Now we turn from our concern with God's affairs—God’s name, God’s
kingdom, God’s will—to God's concern with our affairs—our bread, our sins, our times
of trial. The first thing we ask is, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Just
about every word in this petition is worth thinking about.
We begin with the action word, the verb “give.” We’re boldly
saying, “God, there’s something we want you to give us!”
Gifts are the language of love. I can’t imagine loving someone and
not giving them gifts—or at least wanting to. Parents give to their children,
and children in their own way give to their parents. Children understand that
the real meaning of gifts is the love they express, not how fancy they are or
how much they cost.
God loves so much that God gives everybody gifts! God makes the
sun rise on the evil and the good. God sends rain on the just and the unjust.
God feeds the birds of the air and clothes the grass of the field. How much
more will God's own children be clothed and fed? If we, being evil, know how to
give good gifts to our children, how much more will our Father in heaven give
good things to us when we ask for them?
Next, Jesus suggests that the first thing we ask God to give us is
bread. We all know what bread is. We all need it. We’d all die without it. What
could be plainer than that?
Unfortunately, this apparently simple request is complicated by
one word: “Give us this day our daily bread.” An honest translation might read,
“Give us this day our [mystery word] bread.” You don’t find the Greek word our
texts translate “daily” anywhere else in the New Testament. We can only guess
what it means, but I think “bread” here means bread, the stuff we get in the
dining room that can be smelled, tasted, chewed, digested—the stuff on which our physical existence depends.
On that interpretation, note the simplicity of this request: plain, old bread,
not candy or cake. The basic staff of life, not luxuries or frills.
Note also the humility of this request. It’s a confession that
despite our advanced technical know-how in agriculture, our deep freezes, and
overflowing supermarkets, we still depend on God for what is essential for our
survival. Should the sun stop shining or the rain stop falling or the seed stop
growing, our technology and our tractors would be useless. It’s been said that
at every harvest time the whole world is only a few weeks from famine. There’s
no such thing as a man or woman of "independent means." You can't eat
means. Even if such a person's stocks and bonds and savings accounts were 100
percent safe (which they never are) the failure of sun, rain, and crop growth
would leave him or her with the grim prospect of eating the paper in the safe
deposit box.
Now then, just because bread is so utterly material, utterly
simple, utterly necessary for survival, it becomes a powerful symbol for a
whole range of blessings, both material and spiritual, for which we must depend
on God. Small wonder that bread plays the central role in the central sacrament
of our faith, where it is the vehicle of the profoundest spiritual realities.
Small wonder that preaching can be described as "breaking the bread of
life." Small wonder that a banquet becomes the symbol of the kingdom.
Jesus could utilize the symbolic power of bread to say, “I am the bread of
life.”
Now to the dailiness. I’m convinced that in this petition, as in
the whole prayer, Jesus evokes the rich Old Testament background he knew so
well, in this case the story of the manna in the wilderness (Exodus 16). Here
are the people of God in a barren desert, entirely dependent on God for
survival. And God provides bread: a little white round thing left by the dew
each morning. The Hebrews called it "What is it?"—that's what the
word manna literally means—and some of them tried to hoard it. But it wouldn't
work. No matter how hard they worked to gather the stuff, they only had enough
for that day. If they tried to save it over, it spoiled.
God has never promised anybody a year's supply of bread. God gives
us enough for one day. Fair enough! The only day we can live is today. How we
distort and twist life when we try to live in the future or in the past! We
destroy ourselves when we try to bear today the burdens we foresee for tomorrow
or the burdens we remember from yesterday. Let the day's evil suffice for that
day, says Jesus. We are promised strength to bear that much and food to survive
that long. Of course we make plans and took ahead. But we pray for strength one
day at a time. That prayer is answered day after day after day.
We can't get a year's supply of the Bread of Life either. Some of
us try to live on the strength of a conversion twenty years ago or a good book
we read last year. These things won't keep. You and I need to hear the gospel
every Sunday, just to make it until the next Sunday. We are all of us daily
beggars at the Lord's Table, for the bread that makes physical life possible
and for spiritual food as well.
Now for the little words we skip over so easily: “Give us this day our daily bread.” When we pray that “our” bread may be given to
“us,” we’re praying that all people may have enough to eat. And we obligate
ourselves to do something about the shameful and stubborn problem of world
hunger in our time. Those who have studied that problem say that the basic cause
isn’t lack of know-how or the inability of the planet to provide for its
population. The basic cause is the lack of the political will to do what we already know how to do. This
prayer obligates us to attack that root cause of hunger.
God feeds us generously—spiritually and physically. May we each do what we can to feed others in God’s name.