A Woman Made Bread, and Jesus Said, "This Is My Body"

Brad Sullivan

Proper 12, Year A

July 30, 2017

Emmanuel, Houston

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

A Woman Made Bread, and Jesus Said, “This Is My Body”

Jesus said the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to “yeast that a woman took and mixed in with tree measures of flower until all of it was leavened.”   Bread.  The kingdom of heaven is like bread, the yeast mixing with the flour, helping it all grow together, the hands of God working to knead the dough and bake it, transforming it from something gooey and inedible, to something delicious and life-giving.  God gives life and forms people in the Kingdom of Heaven, transforming us from one thing into another.  Like God took clay and formed it into Adam’s body and transformed it into a living being, so did a woman knead and shape dough to make bread, which Jesus took, and broke, and gave to his friends and said, “this is my body.”

We are called the Body of Christ live here on earth, as we believe in Jesus, recognize him moving in our lives, and as we seek to live out his Kingdom here on earth.  We’re called to be bread, our separate lives transformed into something greater and life-giving, yeast mixed with flower and water, kneaded, shaped, and leavened into a large loaf of fresh baked bread.   Think for a second about the smell of fresh baked bread; it smells so good, makes you hungry, even if you’re not, you smell that bread, and you want some.  That’s what the Kingdom of God is like.  When we see or hear about the Kingdom of God really being lived out here on earth, we want to go there, we want to be a part of it.

Really living out the kingdom of God here on earth takes time and effort, just like it takes time to and effort to make bread.  It takes time and effort to mix the ingredients together, to knead the dough, and then it takes God’s transformation, the ingredients literally becoming something else as they are baked together.  That’s life in God’s Kingdom:  time, effort, mixing, and God’s transformation.

Life in God’s kingdom, truly living our God’s kingdom takes time.  It takes time for people to form relationships with others, time to get to know our neighbors.  Life in God’s kingdom takes effort.  It takes effort for people to join with others in their communities to serve others, to pray together, to strive together for justice and peace: seeking and serving Christ in all people, respecting the dignity of every human being, and loving our neighbors as ourselves. 

Life in God’s kingdom also takes mixing.  For the kingdom of Heaven to work, the yeast doesn’t just sit on the counter and watch the woman make the bread.   The yeast moves in and  around and interacts with the flour, the yeast and flour joining together with each other, changing each other, becoming something different than the two were separately.  In the kingdom of God, we take time and effort mixing our lives with the lives of others.  We work.  We strive.  We meet people, and we see where Jesus is moving in their lives.  We join with them:  the movement of Jesus in our lives joined with the movement of Jesus in their lives.  When we take this time and effort to mix our lives together, Jesus works to knead the dough, like a woman who kneaded and shaped dough to make bread, which Jesus took, and broke, and gave to his friends and said, “this is my body.”

I read an article last week which was about this kind of Kingdom work, people mixing together and forming bread.  The article from gravityleadership.com, was titled “How to Shift Small Groups to Missional Communities”  For those unfamiliar with the term, mission communities are groups of people within a larger body of the church who “are committed to growing closer to Jesus, doing life together, and joining God’s work in the world.  In other words, missional communities embrace worship, community, and mission as a holistic life of discipleship.” 

The thrust of the article was that missional communities are different from small groups and that in order to live God’s kingdom, we need to shift some of our small groups into missional communities.  The article points out that many churches have done pretty well at gathering their large worshipping communities into smaller groups which pray together, and study scripture, and get to know each other more deeply through their faith.  The small groups take a large community in which some people know hardly anyone, and they give places where people can grow together in deep relationships with one another.  The article went on to say, however, that often these small groups grow stale, continually looking for the next book or next study, and the mission and work of Jesus gets left undone.  Even with a good focus on formation and sharing faith together, reaching out to others beyond themselves is often left out of these small groups.  The yeast remains on the counter, watching the flour from a distance, not mixing and allowing the woman’s hands to form them into bread.

