What Leaven Does
Bread and crackers are made of nearly the same stuff, but no one confuses them — and the Gospels kept two words for it too. Set aside the old fight over which one Jesus broke, and watch instead what leaven actually does.
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The Old Leaven and the New
For seven days each year, every trace of leaven is swept from the house. If leaven never meant sin, what is actually being cleared out — and why does it come back, risen, by Pentecost?
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Room for One
Mary asked if I’d found my way through the “narrow gate.” Her question deserved more than the brief answer I gave — so here is the fuller one. It begins with a single word we tend to mishear.
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Paul Wasn’t There Either
Paul never saw the cross — he came in years late, on the wrong side of it — yet no one in the New Testament staked more on it than he did. Why would a man build everything on an afternoon he wasn’t there for?
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Chewed, and Walked
The clean land animal chews the cud and has a split hoof — two traits, both required. And the measure has already turned on us. So what are they measuring in us?
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The Only Clean Place
We have said that man is the unclean creature. And we have heard Peter told to call no person unclean. So which is it — are we unclean, or are we forbidden to say so?
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Never Only Animals
A sheet full of unclean animals comes down out of heaven, and Peter reads it as being about people, not pork. The New Testament keeps treating the unclean creatures as a kind of language — and Christ did too.
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The Measure Turned Around
We file the clean and unclean laws under “forbidden foods.” But open Leviticus, and most of the system isn’t about the menu — it’s about the body. Turn its own measure around, and it points somewhere we didn’t expect.
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Not the Destination
The food laws plainly changed — plants in Eden, every creature after the flood, clean and unclean at Sinai. If God never changes, what do we make of that? It turns out none of the stages was the destination.
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He Kept Reaching
The leper wasn’t the only one. Again and again Jesus crossed the line the law drew around the unclean — the leper, the bleeding woman, the dead — and every time, it was the uncleanness that gave way, not him.
