The Lord's Prayer - Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

The Lord’s Prayer - Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread Matthew 6:9-13; Mark 6:34-42 The Lord's Prayer is a timeless composition of words because in a few short lines, it captures virtually all the essentials of faith and discipleship that Jesus sought to teach. Nothing is more annoying than preachers who have to go on and on and who enjoy hearing themselves talk, especially preachers who think they know it all and are plump with pride about their intellectual prowess. They sound like a bunch of Pharisees. However, in all humility, I once heard a gifted philosopher of life, my brother Leslie, say, that “the more you know, the more you know what you don't know.” Jesus does know it all, but Jesus spoke as One whose few words spoke volumes of wisdom. C.S. Lewis writes about the Lord’s Prayer and talks about its very first words: Our Father. Do you know what those words really mean? Think about them for a moment. They mean, quite frankly, that we are putting our self in the place of a son or daughter of God. By saying “Our – Father,” we identify ourselves. To put it bluntly, Lewis says, “you are dressing up as Christ. If you like, you are pretending. Because, of course, the moment you realize what the words mean, you realize that you are not a son or daughter of God. You are not a being like the Son of God, whose will and interests are at one with those of the Father: you and I are a bundle of self-centred fears, hopes, greeds, jealousies, and self-conceit, all doomed to death. (We are not only self-ish; we are self-first.) So that, in a way, this dressing up as Christ is a piece of outrageous cheek (bad manners). But the odd thing is that, He has ordered us to do it.” Jesus said, this is how you should pray, saying, “Our Father…” So, first, we distinguish ourselves as sons and daughters of God, knowing full well we don’t live up to that merit of valor. Then, from distinguishing God as both ours and holy, as both heavenly and down to earth, as both detached from and engaged in our lives, giving us both freedom and design to have a personal relationship with us, now Jesus introduces another element that is both temporal and prophetic, mundane and sacred, saying, "Give us this day our daily bread." But this is not to be passed over lightly as some small, generic, thanksgiving prayer for food in general. It is a reminder of our utter dependence upon God for every morsel we may have ever held in hand. 2 I am always reminded of Moses and the Hebrews wandering in the desert for 40 years with their faith and reliance upon God to provide just enough manna each day for them to survive and be well. It was called bread from heaven. I am also reminded of that heavenly bread that Jesus Himself was to become as He would one day identify Himself with the bread of the Passover with the words, "this is My body." This act of asking for bread is for us a daily reminder that our lives, like our bread, are gifts from God. We would perish were it not for the daily, ordinary and essential gifts of God. St. Augustine said, "When the priest prays over the bread on the altar, it is not that the priest is saying by virtue of his prayer, that this ordinary bread is transformed into a strange and extraordinary sacrament. Rather, by the prayer, the priest acknowledges bread as a gift of a loving God and that is why it is holy, that is why it is a sacrament, because it is a gift of God." When we behold the sacramental bread of Holy Communion, we might think to ourselves, "It still looks like the same old bread I had for breakfast and I didn't think it was all that holy then." But Jesus is saying, and the priest is underscoring by saying, "That's the point. After praying over the bread at church on Sunday, perhaps we should eat our bread differently on Monday for it is all the same gift from God. It is all holy." We pray for daily bread as both food for our bodies and foolishness for our minds – foolishness you say – yes, for we are foolish to think that we can provide food for ourselves, save as a gift from God. Through the Lord's Prayer and through this verse of the Lord's prayer, we are being taught how fragile our lives are, how dependent we are and that God cares about what we need, even something so simple and yet, utterly essential, as bread. Besides giving thanks for its simple qualities, this daily bread has more profound spiritual qualities. In Luke 24:28f, we have the story of the two men on the road to Emmaus and how in the evening, as they thought Christ was dead and gone, they were enlightened to realize that Christ was still with them in the breaking of the bread. When we want to meet God, we Christians do not need to go to some high mountain, nor rummage around in our inner selves on some psychiatrist's couch, nor do we need to hold hands, close our eyes and hum to the cosmos. All we need to do is to gather and break bread in Jesus' name. Here and now we encounter God. That is where Jesus has chosen to meet us, that is where our eyes are opened and we recognize 3 Him. We pray "Give us this day our daily bread," not as a survival strategy, but rather, we are praying for His daily presence among us. Yet, the bread of breakfast is different from the bread that is the body of our Lord in Holy Communion. We also see from the scripture that the Host who feeds us is also the teacher who commanded His disciples in the company of thousands of people and who commands us still today, "You give them something to eat." At the Lord's Supper, we are made participants in God's body so that we may be for the world the body of Christ redeemed by His blood and empowered by His gifts. From the scripture, we see Jesus as One who has compassion upon the hungry people, and as the Savior for whom hunger is an affront, an offense to the blessings of the coming of the Kingdom of God. This should not be - that people go hungering and thirsting in the presence of the Kingdom. How many of you ever heard of or were a member of a 4-H club? Do you remember what the 4 H’s stood for? The four H's in 4-H stand for head, hands, heart, and health. The 4-H pledge urges members to "Pledge my head to clearer thinking, my heart to greater loyalty, my hands to larger service, and my health to better living, for my club, my community, my country..." and we should add “and Christ and my church!” Pause for a minute to appreciate how many heads, hands and hearts make a loaf of bread for our health. You have the farmer who plants the seeds and cultivates and harvests the field of wheat. He passes it on to the granary who sells it to the manufacturer, who turns it into flour and sells it to the baker, who makes the bread and hands it over to the trucker to run to the grocer who sells it back to the farmer and all the rest of us. Bread is a community project. Then, before we can have Holy Communion, our communion steward goes and either purchases the bread or makes it themselves at home and comes early in the morning to prepare the table so that all of us may partake. Thank you one and all for our daily bread and especially for our Communion bread. Likewise, we are a community project for Christ's sake. As the body of Christ, as the bread of Christ we are to offer life and sustenance to others in Jesus' name, to be for the world the body of Christ redeemed by His love and grace. We have noted the significance of praying, "Our Father." Today, we also want to note the significance of praying, "Give us our bread." We do not pray for MY bread, it's OUR bread. Bread is a shared product, not 4 to be eaten alone. Likewise we are to be a sharing people, not keeping Christ to ourselves. Note also that we pray for "daily" bread, which may translate as "sufficient" or "enough." When manna was given in the wilderness, the Hebrews were permitted to gather only as much as they needed for each day. The lesson is, "Daily we must reach out to God who reaches out to us." Philippians 4:11 says, "I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little and I know what it is to have plenty. In all circumstances, I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Centuries ago, Gregory of Nyssa noted with wonder, that in the Lord's Prayer, when one considers all that we need, the only thing we are permitted to ask for is something so basic as bread. We can’t ask for wealth or prominent positions or conveniences or influence and on and on; all we can ask for is bread. To pray, "Give us today our daily bread," is to re-examine ourselves and our prayers and if there may be some frivolous requests, and to acknowledge the responsibility we have for our neighbor's need. When we come to receive the bread of Holy Communion, may we come to participate in the sharing of the life of Jesus given to us as a gift. As we come to receive, may we also come to give of ourselves as a gift to others.