SUNDAY, JULY 26TH, 2026 – NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
FLOUR
THE REV. RICHARD BURDEN
Photo by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash
Title: Flour
Three measures of flour is a lot. It’s close to 40 pounds. That’s enough for a hundred people?…more?
That faction got dropped into the middle of five other parables about fields and pearls…so you may not have clocked it.
Two weeks ago we were soil—hard, rocky, thorny, fertile. Those don’t describe individual people by the way…we all have some of each of those within us. The question is which dominates?
Two weeks ago we were soil. Last week we were wheat and weeds growing together in a field. This week we are this very substantial amount of flour.
Did you notice that not once in all these parables are we the ones doing anything?…We are not the sower…we’re not the landowner or the reapers…we’re not the woman mixing dough…In other words, we’re not the ones acting…“strutting and fretting our hour upon the stage”…we are acted upon.
Soil doesn’t decide what seeds will be sown in it…Wheat doesn’t choose where it’s planted, or when it’s harvested…And flour has zero opinions about what kind of bread it should be.
Soil is just dirt until something falls into it and dies…Wheat is just grass until it is harvested, cleaned, milled, sifted and ground. Flour just sits in the bag…until…
Until a woman takes some yeast and mixes — actually a better translation is “hide”— she hides some yeast. Again, without consulting the flour — us. Hide is the better word, because once yeast is mixed in…you can’t see it. You know it’s there because you can see something happen…the dough rises…but you can’t see what’s doing the work.
Then what happens? Flour and yeast by themselves don’t make bread…you also need water…some salt…but if you just mixed all that together and left in on the counter, what would happen? Something would happen…Would anyone want to eat it?
The flour…has to change…something energetic and transformative gets hidden in it…and then it’s worked…kneaded…until the internal structure changes…kneading dough literally uses tension and pressure to rearrange the proteins.
The hidden yeast also has to change…it causes the dough to rise, but in order to do that it has to die and be absorbed…its flavor is all that remains…Salt dissolves…and ultimately heat has to be added. None of it remains what it was.
Moreover, the dough does not rise, and the bread is not baked for the soil, or the wheat, or the flour…the bread is for the hungry, the grieving, the sick, the friendless, the needy…the distracted…the faithless…the ones “who do not know how to pray as we ought”…
We all want so badly to be the ones in charge…to have some say…to be the ones who act…to know that everything will work out if we follow this pattern…do these things…say these words…It’s a hard and humbling lesson to learn that we are not yet what we will become…that we probably won’t recognize what we are being transformed into…that we undoubtedly have less say in how the Kingdom of Heaven comes into being than we would like. But that doesn’t mean we have zero autonomy.
Soil can’t say “no.” Flour can’t say “yes,” but we can. We have to consent to what God is doing…and that consent is really the only thing being asked of us.
This thing we do here every week…taking…blessing…breaking…sharing bread…the real name for that translates as “the work of the people.” It’s a public work…work that is done — not entirely for us, but definitely with us — on behalf of the whole hungry, hurting world.
Three measures of flour…is a lot…No one would make that much bread just for themselves. But they might make that much to feed everyone here…and have plenty left over.
What’s being made out of us here every week…with the yeast of this Eucharist is for more than us…it’s for everyone in the world who is convinced that there isn’t enough…There is enough. There has always been enough. That’s what we are for.