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5 Questions from the Lord's Prayer
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
We're gonna continue this morning, going through Matthew's account of Jesus teaching the Lord's prayer. And today, we're gonna focus on the line, give us this day our daily bread. And I'm really glad that I got the part on daily bread because I don't know if you can tell by my physique, but I am a carb enthusiast. And so yeah. Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So there's people that like after we would celebrate communion together, they'd look at the bread and they'd like, man, I wish I could have some more of that. I'm one of those people. I'm one of those people. I'm unashamed of that fact.
Speaker 1:I'm also glad that I got the daily bread section of the Lord's prayer because I always am researching, trying to find something funny just to lead with whenever I come up and speak. And so this week I found something very significant. I found a website called Bread People. It's a Tumblr page, Bread People. What is Bread People do you say?
Speaker 1:Well, don't worry. Don't go on your phones and try to figure it out because I scoured this website and I found all the best stuff and I brought them to church this morning. So bread people. Just I'll show you the first one just to give you an idea and you'll see if you need to check out for the next few minutes or if you're really gonna start to pay attention. First one, Tom Brady.
Speaker 1:Pretty good. Right? There is a whole website devoted to taking people that have Bready sounding names and then photoshopping their faces to have bread in it and what a great find. Hey. This is awesome.
Speaker 1:You're welcome everyone. Welcome to church. So I found my favorites and we're gonna start with those. Next one. Thomas Bredesen.
Speaker 1:Okay. Less funny than Tom Breddy. Bread Savage. Anyone my age? Okay.
Speaker 1:Han Soloaf? That's a good one. I was I didn't notice the first few times but his gun actually is a butter stick. So that's a good one. Bon Jovi.
Speaker 1:I like that one too. Tostoyevsky? Pretty clever. Hey? Now we're gonna get to this point where we're getting into specific types of bread.
Speaker 1:So there's a few really good ones left. Sourdobama. Good? Really? Some of you are thinking, is this church or what are we doing here?
Speaker 1:Two left. Pumpernickelback. Really good. And a very close relative of that and my personal favorite, pumpernickel is cage. So despite despite what what you you might might think, think, I do spend a lot of my time researching and trying to find some applications for these great pieces of scripture that we get to read together as a community.
Speaker 1:But I do obviously devote some of my time to making it fun or at least memorable as we go forward. In fact, what I do is I text myself any brainstorms that I have. And this is a bad system. And I'm going to meet with Jeremy this week so that he can tell me what he uses for brainstorms in the moment because what happened to me this past week is that I did this. I texted myself this, and I still don't know what it means.
Speaker 1:At the time, I was like giggling to myself. I was like, this is a good one. I can't wait to share this one when I I don't know what it means. And this is why I stumbled upon the bread people tumbler, because I couldn't start with this whatever that is because I was lost. But the question, what do I need for today?
Speaker 1:Is a good question for us to start with this morning. Because maybe it changes for us and it can be very different depending on when or where we are at different seasons in our lives. So if I was asked this question when I was 15, I would have said that I just need more time in the day to play basketball. Again, despite my physique and height. When I was 25, I would have said I need more time in the day to play basketball and to play basketball video games.
Speaker 1:When I was 35, which is last year, I had a one year old, so I would have said I need more time for naps and basketball video games. And maybe when I'm 45, I will say I need more time in the day, maybe not for naps, but again maybe for some more basketball video games. But we're gonna start today by talking about this idea of daily bread. Is it simpler or is it more complicated than we initially think when we hear that line? But before we do that, would you stand with me and can we recite the Lord's Prayer together?
Speaker 1:Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. Thanks. You can have a seat. Now daily bread seems like it might be a simple concept, but as I researched this week, I discovered that there's actually a lot of debate about what the word daily means in the Greek in the original writing.
Speaker 1:The word Matthew uses is actually a Greek word pronounced and there's a debate about when is. It's not used anywhere else in the New Testament Testament except in Matthew and Luke's account of the Lord's prayer in the word for daily. Some of the things I read this week argue that it's bread for the coming day. It means bread for tomorrow, not necessarily today's bread. And so some people say well why would we pray that?
