12th March 2025

I never tire of baking sourdough bread. Every loaf seems like a miracle to me. How is it that two cups of water, four cups of flour, two teaspoons of salt and a quarter cup of sourdough starter can turn into a beautiful, aromatic, nutritious loaf of bread? As I was admiring my latest loaf, I was reminded of Jesus’ words about the woman who put yeast in three measures of flour, and it leavened all of the dough (Luke 13:20-21). Three measures is about a bushel, which is a lot of flour. 

Jesus was talking about the kingdom of God, how it starts small and through a miracle, changes everything it touches. Robert Farrar Capon, in Kingdom, Grace, Judgment, calls this parable ‘both more mysterious and more pervasive than any of the hidings Jesus has so far used to illustrate the kingdom.’ He’s saying that the woman baker – God – mixed the kingdom yeast into our world, hid it so to speak, in his creation. It’s always been working the dough, in an intimate, mysterious way.  

The kingdom of God is working, growing and expanding in us and all around us. It’s inseparable from creation and it can’t be stopped, just as the yeast, or sourdough, is inseparable from the dough – you can’t get back any of the yeast once it’s mixed in with the flour and water. It will do its work until, through the production of thousands of carbon dioxide bubbles, the whole lump has risen and is ready for baking. 

In my kitchen, when the sourdough yeast has done its work, the finished product is a gorgeous loaf of bread. For humanity, it’s much bigger than that – the yeast of the kingdom, working through the breath of God has been, as Capon puts it, ‘not a transition from nonkingdom to kingdom; rather it is a progress from kingdom-in-a-mystery to kingdom-made-manifest.’ God’s finished product, no longer hidden, will be the ultimate real loaf, the true Bread of Heaven made real and present for everyone.  

First published on 19 February 2025, at www.gemsofgodsgrace.wordpress.com a personal blog which is not sponsored by Grace Communion International.

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