THE LEAVEN MODEL

The Leaven Model is one of the examples of Jesus on how the Kingdom influences:
“To what shall I liken the kingdom of God? It is like leaven (yeast), which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened.” (Luke 13:20-21)

A parable has three parts: A picture part, a reality part and a comparison part. The picture part is a woman making bread with leaven, the reality part is the kingdom of God, and the point of comparison is the powerful growth of the kingdom from small beginnings.

Dominic Garramone, The Bread Monk (PBS), writes:
“The amount of flour is the most surprising element of the parable, which is not entirely evident in most English translations. “Three measures” is the usual translation for the original Greek “tria sata” which is a little over a bushel of flour (1.125 bushels, to be precise). That’s a ridiculously large amount of flour—you’d need a 100-quart Hobart mixer with a dough hook as big as your leg to knead it! Translating into kitchen measures, 1.125 bushels is 144 cups of flour. Presuming we used a common recipe for basic white bread that uses 5 ? cups of flour, 144 cups is enough to make 26 batches of bread of two loaves each, giving us a total of 52 loaves, each weighing about a pound and a half. If we’re frugal but not stingy, we can get 16 slices out of a loaf, yielding 832 slices, enough for 416 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (we’d need 33 jars of jelly, and 64 of peanut butter). What’s the message of the story? It’s simple: The kingdom of heaven is like a woman who wants to do more than feed her family. The kingdom announced by Jesus is like a woman who wants to feed the village.  The kingdom of God is like a woman who wants to feed the world. The kingdom is for everybody.”

‘When you have more than you need, build a longer table, not a higher fence.’ (Sign in Coffee Shop in Midland, MI)

“What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it?” Jesus