Give Us Today Our Daily Bread Matt. 6:5-13, James 2:14-17

On the surface this request in the Lord’s Prayer is pretty simple and we rattle it off without contemplating about it too much. Frankly it seems this request has been more than answered in our household, and I suspect that most of us would say the same. I can go to the cupboard and pull out all sorts of packets of food made in all sorts of countries. The fridge is pretty full and the small freezer is bursting with all sorts of goodies that we have stored away. The garden is producing beans, courgettes/zucchini, beetroot, broccoli, lettuce, spinach, carrots, potatoes, raspberries, and the tomatoes are almost ripe. Some consistently warm weather would help. There’s a supermarket just down the road that stocks just about any food item I may want and I usually can afford to purchase whatever. Really to ask God for daily food seems a bit needless. It’s there anyway.
For most of the world, of course, it isn’t that easy. I don’t know about you but I as I look back at my life I see key moments that have shaped the rest of my life. There are moments that are a sort of turning point. For me, one of those moments occurred when I was a young man on my OE living for a year in India. I worked for a while at the St Thomas School in Jagadhri living with New Zealander Doreen Riddle, an amazing woman and fine Christian. There I became friendly with one of the male teachers and one afternoon he offered to take me out to a local village for the night to stay with some of his relatives. We bounced our way on his motorbike down back country roads and tracks, through numerous villages until we got to our destination. I was completely lost – it was yet another small village in rural India. His relatives lived in a simple mud cottage that consisted of one open plan room. Cooking space at one end and sleeping at the other. It was basic, but it was home for the family. I’m not sure how many slept inside because we got to sleep outside under the stars. What hit me, however, was the kitchen. There were two or three pots and pans sitting beside the internal fireplace which was simply a scooped out hollow in the floor with a window above. Fuel was gathered sticks and cakes of cow dung mixed with straw. There was a sort of cupboard that had some metal plates, some mugs, and a couple of containers that may have held spices. I scanned around looking for a pantry of some sort – or at least a cupboard with some food – there was none. There was an earthenware jar that I think had some rice in it, but this family like so many families in the village lived on the food they could gather or barter for that day. There was no fridge full of food, no cupboard full of packets and tins, there was no fast food outlet, no supermarket just down the road. We shared a simple meal that night and I was greatly humbled because for this family food was not something you took for granted. Even getting fuel for the fire was a daily chore. This family, typical of so many in the world, lived on what they could gather each day.
I suspect if they were to pray ‘give us today our daily bread’ they may pray with more feeling and passion than we do. When the cupboards, the freezer and fridge are full, the supermarket is just down the road and we don’t think twice about having a meal on the table, it’s hardly surprising we rattle off this petition. We take our food for granted – I suspect none of us were greatly concerned about whether we would have breakfast this morning. In reality our concern about food is usually about eating too much. Sadly we have often forgotten the practice of saying grace before our meals because we no longer make any connection between the goodness of God and the provision of our food. We may even be tempted to leave this petition out of the Lord’s Prayer also.
The situation of the first century peasants and tenement dwellers who prayed this prayer with Jesus was precarious and much more akin to my Indian friends. Many lived at a subsidence level and were extremely vulnerable to a bad or ruined crop, illness that made work impossible, or whatever reason might interrupt the daily food supply. They prayed this prayer with passion and then set about making sure the members of their church community and others around did have food. The Kingdom of God for them was about making sure everyone was fed. It was, and remains, being about bread for the world. If we pray this prayer Jesus taught us, we cannot turn our backs on the plight of so many in the world who are hungry – kids whose brains will never fully develop because of poor nutrition, human-beings, our brothers and sisters who eat poorly, or not at all, because we cannot sort issues of production and distribution justly. In our service sheet I have included a table grace from Latin America. It prays simply “Lord to those who hunger give bread. And to those who have bread, give the hunger for justice”. I suggest that if Jesus was teaching his Lord’s Prayer to us today, he might ask us to pray words such as these.
I think he might also point out to us that while he definitely had real bread on his mind there was also another thought in his mind as he taught his disciples to pray. Scholars have long debated what the actual words daily bread mean. The Greek words in the manuscripts we have for Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels use the words ‘artos epiousios’. ‘Artos’ is the common word for a loaf of wheat bread but ‘epiousios’ has scholars scratching their heads. This word is very uncommon and doesn’t occur anywhere else in the New Testament or anywhere much else for that matter. That makes it difficult to work our what was actually meant. One very common thought is that it draws on the story and experience of the Hebrews who travelled the exodus journey through the wilderness.. You may remember they ran out of food and God had to provide for them, and they got their daily ration of manna. They discovered something important about God’s provision of daily food however. God simply provided for the next 24 hours. When they tried hoarding and saving the manna so they didn’t have to worry about the source drying up and could store some away for the future, they discovered what they hoarded and saved went rotten. They had to learn to trust God to provide for their daily provision, and not to take more than what they needed each day. It was not an easy lesson but they learned to trust God. One of the names they learned to call God was Jehovah Jireh. Jehovah or Yahweh being a name for God, Jireh the one who provides. It was a name they had learned from their ancestor Abraham who first learned this when he was about to sacrifice Isaac, but God provided a ram instead. The lesson learned was God will provide. [Gen.22:4]
I think it’s a lesson we have to learn again. In our comfortable protected risk-free existence we are so cotton-wooled that trusting God in our journey is not something we entertain easily. The Lord helps those who look after themselves we proclaim, and of course there is truth in that, but I wonder if the scales haven’t tipped too far.
If Jesus was teaching this prayer to us, I think he would agree that bread is not the issue for us, but our hoarding of all sorts of things ‘just in case’ surely is. Money in the bank, insurance for everything imaginable, food in the cupboard, are all signs that we don’t trust God to provide for the next 24 hours. Jehovah Jireh God will provide – yeah right!
I’m not suggesting that we all start praying for a new car or to win Lotto, for I think God’s provision is about deeper issues in our lives. Lotto, or a new car, are what I would call frivolous wants or worldly hungers. They are certainly not needs in the same way a loaf of bread is a need for a hungry person. The hungers addressed by a new car or a windfall of money are not our deep hungers of soul. God is really interested in the deep desires of our hearts, the deep hungers of our souls, and these needs are much more difficult to discern.
Discerning our deepest needs and hungers takes reflection. It means being still with God and being honest with ourselves. Maybe we do ask for a new car but we listen and look again at our need, slowly peeling away the outer skin of the onion to go deeper. There we will find more real hungers. It may be the need to find a greater integrity to our life, it may be the need to find courage to attend to a conflict or issue we have with someone else that has been festering for years. It may be that you are struggling with a deep question about your life, or you need strength to face an illness. What is your deepest hunger for the next 24 hours…this is what Jesus is calling each one of us to discern and ask God for help with. As we pray ‘give us the food we need for the next twenty-four hours’ contemplate what is your deepest need, ask for God’s help, and trust Jehovah Jireh – the Lord will provide.

Dugald Wilson 29 Jan 2012