Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod
Mark 8:14-21
Don't worry about the bread, Jesus can deal with bread!
The disciples had forgotten to bring food. After all that business with not having enough to feed everyone and then the miraculous moment with the five loaves and two fishes, we might have thought they'd have made sure they always had provisions with them after that.
But no, here they are again, twice, it would seem, in a very short time, without enough between them to feed everyone. Someone pipes up that they have one loaf between them on the boat.
Jesus comes back however with something completely different. They're still concerned about what they will eat, still feeling stupid for having forgotten food and thinking He is complaining about that. Bothered that they look silly.
But no, He couldn't care less about the next meal, that was small fry, He could handle that in a moment and according to Him they should have realised this.
What He wanted them to be concerned about was a different kind of 'leaven' or 'yeast' -
"the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod"
What was that? It was enough for them to learn to be fully reliant of Jesus for all their bodily needs, to entrust themselves to Him to manage the food question as well as the clothing and lodging question.
Now He was over their heads again and over ours too probably, if we just read the words without pondering and considering what Jesus really wants to say here.
Its not about bread, or fish, or raising agents...
However, it is about relying on Jesus, trusting Him to deal with the small stuff and then going deeper.
We know what Jesus thought of the way the Pharisees went about their religion as He is reported several times in the Gospels chastising them for various things. We also have a detailed description of the way Herod thought and acted, in the telling of the arrest and subsequent murder of John the Baptist.
The Pharisees thought they could earn their way to heaven, they were scrupulous to the extreme and tied themselves and others in knots with their rules. For them the worst thing was to be seen to be breaking a 'jot or tittle' of the law... They were primarily relying on themselves for the health of their spiritual lives.
Herod on the other hand, was concerned with success by the world's standards, being seen to be a great king, a strong ruler and keen to stay riding the waves of popular acclaim and adulation, even fear as long as he kept his earthly status at all costs... He was primarily relying on himself (his status, power and earthly authority, riches and appearance) for success in his earthly life.
As Jesus tells the disciples - and us - to be on guard against both of these temptations, clinging to our own control and working it all out by ourselves. He seems incredulous they were still talking about the bread. As so often happened during Jesus' ministry on earth with His disciples, and as so often happens with us here today as we try to follow Him, we get bogged down in the daily doings of life and don't notice when we're being influenced by the leaven or yeast of the Pharisees or even Herod.
We need our trust and faith to grow. To trust He will provide for us - both physically and spiritually - that He can do miraculous things with some very ordinary things (even bread - both physically and spiritually) and He can do the same with us.
We need to be open and teachable - docibile - trusting that God can give us all we need on every level. We don't need to worry about looking perfect in the eyes of the world or in the eyes of religious leaders. We can't earn heaven through ticking boxes. We can't earn a gift that is given freely.
Another way of looking at it, which I've been pondering lately, is the worker of the eleventh hour, who obtains his full reward at the very end of a long day. The other labourers, who had sweated for hours through the hottest part of the day and would receive the same pay. complained that this late-comer was getting off lightly. The result was the same, they were to be rewarded just as he was. We really need to make sure we're not like them - we can't earn heaven through decades of hard graft and then demand our pay.
Suddenly someone we have known forever as not being quite up to scratch in our opinion, could one day present to Our Lord a childlike, simple, open, teachable heart and might surprise us by passing 'Go', getting their £200 and receiving a 'get out of jail free' card before us... even when it would appear that they have done nothing to deserve it (like we have).
Neither can we earn our way to heaven through decades of climbing the greasy pole, priding ourselves in success or status or achievement. Or even measuring our worth by the approval ratings of our bosses, colleagues or peers. This is another sort of bread Jesus didn't much like, he called that 'the bread that perishes'. That would have been the bread Herod served at his palace banquets.
We need to be like Our Lady, one of the poor ones, the little ones - anawim - full of wonder at what God can do, fully aware of God's power, fully trusting and reliant on Him, despite what it looks like on the outside.
We need to be teachable, fully reliant on Jesus - for the spiritual as well as the physical - saying our 'yes' in each moment and knowing that He has everything in hand if we would only let go and allow Him to be our God.
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