And that's when I realised that when I thought about yeast in biblical terms, I was thinking about the round, brown grains that come from the jar. You know, "A little leaven leavens the whole lump," and that sort of thing. I was imagining the brown jar yeast. But biblical leaven didn't come from a jar. It was the wild stuff. And that got me thinking along whole new lines.
You see, I could never really understand why the Israelites didn't have enough time to make leavened bread. After all, they had enough time to roast a whole lamb in its entirety. In that time, I could make two batches of bread using yeast from a jar. But that loaf of wild yeast-raised bread you see in those pictures? That bread took two days from start to finish. Two whole days. Of course they didn't have time to make leavened bread, if it takes two days.
And then there's the whole idea that at every Passover, the Jews had to throw away every bit of leaven. I spent nearly two weeks trying to get my flour and water mixture to bubble enough to raise a loaf of bread. I am diligently saving some starter so I can make bread again. Some sourdough starters are years and years old. They are passed down from generation to generation, and from neighbour to neighbour. One that I read about has been around since the days of the Oregon Trail. But the Jewish people, every year, had to throw out all their starters, everywhere in the land, and start from scratch.
Because the leaven represented sin. And I can kind of get it.
The yeast that lies so obediently in the little brown jar is such a different thing than the wild yeasts I grew in my flour and water. The wild yeast is a living, growing beast. It demands to be fed on schedule, or it turns nasty. And every time you feed it, it doubles in size. One article I read said that if you started with a quarter cup of water and a quarter cup of flour, in 10 days, you'd have enough to fill a full-size swimming pool. It's insatiable. So for a while, my life revolved around my sourdough starter. I named it Gomer, after the wanton but loved harlot in Hosea. Gomer needed to be fed twice a day. I did my best to keep her home, to keep her from springing from her bounds and taking over the counter. I cossetted and coddled her. I fed her of the finest wheat, ensured that her living conditions were optimal, and still she demanded more. At this point, I can somewhat control Gomer, or at least slow her down, by putting her in the fridge and putting her to sleep for a couple of days, but the Israelites didn't have that option. In a warm climate, their wild yeast would have grown with abandon.
And wild yeast is hard to control. I can trick myself into thinking I've mastered the wild yeasts and created this lovely loaf of bread, but the truth is, when you're working with sourdough, it masters you. You feed it. You wait for it. You can't go by the clock. You go by the dough. It could take four hours. It could take eight. It might take longer yet. The dough decides, not you.
And isn't that so like sin. It starts off so small and innocuous. It promises good things. It grows more and more demanding. Its appetite is insatiable. It breaks its bounds and takes up more and more space in our lives, and if we don't meet its demands, it gets nasty and leaves us with a foul mess. And while I think I have control over it, it, in fact, masters me.
So, every year, the Jewish nation chucked it all out and cleaned house. They killed the beast. They cast out the sin. They swept everything clean. They stood under the blood of the lamb, and they were free. A fresh start. A clean slate. Free from the insatiable beast. It was a powerful image.
So, then, I wonder if, when Jesus described himself as the Bread of Life, he was saying more than that he is essential for life. I wonder if there might be some aspect in his statement to suggest that he alone has mastery over the leaven of sin, and that unless we partake of the Bread of Life, we can never hope to find victory. I wonder if he was giving people permission to let go of the tyranny of the wild yeast of sin. And I wonder about the symbolism of the Lord's Supper. Perhaps, when we take the bread, symbolic of his broken body, we sweep away the wild yeasts of sin, stand under the blood of the Passover Lamb of God, and are free. A fresh start. A clean slate. Freed from the insatiable yeast of sin.
Bread of life, indeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment