Pass It On

+Perpetua and Felicity+ 203 AD

"And all are welcome to enter in

In the blood of Christ the great sacrifice

The withered branches bloom again

The withered branches bloom again

Pass it on

Break the bread lift the cup

Pass it on

The broken will be lifted up"

Pass it On by Peter Mayer/Patricia O'Reilly

Thursday is my day off, and so it is the day on which I like to bake bread. For the past year or so I've been working with sourdough. Many people recall their mother or grandmother having some "friendship bread" or "starter" or "mother" inhabiting the kitchen counter or taking over the refrigerator. Whereas Garrison Keillor says, "guilt is the gift that keeps on giving," it might actually be sourdough starter that gives and gives and gives. All of a sudden when you see people running from you when they see you approaching them with a closed Tupperware container of this mysterious liquid which resembles some kind of primordial ooze, you know your friends have had enough of starter.

Father Dom, in his great little book, Bake and Be Blessed: Bread Baking as a Metaphor for Spiritual Growth writes, "Yeast symbolizes the enlivening principle in our lives, the core values and passions that make our lives worth living. For some people, work is at the center of their identity, so much so that when they retire or are no longer able to work, they lose their sense of self-worth. For others, life is centered on sports or entertainment, or on the acquisition of wealth. Other more positive values like family, creativity and service can be the passions that give our lives meaning. For Christians, however, the yeast in our lives should be the good news of the kingdom." (page 33) 

Find out more about Father Dom by checking out  www. Breadmonk.com.

Today the church commemorates Perpetua and Felicity, who were martyred on this day in 203AD.  You can read more about their story, their lives and their deaths here.

Obviously these two women (along with many other saints throughout the years) had some enlivening principle in their lives that gave them courage, hope and stamina.  Peter sings about this "something" as he invites and encourages us to

"Pass it on
Break the bread

Lift the cup

Pass it on

The broken will be lifted up"

In my humble opinion, there is nothing more elegant and grand than sharing good, warm, fresh baked bread with others. There is the aroma which fills the house. It is welcoming and pleasant to behold. The simple, basic ingredients of wheat, water, yeast, salt and sugar when mixed together, kneaded and then baked in the heat of the oven produce a product that is pleasing to the eye and delights the mouth and stomach.

(Some of this material first appeared in a sermon on January 26, 2014:)

In January I spent some days at the Baking Education Center of King Arthur Flour. It was a wonderful Christmas gift from my wife. We spent one day just working with sourdough. As part of that lesson, we heard lots of terms like pre-ferment, biga, polish, levain, old dough, mother dough and, of course, starter. 

Now, not to get all technical here, but if you look up any of these words on Wikipedia, it will say, "A pre-ferment and a longer fermentation in the bread-making process have several benefits: there is more time for yeast, enzyme and, if sourdough, bacterial actions on the starch and proteins in the dough; this in turn improves the keeping time of the baked bread, and it creates greater complexities of flavor." 

Now, I can tell you what will really make you a believer is to taste the bread that is made in that way. As I thought about "pre-ferments," I think of how Jesus, the Bread of Life, utilized the disciples as a pre-ferment, as a starter, as mother dough for the rest of us. Those of you who bake and work with sourdough know, the ingredients are simple; flour and water. Flour and water, when combined with wild yeast spores, all of a sudden there is something happening. And yes, even if you can't see it, you can smell it.

Jesus took these 12 average, regular people and worked with them for three years. He set them aside. One day in Bible class, someone said that he must have seen something in them that they didn't even know they themselves had. I think that's true. And just like sourdough starter, to be kept together in a jar doesn't do any good. What needs to happen is to get mixed up with the rest of the recipe. This flavor, this energy of the sourdough is just like that of the disciples, of you and me. We are called to get mixed up in God's loving recipe for the world.  And when that happens, we, along with the others, get transformed and made new.

May you sense God's loving hands adding you into the mix today and this coming week.

Pass it on!

rtg