Throughout the history of the Church some congregations have celebrated this meal with leavened bread and others with unleavened bread. We are not told explicitly in the NT which sort of bread God requires and therefore we believe that Christians are free to choose. We know that leaven can represent malice and envy (1 Cor. 5:8), but Jesus also says that the kingdom of God is like leaven which works through the entire loaf (Lk. 13:21). So which is it? The answer of course is, yes. Leaven means growth and maturity, but growth and maturity is not an automatic blessing nor is it neutral. The question is always what is growing? Is it cancer or a tumor? Then it needs to be cut out. Is it good muscle and strong bones? Then we can rejoice in it. And sometimes leaven needs to be got rid of not because of any inherent evil but because you’re growing up. Children give up pacifiers and diapers. Older children don’t hold their parents hands when crossing the street. Young adults leave their parents and marry and begin families of their own. And parents let their older children go into the world. These are good and healthy transitions if they are done with thanksgiving and obedience to God.
We use leaven in our communion bread perhaps for many reasons, but one of them is because we want to emphasize the growth of the kingdom, the promise of the gospel. The gospel is not merely clinging to old things or wishing we could get back to some better time. The promise of the gospel always takes us forward. In this meal you are eating mature bread, fermented bread and mature wine, fermented grape juice. This is the life of the kingdom, and the kingdom is not done. It’s growing. And it will grow until it fills the whole earth. Some come, eat and drink, and trust that God knows what he’s doing. He’s growing us up; so trust him.
Monday, July 02, 2007
To Leaven or Not To Leaven
Posted by Toby at 12:05 PM
Labels: Eucharistic Meditations
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4 comments:
Just to be clear, Toby, you're saying that you use sourdough for communion? As far as I can tell from Scripture, sourdough is the only bread that has leaven (i.e., a fermented part of the previous lump of dough) in it as a rising agent.
Here in Medford, we use unleavened bread. It's risen bread. But it's not sourdough.
Hi John!
Yes, technically you are right. And no, we don't use sourdough. Ancient leaven was always the leftover "barm" from the previous day's sourdough bake out.
However, it seems to me that what is also significant is the symbolism of leaven... growth and maturity. In this sense, even the pre-packaged yeast that one buys at the grocery store today at least pictures this symbolism (versus the flat un-risen bread).
So yes, it's worth remembering that our communion bread is not exactly the same as their leavened bread, but at least part of the significance seems to be pictured between "un-risen" flat bread and "risen/leavened" bread which is what I was trying to get... ;)
What do you think?
I think that growth and maturity is important, but that the reason leaven was prohibited is because it would promote the growth and maturity of the old lump.
That's the point that Paul is making in 1 Cor. 5 when he refers to leaven. You're a new lump, he says, and therefore get rid of the leaven from the old lump.
There's nothing wrong with the growth and maturity of the new lump, so there'd be nothing wrong with risen new bread.
In fact, after getting rid of all the old lump leaven at Passover, Israel was required to use leavened bread at Pentecost. So I'm not persuaded that it's wrong for us to use sourdough, and we have here on occasion.
Thanks, John.
I completely agree that it would be just fine to use sourdough bread. I was just trying to point out that "risen" bread pictures some of what sourdough bread meant in the OT context.
You're also right about what Paul is talking about in 1 Cor. 5. I was just pointing out that the Kingdom of God is also pictured as leaven by Jesus in the Gospels. So in the NT, leaven takes that association on as well. It can picture the old lump, but it can also picture the new kingdom growing and expanding to fill the earth. I hope that makes sense.
BTW, sorry it took so long for your comment to appear. I was fooling around with my blogger settings and selected "moderate comments" trying to do something else. I didn't realize that it would "hold" comments until I could preview them!
Blessings,
Toby
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