Speaker 1:Why would we pray for tomorrow's bread not today's bread? If it was tomorrow's bread the Lord's prayer would read give us today tomorrow's bread which sounds weird and doesn't quite make sense. But technically that's what Epousseus means. I think this is the fun stuff that super theologians spend a ton of time debating and they have a lot of fun with. And either way we read it whether it's today's or tomorrow morning's or tomorrow's bread, there is a tie to the idea of manna, which was the bread that was delivered by God daily every morning Israelites as they learn to trust him in the wilderness in Exodus.
Speaker 1:If you remember, God provided miraculously enough bread for each person for each day. And in that story, if someone took more than the amount that they needed for one day, it would spoil. It'd be no good. It was a way of God providing on a daily basis enough for each person to live. And the point is that regardless of if we say give us today's bread or give us tomorrow morning's bread, what matters is that we are asking every single day for just one day at a time.
Speaker 1:Now, if you thought that the debate on Epiuseus was heated, let me tell you that the word bread in the original Greek literally means bread. It means a thin loaf or cake of bread. Now, it can symbolize daily sustenance, but there's nothing super cool or mysterious about this word in the Greek. So sorry to the super theologians, there's nothing for us to really get after on that one. This same word for bread is used lots of places in scripture and it just means bread.
Speaker 1:And we'll reference a few of those as we continue this morning. Now, the request for daily bread in this prayer does two things first. The first thing it does is it keeps God as God, as our father, and us as not that. And second, when we ask God to give us something as simple and straightforward and ordinary as bread in this prayer, we're reminding ourselves every day that we are dependent on God even for things as simple and straightforward and ordinary as bread. Because ultimately daily bread is about trust.
Speaker 1:Trust is where this portion of the Lord's prayer takes us. And it's daily bread and it builds trust daily because we know something that God knows. A truly trusting relationship is beautiful and full of life and encouraging and freeing. And we also know that building trust in any relationship takes time and proof over repetition. This is true for our human relationships as well as our relationship with God.
Speaker 1:If I just met you this morning, I don't know if I can trust you, and you wouldn't fault me for that. But I've known my wife Hillary for seventeen years, so I should have a much better idea of if I can trust her or not. But I'm not gonna tell you if you can, so you can figure it out. I have a story of I have a two year old son named Frank, and after his first birthday his birthday's in February. He learned to walk right after his first birthday, but it was dead of winter.
Speaker 1:And so he didn't get a ton of opportunities to kinda be in a huge open space to just kinda run around and do all that kind of stuff except for the church gym, which is cool, but not huge. And so, we had to go to a conference in Creston BC in in April. And it was beautiful and there was no snow and it was green. And so, drove out to this conference with our little walking kid. And we get there and we decide we're so excited to let him go play in a big park, in a big field, and let him just go for it.
Speaker 1:And we're excited because we're cooped up in Calgary's winter, and that winter was horrible one. And so, we get to this playground, and Hillary had been reading some of these parenting books and had we had been talking on the way out about how there's this there's this common thinking that as kids grow up, when they start to be able to move and walk and get on their own, there's sort of this concentric circle of trust that they get more and more comfortable moving further away from you. So at first, they will only take a few steps and they'll just check and make sure you're there. Okay. I built that little bit of trust and now I'll go a little bit further maybe to the edge of the living room and they'll go there.
Speaker 1:And there's this idea of them learning what these concentric circles of trust are. And so we get to this massive 300 yard long field with Frank with a playground and all this stuff, and we get there and we put our stuff down the picnic table, and we say, okay, Frank, go play. And he just goes. And he doesn't look back back once. He walks about a 150 yards to the edge of this field and he gets to the fence and he's trying to get out of the fence.
Speaker 1:He didn't even look back and Hillary and I are standing in the middle of this field. We don't know if this whole concept of this circle of trust thing is a joke. Probably not. We also don't know if this means that our son is just trying to get away from us. We're not that bad of parents.
Speaker 1:I like to think that it's because he trusts us enough that he didn't even have to look back. He just knew we were there. Either way, I could be lying to myself or I don't know exactly what that means, but there's this idea out there. And the question becomes, how do I learn to trust God in my own context today? How do we balance the need in 2015 in Calgary to be wise for the future, yet still trust God to provide what we need on a daily basis.
