Give
us each day our daily bread.
The
nice thing about preaching on the Lord’s Prayer is that when you’re lost, and
maybe writing some stuff down on Saturday… evening… after dinner... there’s
this guy named Martin Luther who wrote on this topic and he put it in an
easy-to-find location right in the Small Catechism, which I can pull up on my
smart phone on Augsburg Fortress’s new Small Catechism app (available for
download for Android and possibly iPhone, I’m not sure, I’m not a very good
advertiser).
Anyway,
when I want to know about the Lord’s Prayer I just open up the app, click on
“Lord’s Prayer” and, today, we’ll scroll down to the Fourth Petition, “Give us
today our daily bread.” What does this
mean? Oh, good, exactly what I wanted to know! “In fact, God gives daily
bread without prayer, even to all evil people, but we ask in this prayer that
God cause us to recognize what our daily bread is and to receive it with
thanksgiving.” What then does “daily
bread” mean? Good, I was wondering that one, too! “Everything included in
the necessities and nourishment for our bodies, such as food, drink, clothing,
shoes, house, farm, fields, livestock, money, property, an upright spouse,
upright children, upright members of the household, upright and faithful
rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, decency, honor, good
friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.”
Wow.
OK, so that’s a really good starting
point. Daily bread isn’t limited to communion or food or even things related
exclusively to physical well-being; it is anything we need to live our lives in
all of our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well-being. Daily bread is
everything from the air we breath, to the water we drink, to the earth and its
habitats, to the paycheck we receive, to the relationships we have and the
governments and various systems that support us. Asking for daily bread is
asking for quite a lot.
The
one part of Luther’s explanation that I really like is the bit where it says
“we ask in this prayer that God cause us to recognize what our daily bread is
and to receive it with thanksgiving.” See, it’s not enough to get good things;
it’s critical that we have to wisdom to acknowledge these gifts and to
understand from whom they come. It’s one thing to catch a fish; it’s quite
another to understand that that fish, no matter how adept my angling of it, is
not my fish. I didn’t create it; I didn’t earn it. It comes as a gift.
So, whatever the skills I possess, these too aren’t a
testament to anything other than God’s grace giving me something I haven’t
earned, because my abilities are not of my own doing. I can’t make a thing on my
own. All my talents are given according to God’s grace. This is why it’s so
critical that we provide daily bread for others whenever we are able. To give
daily bread is merely paying forward what we have been given. None of us can
claim a special right to it. Just as we can’t earn God’s love neither can we
earn daily bread.
None of us have created a thing in our lives. We have
simply done our best to mold what God has created, formed, and provided for us.
Now, some of you are very good at taking God’s creation
and molding it for the good of the world. As you should! This is called being a
“created co-creator.” To be a created co-creator is one of the true great
callings we have as Christians, and, really, as human beings. We should commend
these people for providing, because ultimately God works through human beings
as intermediaries to give bread to all people, but we shouldn’t confuse the
molder with the creator. We are all children playing with clay, doing our best
amidst our humanly imperfections.
This is most certainly true.
This is also a good reminder when the weather stinks,
when the crops don’t grow, or grow moldy, or commodity prices tumble, or the
store doesn’t carry the things that we want, or the concert is sold out, or our
friends are busy. We haven’t earned any of that. And, yet, to some extent we
need it.
Too many times we imagine a bad day is the end of the
world. We lack the long-view that God has of creation; we also lack the
understanding of God’s plan, which is not so much a plan for individuals but a
plan for all of creation. We are very individualistic, but God moves in the big
picture. I wonder sometimes if God doesn’t leave the little things to we-human
beings, and that’s why the world gets all messed up. We-human beings are
selfish and, at the very least, short-sighted, and therefore Jesus has us pray
not “Give me this day our daily
bread” but “Give us this day… (our
daily bread).” This is a prayer for the community. Luther recognized this and
keeps his explanation to it in the plural, focusing on “we,” not “me.” “Because
the smallest unit of health is the community and to speak of an individual is a
contradiction in terms” (Wendell Berry).
We
are the body of Christ; we are fed together; and when one of us suffers we all
suffer. This is true of all the least and the lost in our midst. So, give us this day that daily bread; give us enough to get through the day. Not me…
us. Help the one who suffers in
silence to know that she is not alone. Help the one who feels as if he can’t go
on to know he is a necessary member of this body—that we are less without him.
Help the one who is literally hungry because she can’t pay the bills. Help the
one who has to make the choice between rent and medical bills. Help all those
who cry out because of the stress of money and debt and an uncertain future,
because we are all in this together. To be Christian is to be together. There
is no such thing as an individual Christian; it doesn’t exist.
Even the monastics formed communities in the deserts.
Give us this day our daily bread, because we need it for
all people… because we can’t create it… because we are at the mercy of things
we cannot control. We all need it. We need it for one another.
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