I think you’d agree there are few delights in the world more irresistible than the smell and taste of hot, oven-baked bread. For years, a week didn’t go by that I didn’t bake a couple of loaves for myself- French bread, ryes, pumpernickel, San Francisco sourdough bread, I made them all. (I must have inherited the talent from my German grandfather who worked for a bakery most of his life.) Only this past Friday, I made some ciabatta- that’s that porous bread with the thick crust served in the finer Italian restaurants which you dip in the olive oil. If truth be told, I find that when I go out for dinner somewhere, it's usually not the quaint decor or the quality of the food that impresses me so much as the piles of hot rolls or thick slices of home-made bread waiting to be smothered with heaps of fresh creamery butter. I feel confident that if the BREAD is delicious, then the REST of the meal will be no LESS delectable. Unfortunately, my nose and taste buds will too often induce me into eating 3 or 4 pieces so that when the main course IS served, I'm almost too full to eat the REST of my meal.

When the Bible speaks of "bread," it does so in several ways. The first, of course, is the most obvious- bread in its most elemental sense as a mixture of flour, water, salt, and yeast which is then baked and eaten to satisfy our hunger. It was the most basic staple of the ancient world and a main course served during Jesus's Last Supper with his disciples. We’re all familiar enough with the account of Jesus and the feeding of the 5,000. A massive crowd had gathered beside the shores of Capernaum to hear him preach. However, since many had come from long distances, rather than send them back home hungry, he fed them all a meal of loaves and fishes, understanding that MATERIAL bread is every bit as important to our bodies as SPIRITUAL food is for our souls. His was first and foremost a “wholistic” ministry. Over the years, I’ve preached in enough rescue missions to know that unless the body is well attended to, it becomes virtually impossible to minister to the soul. After all, what good is it trying to tell a person about the love of Christ when he is constantly distracted by hunger pangs that get in the way of the message.

But the bread metaphor can be extended to include ANY of the most basic necessities of life; it can be ANYTHING we might require for a healthy, sustainable, productive life. To ask for bread is to express our dependency upon God for everything that pertains to our nourishment or even SURVIVAL whether it relates to our health, our housing, our clothing, our money and the like. Many of my former churches operated food pantries from out of them where hundreds came each month seeking help. We responded by giving them “bread,” that is, bags of produce, boxes of cheese, canned goods, and even hams and turkeys at holiday time. In my last church in Indiana, we operated a “Soup and Serenity” ministry where for the past fifteen years, we offered every Thursday a hot luncheon AT NO COST to the ENTIRE community. The only stipulations were that you had to be hungry and that you had to come and eat. 

For many persons, the request for bread may represent a prayer for healing in their lives or at least access to adequate healthcare. The reality has become that when people look for employment these days, their PRIMARY consideration is no longer how much salary is being offered but whether health insurance is part of their package. In our country and around the world, the prayer for bread may be the request for safe, affordable housing, or perhaps a good job that provides a living wage for oneself and one’s family. Still, for others, it might be something so basic as decent clothing. When I pastored in Iowa, we were known for our “More Than Fashion” ministry which offered tasteful, well-tailored clothing to poor women looking for work. Some were graduating seniors from the local high school, some were welfare mothers raising young children by themselves, while others had just been released from jail or prison and owned little more than the clothes on their backs- but all of them came hoping to begin a fresh start for their lives. We not only outfitted them free of charge, we also helped to prepare them for their upcoming interviews so as to improve their chances of success. 

But then for many, the bread that is prayed for is much DEEPER than material resources- it becomes a hunger for deep and meaningful FRIENDSHIPS. For all our churches, clubs, and service organizations, we continue to experience an epidemic of loneliness here in our country. Approximately 20 million American adults or about 10% of the U.S. population age 18 and older will suffer severe depression in a given year. Suicide among our nation's youth has increased dramatically over the years, and is now the second leading cause of death among teenagers today. George Barna, in his book Virtual America, revealed statistics that should break our heart. 55% of non-Christian Americans believe it is getting harder and harder to make lasting friendships; 62% of “born-again” Christians claim it is getting hard to make lasting friendships; and 73% of “evangelical” Christians are finding it difficult to make any real friends. Hence, when they pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” what they are REALLY praying is, “Lord, please do something about all the fear and loneliness in my life!” What this petition then says to us is that we are to look to God as our provider for ALL our needs because there is no area of our life which God is NOT vitally concerned. If we can trust God for bread, we can most certainly trust him to help us with the areas of our health or finances, our relationships or deepest spiritual needs.

Now when Jesus referred to “bread,” it was an obvious reference to the manna that God provided the Israelites with during their wilderness wanderings. This manna was described as a fine, flake-like wafer that tasted sweet like honey. It could be ground up or boiled in pots and made into cakes. It was daily provided by the Lord, and the Israelites were expressly forbidden to gather more than was needed for just that day. God would provide enough the following day for that day's need. In this way, the Israelites were absolutely dependent upon God for their very survival. As long as they remained faithful to him, God would supply all their needs and bring them through the wilderness.

I have to admit that even as I find great peace in this promise, knowing that we can approach God at any time with whatever needs might overburden us, I also have a growing concern about it at the same time. In fact, I find the more I think about it, the more disturbed I tend to become. After all, here is our Lord making a bold promise to each of us, offering us the assurance that if we only trust God, God will see to it that all our needs will be taken care of. He asks us here to make God ALONE our ultimate security, and if we do, we shall not be disappointed. He confidently says to us:

I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?...Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.

Great stuff, ISN’T it!

