September 23, 2025

The focus of St. James Presbyterian Church’s weekly 30-minute Prayer Break Gathering is based on one of the scriptures of our PCUSA Daily Lectionary 1 Corinthians 5.6-8.
1 Corinthians 5.6-8
6Your boasting is not a good thing. Do you not know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? 7Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. 8Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.


Meditation: Leavened by Prayer: A Festival of Sincerity and Truth
Paul is pressing the church to remember who they are — and whose they are. He is reminding them that their life in Christ is not just personal piety but communal witness. A little yeast, he says, can work through the whole loaf. One hidden sin, one pocket of pride, one tolerated injustice — left unattended — can spread through the whole body.

Prayer, too, works like yeast. It can leaven the whole community with life, or, when absent, it can leave us flat and flavorless. The church that prays together is the church that rises together. And the church that does not pray risks collapsing inward on itself. Yet Paul grounds this exhortation not in fear, but in hope: “For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed.” The heart of prayer is not what we can muster, but what God has already done. Christ has torn the veil. Christ has opened the way. Christ has made us unleavened, clean, new. We are not praying to earn access to God — we pray because we already have it. Prayer is not us clawing our way into heaven; it is heaven stooping down to meet us.
That is why prayer is both humble and bold. We come not boasting of our faith, but confessing our frailty. And yet we come with confidence, because our confidence is in Christ. The efficacy of prayer is not measured by how eloquent our words are, nor how long we pray, nor how many people hear us. The efficacy of prayer is that God hears, God responds, God shapes us, God changes the world through our surrendered hearts.
This is where the narrative wisdom of our foremothers comes in. Toni Morrison, in Beloved, gives us the image of Baby Suggs leading her people into the Clearing:
“When warm weather came, Baby Suggs, holy, followed by every black man, woman, and child who could make it through, took her great heart to the Clearing … She called the children to laugh. She called the men to dance. And she called the women to cry. Just cry. And in the silence that followed, she offered up her great big heart.”
That was prayer. Not lofty speech. Not pious performance. But laughter, dance, tears — the whole heart turned toward God. Prayer, at its core, is the offering of the heart: in honesty, in sincerity, in truth.
So what does that mean for us? It means prayer is not just a private whisper; it is a public festival. Paul says: “Let us celebrate the festival … with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” Our prayers are a celebration of God’s victory in Christ. Every prayer of thanksgiving, every sigh of lament, every cry for justice, every plea for healing — all of them are part of the feast. The table is set by Christ; our prayers are the dishes we bring to share.
And we must bring them sincerely. We must bring them truthfully. Not boasting. Not posturing. Not using prayer as performance. Instead, bringing our agency, our faith, our honesty before God. When we pray sincerely, we become participants in God’s cleansing work. Prayer itself “cleans out the old yeast.” Prayer names what is broken and opens us to God’s power to make us new.
And prayer is not only about our individual lives. Paul is speaking to a church. A whole loaf of bread. The old yeast doesn’t just corrupt one person — it corrupts the body. And so, when we pray together, we pray not only for ourselves, but for one another, for our community, for the world. A praying church is a yeast of grace. It leavens neighborhoods with hope. It leavens families with courage. It leavens nations with justice. So I say today, do not underestimate the power of your prayers. Do not fall into the lie that prayer is passive or that it changes nothing. To pray is to act in faith. To pray is to align with God’s Spirit. To pray is to say, “Not by my power, Lord, but by yours.” That humility is strength. That surrender is agency. And so, here we are. We are gathered, cleansed, made new. We come as one body, called to keep the festival. We come not with the yeast of malice, but with the bread of sincerity and truth.
The question before us, then, is simple and searching: for what do you pray today?