Friday, September 10, 2010
The disciples crossed the water [to Christ's location], but forgot to take any bread with them. Jesus told them, "Take heed. Beware the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." They discussed this, because they had no bread.
When Jesus overheard them, he said to them, "You of little faith, why does your lack of bread mislead you? Do you not yet understand? Don't you remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered up? Or the seven loaves of the four thousand, and how many baskets you gathered then? Why don't you understand that my words don't concern bread? Just beware the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees."
Then they understood that he was not warning them about leaven for bread, but of the teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Leaven is a substance that makes bread rise, i.e. yeast. Middle Eastern peoples did not isolate yeast as we do today; rather, they would take a little piece of starter dough, or risen bread dough, and knead it into the new bread dough. Over the course of time, the yeast in the old dough would grow and spread throughout the new loaf.
(This technique is still used, even in industrialized societies. The organisms needed to flavor sourdough bread, for example, are usually transmitted from starter.)
Like a mustard seed, leaven is something small that spreads and grows. But leaven does not form a new plant or plants; its effect is subtle, and it spreads through something that already exists. Christ makes a clever analogy between leaven in bread dough, and doctrines and teaching in communities. A false doctrine, like a rumor, will spread quietly through a community, unseen and uncontrolled, without anyone seeming to do anything.
Christ chides his disciples a bit, because they should have known, from the miracles of the loaves, that he wasn't concerned about bread. Rather, he was concerned that the disciples understand, and look out for, the manner in which the religious authorities were spreading false doctrine: Not by openly challenging Christ's ministry, but by planting doubt and false doctrine which might then spread by word of mouth.
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