C 07 - Our Daily Bread

7. Our Daily Bread Some of the Reformers (and we can do likewise) included in our bread everything we need to sustain life.

Those who are acquainted with Luther’s Shorter Catechism will remember the well-known list that he draws up to explain the meaning of the word bread : food, drink, clothing, shoes, houses, farms, fields, land, money, property, a good marriage, good children, good and trustworthy authorities, a just government, favourable weather (neither too hot nor too cold), health, honours, good friends, trusty neighbours. This is no small order ! The list shows us the needs and the living conditions of a middle-class German countryman of the sixteenth century. But nothing need prevent our interpreting and completing the list to suit the needs of our own time and our individual situations. It is certainly permissible to think of daily bread in this wider sense of the word. Nevertheless I would emphasize that it is advisable not to lose sight of the original, simple meaning of the word bread . In the language of the Bible bread is used in two senses

1. That which is strictly necessary for life, the minimum nourishment which even the poor man cannot do without, the necessary minimum for the beggar and the tramp. It is the complement to the notion of hunger . Asking God to give us bread means appealing to his free grace which holds us and keeps us on the edge of the abyss of hunger and death. The minimum keeps us alive today; shall we have it tomorrow also? That is the vital question. Now we are living on it, but tomorrow? No one knows. We have no security if God does not give us this necessary bread, and with it life. The children of God know how precarious is our existence and the human situation in general. They know that, whether rich or poor, we are a people living in the wilderness, the people of Israel committed to God’s cause. This is why we dare to ask him to preserve us from hunger and death, and we ask for it under this primitive form of bread because it cannot be taken for granted that we shall have it tomorrow.

2. In the Old and the New Testament bread is also the earthly symbol of God’s eternal grace. Here the meaning of the word is at once more simple, natural and material as well as far more profound and sublime than we suppose. The natural and the sublime aspects are closely linked. They are a sign from God, given to this people in the wilderness, to the poor, the afflicted, to those who hunger and thirst, to those who are in the very jaws of death. Because of all that it stands for, bread is something sacred. Bread is the promise, and not simply the promise but also the mystical presence of that food which nourishes for good and all; the food which, whosoever has eaten of it will not need to eat again. In the Bible every meal, the most frugal or the most sumptuous, is something sacred, for it is the promise of an eternal banquet. In the Bible the life of the body in this world is sacred because it is the promise of life immortal and eternal. The word bread, as we have seen, is set beside the word hunger. But it also stands for that fullness of life which we shall experience in the new age, in the era which is to come. This actual bread which we eat is the pledge and the sign - and also the presence - of that fullness. This is what is called here our bread. Thus, Give us our bread means : give us what is necessary for the present and, at the same time, let it be to us a sign, a pledge given in advance, that we shall live. According to thy promise, we, receiving it today, receive also the presence of thine everlasting goodness, the assurance that we shall live with thee. The word daily has been the subject of much discussion; it raises all kinds of questions and problems which I do not propose to deal with here. I shall simply suggest to you the most probable interpretation. Epiousios (daily) means, for each day, for the coming day. Give us today, give us each day, the bread we shall need tomorrow. We are living now, but shall we be alive next minute, next day? Will hunger and death spare us till then? This is the practical question which our precarious situation presents to us. You will remember that in Matthew 6:1-34, Jesus exhorts us not to be anxious about our life, what we shall eat or what we shall drink. Calvin was surely right to add, in his Commentary it is very necessary to work for tomorrow’s food. But neither anxiety nor work provides an answer to this question, Shall we be alive tomorrow? Prayer must take the place of anxiety and must underlie our work for the morrow. The children of God are not anxious about work; they work because they pray. But perhaps at this point another meaning of the word bread should occur to us. Anxiety about the temporal tomorrow prefigures anxiety about the eternal tomorrow. For the uncertainty f this life is nothing compared to the uncertainty f human destiny. In the words of the requiem, `What shall I say then, wretched man that I am?’ May this fear be transformed and become a prayer! The children of God know the uncertainty of human life and everything we are afraid of in time and in eternity, but they hope to receive today, yes today, with their bread and in the form of earthly bread, the pledge, nay rather the first-fruits, of the bread which will feed them eternally, which will be their food in the eschatological tomorrow.

Let us now consider what this petition means. To ask God to give us bread, both earthly and heavenly, material and non-material, implies that we know God as the one who gives. We have already pointed out that to pray with full knowledge of the situation it is necessary to pray with the certainty of being heard; to pray at random, without this certainty, is not prayer at all. Our prayer, therefore, must begin with this implication.

Thou givest us our bread for the morrow, and thou givest it today. Thou art our faithful Creator, and never for one moment dost thou cease to be so. We are a people in the wilderness and yet encompassed by the splendours and riches of creation, by all thy creatures and by the covenant of grace which thou hast been pleased to establish between thyself and us. Thou desirest not our death, but our life. On thy side, nothing whatever can be lacking. There is bread in plenty for us and for all who could join with us in this prayer, bread in plenty for everyone. There is no danger of our being overtaken by hunger or death. Thou art ready to preserve all those whom thou hast willed to call to the service of thy glory. Everything thou givest us is in truth the pledge of a living food, of that abundance in which we shall live for ever. This we know because thou art our Father in heaven, our Father in Jesus Christ, with whom we live and who has called us to follow him and travel in his company: for the moment from afar, but nevertheless we travel with him. And since thou art his Father thou art ours also. Therefore we know that thou hast prepared for us a meal, a banquet, both temporal and eternal, and we hear thy voice bidding us to be guests at thy table.

We need to hear that voice calling us, and we cannot forget it : `Come, for all things are ready.’ This is what impels us to pray and gives us leave to say to God : Give us today our daily bread.

We must also say : Do thou give it in such a way that it is not given in vain but that we may truly receive that bread which thou has prepared at thy table in the Holy Communion; that we may take from thy hands the bread which thou hast created for us and dost give us. Help us, therefore, and enlighten us, lest at the very moment when thou givest us afresh that ineffable and incomparable gift of thy patience and our hope, we should bear ourselves like gluttons or men surfeited with food; see to it that we do not squander or destroy that gift. Grant that each one may receive his bread without dispute or quarrelling. If anyone has more than he needs, grant him the knowledge that he is thereby appointed a servant and minister of thy grace, to be used in thy service and the service of others; and may all who are in special danger from hunger, death, and from the chances of mortal life find brothers and sisters whose eyes and ears are open and who are alive to their responsibilities. How shameful is our ingratitude and our social injustice! How senseless it is that in the midst of men who are surrounded by thy gifts and swollen with riches, there should still be some who are perishing from hunger!

See to it that we receive the food we need and that we receive it as thou givest it, that is, as a sign and a promise; and as we enjoy that sign, and as we bless thee (’Bless the Lord, 0 my soul, and forget not all his benefits’), may we enjoy in anticipation the things thou dost promise us, so that even now we may take part in that feast at which thou wilt preside from everlasting to everlasting. As you see, there is good reason to pray. Indeed it is our cause that is at stake. We are completely dependent on God, and truly he must make our cause his own so that it may be sustained and be victorious. We are in the position of being free to call on him without fear, in the certain knowledge that he hears us, and that he has always done and always will do what we ask of him.