Daily bread

"Give us this day our daily bread" is one of those lines in the Lord's prayer that, for me, is a mnemonic device to make sure as I lead a congregation in saying it my mind doesn't skip a track. In the center of a prayer about the hallowing of God's name, the coming of the Kingdom, the forgiveness of sins and scary temptations there is a loaf. God's will is done and his Kingdom comes when people have daily bread. Daily bread, a phrase that sounds straightforward in English but which translates a word used nowhere else in Greek literature. The classicists and linguists have had a field day suggesting its meaning, but the more settled view is that it means 'bread for the coming day'. So, if I pray it in the morning I'm thinking of today; if I pray it at night, I'm looking to tomorrow. Either way bread enough for one day—and this prayer reflected a society in which people were paid daily. Think about it, if you're sick and can't work, how do you eat?

Jesus knew about bread, and about hunger, about the rich and the poor, the powerful and the vulnerable. "Give us this morning bread for the day...Give us tomorrow bread for the day..." The same Jesus looked on a hungry crowd and multiplied five loaves and two fishes into an ad hoc food bank. That act of extravagant mercy is defining of the church, bread for the hungry, rest for the weary, a place to sit down and be nourished, space to be human. "Jesus took bread and blessed and broke it" and so the Eucharist was handed to the church in broken bread gratefully shared. No, the church isn't a food bank, it is a mountainside with loaves and fishes; and it is a community which resists the iron systems of economic discrimination, which calls in question cash value by demonstrating the genius for generosity.

Give us this day our daily bread, Lord.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation