"Give us this day our daily bread"

Sermon on Sunday, October 3, 2010

I Corinthians 10:16-17

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.

Have you ever prayed for something you didn’t want? You can think about it for a moment. Have you ever prayed for something—anything—that you didn’t really want?

Maybe you thanked God for the rain when you really wanted to play a round of golf. Maybe you prayed for forgiveness when you really wanted revenge. Maybe you prayed for strength to get through the day when what you really wanted was permission to go back to bed.

Let me ask you: When you pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” are you praying for something you don’t really want? Keep that question in mind for a moment.

Today is Sunday number three in our series on the Lord’s Prayer, and so we’ll spend some time with “Give us this day our daily bread.” Given the fact that today is also World Communion Sunday, it makes sense for us to think about bread this morning. All over the world, Christians are breaking it together and remembering Christ in their communion. Today, all over the world, we’re coming together around bread as we break and share it.

All over the world, you know, there’s enough food to feed everybody. Every body. As of today, just fifteen minutes before worship, in fact, the world population is 6,872,695,540 (http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html). And it’s amazing, but there is enough food on the planet to sustain all of us. Based on the amount of food produced globally, there’s enough to provide each and every person in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories a day. (World Hunger Education Service, www.worldhunger.org) That’s a staggering amount of food available on the globe, but of course the problem is that for too many, it’s simply not available. Roughly 925 million people in the world—most of them women and children—are hungry every single day.

Meanwhile, folks here in the United States throw away roughly 40% of their food. Statistics vary on this, but it’s estimated that every year, 38 billion dollars worth of food is thrown away in this country.

“Give us this day our daily bread.” Huh. Interesting request, given the fact that we’re likely to throw almost half of it away. So back to my initial question: When we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” are we asking for something we don’t really want? Don’t we really mean to pray, “Give us this day and tomorrow and the next day and the next more food than we could possibly eat. Give us enough food to fill our stomachs and our refrigerators and our pantries and our basement shelves and our trashcans”? Well, that would be a ridiculous prayer to make, but judging by the amount of food we buy, store, consume, and waste, it might not be that out of line.

What if we got all we ever prayed for, but what if all we every prayed for was daily bread? That’s not really something we’re comfortable expecting. We’re a little too rattled by the prospect of scarcity to live that way.

Does anyone here remember Harold Froehlich? Froehlich was a US Congressman from Wisconsin back in the 1970’s. In 1973, his first year in office, he issued a report stating that the federal government was falling behind in getting bids to supply toilet paper. Froehlich claimed, therefore, that the United States could face a serious shortage of toilet tissue within months.

Without CSPAN or instant news on the internet, this announcement may have passed by unnoticed, except for the fact that that very night, during his opening monologue on the Tonight Show, Johnny Carson made it into a joke. “You know what's disappearing from the supermarket shelves?” Carson asked. “Toilet paper. There's an acute shortage of toilet paper in the United States.” The very next morning, millions of people across the country ran out and bought as much toilet paper as they could possibly carry. By noon, every store in America was out, and it took three long weeks to get it back in stock.

We’re not comfortable with scarcity. Whether it’s toilet paper or oil or energy or food, the possibility of a shortage seizes us and we respond with fearful behavior. I was living in Texas when hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast, and during those weeks when the storms came, you could hardly find bottled water in stock on the shelves, and we were a good four hours from the ocean. In our comfortable abundance, we don’t like even the possibility of scarcity.

We’re closing in quickly on another election in this country, and so the political rhetoric is ratcheting up once again. As Americans continue to endure the recession, I’ve heard politicians talk about our standard of living. Mainly, they seem to prey on fears that it’s on the decline. “Let’s not give the next generation an inferior standard of living,” we hear them say. Or, “Our standard of living is in danger of decay for the first time in generations.”

Now it’s not that I’m not worried about the future at all, but I question just what “standards” we’re struggling to maintain here. Should it be “standard” that we throw away half of our food? Should it be “standard” that our closets are bursting with clothes? Should it be “standard” that on average, we each use 160 gallons of fresh water a day while the rest of the world lives on just 25? Should it be “standard” that though we make up just 5% of the world’s population, we use a fourth of its fuel? I’d love to hear a politician stand up and say, “Our standards, by and large, are ridiculous!” Because if we don’t get wise about our standard of living, we certainly will suffer.

Jesus teaches us to pray, simply, “Give us this day our daily bread.” That’s a standard of living we’re praying for…

Give us this day that which we need today.
Provide us today, God, with the food, the energy, the things that are necessary.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Give us not heaped-up stores for days and days come.
Give us not the false promise that nothing will go wrong.
Give us not more than we could possibly use.
Give us not sinfully more than we need.
Just our daily bread, God—that will be enough.

Enough. Sometimes “enough” can be a hard concept to pin down. So I’d like to issue a prayerful invitation for you today. I’d like for you to take a moment, right now, to think of a few things that sustain you each day. Just three or four things. Maybe five. These are the things that sustain you as a person each and every day. Food. Work. A place to live. Of course, we’re sustained by much more that food and shelter. Maybe other things are coming to mind for you. What sustains you each day? Family? Church family? Friends?

Another way of thinking about what sustains you is thinking about what you can’t imagine living without. People. Connections. Sources of love, hope, strength. When you get a chance, jot down those things—write down those three or four or seven things that sustain you each and every day. And then each morning from now until you start forgetting, I’d like to invite you to pray this prayer:

“Give me today my daily bread. In other words, God, help me receive as a gift that which sustains me. My family—help me receive it as a gift. My church—help me embrace it as a gift. My spouse, my children, my friends—help me receive them as gifts in my life, my daily bread that sustains me. My faith, my hope, my God—help me receive you as a gift each day that I live. Even my food—my literal daily bread—help me receive it as a daily gift that sustains me. God, give me today my daily bread. Help me be satisfied in that which will sustain me today. Help me not to worry about the bread I don’t have yet. Help me trust that you hold my entire life in your care. And while I’m praying for my daily bread, God, let me reach out to those who are not sustained in your world—those who go without food, without shelter, without love. May my daily bread give me strength to care for myself and for others, so that perhaps a part of your kingdom might come.”

In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul reflects on Jesus sharing daily bread with his followers, and asks, “The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?” And then he makes this wonderful claim: “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.”

Today we join sisters and brothers all over the world. All of us, coming together at the communion table, and in our bread-breaking, we declare an impossible and yet amazing truth—that we are one in Christ. One body of Christ, spread all over Wisconsin and North America and China and Pakistan…

In our bread-breaking today, and in our communion, let us be mindful of our global family of faith, and in so doing, let us be thankful for that which sustains us, mindful of that which we need, and generous with the rest. Amen.