Bible Text:

Text:   “Give us this day our daily bread.”                     (Matthew 6:11)

A very wealthy producer of chickens in this country approached the Pope in Rome one day. He said, “I have an offer to make. I will give you an unrestricted gift of 2 million dollars if you will change the Lord’s Prayer to Give us this day our daily chicken.” 

The Pope shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t do that. You know I can’t.” Replied the man, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll raise the offer to 5 million dollars—an unrestricted gift of 5 million dollars if you will change the Lord’s Prayer to Give us this day our daily chicken.” 

Again the Pope shook his head negatively. “I can’t do that,” he said. “I just can’t do it.” 

One more time the man responded, “Your Holiness, here is my final offer. I will give the Catholic Church an unrestricted gift of 10 million dollars if you will change the Lord’s Prayer.” 

The Pope thought for a moment and then he said, “Okay, I’ll do it.” A few days later he called the College of Cardinals together for a very important meeting. In the meeting he stood up and said, “Gentlemen, I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is we have just received an unrestricted gift to the church in the amount of 10 million dollars. The bad news is we just lost the Wonder Bread account.” 

“Give us this day our daily bread.” Here is a starkly simple petition against a prayer of majestic words. There are six petitions in the Lord’s Prayer. This one almost seems out of place. Amidst vaulted words and soaring themes—thy kingdom come, thy will be done, forgive us, lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil—comes this simple prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread.” 

Through the years of the Christian faith, some people have tried to elevate the prayer a bit, perhaps to make it more profound. It has been suggested that the bread to which Jesus refers here is the bread of eternity. Therefore we are praying, “Give us this day eternal life.” Others have suggested that since Jesus referred to himself as the bread of life, this is a prayer for a closer walk with Jesus… give me more of you, O Lord. Still others have suggested that the bread refers to the bread of the Eucharist, of the Lord’s Supper. Jerome, the 4^th century scholar who translated the Bible from Greek into Latin, used a word in the Lord’s Prayer which means, “super substantial” bread. 

But the prayer is really very simple. Yes, I pray for great things in the Lord’s Prayer. But I also pray for small things. Yes, I pray for spiritual things in the Lord’s Prayer, but I also pray for material things. I pray for daily bread—white bread, whole wheat bread, rye bread. Actually, Jesus probably had in mind barley bread. It was the cheapest bread available in that period of history. In the gospel of John where Jesus asks the disciples how much food they have to feed the multitudes, the disciples say “There is a boy here with five loaves of barley bread.” Barley bread was a symbol of the simplest basic stuff of life. 

So what is Jesus teaching here in this prayer? Let me suggest several things. 

TALK TO GOD ABOUT SIMPLE THINGS 

For one thing, I can talk to God about the simplest things of life. We sometimes think we are bothering God with trivialities. In this petition Jesus says, “Not so.” 

I sometimes get asked, “Is it okay to pray for my swollen finger?” “Is it okay to pray for a better job?” “I have a job, but it’s really not much fun, and I’d really like something better. Is it okay to pray for that change?” “Is it okay to pray that my daughter gets a date for the prom?” These are everyday things that sometimes preoccupy our thoughts. 

Jesus says simply, “Yes.” 

Sometimes our needs seem so trivial, so ordinary, so simple. This prayer teaches us that God is in the midst of the throbbing trivia of life. The roof leaks, and you don’t know where to find the money to fix the roof. The windows in the house are so old that too much heat escapes, and you don’t have money to replace the windows. We can approach God for the small and the trivial needs. 

Yes, many people have deeper, complex and extensive needs. Life’s needs vary widely. But I can also take my simple, basic needs to God. God may be freely approached. Give us this day our daily bread. 

TRUSTING GOD 

The second theme of the prayer is this: I can trust God for my daily needs. In the New Testament culture, bread could not always be taken for granted. Sometimes it was a problem. Sometimes it was difficult to find enough to feed oneself or one’s family. 

Today we who have two or three meals a day may not always understand this. Most of us have no problems with bread. We may not have all the niceties of life, but we don’t usually struggle for daily bread. This was not the case when this prayer was taught. 

So for us, the trust issue is a little bit different. For most of us, the issue is a kind of extension of this prayer. For us it’s not “Will I have enough bread for the table today?” Rather the prayer is, “Do I trust God from day to day?” Or, “Do I worry too much about tomorrow?” 

The prayer parallels the story in the Old Testament book of Exodus about the manna in the desert. The Hebrew people had left Egypt and were wandering in the desert, heading toward the Promised Land. They were tired, they were hungry, and they were thirsty. The storyteller in Exodus suggests that the people murmured against Moses. “Moses, have you brought us out of this desert to die? We have no food or water here. At least back in Egypt we had bread to eat and water to drink.” 

