Give Us Each Day Our Daily Bread.

Deuteronomy 8:11-20; Mark 8:1-10

October 31, 2004

 

1.  For those who weren’t here two weeks ago, this is the third in a series of sermons on The Lord’s Prayer as Luke recorded it–different from the prayer by the same name that Matthew recorded.  So I will read the whole prayer as it appears in Luke’s Gospel.

2.  And for those who weren’t here a couple of months ago, this is a spoon.  I showed it to the children a month or so ago to illustrate how everyone can get enough to eat.  There’s actually a story that goes with this looooong funny-looking spoon.  It seems there were two rooms, identically furnished with an enormous banquet table filled with the best-tasting food anyone could imagine.  The waiter seated all the people, and gave each one a spoon much like this one.  In one of the rooms, the people tried to eat, but because the spoon handle is so long, the food just spilled all over everywhere and nobody got what they needed.    The first room was called “HELL.”  Pretty good description, don’t you think?  “HELL” is certainly that condition where people don’t have the basics that they need.  In the other room, the people used this spoon to get a bit of food from the middle of the table and reach across to the other side.  In that room, everyone had plenty to eat.  If the first room was called “HELL” then you can pretty well guess what this second room is called . . . “HEAVEN.”  Heaven is where God is, and God is where everyone gets what they need.

3.  And so we pray to God for what we need.  “Give us each day our daily bread.”  That’s quite a mouthful!  Let’s cut up this sentence into bite-size pieces.  “GIVE US . . .”  The subject of this sentence is implied–“You.  You give us. . .”And more than that, it’s in the imperative voice–this is a plea!  Have we heard this plea somewhere before?  You bet we have!  We heard it first from the Hebrew people as they wandered through the desert.  They had just been freed from their slavery in Egypt, and they left in such a hurry that they couldn’t bring much food with them.  In their hunger they cried out “Give us food!”  They mumbled and the grumbled and they whined and they complained.  And God fed them.  God didn’t want anybody to be hungry, even the mumblers and grumblers and whiners and complainers.  It wasn’t steak and potatoes, but it was food.  It was a new dish.  It showed up on the grass one morning, very thin and crispy.  And the people said “Mannu?”  Which means “What is this?”  Moses said “This is what God sent you to eat.”  And there was enough!  Each morning brought enough manna for that day.  As funny as it looked, and as different as it tasted it satisfied their hunger.   After they got to the Promised Land, Moses wanted them to remember who sent it.  “Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God.  When you have eaten your fill, and you can barely make it to the couch for a nap, remember who fed you.  Do not say, ‘I did this all by myself.’”  And so we pray “You give us . . . GIVE US. . .”

4.  “Give us . . . EACH DAY . . .” Jesus told the disciples one day, “Don’t concern yourself with tomorrow.  Goodness gracious, there is enough to worry about TODAY.”  I love the story of the old woman who had more troubles than she could count.  But she never seemed to worry.  She always slept well; no wrinkles furrowed her brow.  One day someone asked her how she did it.  She did not hesitate to provide an answer:  “I read in the Book of Psalms that God neither slumbers nor sleeps.  I figured there was no point in BOTH of us staying up all night!”  There truly is no point in worrying about tomorrow.  Plan, yes, but worry?  NO!  Jesus tried every way he knew to get people to put the future in God’s hands.  That point came home to me over and over when I visited Malawi in deepest Africa.  Those people have almost nothing: very few cars, so they walk everywhere; they live in tiny houses and dig holes in the ground for toilets.  Yet they are far happier than most of us with all the “stuff” that is supposed to make us happy!  They live a life of faith–one day at a time.  “Give us EACH DAY . . .”

5.  “Give us each day OUR . . .”  Jesus did not teach “give ME each day MY . . .”  We forget how inter-dependent we truly are.  The truth is that God’s people do not feed themselves.  God is the one who feeds us.  The story Rodgers read drives this point home.  Did you notice where the disciples were?  They were in way out in the boonies.  “We are in a deserted place,” they quaintly said.  “Send the people away so they can get something to eat.  We don’t have enough for everybody”  They might as well have said, “There are no QuikTrips anywhere near, so send them back to town.    But Jesus said “There is no need to do that.  We have all we need.”  With that, he thanked God for what they had, and what they had fed the whole crowd!  The disciples helped feed everybody.  We are interdependent, and it’s up to each one of us to see that everyone gets fed.  There is enough to go around.  “Give us each day OUR. . .”

6.  “Give us each day our DAILY BREAD.”  Strangely enough, this word for “daily bread” occurs only twice--once here, and once in Matthew’s record of this same prayer.  ”Daily bread” means “sufficient food,” “rations.”  It sounds strange to our ears–those of us who buy in bulk at Sam’s Club and have pantries and freezers full of food, and way too many choices in the grocery store when we go shopping.  We could easily think this part of the prayer does not apply to us.  In fact, lots of people don’t even say a prayer of thanks before a meal.  Once again, Moses’ words flash before our eyes: “God provided everything you have . . . and don’t you forget it!”  We do not feed ourselves.  We cannot feed ourselves.  God feeds us. So when we pray “Give us each day our daily bread,” it is both a prayer of thanksgiving and a prayer of petition.  As we pray, we remember who we are and who God is.  We are the ones who interact with others so everyone can have “rations,” and God is the one who provides it for all of us.  We are dependent upon God for our food.

7.  But we might want to protest a bit at this point.  After all, we are not totally dependent.  We work hard [most of us] for the food we eat.  Or, we worked hard during our working years, so now we can retire and eat from our savings.  We want to claim that God helps those who help themselves, by golly, and we are the ones who have helped ourselves.  We remember those harsh words God spoke to Adam: “From the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread, until you return to the ground from which you were taken.”  And we remember what Paul said: “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.” (2 Thessalonians 3:10).  We can protest all we want, but in the end we are faced with a paradox.  God helps those who help themselves, and God helps those who cannot help themselves.  God helps one and all.  God wants everyone to have enough to eat.

8.   “Give us each day our daily bread.”  “Give us our rations every day.”   And we thank God for the food God gives us.  But that’s not all!  Come again next Sunday, and we’ll find that we cannot live by bread alone.