Our Daily Bread

Matthew 6:9-11, 25-33; John 6:35, 48-60

A man in line at the hamburger joint turned to the person next to him in line and said, “You know, if it’s true that you are what you eat, then I must be fast, cheap, and easy.”  America has a food problem, and part of that food problem is how many of us are lined up at the hamburger joints!  More than 33% of Americans are overweight, and more than 34% are obese; that’s 67% total.  Apparently, we’re very good at consuming what isn’t good for us.  I think that’s been particularly true in the past, pandemic year, as we’ve eaten out of stress or anxiety.

According to Homiletics magazine a few years ago, “Food has always excited strong … feelings in the human race.  Most of the world’s peoples, in fact, are preoccupied with food and with worries about having too much or too little of it.  We North Americans spend vast amounts of time, money and energy devising new and better ways to eat less, while most Africans and Asians spend a large portion of their working hours finding enough food to survive.”

I think that part of our problem in America is that we’re hungry, but we just don’t really understand what it is that we’re hungry for.  I think people are feeling empty and they’re trying to fill themselves up with something, and the easiest thing to reach for when you’re feeling hungry is food.  But our hungers are much deeper than a craving for a Big Mac or a pizza or a bag of Doritos or a super-sized extra-value meal at the drive-through.  Will Willimon writes, Our hungers are so deep.  We are dying of thirst.  We are bundles of seemingly insatiable need, rushing here and there in a vain attempt to assuage our emptiness.  Our culture is a vast supermarket of desire.  Can it be that our bread, our wine, our fulfillment stands before us in the presence of [Jesus]? … Might it be true that he is the bread we need, even though he is rarely the bread we seek?

Jesus taught his followers to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”  He taught them, “Do not worry about what you will eat; your heavenly Father knows you need these things.  Seek first the kingdom of God.”  And he taught them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never be hungry.  Whoever eats this bread will live forever.  Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life; they abide in me and I abide in them.”  Jesus promised that God would supply our food; but he also promised that he himself would be our spiritual food.  Jesus is our daily bread.

When Jesus talked about being the bread of life, he was referring to a substance that the people of his culture understood as being not only the provision for a literal, physical hunger, but he was also using a metaphor that they would understand as provision for spiritual hunger.  In Jewish history, the story of the Exodus and the journey to the promised land was the central core of their theology and self-understanding.  God had provided for them every step of the way, defeating their enemies and leading them with his very presence.  When there was no food, God sent them manna every morning.  Each person gathered enough for the day; but they were not to try to store any, because it would just become infested with worms.  The message was that the people were to depend on God on a daily basis to provide them with what they needed.  They had to learn to trust God for their physical and spiritual sustenance.

I can almost imagine Jesus teaching outside a village where the smell of freshly-baked bread floated on the breeze.  It was a familiar experience in every place where Jesus and his disciples walked.  The women of the household would bake the daily ration of bread in their clay ovens, and when it came out it was a warm loaf much like pita bread.  It was the staff of life for these people.  Other food came and went with the seasons, but bread was the staple that got them through no matter if other food was plentiful or not.  The smell of it, the taste and texture, reminded them of the good presence of God, who gave life to them.  It reminded them of their history.  And it reminded them that God could be trusted to provide.

One lesson for us is that God can be trusted to provide for our needs, too.  We should not worry about the food or drink we need; instead, we should be thinking about the kingdom of God, which, by the way, we have just prayed would come on this earth.  We should realize that God will provide for us, as we work toward the coming of the kingdom, just as God provided for the children of Israel, out in the desert, moving toward the land that God had prepared for them.  We have a mission, a purpose, a destination, and God will provide what we need to sustain us as we move toward the fulfillment of that mission.

One way that God provides for people’s needs is through each other.  While there are hungry people in the world, in our country, we are given the task of helping to feed them.  We do that by donating to food banks, either giving good or donating money.  We do that by volunteering in soup kitchens.  And we do that by contributing to United Methodist offerings.

