Give Us Day This Our Daily Bread
Matthew 6:9-13
There is a story about the President of Anheiser-Busch who went over to the Vatican for a private audience with the Pope. The meeting went something like this: “Holy Father, we are prepared to make a donation of $10 million to the church if you would simply replace ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ with ’Give us this day our daily beer.’” “I’m afraid, that’s not possible, my son.” “Could you do it for a bigger contribution, say $25 million dollars?” “I’m afraid that’s not possible, my son.” “Holy Father, here is my final offer. Change “bread” to “beer:” and I will write you a check right now for $100 million dollars.” The Pope picks up the phone and says: “Cardinal Mancini, how firm is our contract with Pillsbury?”
During this sermon series, we’re trying to take a step back and look at the lessons in the Lord’s Prayer that Jesus was trying to teach us. Today we are focusing on the phrase, “Give us This Day Our Daily Bread.” There are six petitions or things we ask of God in the Lord’s Prayer. The first three have to do with our relationship to God. But a shift occurs when we move from ‘Thy’ to ‘Us’ Only with those attitudinal postures in place of approaching God personally as daddy, acknowledging and revering his holiness and affirming that it is about His kingdom and not ours, are our souls in the right posture to now corporately ask for our daily bread.
In Bible times, bread was absolutely essential for every Middle Eastern meal. This is indicated by the fact that there are over 300 references to bread throughout the Scriptures. People did not have forks and spoons to eat with so they used a piece of bread torn from a loaf for dipping into the various common food bowls set before them. Bread was the vehicle that brought food from the table to your mouth to sustain your life. Without modern preservatives, fresh loaves had to be baked every day. When Jesus tells us to pray for our daily bread, he’s not just talking about bread alone, he’s talking about food for survival.
By incorporating daily bread into His distinctive Disciples’ Prayer, first, Jesus was drawing an intentional reference back to the wilderness of Zin, the site of daily manna, something the Disciples well understood. The Wilderness of Zin is where the Israelites spent the vast majority of their 40-year desert experience. Seeing this place, you are immediately struck by how barren this region is. The Bible refers to this place as “that great and terrible wilderness” Deut 1:19, 8:15 These early Hebrews complainingly describe this environment to Moses as “no place for seed, or for figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates; nor is there any water to drink.” Numbers 20:5b This is why daily manna was absolutely essential for the survival of the Israelites. In this arid setting, there is no source of food. Without God’s daily provision of manna, the Israelites would have quickly perished. That is the corporate historical context that Jesus intends us to evoke in our hearts and minds when we ask for our daily bread.
Second, we are to pray for the faith community and its needs. This is a prayer which encourages the community to pray for the community. In the Middle East, the community is always more important than the individual. Consequently, a person would always sacrifice personal rights and needs for the benefit of the community. Not so in the West! Here the individual always considers himself or herself to be more important than the rest of the community. As a result, community harmony is usually sacrificed for the sake of personal interests.
Third, in this Wilderness of Zin setting, daily manna symbolizes a conscious, continual posture of always acknowledging being totally dependent on the Lord for everything. In giving us that daily bread reminder, it’s as if Jesus intends us to be praying, “Lord, please provide our community of faith with the necessities we require this day, and Lord may we live today acknowledging our need to be totally sustained by You because we are indeed truly dependent upon You for everything.” And it is that contextual backdrop which frames the question “Are we even asking for our daily bread in the spirit in which Jesus intended?” Jesus says, “give us this day”, which signifies from morning until dusk. We are not to pray for a week’s supply but just enough for today. The challenge of course is that we don’t want just enough for today. We would rather have the security and comfort of having a stockpile of food. God seems to be saying it’s not always helpful for you to have more than you need. Because the danger is when we are comfortable and have more than we need, we feel like we don’t need God any more. We know that the more money people have, the less involved they are in their faith and the more difficult it is to reach them with the Gospel. When God provided manna from heaven each day, his instructions were for the Israelites to only pick up enough manna to last them for the day. And when they couldn’t do that because they wanted to pick up more for the next day in case God didn’t meet their need, they opened up the jar the next day and it was spoiled and destroyed by worms. God says you only need enough today so that you will depend on me for tomorrow too. Proverbs 30: 8b-9 says, “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that I need or I shall be full and deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?” or I shall be poor and steal and profane the name of God.” This is a prayer of dependence and contentment. Help me be dependent to you O Lord for what I have today and to be content to think that just enough is enough and not demand more. Help me to always depend on you to provide for my needs.
