The Park Road Pulpit

“Bow your knotty heads…” he says, tapping his fork on the table and looking impatiently around the room and into the den. And then he begins -- whether anyone has bowed a “knotty head” or not -- “Lord, ‘cept our thanks for these and all other blessings. f’Christsakeamen!” From around those pine-paneled rooms comes a chorus of liturgically correct responses: “Amen… Amen… Amen!”

It’s mealtime on A.B. Jacks Road, and Pop has just said “grace.” (Ready or not, here it comes!) This Grace is one of the things I will always remember and love about Amy’s father. His posture, bent over there at the end of that oak table, tapping anxiously, and glaring around the room to signal with his dark eyes that it’s time to eat, and he means business; those simple words, which he committed to memory untold thousands of mealtime graces ago; and his inflection in that blessing, with it’s run-together benediction, will go with me to the grave.

Though James is not an overly religious sort of fellow, there is deep faith in his mealtime routine. Never do we as a family, whether at home or eating out, begin a meal without James’s tapping, and his rote, run-on reminder amidst the commotion of our common life, that Grace, that is, God’s good gifts are with us every time a meal is put before us. It is a complex, theological affirmation, but born of the experience of a South Carolina dairyman, in all its earthy simplicity, the complex becomes simple, the abstract becomes concrete, the theological becomes practical: “Bow your knotty heads…. Give us this day our daily bread.”

In the first few weeks of our study, we have dealt with impractical things in the world of the theological: In what way is God “Our Father”? Where and what and when and why is “heaven”? How could we possibly make God’s name holy? Where is God’s kingdom? And how could we ever know God’s illusive will? Perhaps Jesus’ first disciples breathed a sigh of relief when Jesus finally got to something practical: “Did he say something about bread? Well, it’s about time – I’m hungry!”

In his important study on the prayers of Jesus, the German scholar, Jeremias, reminds us that the first two petition of the prayer (“Thy kingdom come…” and “Thy will be done…”) recall an Aramaic benediction called the Kaddish.[1] This being the case, Jeremias judges that “in the Lord’s Prayer the accent lies completely on the new material which Jesus added.” This original material, the so-called “we petitions” (“give us this day…” and “forgive us our debts…”), “[forms] the real heart of the Lord’s Prayer, to which the first two [petitions] lead up.”[2]

Do you hear that? “Thy kingdom come…” “Thy will be done…” with all their grandiose theology, are but a prelude to that which was most important to Jesus, and to us: Daily Bread. If Jeremias is correct, there must be more truth than we have known to the old adage, “The way to a man’s heart, is through his stomach!”

For many years there has been disagreement between scholars as to the best translation of the phrase “daily bread.” The controversy surrounds one particular word (epiousios), which, in all of Greek literature, occurs only one other time. (How do you learn the correct meaning of a word when it is only used twice in all of literature!?) The word is translated in our version as “daily,” but many scholars believe the best translation is, instead, “give us today, Our bread for tomorrow.” Surely we can understand praying for something “today” -- undoubtedly, we have all prayed, “I want it, Lord. And I want it, NOW!” But what is “tomorrow’s bread”?

On the first weekend that you rightfully called us your pastors, we celebrated a wedding with you. It was a grand event; one that was a long time in the making; one that we will not soon forget. And for two kids, “raised right” in Southern hospitality and Conservative piety, the reception which followed was one more rug-cutting, cork-popping, eye-opening experience! “This is not ‘your father’s Baptist Church’” my wife said. (“Yes. I noticed!”)

Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is a lot like Bryan and Crystal Smyth’s wedding reception. An all-out celebration of that which is best in this world: food and drink, laughter and dance, for better/for worse, for richer/for poorer. And if Crystal and Bryan knew how to throw a party, the Jews of the first century knew even better, because their receptions usually lasted for days – so let us not underestimate Jesus’ claim here: the Kingdom is to be celebrated now!

The Bible tells us that Jesus was the life of the party, a “glutton and a wine bibber,” they called him – much to the chagrin of the preachers of his day. He did not mean, I think, that the Kingdom is always a party, but that when it is, the children of God should be the life of that party -- every time! Maybe his ability to so enjoy the party came from reading the many references in scripture to that great “Messianic Banquet.” This is the way the ancient Hebrews pictured heaven – as one grand feast of celebration on God’s holy mountain. “The kingdom is a party!”[4]

If the Lord’s Prayer can be taken as a summary of Jesus’ teaching, and if the heart of his prayer is this simple phrase, we find at the very center of Jesus’ theology this one, audacious request: God – give us life eternal, give us your sure, continual presence, give us all of the joy of heaven – and give it to us, today!

Jesus’ prayer is in diametric opposition to the prayer that many Christians are taught to pray. Today is not only the first day of the rest of your life, in a deeply theological sense, it is the only day there is! In the frenzied pace that we all live, the sinful cry, “I haven’t enough time,” belies the fact that the God of life has given us all the time there is, for we have today.