Unlike the early people of God, we have the advantage that God himself has come into the world to BE our bread.  We have the advantage of having a tangible presence in the form of Jesus.  As Will Willimon writes, Here, standing before us, in the flesh, is the fullness of God.  IF you have ever wondered just what God looks like, or how God acts, or how God talks, then wonder no more.  In this faith, we do not have to climb up to the divine; God … climbs down to us.  Through Jesus, God is offering to provide our daily bread, our daily nourishment.  God is offering a new way to be connected to people; God is offering a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

I have found that some people, even some churchgoers, are uncomfortable talking about having a personal relationship with Jesus.  They are perhaps afraid of being linked to those religious talking heads who loudly proclaim through various forms of media that they are “born-again Christians” who have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  Of course, technically speaking, all Christians are born again, according to John 3.  And all Christians are supposed to be involved in a personal way with Jesus.  We are to know him, not just to know about him.  We are supposed to talk to him and to listen to him talk to us.  We are supposed to spend time with him, cultivating this relationship.  And in the time that we spend with Jesus, we find that our spiritual needs, our spiritual hungers, are being satisfied.

For myself, I know that in order to nurture this relationship with Jesus, I have to carve out some time each day that I dedicate to intentional, deliberate time alone with Jesus.  I have to just be in his presence.  I have to look for him in the words of scripture and through my prayer.  I have to let him know what is going on in my life and see if there is something Jesus might offer to help me with my concerns and struggles.  It is not a time that I give grudgingly, feeling like there is something else I should be doing that would be more productive.  It is the most productive thing I do all day.  And when I miss that time for some reason, my day quickly finds me running out of energy and losing focus.  One commentator wrote, When we engage in the daily disciplines of cultivating a personal relationship with Jesus through prayer, study, meditation and service, we start to experience the benefits and want more.  We learn that Jesus is, indeed, good for us on a lot of levels.  For me, the benefits include bringing a sense of wholeness to my life and a sense that I am on a journey with a faithful guide.

Praying for our daily bread reminds us that we can trust God to provide for our needs.  It connects us with Jesus, who invites us into a personal relationship with him.  And finally, it calls to mind the strong language that Jesus used when he said that those who believe in him must eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to have eternal life.

This would seem to be a clear reference to the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion.  We ingest bread and juice that represent for us in some powerful way the very flesh and blood of Jesus, our savior.  They become the means by which Jesus feeds us with grace, forgiveness and mercy.  William Barclay wrote that when we eat his flesh and drink his blood, we are feeding our hearts and souls and minds with Jesus.  We revitalize our lives with his life until we are filled with the life of God … If you want life, you must come and sit at that table where you eat that broken bread and drink that poured-out wine which somehow, in the grace of God, brings you into contact with the love and the life of Jesus Christ.  Every time we come to the Lord’s table in worship, we are celebrating a meal that is full of spiritual nutrition.  We are partaking in a diet of grace.  In fact, John Wesley believed in open communion because he believed that a person could, in receiving communion, be saved by the grace of God.

We pray for our daily bread.  We receive that bread in the form of Jesus Christ, who is the bread of life.  And we remind ourselves of the spiritual nourishment that is ours through celebrating the Lord’s Supper, eating the bread and drinking the juice, tangibly and intimately connecting our lives with the life of Jesus.  Above all, we are reminding ourselves that God is present in our lives through Jesus, providing for our needs, reaching out to us with the invitation to taste and see that the Lord is good.  God is our loving God and God is with us.

One day a father went to his son’s preschool class on the day that all the dads were invited to visit.  But when he got there, he was shocked to see that only a handful of the dads showed up to be with their children.  The children and their dads were invited to sit in a circle.  The teacher asked the children to tell something about their fathers that made them special.  One little boy said, “My father is a lawyer and he is really busy with his work.  He makes a lot of money so that we can live in a big house.  He couldn’t be here because he has a meeting with one of his clients.”  One of the girls spoke up, “My father is very smart.  He teaches at the college and a lot of important people know him.  He couldn’t come because he has a class he has to teach.”  Finally it was time for this father’s son to share something about his dad.  He looked up at his father, then just smiled and proudly said, “My dad is here!”

Our dad is here.  Our Father is present.  He is present in Jesus Christ, our bread of life.  We pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”  And God shows up.  God provides for our needs.  God gives us our daily bread.  God gives us Jesus.  God gives us himself.

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