Luke 13:20

      The parable of the leaven may also have had unexpected impact (as did the mustard seed story - last week). It is in many ways a parallel with that of the mustard seed. A woman takes leaven (yeast in many translations) and mixes or hides in a large quantity of flour until all of it was leavened.
     Leavening of the modern type (baking powder or soda) was unknown. Nor did the baker of first century Israel have pure yeast such as the modern cook uses from the store. Yeast or leaven was a piece of old, fermented dough added to a fresh lump of dough to start the leavening process in it. (Frontier cooks often used a similar process, sometimes called sourdough. Laura Ingalls Wilder described her mother putting the scraps of dough into a jar of water to be added to the next batch of biscuit or bread makings.)
     Yet, in the first century, leavening was not always a positive image. Paul twice spoke of a little yeast leavening the dough (Col 5:9; 1 Cor 5-7). But he was warning against what may have appeared to be a little something that was wrong growing amidst the Christians. Leavening, also, was to be completely removed from the home during Passover, in remembrance of the time that the Israelites had to leaven Egypt before their bread was leavened (and it baked hard in the sun, unleavened, unrisen.) Natural leavening begins almost immediately, whether or not something else is added. Natural organisms get wet and that begins the process. For unleavened bread to be “kosher” it must be baked less than twenty minutes after moisture has been added to the flour.
     But Jesus here is not referring to yeast as a negative influence corrupting the whole. It is a parable of God’s kingdom.
      Although modern translations often say mixed instead of hidden, scholars made much of the fact that the woman may have “hidden” the leaven. Three measures of flour would have been a huge amount, enough to feed 150 people. If she hid it, she unintentionally ended up with a considerable amount of bread dough. There was likely some humor intended here. The humor is also apparent in the fact that the growth of the kingdom is portrayed as powerful and unstoppable. Small beginnings can eventually change the character of the whole. After all, who’d have believed that a small number of socially, economically and intellectually unimportant men and women, following a crucified leader, would help change the world?
     Finally, it is impossible not to note the fact that Jesus is using an image from a woman's point of view.  He did the same with the parable of the lost sheep - and the woman searching for a lost coin.  We can only imagine, but do imagine the impact upon his female listeners who were probably accustomed to having their world, their value and their presence be devalued.  What did this say to them?

What is the character of hope in this parable?
What image in today’s world might have some of the same meaning?
What new and powerful movement can be discerned today?