“How Much Is Enough?”

Matthew 6:11

From Exodus 16:4 and 20:17: Then the Lord said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day… You shall not covet…

Amos 2:6-7a, 8 (The Message): Because of the three sins of Israel - make that four – I’m not putting up with them any longer. They buy and sell [righteous] people. People for them are only things – ways of making money. They’d sell a poor man for a pair of shoes. They’d sell their own grandmother! They grind the penniless into the dirt, shove the luckless into the ditch… Stuff they’ve extorted from the poor is piled up at the shrine of their [false] god, while they sit around drinking wine they’ve conned from their victims.

[prayer]

In his Interpreter’s Bible commentary on today’s petition from the Lord’s Prayer George Buttrick wrote, “We are to live soberly in daily dependence on God’s sufficient grace.” [and] “Social righteousness is a matter of table manners: we ought not to glut ourselves while others hunger.

A certain Mr. Haggarty wrote the following amplified version of the Tenth Commandment: “You shall not grasp after what belongs to somebody else or seek for yourself what belongs to all people.”

Finally, in A Layman Looks at the Lord’s Prayer Phillip Keller wrote: Some of the petitions in this prayer [were] utterly revolutionary.”

In the Exodus story, when God graciously chooses to feed his chosen people on manna, he is very clear in his instructions to Moses. The manna was a daily blessing. It could neither be saved nor hoarded. Any of it kept until the next day became inedible. God’s people had to trust in his continued gracious provision.

The prophet Amos condemned Israel’s upper class for the way in which they had amassed their fortunes. Motivated by a covetous greed they had cheated their less fortunate and well-connected brothers and sisters out of their property, money, and belongings. Not only did this doom those unfortunates to a life of destitution; also it left them in a position of indentured servanthood. While the rich gorged they went hungry. While the rich lived in ill-gotten luxury they lived in poverty.

What, you may ask, has any of that to do with the Lord’s Prayer? The reference to manna within the context of a prayer for daily bread is obvious. Jesus was well versed in the Hebrew Scriptures and Israel’s history. He knew about the forty-year journey through the wilderness in which the children of Israel were totally dependent on God for their day to day survival. When he taught his disciples to pray “give us this day our daily bread” he wasn’t operating in a theological or historical vacuum. He had, after all, come to fulfill and not abolish the law and the prophets.

To pray for our daily bread is to pray, in a sense, for God’s daily provision of whatever our manna might be. It is a prayer for daily sustenance, a prayer that recognizes our total dependence on God for everything. Unless God provides we cannot survive. It is a prayer in which we confess to God and one another that we are not self-sufficient. It is a reminder that each and every one of us is only a bad break here, a serious illness there, or a lost job away from finding ourselves living on the street – a reminder of the frailty of human life.

Implied in that simple phrase, “give us this day our daily bread,” is a prayer of thanksgiving. We thank God for loving us, choosing us, calling us to be his own. We thank God for our life and health, for our very existence. We thank God for his gracious provision of all that we need to live. Humanly speaking we might earn what we have. Eternally speaking we have to remember that, directly or indirectly it is a free gift from God. Thus we develop an attitude of gratitude, with a large helping of humility added in.

Now come some ramifications of today’s petition from the Lord’s Prayer that may ruffle our cultural feathers or step on our political and economic toes. Note that the prayer says our daily bread not my daily bread. It’s not just about your, my, or any individual’s needs. It is a prayer with a corporate significance. When the children of Israel received their daily manna each and every one of them got exactly what they needed. The prayer for our daily bread is a prayer that every one of our brothers and sisters in Christ will receive what they need to live. Implicit in that is a reminder that the Body of Christ is to be a community in which each believer’s needs are met. It’s about us not me. We must be mindful of our fellow Christians who are not as blessed as we are. Remember Paul’s collection of funds from the Gentile Christians that was to go toward helping out their less fortunate brothers and sisters in Jerusalem?

And if we are to take seriously that vision of the Last Judgment described by Jesus in Matthew 25, then our prayer for daily bread is a prayer that any hungry human being on this planet will be fed. Any human being, be they friend or foe, ally, or enemy. “I was hungry, and you gave me food.” Those described by those words on Judgment Day will be the ones joining Jesus in heaven.

Related to this is the admonition not to covet, not to be greedy, not to revel in luxury while others live in poverty. Or to use a trite and overused saying, to live simply so that others might simply live. Our daily bread is a description of what we need not what we want, wish for, covet, or lust after. Our daily bread means just that, what we need for today, trusting God to provide for tomorrow. Knowing that God always provides enough for everybody, but only if each of us takes only what we really need.

Furthermore, when we faithfully pray for our daily bread we are not asking God for lifetime security. It is a one-day-at-a-time proposition. It is a matter of being thankful for what we have not envious of what somebody else has. It is a matter of what George Buttrick called good table manners: not pigging out while others starve.

It is also a matter of remembering those words from Deuteronomy that Jesus quoted to the Devil: “Man does not live by bread alone.” We need more than that daily provision of manna with which we meet our physical needs. We need the Bread of Heaven; we need the abundant life available only in Jesus. God doesn’t just provide our daily bread, our daily manna. In Christ Jesus, the Word made flesh, he has provided the Living Water of salvation, that Bread of Life which feeds the hunger in our hearts.

Again this isn’t just bread for you or bread for me. It’s something that every human needs. And the supply of it is unlimited. When we share the abundant life of Jesus with another person we lose nothing as he or she gains everything. This is bread that we are called to give away. This is abundant life that we are called to share. Even as we give food to the hungry we are also to share with them the Bread of Life.

In a moment we’ll be sharing a different kind of bread, the bread of Communion. This bread is a visible, tangible means of grace, something we can touch, taste, see, and smell. It symbolizes the broken body of Christ, a body broken for us on a cross. It isn’t my bread. Nor is it yours. It is Christ’s bread that he graciously shares with us at his table. We don’t deserve it. We can’t earn it. It is literally priceless. We can only accept it as we accept the grace that makes it possible.

“Give us this day our daily bread.” On this particular day that means the bread of Communion. On every day it means what we need to exist. On any day it means the Bread of Heaven. All of it ours by the grace of God. All of it meant to be shared with anyone in physical or spiritual need. None of it ever meant to be selfishly hoarded. Amen.