‘Give us this day our Daily Bread'

Anne Robinson, in her wonderfully sensitive way last week was interrogating one of her contestants on “The Weakest Link.” Her thoughtless question to a baker, “what do you bake?” cast egg on her rude face: “We bake bread, Anne!” “What sort of bread?” the game hostess responded – no doubt to justify herself! Hence the baker from Birmingham proceeded to list all the different types of bread he baked, a host of varieties but all assembled with the exact same ingredients.

Bread is bread, it always was and always will be and its inclusion in The Lord's Prayer highlights its benefits to us not only physically but its blessings to each of us spiritually. Bread incorporates all the necessary ingredients for a healthy diet.

I have just read Ellie Wiesel's Night. It is his tragic survival story from Auschwitz and Buchenwald. He suffered the loss of both parents and siblings, as so many Jews did. However he amazingly endured to the end. He described how bread in its frugality was life. Bread was ruthlessly fought for, bribed for and even stolen at risk for the very gift of life itself. The sobering status that bread held in the death camps is highlighted on the last page of his moving story. After being liberated by the Allies he comments : Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves on to the provisions. We thought only of that. Not of revenge, not of our families. Nothing but Bread.

Bread by its very ingredients is life. How expensive it becomes amidst corrupt governments and nations that are cruelly betrayed by harsh rule. A loaf of bread in Zimbabwe can currently be sold for hundreds of pounds, such is the tragic plight of their economy and an inflation rate spiralling out of control.

The Children of Israel escaping from Pharaoh's harsh dictatorship in Egypt that Passover night were given bread for their journey and even in the desert their feet were kept from stumbling with manna provided from Heaven.

“Bread of Heaven, feed me now and evermore” you can hear from the valleys and rugby stands of Wales as they maintain their 100% winning record in the Six Nations - but hopefully not for too long!

How significant then is Bread's inclusion in our Lord's Prayer?

“Give us” ushers in the first request of the prayer and it is a firm imperative. Physical needs are first and foremost here, and Jesus' preaching to the 4,000 and 5,000 shows the importance of physical needs being met prior to the spiritual. I recall some years ago George Hoffman, the founder and former Director of Tear Fund, emphasising at a Conference that you cannot preach to hungry people in Africa without first feeding them. The gospel must be incarnated in the physical feeding as much as the spiritual. Only then is the Gospel preached in the fullest sense of “Good News.” St. Francis' old adage “Preach the Gospel and use words if you must” looms large in this context.

George Mueller, the founder in 1835 of an orphanage in Bristol, lived out this prayer for his orphanage regularly, as resources were meagre. One morning the 26 children awoke to nothing to eat. Sitting at the table they waited and Mueller prayed “Dear Father, we thank thee for what thou art going to give us to eat.” With a knock at the door a baker stood there and said “Mr. Mueller, I couldn't sleep last night. Somehow I felt you didn't have bread for breakfast and the Lord wanted me to send you some. So I got up at 2.00am and baked some fresh bread, and have brought it.” “Give us this day our daily bread” in this context cannot become more literal!

Grace at meals is a wonderful discipline as it causes us to stop amidst our frenetic lives in order to reflect on the goodness of God and to recognise our dependence on him for all things. How easy it is for Grace to be omitted from our daily rhythm due to life's pressured pace, but how nourishing spiritually this simple “thank you” to God can be. Meister Eckhart, the late 13th and early 14 th Century German Mystic, reminds us: If ‘Thank you' is the only Prayer you make, that is enough.

And yet “our daily bread” constitutes our every need that our Father knows about: our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual needs. All the ingredients of our make-up and being are met symbolically in “our daily bread.” It is a petition to God that all our needs (not our desires , please note!) will be sufficiently met by his grace, as Paul highlights to the Philippian Church (4.6). The apostle's penultimate line in this letter states: God will satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in Christ Jesus (4.19).

God's grace is sufficient day by day. It is daily bread and not next week's bread or next month's bread. In our calendar and diary-ruled high-pressure worlds it is easy to forget today at the cost of next month or even next year!

Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, the hymn writer reminds us. There is a sharp focus for the day that can get eaten up in worrying about the future. “Our daily bread” is the current situation we are breathing in and breathing out, the reality of the present moment, the here and now: a focus that is not to be dislodged by distant events. We are reminded from the Sermon on the Mount in which the Lord's Prayer is taught, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring enough worries of its own. (Matthew 6.34).

The physical and spiritual bread cannot be better contrasted than in Luke's five-verse “behind the scenes” nugget where Christ is a guest at Martha's house. The “daily bread” here is not so much manifest in the meal that Martha is busily preparing (much to her frustration!) but of her sister's lounging at Jesus' feet feeding from his devotion and instruction. Mary is commended for this – a bitter pill no doubt for the hostess to swallow: Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted about many things; there is need of one thing only. Mary has chosen the right portion that will never be taken away from her. ( Luke 10.38-42).

The word translated here as portion is a suitable one in our reflection tonight. Jesus' face is set resolutely to Jerusalem and the cross: a Lenten link here, is there not? Mary feeds deeply and is nourished from “the true bread that has come down from Heaven” and is commended for this spiritual act of being as opposed to doing. In our busyness this Lent let us not lose our focus of the Cross and the significance of the preceding moments to grow and deepen in our relationship with the Living Bread. May we like Mary so dare to lay aside the domestic demands and tasks to sit unashamedly at Christ's feet as the events of his passion draw ever closer.

Returning to the context of our Lord's Prayer we find that it is one of anxiety and need. Jesus in this sermon reminds us that asking for the right things is critical and our needs will be met from a gracious and benevolent Father : Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone?(7.9). Matthew may be wishing us to make a link here with Christ's first temptation from the Devil, to transform the stones to bread [ ch.4 ]. The sterility of the stones set against the life-giving sustenance of the bread may be something the Evangelist wishes us to ponder on here – but that reflection is for another time!

The old, and nowadays less-used prayer of dedication of the material gifts, offered at the Eucharist, is one of quiet and confident acknowledgement of God's daily mercies unto us: Yours, Lord, is the greatness, the power, the glory, the splendour, and the majesty; for everything comes from you and of your own do we give you.”

“Daily Bread” can incorporate all our needs and in this context of supplication we are called to bring our longings and appetites to God in simple prayer and trust. Someone recently said of Christians that when they share their Faith they are simply sharing the bread, for the bread we have received must be shared with others. And surely that is one aspect of the Eucharist, is it not?

And so this Lent, may we journey ever closer to the true Bread of Life and give thanks for that gift born to us in Bethlehem. (It is, I think, no coincidence that the word ‘Bethlehem' actually means House of Bread). And as we journey to the Cross, perhaps even from the desert, may we experience the broken bread given for us on the cross but also the risen bread that lives in each of our hearts, that we like the two on the road to Emmaus may no longer drag our weary feet, but dance with renewed strength and energy as we fully recognise the Christ in the taking, the blessing and the breaking of the bread for you and for me.

Thanks be to God, Amen.