The Parable Of Amish Friendship Bread

I love that Jesus used stories and illustrations to get his point across. When I visited Israel several years ago, I made sure that at each site I visited, I read something from the Bible that happened there. The Word became alive to me and I saw it like never before. One of my favorite times was sitting in the Mount of Beatitudes, looking over the Sea of Galilee and reading Matthew 5. As I read it, I looked up to see what Jesus saw. I imagined Him pointing over to a city on the far side of the lake and saying, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill that cannot be hidden.”

It was common for Jesus to teach the complex, spiritual things in simple, easy to understand terms using things they were familiar with. He told parables that made sense to them based on their culture and surroundings. I was reading Matthew 13 recently where Jesus compared the kingdom to yeast. He said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like the yeast a woman used in making bread. Even though she put only a little yeast in three measures of flour, it permeated every part of the dough.” That parable made sense to anyone reading it until the last few years. Most of us don’t make our own bread anymore.

That parable reminded me of Amish Friendship Bread. I haven’t seen it done in a while, but the kids would come to school with dough in a zip lock bag. They would knead it for days on in. On the sixth day, they were to add a cup of flour, a cup of sugar and a cup of milk. They would knead it through the bag for several more days. On the tenth day, they would separate the bag into four parts. The would cook one part and give the other three parts away to friends who would repeat the process. The original yeast was transferred bag to bag for as long as people followed the process.

To me, that’s what this message is about. Over 2,000 years ago, Jesus put yeast in the flour and gave it to others. They kneaded it into their lives and then shared it with others. The process has been repeated until today. You and I have been given the bag of dough. We work it into our lives and add in scripture, prayer and fellowship with other believers. It grows until we have to give it away to others. They then take it and do the same thing. The Gospel was not given to us to keep. It was meant to be given away. Imagine if the world’s 2.3 billion Christians treated their faith like Amish Friendship Bread. If we each gave it away to 3 people, then 6.9 billion out of 7 billion would have the Gospel.

I gave a challenge to students last week. I asked them, “If you can’t talk about your faith among believers, how will you ever share it with unbelievers?” Most of us stay silent in church settings. We keep our testimony quiet. We’re scared of what others may think, but there isn’t a person sitting in a church anywhere who doesn’t have a testimony. Each of us has sin in our past. Church is the first place we should share what God has done for us and then we should tell others. Who are three people you can share your testimony with in the next two weeks? It’s time to stop hoarding the bread of life and start giving out what we’ve been given.