Cleanse out the old leaven

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump.

1 Corinthians 5:6,7

Paul gives this instruction to the church in Corinth in the context of sexual impropriety that has taken hold in the church. Jesus uses a similar metaphor in warning his disciples to beware the leaven of the Pharisees, the Sadducees and Herod (Matthew 16:6, Mark 8:15, Luke 12:1). The point of the metaphor is not that leaven is unambiguously bad. Jesus uses the same metaphor of a little leaven leavening the whole lump as an illustration of the Kingdom of God in Matthew 13:33 and Luke 13:21. Even in the Old Testament, where there are several instructions about certain offerings needing to be without leaven, leaven is not seen as universally defiling. Leviticus 23:17, for example, specifically requires one particular offering to be made with leaven.

As I understand Paul's usage, the picture is of leaven gone bad, rancid perhaps, yet still very active. Perhaps it has begun spawning some form of mold that has gotten beyond the dough and into the flour bin itself — maybe into all the cupboards. This stuff isn't going to stop growing and tainting everything made in the kitchen — it has to be thoroughly cleaned out and killed before new wholesome food can be prepared.

This imagery reminds me of the pictures that Yvonne and Berndt showed yesterday from their trip to Mississippi to provide assistance in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. The floodwaters had brought mud, filth, mold and disease into the houses. Just cleaning out the superficial junk isn't good enough — the mold and disease will go right on growing in the drywall unless everything touched by the floodwater is ruthlessly ripped out.

In a lot of ways, this describes what I'm going through in various parts of my life, my belief system. I'm seeing a lot of places where the trappings of the "kingdom of this world" has come in and taken root — not just in my own life and belief system, but that of the church around me also. The stuff just continues to grow and pollute the whole structure. Ironically, a lot of this stuff didn't come in in a great hurricane driven rush, nor really even sneak in unwanted. Rather it was invited in, "baptized" lightly by a sprinkling of some Bible verses taken largely out of context, and encouraged in its takeover.

Like the people of Mississippi and New Orleans, I could really use some help in cleaning this junk out — it's so discouraging, seeing so much infestation everywhere I look. But unlike the effects of hurricane Katrina, it seems that few people see the rot I see, and so instead of helping rip the structure down to its solid elements, I find people wanting to just help put on another coat of paint — or paper over the damage with a few more Bible verses.

I am grateful for the cans of airfreshener that people are content to let me have around the place, because they do make a difference. It's just that, so far as I can see, the airfreshener and new paint isn't what's needed; total deconstruction is.

But man, people sure get annoyed when you start talking about knocking down walls — or throwing out bins of flour — when they think it's all mostly still good.