The problem as I see it though is that if those words are true, then why does there continue to be so much hunger and thirst and pain and suffering in the world? Does God only hear the prayer of Christians, and if THAT is the case, then why are there so many CHRISTIANS in the world who suffer AS WELL? Listen to some sobering facts that come straight from Church World Service: 1.2 billion people in developing countries live on an income of $1 a day or less. While poverty has declined in some areas, especially East Asia, in other regions, especially Africa, the number of person living in extreme poverty has INCREASED. Hungry people often feel, and are, unable to affect their circumstances due to illiteracy, political oppression, or a lack of access to land, credit, education, and political decision-making. If they are women, children or ethnic minorities, they are even MORE vulnerable. 70% of those who suffer from hunger worldwide are women and girls, and a child is 20 times more like to die by age 5 than in the U.S. Civil war has perpetuated the problem by disrupting agriculture, uprooting people, destroying infrastructure, and draining precious resources that could be used to better people’s situations. According to the U.N. Refugee Agency by the end of 2016, the number of displaced people throughout the world had risen to 65.6 million- more than the population of the United Kingdom. That number is an increase of 300,000 from the year before and the largest number ever recorded.

If you watched 60 Minutes last Sunday, then I’m sure you would have reacted much as I did, trying to avert my eyes from the TV screen because of the disturbing images it showed- the bodies of hundreds of babies and young children, women and the elderly killed by chemical weapons dropped upon helpless Syrian villages by their own government. It just made you want to scream, “God! How can I believe any of your promises when you allow your children to suffer and die under these horrible conditions, when we have to witness the continual triumph of evil over such helpless and innocent persons!” 

Right here in our OWN country, there is an “underside” to America in which more than 36 million Americans–including 13 million children–live in households that experience hunger or the risk of hunger. Though most poor families in our country are working families, the low wages earned by millions of Americans are not enough to cover the cost of housing, medical care, child care, transportation, clothing, and food. And one MORE fact- the majority of people in the U.S. who live in poverty are White, but the poverty rates of African-Americans and Hispanics are TWICE as high as the poverty rate for Whites or Asian-Americans. With facts like these staring you in the face, how is it that any of us can find any consolation in Jesus’ words? Where is the Father who promised that if anyone asked for bread, he would never give a stone instead? If this is the case, then I find that it’s getting more and more difficult to SEE him much less BELIEVE him!

As I struggled this week to deal with these two seemingly contradictory thoughts, of God’s promise of care and security on the one hand, and yet the reality of a world of increasing suffering and privation on the other, I could only resolve it to my mind THIS WAY. FIRST, we are to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” because JESUS TELLS US TO. He reminds us that our relationship to God is one of continuous, day-by-day dependence- this was the lesson of the Israelites receiving manna in the wilderness. That there is so much hunger in the world is NOT God’s fault. It’s unfortunate that we live in a world that is so broken, that we currently inhabit a domain riven by so much war and famine, disease and deprivation, but that cannot be blamed on God. God does not cause famines and floods, sickness and disease. We are told that after God created the world and everything in it, he declared, “It is good!” Rather, it was the crookedness of humanity that upset everything and has CONTINUED to make a mess of the world EVER SINCE. Our contribution to global warming is just one example of that! 

When the Bible says that the world is under “sin,” it is simply saying that everything in it is BROKEN and it does not work the way God originally INTENDED it to. HOWEVER, if we look to God in trust, God CAN enter our situation and make it more BEARABLE for us. It DOESN’T mean God is going to magically make everything perfect once again but it DOES mean that in the midst of physical privation, we may yet find a DEEPER hunger met and filled- a hunger for meaning, a hunger for immortality, a hunger for love and security we can never find anywhere else in the world. On the other hand, we might have every material need met from our stomachs to our bank accounts, and yet find ourselves severely malnourished where it MOST counts- in our hearts and spirits and relationships with God and each other. 

And SECONDLY, there is an obvious imbalance in the way the world’s goods seem to be distributed. We in the developed nations experience an abundance and an affluence which much of the rest of the cannot POSSIBLY conceive of. However, the message of Christ is that our bread is not ours to hoard, that if we are truly GOOD stewards of the things we have been entrusted with, then we have to say that our bread belongs to our sisters and brothers AS WELL. God calls all of us to a life of sharing and sacrifice. Bread is God’s gift which unfortunately like so MANY of his gifts is perverted by our own selfishness and perpetual state of insecurity. To sincerely pray, “Give us today our daily bread,” is to radically reexamine ourselves, to acknowledge the claim that God has placed upon us through the gift of bread, and to admit the responsibility we have for our neighbor’s need. Nowhere in the Bible does it ever say “God helps those who help themselves.” Rather, the message it states from beginning to end is that “God helps those who are HELPLESS” and EACH of us is summoned to be an agent of that help.

Years ago, I became convinced that the REAL lesson of Jesus' miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 was NOT the supernatural multiplication of a couple of loaves and fishes but that upon hearing the words of love by our Savior, those in attendance WITH lunches were so moved as to share their food with those WITHOUT lunches. This resulted in everyone not only having their fill, but that a SURPLUS was left over for a snack on the way home. If my interpretation is correct, what this account signifies is this: so long as we retain an open and generous heart, God will CONTINUE to bless us. But the day that our bowels of compassion become shut up and our sympathies small, NO LONGER will we be a blessed people- in fact, we will cease to be CHRISTIAN.

Therefore, when we pray "Give us this day our daily bread," let us, in asking God, believe that God is able to provide MATERIAL bread as well as "the Bread of Life" HIMSELF--Jesus Christ--so that we shall be whole- physically as well as spiritually. Let us believe that God can and WILL use US as his partners to alleviate needs in our midst, that we will always be generous enough to offer up our OWN bread when there is enough to share. And finally, let us be assured that as we extend our care and compassion, God will be quick to show himself faithful and supply all our needs. Amen and amen.

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