Biblical Text

You can read Mark 8.14-21 here.

Sermon Video

You can watch the sermon video here.

Sermon Transcript

[Note: The actual sermon will differ somewhat from what I had typed.]

My good friend celebrated his birthday this past week. I have known him since August 2000 when I started as Cell Pastor at North University Park Church in Los Angeles. My first vivid memory of him is from a few weeks after I started. He asked for a meeting with me. I had no clue what it was about. During the meeting, he revealed to me that he was from a Buddhist family and that he had only recently come to believe in Jesus. He wanted someone to disciple him and show him the ropes of the Christian life. To be more specific, he wanted me to do that!

I accepted and we set a regular schedule for our sessions together. At our first session he asked me something that I cannot forget. Neither can he and we have since then often had a nice laugh recalling that occasion.

Knowing that I like Mathematics, he asked me, “So what’s the formula?” He was serious, though. He had grown up in a Buddhist family. When he was still quite young, his mother became a Jehovah’s Witness. And from both sides he heard lists of things that had to be done. He heard formulas; formulas that would have made him a good Buddhist or a good Jehovah’s Witness.

And he wanted to know what would make him a good Christian. “So what’s the formula?” he asked. I responded in what I now realize to be a rare moment of insight. But I will save that for later. So don’t sleep!

Why do I bring this up? Because this is directly relevant to today’s passage. But if we do not recognize it, it is because we have been told differently and led astray by well-meaning Christians who did not discipline themselves to pay attention to the context.

Let us first consider some common interpretations of this passage. One way of interpreting the passage is to say that the yeast of the Pharisees is their hypocrisy and that Jesus is warning his disciples against being hypocrites. We can all agree that Jesus would not want us to be hypocrites. And we know that he calls the Pharisees hypocrites at another time. But does that mean that he is referring to the same thing here?

A second way of interpretation is to say that the yeast of the Pharisees is their refusal to believe in him. We can all agree that the Pharisees, in general, did not believe in Jesus and that Jesus was more than displeased about this. And Jesus, in another place, clearly repudiates the Pharisees for their unbelief. But does that mean he is referring to the same thing here?

A third way of interpreting Jesus’ words is to say that Jesus was warning his disciples about becoming obsessed with religion and politics – hence the mention of the Pharisees and Herod. We can all agree that Jesus would not like us to obsess about anything, except about becoming like him. And we know that he said things against the religiosity of the Pharisees and the self-serving politics of Herod. But does that mean he is referring to the same thing here?

The Austrian philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, classmate of the infamous Adolf Hitler and a major target in Hitler’s book Mein Kampf, once said, “The meaning of a word is its use.” We should be able to recognize this for, while the word ‘yeast’ is normally used in a negative sense in the bible, Jesus himself uses it in a positive sense when likening the kingdom of God to yeast in dough.

But more than that, if “the meaning of a word is its use” then the immediate context of a phrase must be the strongest determinant of the meaning of the phrase.

This is where the three common approaches fail. They import into the text meanings that are not inconsistent with Jesus’ teaching elsewhere. But they fail precisely because these meanings are imported into the text. They fail because they ignore the immediate context.

Hence, we must take a close look at the context within which this passage arises and then try to understand what Jesus meant. The immediate preceding context is the miracle of feeding over four thousand people. And Jesus refers to that in today’s passage. He also refers to the feeding of over five thousand, recorded for us in Mark 6. This makes both these feeding miracles the primary preceding context for our passage.

But what is Jesus doing in the entire passage? Why does he mention the feeding miracles? A common way of looking at it is to say that Jesus is telling his disciples to have faith that he can provide for them even if they had not brought enough bread. But that would mean that Jesus actually does not say anything substantial about the yeast of the Pharisees! It would mean that, though he opened the issue of the yeast of the Pharisees, probably because it was important, he just dropped it and allowed his disciples to sidetrack him.

A better approach is to think that Jesus used the concerns of his disciples, namely the lack of bread, to teach them truly what the yeast of the Pharisees meant. Yes, he reminds them of those two miracles and in so doing reminds them that he can provide for their physical needs. But he goes further and with those two miracles teaches them what the yeast of the Pharisees meant.

So let us focus on Jesus’ response to his disciples’ concerns about the lack of bread. He asks them, ‘When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?” Then he asks them, “And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”

Why does he ask, “How many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?” Why is he asking about a number? If he wanted them to just know that he was able to provide for their needs, all he had to do was remind them about the two miracles and the fact that there were leftovers. Why is the amount of leftovers important? And why does he mention the number of loaves and the number of people in each case? Why is that important?

If Jesus wanted to reassure his disciples that he could provide for them, all he had to ask was, “Don’t you remember the two feeding miracles?” Why does he go into the numeric details of the miracles?

I am a Mathematics teacher and have, since I was quite young, been fascinated with patterns. Patterns of numbers and shapes catch my attention and fire my imagination.

So when I see Jesus ask about numbers, not once, but twice, in the same passage, I pay attention and let my imagination take wing. So here is what Jesus says.

When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?

