Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Give Us This Day

by Dave Wilkinson

Matthew 6:9--11

November 7, 1999

"Give us this day our daily bread." That's a very familiar phrase from a familiar prayer. And it's one that is kind of charming in its simplicity. But have you ever thought what you are really praying for when you talk about bread?

In our complex society, where people are bound to one another by webs of supply and demand, what is required for just one loaf of "daily bread"?

You might begin with God's gifts of sun and rain and soil. Your loaf of daily bread involves farmers and harvesters. It requires railroads and trucks and grain elevators--and those who manufacture, maintain, and operate all of these. It involves millers and bakers, distributors and grocers, stock boys and check-out clerks -- as well as your ability to earn the money to

purchase your one loaf of bread --- and that involves whatever business or industry employs you, and the government that prints and stands behind the money you spend.

It's not a simple prayer. Not even for us.

But that's not something we tend to think about. We assume that we'll have bread -- and meat covered with grey poupon -- but of course -- to put on it.

Probably no one here this morning has ever prayed this prayer without having a pretty good idea where the next meal was coming from. We don’t often pray, "God, help me eat." We pray, "God, help me not to eat so much."

But there are many places in the world where actual daily bread is a very real issue. We have all seen pictures of refugees and famine victims lined up for their daily bread--and pictures of the dead along the road who died for lack of it.

Daily bread may not be our biggest issue. But it is important to pray and work and give for those for whom it is. Jesus teaches us this. It is not "give me my daily bread" but give us our daily bread". That takes in all of us--and the refugees in the pictures as well. We can’t pray this prayer as selfish people. This prayer is a confession that no one of us lives to himself or herself alone.

The word translated "daily" is one of the most interesting words in the Bible. This word "epiousia" is interesting because this is the only place in the entire Bible where it is used. In fact, the Lord's Prayer is the only place the word translated "daily" is used in the whole of Greek literature -- anywhere.

There is only one place it is found outside the Lord's Prayer. It was found by an archeologist on a little scrap of papyrus that came from a Greek household. What this was was a shopping list. It was a list a housewife took with her to the market. What it means is "being bread" -- basic bread -- day to day bread -- our staple needs.

Our Lord invites us, his disciples, to share with God, our Heavenly Father, our concern for this basic bread. Now we aren't "daily bread" focused. I hope our economy or ecology ever gets so bad that we are. But this prayer is still a valid prayer for us. For we also have our need.

I am going to interpret "bread" here to mean the very basic part of our human existence; the things we need physically, emotionally, and psychologically; the whole of us that we need in order to survive. Jesus tell

s us, "pray for your daily bread. Pray for those physical, concrete things--the emotional experiences and psychological supports you need right now in order to survive." We are told to pray that God should give to us the simple, ordinary things, which we need to keep body and soul together. That's what we're told to pray for and what we are told we can trust God to provide.

Does this offend you? I hope not. But, you know there are two groups of people who would find this prayer very offensive. Jesus’s prayer is offensive to two particular kinds of human belief.

The first people to be offended are the spiritualists --- the new agers of Jesus' day and ours. Spiritualists would prefer the prayer to go this way:

"Our Father who art in Heaven; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." This, they would like -- especially if it was interpreted in a new age, crystal gazing sort of way. But "give us this day our daily bread" offends them. You see, they would rather pray, "Oh, God! Help us to have the supremacy of our spirits over our body so that we will no longer need daily bread to the end that our spirits may soar like the seagull in the book." They are offended by that "earthy" line which appears (to them) materialistic--"give us this day our daily bread."

They would argue in two directions. First they would argue, "should not our prayers lift our sights above the earth?" In other words, they would come to Jesus and say, "Jesus, you have given us a prayer to converse with our heavenly Father and right away you have our eyes focused back on the earth--'give us this day our daily bread.' should not a prayer focus our attention upward, away from the earth?"

And second, they would be offended by the use of the word "daily". "Daily" is an affront to the person who wants to avoid all ties to daily, ordinary, life. The spiritualistic person wants to transcend the "daily". Yet this prayer says, "give us this day our daily bread".

For Jesus has something much better for them and for us, and much richer, than escape from the world. What He has in this prayer is a promise of companionship in the world. He promises to that group of people who yearn for the spiritual relationship with God (and this Jesus Christ agrees with) that He will make that spiritual relationship real in the midst of the real world -- not in isolated, mountain top experiences, but in the day to day of the family and the job. That's a great promise. Because we don't live on mountaintops. We live in the real world.

"There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God," is the way C.S. Lewis, put it. "God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not. He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it."

But at the same time as Jesus offends the spiritualists, He also offends the hyper-materialists.

Have you ever noticed that when the United Nations developed an economic index for what they called value of life or standard of living index worldwide, the only category with which that index operated was the accumulation of possessions? In other words, the whole basis for evaluation of culture and the evaluation of people in terms of that standard of living index is on how many refrigerators an average person in China has, compared to an average person in the United States. How many automobiles would a person in Japan own versus a person in the Philippines, or in India. The whole standard of living index is based on that one variable -- possessions that people are able to call their own. That is an example of just how distorted we have become in our modern age about life and its meaning.

If I can collect, and consume, and own, quantities of things and the experiences that goes with them, that is not materialism. Materialism is more profound than that. It is to collect, and to consume and to own and to accumulate quantities of things and the experiences that go with them -- and to believe that that ownership will grant meaning to my life. That's materialism. Materialism gives meaning for life by the ownership that I am able to have over things and experiences.

Now the result of this way of living is that soon everything in my life--the houses, the cars, the people -- all of my relationships--my physical relationships with people, my emotional relationships -- are all viewed as the objects to be owned and to be possessed.

But that is not the way of Jesus Christ. And that is not the prayer He teaches us. In this prayer we acknowledge that we are totally dependent on God and responsible to God for what He gives us. Jesus never teaches His disciples to pray for rich and abundant material goods. Nor does Jesus ever encourage anyone of His disciples to pray selfishly. We are not to pray for our private enrichment. Rather we are to be conscious of others as we ask, "give us." For we know that we finally have nothing to call our own. We know that we are stewards of God for what He entrusts to us. Jesus tells us that our personal meaning is not found in transcending the world. Our personal meaning is also not found in consuming the world. Our meaning is found in walking in this world and the next with our Creator and Redeemer.

That is why it is so special to come to the table of the Lord. For as we come, we are in the presence of the one who cares for all our needs -- no need too big, no need too small -- and tells us to pray, "give us our daily bread."

Note: The portion of this sermon exploring the response of the Spiritualists and the Materialists to the prayer was adapted from a sermon delivered by Dr. Earl Palmer when he was at the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley.