Give Us Our Daily Bread
Matthew 7:7-11
St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
January 28, 2024
Rev. Juvenal Cervantes
As we consider the lingering effect of Covid, natural disasters, current wars in Ukraine and Israel, one thing is true: We cannot control nature. We cannot control human nature; to be human is to be vulnerable. To be human it to be in need.
You may know this; you may go about 40 days without food before your body cannot take it anymore. We can go about three days without water and we are done. You and I can go for about four minutes without oxygen. We can have an aneurism or heart attack and we’re gone. You may we wondering, “Gee, thanks for encouraging us today.” To be human is to be in need.
If you remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The physiological needs are the baseline. We are not going to do much unless our physiological needs are met. And among most living things, humans are more fragile and are in most need. We think we’re on top of the world, and WE ARE the crown of God’s creation. Yet God created us to be in need, to be dependent on Him.
J.N. Darby an 1800’s British theological is the one who said, “Necessity finds him out.” You don’t find anything in life apart for your need of it. We only find God when we recognize our need for him, precisely why so many people never quite find him, our sin gets in the way, our pride gets in the way. I was at the barber last week as I asked my hairdresser, “When you go to church, where do you go?” She said, “I don’t go to church.” I responded, “I have no idea how people live without God.” She quickly affirmed, “I believe in God.” I added, “God wants us also to be in community.” Total silence.
Today we come to a portion of the Lord’s Prayer that we sort of skip over. We generally ask God what we want. We say, “What I want is this. I want is to be released from this challenge. I want to be released from this pain, this relational strain. What I want is more of this. So we reduce prayer to our coming before Him asking him for things. Think about it: isn’t my role to ask him for things and his role is to respond. My role is to request, He responds. IF this is what prayer is to you, you are going to live a frustrated prayer life, Christian life. Because the moment He does not respond the way you want him to, your faith goes off the rails.
So this is what we’re doing, we’re learning to pray in the context of this sweeping prayer. For me personally, getting underneath each prayer line of this prayer life is transforming my life, again. So we’re memorizing it, we’re repeating it three times a day out loud.
Let’s pray it together: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
The Lord’s Prayer is the entire essence of the Christian life. It is the summation of the kingdom person; it is prayed by kingdom people. One writer said, “It is a handbook for holiness.”
As we learn to pray as He taught us to pray, we learn one phrase, right there in the middle, “Give us this day our daily bread,” Matthew 6:11.
Living in Greeley, in northern Colorado, it is likely that most of us had something to eat this morning and likely, we don’t ask, “I wonder if I’ll have something to eat this afternoon or tonight?” If you traveled to other places such as I have, remote places in Puerto Rico, Brazil and Mexico, this is a prayer that people literally pray; this is a desperate prayer.
Many of us have stayed informed of what is going on in the Middle East, particularly the Palestinian people who lack food during this horrific war. Can you imagine a parent waking up, with no home, all their belongings gone, many injured by the war, places where parents are praying for food for their children for that day?
In Greeley, we have so many options for food and we also know that there are many in our community who are without food. Implicit in this prayer is not only the realization that God provides food for us, but also that there are others go without food. This prayer reminds us that God is the one who provides for our needs, but too often we jump to this portion of the prayer: ‘Here’s what I need, here’s what I want…” And what happens is that our greed gets in the way of grace.
Prayer is an act of grace. God making a way for us through Christ to come before him. To put this in context, Jesus said, “When you pray to the Holy One of Israel, Yahweh, come before him, call him Abba, call him father.” If you have received Christ, if you are his disciple, call him father, very intimate, very close to you, He loves you. And yes, he is in Heaven, not that we’re assigning him off to some place, but to say, “He is in heaven” is to say that He is not assigned to a particular place. He is everywhere, he is transcendent, He is Spirit, he is always. You cannot confine him, anywhere. He is holy, he is unlike us. Prayer is the center of our lives, that his will be done, that his kingdom would come, through us, as it is in heaven, meaning right in line with the will of God. Now as you pray that way, focus in on the needs for the day.
Do you see how prayer is comprehensive? In the middle of this prayer is this humble petition for daily bread. Here are three things that I want you to see in this passage as we come to God in prayer:
1. No need is too small
2. No need is too big
3. All needs are met in Him.
No need is too small. In the context of kingdom living, no need is trivial to God. It happens to me, I say, “It is silly for me to bring this to God, such as asking God to help my find my car keys.” However, irrelevant it may seem, God cares about the most inconsequential, miniscule need in our lives.
The word “bread” represent anything that you need to sustain your life to serve him. Again, context, “I am a kingdom person, I am living for you, I seek to glorify you, bring your kingdom through my life, to everyone I encounter today, now Lord, give me the very smallest things that I need.”
Turn your anxieties, your worries into prayer. He wants to come with all that we have. When we think our issues are silly, we can hear the Spirit say, “No, no, come, cast all your anxieties on me because I care for you.”