When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?

The answers to these two questions are twelve and seven baskets respectively. But Jesus is not focusing on just the plain facts, the plain numbers, but on something else.

In the passage Jesus makes it clear that the yeast of the Pharisees had nothing to do with whether or not the disciples had brought bread with them. In fact, he makes it clear that they should not be thinking in terms of physical provision. Rather, he draws their attention to the six numbers that were involved. And then asks, “Do you still not understand?”

What were his disciples supposed to understand from these numbers? What is it about these numbers that shed light on what Jesus meant by the yeast of the Pharisees?

We can place the different numbers of the two miracles in a table like this. Here, the smaller numbers are enclosed in green while the larger ones are enclosed in red.

What we see is something quite astonishing. When the quantity of bread per person was lower – significantly lower – in the first miracle, there were more leftovers. When the loaves per person was higher in the second miracle, there were fewer leftovers.

This is quite unexpected. We would expect that, with more resources per person, there would be more left after the people had eaten. But this is not the case. It is exactly the opposite.

This leads us to two conclusions, extremely important to a life of faith. First, and this is included in most interpretations, God’s grace is sufficient for all our needs. I am not telling you anything new or letting you in on any secret. The five thousand, and then the four thousand, were fed and had more than their fill. There was such an abundance that the leftovers in both cases would have been enough to feed a large group.

The second conclusion is one that is ignored by most interpretations simply because they do not focus enough on the immediate context in which Jesus draws his disciples’ attention to the numbers and then asks them how it is that they still do not understand.

Religions have always liked to give their followers a semblance of certainty in this uncertain world. Religious leaders have guided people with advice about diet, offerings, lifestyle changes, and sacrifices, to name just a few ways. People who approach religious leaders with their problems and ask for advice, often get a list of ‘do’s and ‘don’t’s, a structured life we need to follow to attain the spiritual goal.

We can think of the four yogas – Karma yoga, Bhakti yoga, Jnana yoga and Raja yoga – of Hinduism, three from the Bhagavad Gita and one from Patanjali. Each of these promises to draw a person closer to the goal of Hinduism – moksha.

We can think of the middle way and eight fold path of Buddhism, which promise to lead the person closer to the goal of Buddhism – nirvana.

We can think of the straight path of Islam, which promises to enable a person to submit to the will of Allah.

Or we can think of the three gems of Jainism, the ratna traya, consisting of samyak darsana, samyak jnana and samyak charitra, that would lead the practitioner toward moksha.

And we can think of all the routines within the Christian faith that purport to draw us closer to Jesus. Here, in two columns, are some of these routines.

Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing inherently incorrect about any of these practices. In fact, Jesus himself, in other places, has recommended and even commanded prayer and fasting.

If you have been in Christian circles long enough, someone would have probably recommended a prayer to you, saying that it is a powerful prayer and that the results of praying it are astounding. You can think of the serenity prayer, the sinner’s prayer and the Jesus prayer, to name only three popular ones.

But this is not restricted to prayer. We are told how to fast, what the best time to do is, what to do when fasting, and so on. And it goes beyond fasting too.

Tell another Christian that you do not begin the day with prayer and just watch their response. Tell them that you do not have an organized bible reading schedule and you can see the scorn rise behind their eyes. Tell them that you do not tithe and you can feel the disbelief become tangible.

Tell a Baptist that you were baptized as an infant and you could witness him question your salvation. Tell an Eastern Orthodox that you were re-baptized as an adult and you can sense her waiting to call you a heretic. We know by heart the verse that says, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” But we know quite well how to lay on the condemnation!

“Do you still not understand?” We often claim, “My God is a big God!” but then place God safely in the box of our theology and practice, treating him like a genie in a bottle, waiting to give us a wish when we ask. Oh, but we do not call it a wish! We call it answered prayer for we know the theologically correct term.

But what does it mean to say, “My God is a big God”? When my friend asked me, “So what’s the formula?” I responded in a rare moment of insight. My response to him was this: “God’s grace is precisely the freedom from formulas because God deals with each of us in unique ways.”

There is no formula. There is no method, no routine, that can guarantee that we will draw closer to God. What works for me might well not work for you and what works for you may not work for me. What this means is that each of us must get up close to and personal with God in our own unique ways and allow him to use our personalities, our skills, our dispositions, our talents, our weaknesses, our strengths, our failures, our successes to relate to us in ways that are unique to us.

But we read books by the spiritual masters – St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Augustine, Martin Luther, John Wesley, to name but a few. We read what worked for them. And slavishly we imitate them, not realizing that by doing this we are trying to relate to God in second hand ways, keeping him at a distance by introducing a mediator to tell us how to relate to him.

We can certainly learn from these spiritual masters. But each of us needs to learn about ourselves too. We need to learn who we truly are. And for this we need to rid ourselves of all the formulas, all the routines, that we have absorbed in the past. And we need to set forth anew on a journey with Jesus in which he helps us discover who he made us to be and how he made us to respond to the overtures of his love. And in so doing we will be transformed. And we will then understand that and why there is no formula.