Lent Days 23-24: Oil

This morning I read a story I did not remember, from the life and work of the prophet Elisha.
(2 Kings 4:1-7, you can find it here.)

An unnamed widow goes to the prophet-- they seem to know one another, because her late husband belonged to "the company of prophets" (a union? a Bible Study? I must find out more...).

She tells Elisha that someone she is indebted to has come to take her two children-- sons-- as slaves, as repayment of her debts.

Elisha asks the most wonderful question: "What shall I do for you?"

It's so easy to assume we know what people need; it's respectful and kind to simply ask.

He adds, "What do you have in your house?", i.e., what have I got to work with?

She has only some oil.

Oil in scripture:

"Lampkoliwna," Oil lamp, Poland. 

It is used for anointing prophets, priests, and kings.

It lights the lamps that allow for sight in the night.

It is used in cooking, in baking-- oil for cakes, oil for bread, for sustenance.

And then there's that psalm that speaks of people living together in peace and unity:

How very good and pleasant it is
    when kindred live together in unity!
It is like the precious oil on the head,
    running down upon the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
    running down over the collar of his robes.  ~Psalm 133:1-2

Oil is valuable. Everyone needs it.

Elisha is about to perform a miracle of abundance.

He tells her to get as many vessels-- containers, jars, find them, borrow them, bring them all in, and shut the door, shutting herself in with her sons, and fill them all with oil.

And she does. She pours and pours. "They (the children) kept bringing vessels to her and she kept pouring."

In the end, her vessel, her original source of oil, does not run out.

This unnamed woman, through the intervention of the prophet, has enough oil for all the anointing and blessing, for all the cakes and bread, for all the lamps that will flicker comfort and vision in the night, for all the oil that will speak to her neighbors of everything that is good, and needed, and holy.

She has just become an oil merchant.

Her sons are safe.

I see her, this very same night as the night of the miracle, the night of her first day as an oil merchant. She tucks the coins-- heavy, a bagful, all that's left over after paying her debt-- beneath the matt where she sleeps.

Then she takes a lamp filled with oil, a lamp glowing and bringing light to her home, and sits with her sons, and sings them to sleep.

Lent Day 19: Yeast

And again he said, “To what should I compare the kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”  ~ Luke 13:20-21

Yeast.

My first experience with it was in college: I bought something called the Tassajara Bread Book, and taught myself how to bake bread. This was in an era when I was buying books about holistic health practices and imagining my life to be taking a kind of hippy-ish turn. Earthy, crunchy granola girl. Goals.

I was a junior in college, in a six-person suite, and my friend Jean was witness to my efforts. I'd grown up in a household in which my mother was self-described as being "NOT a baker." She sent me to her friend, Cecily's house at Christmastime, to learn how to bake cookies. She never made cakes or cupcakes; why should we, when there was Minos bakery in Atlantic City? The one thing I remember my mother baking was an apple pie, that was hot and fresh one day when I got home from school. But bread? Never. Not in a million years. You could buy bread anywhere.

But there I was, 19 years old and learning how yeast "proofs," or gets activated. It needs fluids and food to bring it alive-- like anyone, I guess. So, I provided, as the book instructed, lukewarm water and honey, and mixed in the tablespoonsful of yeast and watched as it spread, and bubbled, and declared: I'm ready.

Same baking book, thirtysomething years later. 

What followed was work, a kind of work I still love. Measuring and stirring, sure. But what makes bread is the kneading, and kneading is a whole-body experience. You do it with your hands, and elbows, and shoulders, and back, and hips. You put your whole self into kneading, and it is an exquisite workout. Kneading is what gives the bread its texture. Kneading helps the bread to rise by ensuring lots of air is also mixed in with what by the end of the 15 minutes (prescribed by the book) must be a thousand layers of dough folded in upon itself, again and again.

The work the yeast does is to help the bread to rise. By the time I was finished with my four fragrant honey-whole-wheat loaves, it was three in the morning and Jean and I were both delirious, me giddy with baking and the prospect of sitting down to cut into a loaf; and Jean, with French reflexive verbs.

"I've had a vision," Jean said. "The verbs are little ferrymen."

And we sat together, laughing, dipping hot bread in honey, and ate.

Jesus tells this tiny parable, only 24 words in the Greek (35 in English), and, as in so much of Luke, a woman features as the main actor in the miniature story. In the original Greek she "hides" the yeast/ leavening in the flour, until it all is leavened. Maybe "hides" because ancient people weren't so comfortable with leavening. It freaked them out. It was alive in an unpredictable way, and so it actually, for most people, symbolized something insidious, something uncontrollable, that could make mischief or even mayhem.

But Jesus doesn't use it that way.

Because now, bread is possible-- bread, the staff and stuff of life; bread, the word we use to indicate all sustenance; bread, the very least that every human being has a right to have, because no one in a civilized society should be denied it.

That, Jesus says, is what the reign of God is like.

Something unexpected, done by someone unexpected, makes something good.

Not only good, needed.

Not only needed, loved.

Not only good, needed, loved: but a source of life itself.