Jesus enjoined them, “Watch out,
guard against the leaven of the Pharisees
and the leaven of Herod.”
Jesus warned them about the leaven of the Pharisees for a similar reason that Paul warned the Corinthians about boasting. Paul warned that "a little leaven leavens the whole lump" and went on to say, "Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened" (see First Corinthians 5:6). There was something about the pride the that motivated the Pharisees and the pride that motivated the Corinthian boasting that had the potential be a disproportionately corruptive influence. This means that it was not just the Pharisees that were at risk from prideful teaching, nor the boasters in Corinth at risk from their boasting. These things had the potential to damage the whole community, to create, divisions, jealousy, and rivalries.
They concluded among themselves that
it was because they had no bread.
Jesus wanted his disciples to be able to interpret the spiritual meanings of his teachings. But they were still too fixated on material things, on circumstances, and the apparently pressing problems of the moment. We get like this too. We make a mistake like forgetting to bring bread and suddenly we think everything Jesus says to us is related to that mistake. Our horizons constrict around our ego as our imperfection becomes our central concern. We forgot the bread. How could Jesus want to talk about anything else? But this attitude is precisely pride. This inability to look beyond ourselves is very much the beginnings of the same corruptive leaven as the Pharisees and Herod.
Jesus multiplied the loaves to show that our material concerns and needs could be subordinated to following him. If we seek first the Kingdom he will provide for what we need. The risk is that we look on the miracles of the feeding of the five thousand and the four thousand as though those miracles had no end beyond the mere provisioning of food. The risk of the leaven mindset that only sees solutions to short-term problems is to miss the way in which those solutions were signs of something more and greater.
when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand,
how many wicker baskets full of fragments you picked up?”
They answered him, “Twelve.”
“When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand,
how many full baskets of fragments did you pick up?”
They answered him, “Seven.”
There were twelve baskets for the twelve tribes of Israel and seven baskets for the seven nations of the Gentiles. Jesus intended that they would become one body by feeding on the one loaf of his own body. But he needed to help his disciples to elevate their vision from a mode which was merely material to include a vision that was more expansive and could also recognize the spiritual.
Sometimes the best way to grow in the clean, the unleavened, and the spiritual, is to spend some time apart from influences that corrupt us and cloud our vision.
Then the LORD said to Noah:
“Go into the ark, you and all your household,
for you alone in this age have I found to be truly just.
We can enter more fully into the ark of the Church and let the flood waters of the grace of our baptism more fully put our old sinful self to death. We can more and more live and act from the grace of our new birth. We have been born again as new creations in Christ but it is up to us to choose to live from that reality.
As soon as the seven days were over,
the waters of the flood came upon the earth.
We need to be able to trust in the Lord, to be concerned about his word sufficiently more than we are concerned about the word of the world, so that we can enter the ark when he calls and to leave the details in his hands. Our minds tend to rebel from this, as though the outside world will collapse without us. But again, this is pride and leaven. When we're within the ark God can still bring renewal to the outside world. For our part, he wants us to be ready and equipped to plant the seeds of a new and better life on that outside world when we finally emerge.
The voice of the LORD is over the waters,
the LORD, over vast waters.
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