So Moses goes to God. He asks God for guidance as to what to do in this situation, and God replies, “I will give them bread, but I will only give them bread for one day at a time.” And then God adds, “I will test their trust level.” (see Exodus 16:4-5) 

Jesus says, “Will you trust God one day at a time?” Occasionally I hear echoes in my mind of a song we used to sing at Jumonville many years ago. Every time we left the dining hall we sang, “My tomorrows are unknown to me, but Thou will lead me all the way.” 

This prayer is not “Give me a lifetime of bread.” The prayer is not even “Give us bread.” Rather the prayer says, “Give us bread one day at a time.” 

I had a family in my first church comprised of a mother and father and six boys between the ages of 6 and 18. They were not a poor family, but they lived very modestly. The mother baked all the bread for the family. She told me one day that those six boys ate 4-5 loaves of bread as a snack before they went to bed every night. The next day she had to bake enough bread for that day. She trusted God to give her strength and bread for each day. 

The prayer teaches, “Give me enough for this day.” That’s a hard lesson for us to learn. We are geared to think ahead. We are wired to think farther into the future. I get at least 10 offers a week for help in financial planning—some of them mail, most by phone.  

True, we do get to a point where we begin to try to calculate what our pension might be, and we ask questions like “Will I have enough for retirement? Will I have enough to meet my medical costs? Have I saved enough in my nest egg? Will it be there when I retire? Can I stay in my home, or do I need to downsize? Do I need to move in with the children?” 

There is nothing wrong with financial planning. But I’ve been wondering something this week around this petition. I’m wondering if some possible good might not come from the current economic doldrums in which we find ourselves. This prayer raises the trust level for us. Can I learn to live with less? Can I be free of fret about the future? How long should I keep working? (You may have me in the pulpit of Christ Church a lot longer than you thought!) 

This afternoon the children will present the story of Noah in a musical called “100% Chance of Rain.” Noah is the story of a man who learned to trust God. God told Noah to build a boat. He told him to make the boat sea-worthy. He told Noah to get his family on board. And then he told Noah to take with him a pair of each kind of animal. Noah did all that God asked and then said, "Okay, now what?” And God replied simply, “You can trust me for the rest.” 

By the way, do you know what kind of lights Noah had on the ark? Flood lights! 

“Give us this day our daily bread,” asks us, “How much will you trust God into an unknown future?” That’s why one of the great hymns of faith has the line, “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way.” 

AT LEAST ONE OTHER LESSON 

There is at least one other lesson in this petition. Jesus makes you think about your own trust level with God. Then, suddenly, Jesus shifts the focus, almost without your realizing that it happened. Suddenly you remember that he says, “Give us this day our daily bread.” 

Bread is not just a personal issue, but it’s also a community issue. Trusting God is not just “me and God” but “we and God.” Give us this day our daily bread. 

At one level it’s about the church. This prayer says (and I think Jesus intended this), “Take care of the church.” There is lots of evidence that this happened in the New Testament story. There are plenty of texts that imply offerings and instructions for feeding and caring for the believers. 

There is a story in the Book of Acts which says that all the early believers sold their possessions and held everything in common. Sometimes this is thought as an experiment in pure Communism. (see Acts 2:45)  I don’t think this is the case. It is much more of a simple recognition of the needs within the church. It’s a way of saying, “Take care of the family of faith.” 

But on another level it talks about the human family. It implies that we have some responsibility. In the story of the feeding of the multitudes, Jesus says to the disciples, “You give them something to eat.” 

That’s why the One Great Hour of Sharing offering is so important for us today. That’s why I’ve held membership in a Christian citizens’ lobby called “Bread for the World” for many years. That’s why we pass out grocery bags after this service today in order to provide food for the S.H.I.M food pantry in the coming months. 

There was a bit of interesting data out of Iraq this past week. I am slowly learning that Iraq is a fairly wealthy nation with a rather large middle class. But I also learned that almost 45% of the population of Iraq is comprised of children under the age of 14. This makes them more vulnerable to disease, hunger, and thirst than adults might be. So we have become the one nation on earth that both goes to war to remove a dictator and at the same time provides food and water to the people of that nation. 

“Give us this day” is both a prayer and a call to action. A little boy in a Sunday School class was asked what his favorite story was in the Bible. He replied, “My favorite story is the one where everybody loafs and fishes.” We can’t just loaf and fish when we pray this prayer. Jesus nurtures and pulls us toward a wider consciousness. He pulls us toward a global consciousness in our human bond. 

Do you sense the depth of meaning in this prayer? This is a petition that has multiple layers of meaning. It is a rich and powerful text. 

·         You can talk to God about your most basic needs.

·         You can trust God for your future.

·         You can work with God to provide bread for the human family. 

When you pray this petition in the Lord’s Prayer, when you pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” you are reminded of some of the core qualities for the Christian journey.