Speaker 1:And the first important point before we move on is that this kind of trusting is not about having enough so that I feel secure and ready to trust. That's something else entirely. A lot of us do this. It's how I kind of operate normally with trust. It's also the extreme end of planning for retirement that some of us think about.
Speaker 1:It's sort of the way we've been kind of trained to think about how we do this. But it's not about having enough so that we feel secure and then we can trust. But after I make that point it gets kind of hard, because it's another one of those things that's not just black and white. How do we balance the need to be wise and plan for the future, but still live where we can trust God for what we need today? It's a great question.
Speaker 1:It's a great gray area question. And the struggle for a lot of us is that it's really easy to say here in Calgary right now. It's easy here where I can be pretty sure that I'm gonna have a job tomorrow. Unless this is going way worse than I think it's going right now. And does it ever, does this question ever get more complicated when you have kids?
Speaker 1:But it comes down to this. Daily bread is about getting in a rhythm of asking God to provide what we need for today so that we don't have to worry about those things for the future. Then we can pay attention to what Jesus is doing and how we can participate with him and walk further and further out responsibly into the kingdom to be and do the things of Jesus. Most of the rest of Matthew chapter six is about trust. And Jesus talks about, don't worry.
Speaker 1:Quit worrying about the future, what you'll wear, what you'll eat, what you'll do. Spend so much time, so much of chapter six is devoted to the idea of worrying worrying and not trusting. And it is a direct follow-up to this line in the Lord's prayer. And it culminates in Matthew six starting in verse 31. I'm gonna read this for us.
Speaker 1:This is Jesus speaking. So do not worry saying, what shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we wear? For the pagans run after all these things and your heavenly father knows that you need them.
Speaker 1:But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all those things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. My wife whom who I can trust, I will follow that up. My wife has this weird feeling when the pantry at home is full she feels safe and secure.
Speaker 1:It's this thing that she has. I don't think that she is alone. I think we all have something like that. When something is certain way, now I feel safe and ready to trust. Hillary's is represented in cans of soup and tomatoes, but we all could probably point to something that helps us feel secure.
Speaker 1:Because that to me is what it comes down to as far as our human nature goes. If Jesus' mention of bread and daily bread is a hint and a reference to manna or not, who among us, if we're honest, wouldn't be exactly like the Israelites were and grab as much bread as we could whenever we can? Especially, if it means I don't have to trust for a while. So if I can get enough bread that I don't really have to trust for a week or for six months or for my retirement, I feel safer safer that way, but even though it's not exactly how it works. The same word for bread that's used in the Lord's prayer is used again in Proverbs 30.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna take these verses out of Eugene Peterson's The Message. It says, give me enough bread to live on. Neither too much nor too little. If I have too little, I might steal and that does not honor God. But if I'm too full, I might get independent saying, I don't even need God.
Speaker 1:So thinking that we might not need God happens when we hoard more than one amount of daily bread and we don't want to trust him. So I said at the beginning that we were gonna start by asking what a need for today was, and that was a good question. And when I first started writing this this week, I was planning to build to this point where I was going to create space for us to ask and figure out what do we think we might need for a day. What do you need for a day? And I hoped that as I did that, it would be this maybe really simple yet profound realization for all of us.
Speaker 1:But then I caught myself. Because that's the wrong question. It's not about me figuring out what I need for a day and then relying on that because that's still about me. That's me saying, okay, well if I really think about it I need this, then that, and then four of those, and then that's what I need for a day. Then I'm back to doing those same things where I'm waiting until I have enough of something that I feel secure and ready to trust.
Speaker 1:Because it's not that. It's about trusting that God will provide what I need even if I don't know what that is exactly for every day. So then I can focus my day on Jesus and his kingdom. The prayer instead needs to be, God please provide what I need. So I can spend my day participating in the good things that you hope that I can do.
Speaker 1:Now, if we're focusing on what we think we need, we aren't focusing on the things that Jesus has for us right now. And as I already mentioned, Jesus spends most of the rest of Matthew six denouncing anxiety about the future and thinking that way. And yet we keep trying to set up and secure our futures, but really we can't secure our own future. If we spend our time doing that, we won't leave room for Jesus and his kingdom in our day. What I need to do today is trust Jesus and then live with a posture that is aware and available and open handed.