To be fair, the yeast is always ready for the flour to come to it.  We, the church, want people to come here.  We have become a largely attractional community, waiting for folks to come through the doors of the church building and join us in worship.  While we do outreach here and have mission trips which are all good things, those efforts are not usually part of our daily lives and the communities in which we live.  Rather, much of our life in the church is a part of this attractional model:  come to church to be a part of these outreach efforts here. 

With the attractional model of church, we’ve also done Sunday school pretty well for those who are here.  If you come to church on Sunday, you can be formed in the stories of scripture and the faith of Jesus.  If you can’t come to church on Sunday, you’re kinda left on your own.  Folks can watch Joel Osteen on TV, but there’s not actual interaction, actually community with real people, watching something on TV.  We have not been really faithful to Jesus’ calling for us to go out into our communities and form disciples of Jesus there.

Now, that sounds like evangelism, which the Episcopal church has not historically been overly well known for.  We can share our faith within communities within the church, but going out?  That sounds like less than happy street corner people.  Let me be very clear:  a faithful, yet less than happy person on a street corner, threatening strangers to believe in Jesus isn’t yeast mixing with flour; it’s rat poison.  Truly being yeast that gets up off the counter to mix with the flour means mixing with others in our communities, living life together, and thereby allowing Jesus to transform us into bread.  Evangelism is not generally done with strangers.  Evangelism is done with people we know and people we have gotten to know.  Evangelism is done in community, not by ourselves.  Becoming bread, becoming the kingdom of God means we live out our faith in community with others, going out together in our communities to serve others and likely to be served by them as well.  That is what missional communities are, what the church was always intended to be.

The article, “How to Shift Small Groups to Missional Communities”,  gave three steps toward transforming a small group into a missional community which has an outward mission:

• Start a conversation with your existing small group about joining God’s work in your community. If you are not currently part of a small group, prayerfully make a list of people you can invite in on the conversation.
• Discern mission as a group by making a list of areas in the community that God might be inviting you to step into. This could be a place like your neighborhood, [joining with others to regularly and consistently help at a non-profit or community home], or a people group that you feel especially called to serve and love.
• Develop some rhythms to support your life together that includes regularly seeking God, connecting in community with one another, and engaging your shared mission together.

Prayer, Worship, Service.

[Finally], as you step into mission as a community, think presence more than projects. How can you be intentional and consistent in being present among a group of people as a community? Then simply keep noticing where God is at work and join him there!

Now, I’d love to give an exact, step by step process for becoming a missional community with a simple beginning, middle, and end, but the Kingdom of God doesn’t work like that.  What exactly a community is going to look like, what exactly the community mission work will be depends on what needs there are in each of our communities.  What are our passions, and were do the needs of our communities meet the passions of our hearts?  A missional community could join together to serve together, regularly, at a non-profit or a community home/shelter.  A missional community could join together and get to know their neighbors and serve them when in need.  Then that person might join the missional community and serve with them when someone else is in need. 

A missional community, like the Body of Christ, like the Kingdom of God, is not a project that can be easily drawn up, pre-formed, modeled, and packaged for easy assembly.  Missional communities, the way of the kingdom of God, requires work, effort, mixing together, dreaming and praying together with guidance from Jesus.  Missional communities are going to be different everywhere because the needs and the people are different in each community. 

Our part is to be formed as bread, to be yeast, to mix with our communities, to really get to know the communities in which we live, to notice what the needs are, to notice where Jesus is already at work, and then to be willing to be changed by mixing our lives and the work of Jesus with the lives and work of Jesus within others in our communities.  Then we become the Kingdoms of God. 

When we take this time and effort to mix our lives together, Jesus works to knead the dough, like a woman who kneaded and shaped dough to make bread, which Jesus took, and broke, and gave to his friends and said, “this is my body.”

https://gravityleadership.com/small-groups-missional-communities/