The Gospel is Yeast
At the very outset of the ministry of Jesus, as recorded by Mark, he evades two deadly dangers which have beset his cause ever since: he refuses to become localized; he refuses to become institutionalized. The future of Christ's church depends to a large degree on the measure to which the paralysis of those same two calamities can be avoided.
It was natural that the townspeople of Capernaum should say, "Stay here!" Jesus' healing had been a blessing to the town. His presence would become a permanent asset. He was among friends. What would be better than just to stay? To Jesus there was one thing better-the road to the world. He came not to be a town doctor but a world's Redeemer. . . .
Threatened, for the moment, by loving but mistaken hands which would have imprisoned him in a local provincialism, Jesus said, "Let's go somewhere else." In those words and in that spirit there was the universal destiny of Christianity, its unresting outthrust into all the world. It broke through the bounds of Judaism, broke out of the wider bonds of the Roman Empire, burst the bonds of Europe, across the Pacific. Christianity has lived because as each new frontier came into view, [those] with a spirit akin to their Master's have cried, "Let's go!" Always that preservation of Christianity as a world force has been won only by overcoming the seductive voices, which demanded, as on that first day at Capernaum, "Let's stay." . . .
Jesus' departure from Capernaum on the road that led to Jerusalem, Calvary and all the world, was a refusal to become institutionalized
The Christianity which degenerates into provincialism and forgets the call of the road speedily becomes a mummy.
Jesus' departure from Capernaum, on the road that led eventually to Jerusalem, Calvary, and all the world, was a refusal to become institutionalized. The Prophet, the Teacher, the Redeemer, would have been transformed into a kind of impersonal clinic, a hospital and dispensary. Another institution, a blessed one of course, but still an institution, in the town's life.
That subtle danger is never completely escaped and has strangled the spiritual life and power of Christ's church again and again. Whenever Christianity has been expressed in a statement of doctrine, in a form of organization, and men [sic] say in satisfaction, "This just fits. Let's keep it this way forever," the institution begins to set like a plaster cast, throttling the spirit within.
It is inevitably so. The Christian gospel is yeast, not concrete. It should ferment, upheave, grow, not solidify. The hope of the Kingdom depends on the persistence of the Spirit of Jesus, "Let's go somewhere else." When Christianity is identified with any form of organization, the organization is soon substituted for the inner life. Then the church becomes like the man who said to his soul: "Now we're all set. We have goods laid up for many years. We don't need to think, or to plan or to work or to worry." When he reached that stopping-place, of course, he stopped. His soul, his life was gone.