Speaker 1:Ready for whatever opportunities, good or bad come my way in a day. Knowing that I can meet those opportunities with the full confidence of Christ having already provided my basic needs and that he is also present with me in those moments. I think of it like, I volunteer sometimes in the basement with the kids. And the toddler room is hilarious because they're they are. They're like teenagers in a sense.
Speaker 1:They just have no control over their hormones and their decisions. They're learning what's mine and what's not mine, and they don't quite understand how the world works. It's great and hilarious and exhausting at the same time. But a lot of what happens down there sometimes as kids are learning these things, sometimes kids will just hoard toys and they'll think it's mine and they'll say this is mine, this is mine. And there's a lot of times where I have seen a kid pick up a bunch of toys, maybe like six or seven toys that they just wanna hang on to, and they're holding on to them so tight and then they see something else and they wanna go get that.
Speaker 1:And in reality, those kids aren't playing with all six of those toys. They're actually they're in the way of the things that they really wanna do. As a parent or as a volunteer, you see this and you know this and what you wanna say is, hey, Frank. Put all that stuff down. Here's the thing you're really going for.
Speaker 1:Here's what you really want. Trust me. And I do think this is also tied to when Jesus wants us to have faith like a child. Because my son Frank wakes up in the morning and he's not worried about if he's going to get fed. And he's not worried that Hillary and I are gonna leave him.
Speaker 1:He's not worrying whether or not we're gonna kiss it when it gets hurt, or what he's gonna wear, or what the day looks like. He wakes up and he is present to us and fully engaged with whatever is right in front of him. That is part of his childlikeness and a childlike faith that is offered to us. It's significant in this prayer. In this section of the prayer when we say, give us today our daily bread.
Speaker 1:That the language is us and our. Because it means something that we say that instead of me or I. If you were to say out loud, give me what I need. Or if you were to say out loud, give us what we need. It is extremely different.
Speaker 1:It changes it significantly, at least for me it does. To ask for bread today is to acknowledge both our individual and collective dependence on God for these routine provisions. And we get to do it as us. We get to share in learning how to trust each day. And also, as us and as we and as our, if we're living with this posture of being open handed and aware, it helps me to ask how can I use part of what God has given me today to maybe be somebody else's daily bread in community?
Speaker 1:Not just church community. I don't wanna limit it to that. How do we live in that posture where we are aware of what we have and we're aware of what others have or don't have? It's part of the us and the hour that we get. And we are called into trustfully participating in the daily needs or the daily bread of each other's lives.
Speaker 1:Christ is already providing providing and and already already participating participating and asking us to learn to trust together. And we get to say all of these things together. And if I am carrying too many things, too many toys, too many worries, too many anxieties, or too much focus on the future, you get to look at me and say, hey, hey, put all that junk down because that's not what you're really doing here. That's not what you're looking for. That's not what you should be holding on to.
Speaker 1:And then we get to say to each other, instead let's ask Jesus to provide what we need for today. And then together, let's learn to trust more and head further and further out in these concentric circles into living out Christ's kingdom in our lives today. I'd like to wrap up this morning with a quote from Stanley Hauerboss. He wrote a commentary on Matthew and this is a really significant section from what he said about this specific verse. So without the community that Jesus has called into existence, we are tempted to hoard, to store up resources in a vain effort to ensure safety and security.
Speaker 1:Of course, our effort to live without risk not only results in injustice, but it also makes our own lives anxious, fearing that we never have enough. In truth, we can never have enough if what we want is that same type of bread that the devil offered Jesus in the wilderness. But Jesus is good news to the poor. For he has brought into existence a people who ask for no more than their daily bread. Jesus is good news to the poor because he has brought into existence a people who ask for no more than their daily bread.
Speaker 1:Let's recite the Lord's prayer one more time. You can stay seated this time, but we'll say it together. Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Speaker 1:And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. And so we'll end as we always do. Love God, love people, and tell God's story well with the way that you live.
Speaker 2:This is a podcast of Kensington Commons Church. We believe that God is invested in the renewal of all things. Therefore, we wanna live the good news by being part of the rhythms of our city as good neighbors, good friends, and good citizens in our common life. Join us on Sunday or visit us online at commonschurch.org.