Today is not a prelude to the real thing, not a dress rehearsal, a hint of things to come. Today is all there is. Today is Grace Enough if we can learn to pray for it: “Give us today, our bread for tomorrow!”[5]

If today is the key, there’s one more thing, though, that we must say about this petition. If the Kingdom is about today. If Heaven has come to earth. If all the potential of God comes to bear on our “jars of clay”[6] (as Paul refers to our bodies), then there is one more, essential point that Jesus was making. And it is disturbing…

“Salvation is material.”[7] That is, there is no sense in talking about a “spiritual salvation,” if the full weight of heaven depends on daily bread. And in that sense we must be willing to talk about “bread” as bread. Material sustenance. That which gives us earthly life, breathing life, physical life, today.

It is not possible for us to understand that much of the world, still today, prays this prayer literally: “Lord, my children are hungry. Help me feed my family, today. Give us daily bread.” Most of us, in the span of our entire lives, will never have to worry about a single meal. So while this petition, for millions, expresses a necessary trust in God’s providential care for the sustaining grace of every day life, for millions more, like you and me, the prayer cuts back. If we dare to pray, “give us this day our daily bread,” our daily bread might well cry out from moldy, uneaten loaves – there is Grace Enough. [8] Are you willing to share?

…money is becoming a kind of narcotic for us. We hardly notice our own prosperity or the poverty of so many others. The great contradiction is that we have more and more money and less and less generosity – less and less public money for the needy, less charity for the neighbor.[9]

Brueggemann says that the Bible begins with a liturgy of abundance. In creation, God made all things “good.” Scripture claims that “God’s force of life is loose in the world” – and there is always enough. But somewhere along the way we created a “myth of scarcity,” and it is that myth that we now worship.

Put as offensively as we know how, Christianity is about your money (bread!), about economics. Salvation is material… We believe nothing is more “spiritual” than money. Through learning to pray this prayer we are taught that our money is not “ours.” Thus we can be asked to share because what we have is shared.[10]

If you never have to worry about having enough to eat, what does it mean to truly pray for “daily bread”?

Amy organized a disaster relief trip to Homestead, Florida just after Hurricane Andrew left its devastating wake there a few years ago. We drove from Clemson, South Carolina for fourteen hours with two church vans filled with college students on fall break. The scenery was incredible. The experience, even more so.

In one location we constructed a 12-foot by 20-foot, single-room shed behind a small, white, charismatic church. A Hispanic family of four made this their home. We returned the next day to find them beaming with pride in their new home, and overwhelmed with gratitude. We cut holes in the side of their sweltering new south-Florida home and added two used windows for ventilation and view. And when we finished the work, the mother of the family invited our group for dinner. You see, even in their great poverty, there was Grace Enough.

My cousins, who grew up on the “mission field” in Chile, taught us to sing a blessing in Spanish, and the words were appropriate for that setting:

You are going to be challenged, in the very near future, I promise you, with one, simple question. You, as individuals, and we, as a community of faith are going to be asked one, simple question. It is this: Do you have enough, yet? Have you been given your daily bread? Are you living tomorrow’s bread – even today?

Little Joseph Ferrante needs to hear your answer.[11] He needs to know that faith means generosity and neighborliness. Knowing that we have been given enough, and that we are called to share. Joseph and our community, growing in need, needs to hear a resounding cry, “Yes. Yes, there is enough. And then some.” For, those who have enough, those children of faith, like my Hispanic friends in Homestead, Florida, know that when we have experienced The Grace of Enough – there will always be enough to go around.

[1] “Exalted and hallowed be his great name / in the world which he created according to his will. / May he let his kingdom rule / in your lifetime and in your days and in the lifetime / of the whole house of Israel, speedily and soon. / And to this, say: amen.” Joachim Jeremias, The Prayers of Jesus, p. 98.

[2] Jeremias, p. 100.

[3] Jeremias translates the phrase in this order.

[4] No one should hear me encouraging drinking. I am a non-drinker, and I do not recommend the practice. In my opinion the liabilities of drinking far outweigh its benefits. I have come to believe, however, as a friend of mine once said, “Alcohol has almost nothing to do with religion, and almost everything to do with culture.”

[5] For more on my theology of present/future, here and now/heaven, see my sermon, Praying with Jesus: The Beyond in Our Midst, from this same sermon series.

[6] “But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted by not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies” 2 Corinthians 4.7-8.

[7] William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas, Lord, Teach Us: The Lor’s Prayer and The Christian Life, p.76.

[8] The idea of the bread “speaking,” comes from Gerhard Ebeling, The Lord’s Prayer, p.60. “The more awake, attentive, and open our hearts become, the more meaningful and eloquent everything around us becomes and the more everything joins together in a single, living coherence. Bread is then no longer merely a [physical] thing… no longer merely a means of nourishment… but it is eloquent bread, bearing, so to speak, words that concern us… because God’s word is present in all that is.” (emphasis added)

[9] Walter Breuggemann, “The Liturgy of Abundance, the Myth of Scarcity,” in The Christian Century, March 24-31, 1999, p.342.

[10] Willimon and Hauerwas, p.76.

[11] Joseph was presented to the church at the beginning of this worship service in a celebration of parent-child dedication.

[12] Matthew 6.25-34.

Hit Counter