Westminster United Church

WHO IS DESERVING?

Text: Luke 13:33 by Rev. Dr. Pirie Mitchell

A few years ago, the former Moderator of the United Church, Jordan Cantwell related a story to us about an incident while she was on a visit to Nova Scotia. At a United Church in Lunenburg a youth group meeting was being held. Jordan began asking some of the youth about themselves and what they expected from the group. After a bit she turned to a young girl and asked her about her activities in the group.She answered that she was not a member but visited every week from another church, conservative in nature.Jordan asked her why she came here when her church was noted for its financial investment into teen programs.The young person simply answered, “I feel safer here.”

Without more information, the young girl’s answer makes little sense. Why wouldn’t she feel safe in a church of all places?But if you know the back story, her answer becomes very clear. The young girl belonged to a conservative congregation who believes that homosexuals are destined for hell unless they change their ways. Her answer makes no sense without understanding the Pentecostal principles of faith. For Pentecostals, homosexuality is a sin. Each time the young girl attended her home church she was harassed about being who she was. It’s no wonder she felt safe at the United Church, which accepts all sexual orientations.

“I feel safe here”. To understand what Jesus has to say in the gospels about the need for human acceptance we need to understand the sociology and history of the time. And this leads us into perhaps the most difficult parable Jesus ever told, which is also his shortest. It is found in Luke’s gospel 13:33. “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and concealed within three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”

If you don’t have the back story to “The Leaven” and lack understanding of the culture of the day, this parable will make no sense to you. So, let’s look at it. First, Jesus is talking about the Kingdom of Heaven. He is not referring to the platform suspended in space between Jupiter and Mars holding all the souls of the departed good people late of earth. The reference within the parable is an earthly one, written for the living. 

This parable is a village story, and the listeners would have quickly understood this.It is only in villages where women prepared bread for baking. For the listener of the day, on the surface, the parable is full of moral corruption.Yeast is morally corrupt.Remember the Children of Israel were not permitted to take leavened bread with them when they left Egypt.

In Mark 8:15 Jesus cautioned his listeners, saying, “Watch out; beware of the leaven (moral corruption) of the Pharisees and the leaven (moral corruption) of Herod.”Dead animals left at the side of the road bloated up like rising bread. And that’s bad!

Women were considered unclean for at least half a month, and preparing food was a problem for them. And in this parable the woman concealed the leaven in the flour, a surreptitious activity.

Three measures is a large amount of flour, a little over a bushel. That would yield 52 pound-and-a-half loaves of bread. In the large towns and cities, people bought their bread at a bakery because there was not enough fuel to feed thousands of fires.Most of the firewood in Jerusalem was reserved for the ovens in which burnt sacrifices were offered to God. Remember, when Joseph and Mary brought Jesus to the temple to dedicate him to God, they offered a couple of pigeons as sacrifice. 

So now what does the parable mean? 

Living today requires us to accept all people, the honest and the dishonest, the deserving (you and I) and undeserving (tax collectors) as worthy to live in God’s world, where there will be enough to eat in a land of want and starvation; and where we will be safe.

In other words, all are deserving.