Lord’s Prayer 8 - Food Glorious Food Series

Food glorious food

Christmas is not far away and if ever there was a song that described our activities over the Christmas period it must be that song from the musical Oliver – ‘Food glorious food’.

We eat, drink and be merry as if tomorrow will never come.

And then afterwards we have another preoccupation to loose weight – does all this really make sense?

Ironically too many of us, including myself need to loose weight – we love the wrong type of food – too much fat or too much sugar!!

All too often the food that is said to be good for us is boring, unappetising and not very nice.

No wonder our young people love junk food but the consequences of such an unhealthy diet are all too often ignored – it won’t happen to me.

We ignore the morality of our gluttony and our irresponsible waste of food whilst a third of the world starves to death and another third is undernourished.

Food glorious food?

When we pray, ‘Our daily bread’ its all about sufficiency and balance.

The balance is all to do with energy, the energy we take in, in the form of food, should equal the energy we dissipate in the form of exercise or work.

If the food energy > work we do = put on weight

If the food energy < work we do = loose weight

That’s why those who want to loose weight count calories, but its more than that.

There is the wholeness factor to consider – we are whole human beings and for true health there are THREE factors to be considered.

Health of Body, Mind and Spirit.

We know that being excessively under or over weight can and does affect our mental process.

But the spiritual is also of concern for the person who really wants wholeness out of their lives.

Our daily bread: in a spiritual context can means three things –

• The bread of the Eucharist – the body of Christ

• Spiritual food for our minds and hearts – the Word of God

• The bread of Life – he who eats me shall live forever

The Bread of the Eucharist – from the very earliest times in the life of the Church the Lord’s prayer has been closely connected with the Holy Communion Service.

In the 1662 BCP the Holy Communion service indeed starts with the Lord’s prayer and then is repeated once the elements have been received by the people.

The Holy communion in a very real sense is enfolded in the Lord’s prayer indeed in our revised services it still holds a very predominant place before we received the body and blood of Jesus in the form of bread and wine.

The petition, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ – is a request that we may be granted the daily privilege of sitting at the Lord’s table to eat the spiritual food which we receive there.

The daily bread meaning here the spiritual body and blood of Jesus so that through this feast we may be drawn into a closer relationship with Him - in Communion.

The daily bread has also been identified with the spiritual food of the Word of God – Holy Scripture.

When Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days and nights, tempted by the devil the 1st temptation relates scripture to bread.

‘If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.’

Then Jesus quoting from the book of Deuteronomy said, ‘Man cannot live by bread alone; he lives on every word that God utters.’

So this petition, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ has to be taken to be a prayer for the:

• True teaching of God’s Word for us today

• The true doctrine which leads us through the ethics mire

• The essential truth which can only be found in Holy scripture as the Word of God, which is indeed our daily food for our minds, our hearts and our souls.

Then thirdly Jesus said, ‘ I AM the bread of life, he who eats me shall live forever.’

Ironically this connects the previous two since Jesus is the Bread of life at the Eucharist and Jesus is the Word of God as St. John makes very clear in the opening to his gospel:

‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God’ … ‘And the Word became flesh and lived among us.’ … Jesus Christ our Lord.

In the 39 articles of religion, number 6 tells us: ‘Holy Scripture contains all things necessary for Salvation.’

This salvation comes to us through the grace of what Jesus Christ has done for us in His saving death on the cross.