This a prayer to trust God for everything in our lives, not to worry or to be afraid but simply to trust. Ask and we shall receive. It’s hard to remember that when you go through times of uncertainty, we are to trust in God. Most of us are very good at worry. This economic slowdown and recession has certainly challenged us in this area over the last two years as you have seen your stock portfolio shrink and perhaps job prospects dry up. Worry is really nothing but a lack of trust in God. So when we are asking for our daily bread, we are saying, “God I trust you to meet my need. I don’t know how you’re going to do it but I trust you.”
Jesus offers us some words about trusting God. In Matthew 6 just after he teaches the Lord’s prayer, Jesus expands on this when he says, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?.... So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Matt. 6:25-27,31-33 Many of us are expert worriers, but Jesus calls us to trust fully in God.
Fourth, God provides for our needs. But how does God provide for our needs? Most of us when we pray are expecting two things: an instantaneous answer and for it to be supernatural. The assumption is that is how God always works. How does God give us our daily bread? According to the Scriptures, you were created for three things: you were created to be recipients of God’s love, you were created to reciprocate God’s love (to offer praise and thanksgiving and be in relationship with God) and you were created to do the will of God. You were created to be God’s hands and voice on this planet and do what God asks. How does God give us our daily bread? Through the hands of people. Think about where your food comes from in a restaurant. There were farmers and ranchers who spent months toiling in the soil and hot sun. After the grain was harvested, there were truckers who picked it up and took it to the mill. And then there were millers who processed it into flour. Then there were truckers who took it to bakeries and then bakers who baked it. Then trucker who took it to the store and then workers who put it on the shelves and sold it. And then in the kitchen there are cooks preparing this meal and then a waiter or waitress brought it tour table. Do you ever consider how many hands had a role in bringing our daily bread? And God used all of them to answer this prayer for our daily bread.
This is how God works in our daily lives. But it’s not just others who provide daily bread. You are called to provide daily bread for others too. When Jesus says, “Give us this day our daily bread”, he says “us” because it includes you and me. We are to be the answer to this prayer. This prayer is an invitation for God to use us to meet the needs of other people. A perfect example is when you bring food to fill our pantry. Most of us have more than enough food in our pantries and can go get more when we run out. So how does God answer a homeless person’s prayer when they seriously don’t know where their next meal is coming from? It’s through people like you and me. You become the answer to someone else’s prayer. You hear the prompting of the Spirit and respond when you see someone hungry and in need.
There are 25-30,000 people who die every day from starvation and hunger. And yet we know that there is more than enough food produced in the world to feed every one of them. So where does the problem lie? With you and me. God is in charge of production. We are in charge of distribution. We are called to be instruments by which God answers the prayers of others.
Fifth, we are to trust God so we can focus on Jesus. The word daily, epiousion, only appears in the Lord’s Prayer and we have no evidence of it anywhere in ancient Greek literature, except in the Lord’s prayer. When we pray for daily bread we pray for that which is and supports your very nature or that which your substance stands, that which sustains you, that kind of bread. You remember Maslow and his hierarchy of needs. He said when you had your base needs for food, shelter, clothing and security met, then you can begin to focus on your higher needs. The higher level needs we have as Christians are grace, unconditional love, a life purpose, a connection to something bigger than ourselves. We have this kind of hunger inside of us but we cannot focus on them until our basic needs are met. This is why we pray for our daily bread.
Now how are those other higher hungers and needs met in our life? By a different kind of bread. When Jesus was tempted by the devil, he quoted Moses and said, “One does not live by bread alone but by the very word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” One day the disciples came to Jesus and offered to fix him a meal and Jesus said, “I have food you don’t know about.” Jesus was talking about his relationship with God. When Jesus fed the thousands, he said, this is a sign. Do you get it? And then he says, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” John 6:35 This is what Jesus offers us. He is the bread which satisfies the yearning in our hearts.
Tom Brady was interviewed on 60 Minutes last year. By age 30 he had more money than he knew what to do with, half the women in America would offer themselves to him, had won 3 Super Bowl rings and he said, “Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still thnk there’s something greater out there for me? Maybe a lot of people would says, “Hey man, this is what it’s all about. I reached my goal, my dream, my life. Me? I think it’s gotta be more than this. I mean, this isn’t, this can’t be….what’s the answer? I wish I knew. I love football. I love being quarterback for this team. But at the same time, I think there are a lot of other parts of me, or about me that I’m trying to find.” You know and I know that it’s none other than the bread of life. Isaiah 55:2 says, “Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?” Many of you are malnourished. You come for one meal a week and you try to gorge yourself to last the next 7 days. You sing and pray and listen to sermons and hope that will be enough. But it never it is. And yet we pray, give us this day our daily bread, so let’s make it a daily relationship. Jesus is the bread of life.
