I don’t do a lot
of the cooking at home, but Sunday night is usually my night to cook, and my
wife’s and my kids’ favorite seems to be my homemade pizza. I make my own scratch dough, using a
breadmaker which mixes the ingredients and warms the dough as it rises. Often I’ll mix the ingredients, start the
timer and we’ll go out for a walk.
One day I came back from the walk
and checked on the dough and there at the bottom of the breadmaker was a
well-mixed but lifeless ball of dough.
Just sitting there, not rising at all.
I knew immediately that I had missed a rather important ingredient – the
yeast, the leavening!
Another time I came in and checked
and realized I’d put in a bit too much yeast, or a bit too much water, or
something, because the dough was pushing the top of the breadmaker open. Bursting right out of the breadmaker!
And so it is with the Kingdom of
God. Where the Kingdom is at work, where
the Gospel is preached and reaches people’s hearts, the Word of God is like
leaven, expanding and even perhaps bursting out! But the converse is true also – where the
Gospel is not preached and heard, where the values of today’s culture are too
strong, there is no growth, no expansion, no transformation.
We live in what some call a
post-Christian culture. Never before has
our world been so in need of the leaven of the Kingdom of God. You and I, my sisters and brothers, are called
by our baptism to BE that leaven in our world.
That nourished at the table of the Lord, nourished by His Body and
Blood, we go forth to be the presence of Christ in the world around us, in our
homes, our community, our nation. So
that by our word and example, yours and mine, Christ may transform our world
and continue to bring about His Kingdom.
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