Biblical Wanderings: Mark 8:14-19

They had forgotten to bring bread with them, and they had only one loaf on the boat. And he was instructing them, saying, “watch out - take heed of the leaven of the Pharisees, and the leaven of Herod.” And they were saying to one another, “it’s because we have no bread.” Perceiving this, he said to them, “Why do you think it’s because you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Is your heart hardened? Having eyes, do you not see? Having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of fragments did you take away?” “Twelve,” they said.

Repeating what I said in an earlier week: a parable is like a painting - there is no simple meaning. It’s not a popsicle stick with a question on one end and an answer on the other. The common approach is to split things into “literal” and “metaphorical” meaning, discard the literal and say, “here’s the metaphor. But if you don’t sit with the literal meaning first, you don’t actually get any of it. A metaphor isn’t something separate from the literal thing. It’s like an additional resonance that rises up out of the thing.

So let’s start by sitting with leaven. Let me tell you what wikipedia tells me about leaven. Leaven, or yeast, is a culture. It’s a collection of single-celled organisms - living beings. When you combine leaven with flour, these organisms consume the sugar in the flour and create carbon dioxide bubbles. These bubbles puff up the bread, making it lighter, and by the gods of Wikipedia’s standards, “tastier”. Bread without leaven is flat, like a tortilla or corn chip.

I wanna linger on that word “culture” for a moment, because a lot of us don’t use leaven very often, but we’re all very used to culture. We, too, are organisms that ping-pong about, generating a whirlwind energy and building stuff up. That’s “culture”. So you can see this delicate interplay between meanings in a parable.

Unleavened bread has a big ritual significance in Jewish culture. Making bread without that yeast culture was a symbolic act that represented living a life outside of the empire, outside of mainstream culture. Away from Egypt, away from Babylon, away from these domineering forces of conquest. Matza is Jewish flatbread, and it’s a big part of Passover, which will be relevant later in the story.

So when Jesus says, “take heed of the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod,” it’s a bit subversive, because he’s pointing the finger at Jewish culture and saying, “that’s culture too”. That’s also leaven - that’s also people consuming one thing and spitting out another. This is where we start to stumble upon the larger image. What are these people receiving? It’s divine wisdom, divine inspiration. What do they spit out? Something lesser. This is an eternal problem for every religious tradition: how do you communicate to others something beyond words? In Zen, they refer to this problem as “a finger pointing at the moon”. You see the moon. You want other people to see the moon. So you start pointing at the moon. Suddenly, everyone is talking about your finger instead! They’re looking at you, not at what you’re looking at. This is how human culture works.

And yet no one can escape human culture. Even if you go live alone on a mountaintop, you’re still surrounded by your own voices. I think it’s significant that Jesus doesn’t say, “don’t eat the bread of the Pharisees.” He says, “take heed - beware”. Everyone needs to eat. Just be mindful of what you are eating. It’s like eating a muffin with nuts in it, and you’re allergic to nuts. Eat around the nuts, pull the nuts out - don’t wolf it down. Everyone lives in culture. But you don’t have to receive it and amplify it mindlessly. When a chimp reaches a muddy stream, it digs a hole close to the riverbank and waits for the hole to fill up with water. When water comes into the hole, it’s filtered - that earth between the river and the hole filters out the muck, so the chimp can drink. It’s better to sit near culture and dig a hole of your own than to drink directly from the stream.

How do we do that? How do we build up that filter? Jesus tells us in three questions: “Do you have eyes and not see? Ears and not hear? Don’t you remember?” See. Hear. Remember. My favorite passage of the bible comes near the end of Deutoronomy, after a long list of arcane rules:

“Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.” (Deut 30:11-14)

Divine wisdom isn’t an unreachable quest. It’s not high up in the sky or across a distant sea. It’s inside of you, already there in your mouth and heart. You’re constantly receiving and harboring it. See, hear, remember. When we enter into culture, these three things become our enemies. My eyes are showing me a fuzzy constellation of shimmering dots, and reflections and smears on my glasses, but what I need to be seeing is the message I’m responding to on my laptop. So, away with seeing! My ears are hearing the ticking of my heating unit when I’m supposed to be listening to what someone is saying - away with hearing! I’m remembering a nightmare I had last night instead of thinking about my work - away with memory! We need to forgive these fugitives of their anti-social crimes and restore them in our lives. Otherwise, we never stop chasing something on the outside that’s really on the inside - never stop looking for someone who’s going to climb into heaven or sail across the seas to give us what we already have.

See. Hear. Remember. Savor your experiences. Value them. Recognize what goes on inside of yourself. That will help you develop a filter, so that every new thing that pops up doesn’t drag you along with it. Those are just carbon dioxide bubbles drifting by. Don’t get caught up in it - recalibrate. What’s in front of your eyes? What’s coming into your ears? What’s that taste on your mouth? What memory is sitting within you?

Remember. It’s like the start of a story. You’re walking around in your normal life, and some mysterious stranger comes up and says to you: “Don’t you remember?” And then you unlock some memory deep in your past - oh yeah, I was fated to this fate. I was born for epic adventures. My greatness has been foretold. It’s a deeper, richer story that swallows up the shallow one you were consumed with. St Ignatius started out as a soldier. Then he got wounded by a cannonball, and had to hole up in bed for months. The only thing he had to entertain himself with were two books - a book of chivalrous fairy-tale adventures, and a book of the lives of the saints. Eventually, he became entirely consumed by the book of the lives of the saints, because their story was so much more exciting than the adventure book. It was that deeper excitement that you get when something is really true. Walking the spiritual path doesn’t mean giving up all your fantasies - it means standing alongside them and digging deeper, finding out where they come from. You become unmeshed from smaller goals - objectives of culture. A large automobile, a beautiful house and a beautiful wife. This is the leaven in the bread. These are fingers pointing at the moon. See, and hear, and remember, and you find the moon instead.