Mark tells stories that don’t always finish. They end, of course. But there’s not always a summary of the lesson, or a sense that people understood.

One example is the ending of the three stories we’ve looked at this week. Jesus feeds people because he has compassion. He walks away from people because he has disgust (It’s the best word I can find. Frustration? Annoyance?). And in this last story, Jesus challenges the thinking of the disciples and then asks them, and us, “Do you still not understand?”

+++

Jesus and the disciples are in the boat sailing away from the Pharisees. Jesus warns them to not let the teaching of the Pharisees get in their heads.

It was an important caution. The religious teachers had just asked Jesus for a sign from heaven, a divine confirmation that his teaching and miracles were actually from God. And instead of answering the question, Jesus refused the bait.

It would be easy for the disciples to begin to wonder whether the people they had learned faith from might have a point.

It still happens.

We think we’re walking (or in a boat) with Jesus and then we read something on Facebook or hear something from a friend and think, “But maybe Jesus really wanted us to do that other thing.”

Jesus talked about those faulty teachings with a baking metaphor. He called them “leaven” We most often think of yeast. A tiny bit of yeast, maybe 2% of the amount of flour, can turn the mix of ingredients into a loaf. The yeast permeates the whole loaf. Without it, you have a brick.

In baking, yeast is great. But in the story Jesus was telling, the yeast, the leaven of the Pharisees, was bad. Accept a little bit of the legalism, for example, and it undermines your whole belief system.

There’s more to this story. We’ll be back next week.