I love me some geeks. In fact, I have a few geek merit badges myself. Back in the day there was Dungeons and Dragons. I’m an interfaith nerd, as I like both Star Wars and Star Trek, though I must admit to being an expert in neither. I like the guy in the little blue box who makes time go a little wibbly-wobbly. And my comic book collection is fairly large, at about 5000 issues, about half of its size at its peak.
So trust me when I say that there is not fight like a geek fight. The heated discussions at a Comic-con seem suspiciously like something one might have heard in the Inquisition, blistering and accusatory, and mostly about a bunch of made up nothing. Just ask a geek who would win in a fight, Wolverine or Superman.
And so it is with trepidation that I step into the realm of geekdom for a few moments. You see, I’d like to talk about midi-chlorians. These are the fictional organelles inside the living body, and not just human bodies but the bodies of many intelligent species, including Yoda, that indicate the potential to become a Jedi, the order of spiritual knights found in the Star Wars series. Young Anakin Skywalker has an exceptionally high count, setting the stage for his development as a Jedi in the service of the Force. And so the story unfolds…
Now, if you are even halfway awake during the scenes where they discuss midi-chlorians, and know even a little science, and most geeks do, then you will realize that George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars universe, in modeling these organelles on something real and in this room in the billions. Specifically, Lucas has modeled midi-chlorians on mitochondria, something that exists in most of our cells. Mitochondria play a number of critical roles. We could reasonably say that without mitochondria, life as we know it could not exist.
But here is the really cool thing: it is widely believed that mitochondria developed on a separate branch of the evolutionary tree, that they did not spring into existence within the cell, but came to be part of the cell through symbiosis.
These little things get mixed in, and everything changes. Evolution meets fusion reactor, and at the far end of that explosion, out on one end of one tenuous branch, there’s us. Wave back at the nice mitochondria people. They are why we are here.
One tiny little catalyst that changes everything.
Yeast works the same way, something Jesus and every baker and home-brewer knows all too well, so when Jesus tells us to be yeast, it means something, something lost on those who have only purchased plastic-wrapped plastic bread at the grocery store.
But here’s the thing about yeast. It is alive. And like anything that is alive, it needs the right conditions to thrive. The bread needs the right amount of sweet and the right amount of salt, the right temperature and the right moisture level. Home-brewers quickly cool down the wort, the boil of barley and hops, to get it to just the right temperature to pitch the yeast.
Using yeast to transform grain into something else is so ancient; the creation of bread and beer is documented in the oldest records of civilized society. We remember the blood sacrifices of ancient worship, but forget that the people also brought bread and beer to the Temple.
One small little addition that changes everything. We love that idea. In our culture of frantic busyness, we’d happily take a pill that would make us happy, are forever in pursuit of the perfect exercise that would make us look and feel like a fit 20-year old, as long as it can be done in 15 minutes without any pain, the tread-thigh-climbing butt and belly-buster o-matic. But every doctor on the planet will tell you that a pill alone will not help you quit smoking, will not help you keep off the weight, will not pull you out of depression. That the simple little one thing you add has to land in the right conditions. That you have to have a support network or lifestyle changes or be healthy enough to undertake the change. There really is no quick fix.
But somehow we have convinced ourselves that saying a prayer is going to fix it all. People who don’t own a Bible, haven’t seen the inside of a church, except for weddings and funerals, in decades, suddenly decide that prayer is going to magically erase their terminal illness or find them a job. They believe that somehow one can influence God to change nature, that God can be convinced to cure some and not others, and if one is persuasive enough, you might just land on the positive side of the divine balance sheet.
Never mind the absurdity of it all, the number of good people who have been prayed for, prayed for, and who have still died. The countless foul and evil people who seem to thrive.
If God worked in that way, if prayer was about magic incantations that could influence God, then I could not be a Christian. I could not worship a god that was so fickle and needy.
Then, if prayer does not change the universe, what does it do?
I was asked this question not so long ago, the last time our text focused on prayer. And today’s text isn’t just any text. Here is Jesus himself telling us how to pray, and I for one am willing to accept that the text is probably pretty accurate, that Jesus probably taught something like this. And yet, I don’t think God wants us to sit back and wait for daily bread to rain down from heaven. I think God wants us to get up and wrestle for blessing in the dark of night, to journey to blessing, to welcome blessing, in the form of three strangers, into our tent.
So what are we to do with this prayer?
Jesus did teach a certain reckless abandon. Drop everything and come with me. Make no preparations, do not worry about providing for your family. Trust that since God takes care of the birds, he’ll take care of you. All very nice if you have followers who bring you food and wine and ointment. But most of us have student loans and mortgages and kids that need braces. I mean, have you seen those teeth?
Jesus is right that all that life stuff ties us down and takes our focus away from the amazing love and beauty that is the divine, that it takes our eye off of the ball of self-sacrifice and revolutionary action in a world that needs revolution. But society couldn’t exist at all if we did what Jesus did, if we didn’t have households to raise the kids and someone to bake that bread and brew that ale. Someone has to plant the barley and wheat. And beside, isn’t it sacrifice enough that when you finally go to the toilet, that the toddler is still outside the door saying “Mommy. Mommy. Mommyâ€?
Jesus rejects the magical prayer of the Gentiles, the showy prayer of Hebrew hypocrites. So what is left for the modern Christian in the act of prayer?
I could suggest, and indeed I believe, that prayer is a reality check. True prayer, and by that I mean not the whiny give-me, give-me prayer that is so common but true prayer, humble submission to the divine, acknowledges, for just the smallest moment, that we did not call ourselves into being, that we do not have power. It is a moment of spiritual vulnerability that makes way for real growth, clearing away our false sense of agency, and maybe even our false sense of righteousness, leaving us ploughed up ready for new life.
But more than that, I think prayer is like yeast. It can change everything, but it has to exist in the right conditions. No, not that it will magic away malignant cells. But it can change you, and in so doing change your relationship with other people, with the world around us, with creation, with the divine. And that is kinda magic. Who knows what sort of quantum weirdness might happen!
But like yeast, like the seed, like mitochondria, conditions have to be right. Your heart has to be ready. There have to be a few breaks, a little sorrow, to make room for prayer to do its work. There have to be a few tears to get the moisture level right, a little radiant joy to achieve the desired temperature.
And yet more: for I can pitch yeast, at the right temperature, in mud, and I’ll get mud. It is only when yeast comes together with the crushed grain that we get the bread of life, or a really fine ale. And the dough, the wort of our prayer life is the lump of religion. Spiritual but not religious? Bah! Jesus was religious and only models one way of journeying with God. That is in the company of other pilgrims, with scripture as our guide.
You want prayer to work? Want to become a spiritual Jedi? Or maybe just a great yeasty loaf? Then study God’s word. It will lead you to prayer. Walk with other Christians in the messiness of religion. They will lead you to prayer. And there, with the conditions right, you will become something new. Nourishing. Amazing. The Bread of Life.
Pitch the yeast of prayer, living and mysterious. It changes everything.
Amen.