Scripture: 1 Corinthians 5:8 – “Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” (NRSV)
Sometimes, doing the things that worked in the past no longer cuts it. Last night, I watched parts of the Brooklyn Nets/Boston Celtics NBA playoff game. One of the takeaways from the game was that Brooklyn’s plan of feeding the basketball to one of their two big stars, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, was not working anymore because of how the Celtics were contesting all of their shots. Now, paying millions of dollars for players so talented that they do not need genius-level schemes to win should have been enough. That strategy has worked for decades in the past. But not last night. And while there is a lot of basketball yet to play, the Nets are going to have to refocus their talents in different directions if they want to win. While I hope that the Celtics ultimately prevail, I think there is a lesson we can learn from this.
As we find ourselves in the first week after Easter, we remember how important new starts can be. We remember how Jesus’ ministry exposed how the former ways of faithful action were no longer working in a world under the thumb of a multicontinental empire. The ways of conforming to the values of power and greed were no longer bringing people peace. They were dissatisfied and all the grasping at ephemeral pleasures or blaming others for the problems of the world did not bring them joy. So, Jesus became the new “paschal sacrifice”, like the lamb slaughtered for the Passover feast. Just as the blood of the lambs of old allowed the Israelites of old to escape death from the Plague of the Firstborn, so too does Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection allow us to escape from our slavery to sin.
The Apostle Paul uses this Passover imagery to explain how the church should approach their faith moving forward. He used the image of yeast, and how yeast is omitted from bread during Passover to remind the people of the haste in which they had to flee from the Egyptians. Over the centuries, this yeast took on spiritual resonance. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul looks at the Passover period, which corresponds spiritually to Lent in Christianity, as a time to become “unleavened”, to put aside the old “yeast”, the old ways of trying to make our bread or live our lives in faith, so that we could use new yeast, take on a fresh start, and bring our new understanding to create new strategies for facing the challenges ahead. “Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” We need to reset our lives with truth, so we do not fall back into malice and fear.
As we look on our congregations and upon our own faith practices, we may notice that we face diminishing returns on our efforts. And when we find this is the case, it is time to try something new. We cannot just rush into some new fad or intense new discipline without preparation. We need to reset ourselves and approach our new strategies carefully, so we do not get burned out and relapse back into those ineffective ways of the past. I hope that you used the past six weeks of Lent to get ready for this new spring of Easter possibility, but if you are still uncertain, it is never too late to reevaluate your situation. While I hope it is too late for the Nets, I know through my prayers that it is not too late for you. Keep your faith, be strong, and together we can rise with new yeast to experiences of love that we could not imagine before.
Prayer: God, help us recognize the things that no longer bring us or our community to you and help us to discern the new winds of the Spirit pointing us in new directions. Amen.
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