This prayer reminds us that there is no prayer that is too small to bring before him. Although we tend to get stressed and get anxious about things that really don’t matter in the end, he says, “You come to me.”
This prayer also reminds us to remain where we ought to be: little children in need. A child must be fed by a parent or it does not survive. Here’s what is so radical about this prayer: what seems to be simple teaching from Jesus, yet again, it so powerful. Give us THIS day our daily bread. Give us this day what we need, only for today. Throughout Scripture God teach us and Jesus does this again, over and over again, one moment at a time. One way to live with the anxieties and worries of the future and regrets of the past, is to stay focused on the moment.
You might remember in Exodus 16, God is teaching his people to trust him, so they are out in the wilderness, there is not food to eat and he says, “I am going to provide food for you, one day at a time.” He is going to bring mana from heaven: “You collect enough for one day and tomorrow trust me. Don’t worry about tomorrow. On the day before the Sabbath gather enough for that day for you. Even on the Sabbath when you are resting, I am still working.”
One of the hardest things for some of us to do is to actually rest and stop producing. Our worth is not found on what we own or what we produce, it comes from Him. Gospel peace comes to us as we live for him, one day at a time.
In Matthew 6:25, Jesus says it again, “Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, not about what you will eat or drink nor about your body what you are going to dress, isn’t life more than food, more than clothing?” Some folks are struck by anxiety and don’t go out in the public. I’ve heard people say, “I don’t go to church because I don’t know what to wear.” Come as you are; the church is a place where whosoever will may come.
Then in verse 34 he says, “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself, sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” Focus on today. The prayer of our daily bread helps us to focus on the moment. So many of us are forfeiting the joy and the peace in the moment because we are so worried about the future. Other of us are robbing ourselves of the joy of the present because we continue to regret the past, mistakes that we have made in the past. The action in the kingdom of God is right here, right now.
This is a prayer of humility, a prayer of focus, a prayer of contentment and a prayer of gratitude.
There is no need to big. Our needs go beyond food, in fact, for some of us we could probably eat less in our day. But our needs go beyond food, to relationships, to work.
As kingdom people we are working and living and serving for the common good of others, in our homes, friendships, in our city. To serve others, that’s how the kingdom is advanced as we do so in the name of Jesus. We forget to become what we ourselves need; we must become what we ourselves have received.
We pray give us our daily bread so we too can feed others, literally. When one is ill, we take them food. We can invite others to eat. One thing that I love about Jesus is that he loved to eat and drink, we see it throughout scripture. And he made it a habit to eat and drink with all the wrong people. I wonder, when was the last time you ate with the wrong person, maybe a new neighbor?
Luke 15 says, “Tax collectors and sinners were drawn to him.” Are you a magnet for sinners? By the way, we’re all wrong, aren’t we?
One of these days we are going to be in the great banquet table and we are going to be with all the wrong people, like me and like you.
Jesus was accused by Pharisees. They complained, “This man received sinners and eats with them.” Jesus wore that badge with great honor. In fact, in Matthew 11:19 that Jesus threw a party for all the wrong people and the Pharisees continued: “Look at him, a drunkard and a glutton, a friend of tax collectors and sinners, yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.”
Who will you invite to eat? Who will you feed today? The kingdom of God is about one person at a time. No need is too small, and no need is too big.
All needs are met in Him. Here’s the twist, we don’t come to God in prayer simply for provision, we first come to him for his presence. What God offers to us with all the many gifts that he gives to us, is himself. We think, we come to Christ and life is great, we’re getting our act together, we’re forgiven, all is good. No, the Christian life is filled with many ups and downs, some propelled by our culture, many by our own doing. We come to God because the best gift we have is himself, whatever may come my life, I have God and he is enough.
This is why Jesus said in John 6:35
“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”
Do you know him today? Jesus said, unless you come to me you are going to continually be hungry. Do you recognize your need for Him? “Necessity finds him out.”
We are all desperate for him. How do I know if I’m following Jesus, because others may see me do that or am I simply following him because of who he is? How do I know? Jesus teaches us: this is how you know; your private prayer life will answer the question.
Do you follow him to be seen by others? We follow God in our private prayers that nobody sees, this is what Jesus says. Are you praying every day? Our prayer reveals our dependence on God. How desperate are you?
As we seek God, knocking on the door, we can recognize that he is already there. In Revelation 3:20 he says, “I’m the one that is knocking on our door and as you open the door I’ll come in and dine with you, I’ll break bread with you.”
What he is saying is: I want to come into your life, I want to be part of your life, I want you to abide in my love. I want to be knee to knee, toe to toe, heart to heart, eyeball to eyeball, I want to be present in your life. Friends, he is always ready for you to come to him and he’s knocking on the door of your heart today. Will you receive him, and will you go and serve him.
Jesus said in John 4:34, “My FOOD is to do the will of the one who sent me to accomplish his work.” HE is our sustenance, his purpose for your life is what brings life. He is the bread of life, come to him and have your fill and go and tell others where they can find bread to eat as well.