1 One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples."
2 He said to them, "When you pray, say:
"'Father,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread.
4 Forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
And lead us not into temptation.' "
5 Then he said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, 6 because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.'
7 "Then the one inside answers, 'Don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.' 8 I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs.
9 "So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 10For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
11"Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"
This version of Deuteronomy 8 2-20 comes from the International Version Bible. I did a tiny bit of "translating." I "translated" the phrase "the lord god" into "God the Sovereign," "the Sovereign One" or simple "the Sovereign." I was tempted to change the pronoun to he/she or sometimes he, sometimes she, but left it as it was. My justification the term "lord" has the connotation of a medieval chief. It's my opinion that the term sovereign or sovereignty is more congruent with a modern understanding of governance.
2 Remember how the Sovereign One led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. 3 He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. 4 Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. 5 Know then in your heart that as a man guides and disciplines his son, so the Sovereign One will guide.
6 Observe God's commands, walking in his ways and revering him. 7 For God, the Sovereign One is bringing you into a good landa land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills; 8 a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; 9 a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.
10 When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Sovereign for the good land he has given you. 11 Be careful that you do not forget him/her, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. 12 Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, 13 and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, 14 then your heart will become proud and you will forget God, the Sovereign One, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 15 He led you through the vast and dreadful desert, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. 16 He gave you manna to eat in the desert, something your fathers had never known, to humble and to test you so that in the end it might go well with you. 17 You may say to yourself, "My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me." 18 But remember the Sovereign, for it is she who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which she swore to your ancestors, as it is today.
19 If you forget God, the Sovereign and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. 20 Like the nations that were destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying God.
The two phrases "give us this day our daily bread" and "man does not live by bread alone" are deeply ingrained in the psyche of society. These bible quotes have become idiom, and bread has become a solid symbol to us all of the most basic human needs. We speak of having a job as needing to "put bread on the table." We even call money, society's medium of exchange, "bread."
We might even forget the emphasis on God in these bible quotes about bread. And for some of us leaving God out of the discussion seems preferable. God, and especially Lord God or God the Father are concepts that some of us would like to be so over.
And all the biblical emphasis on obedience is likely a problem to us. Obedience, that's what allows Nazi regimes to flourish. We UUS are likely more comfortable talking about the righteousness of disobedience- of challenging the established order.
But I would ask your generosity in considering the wisdom of these passages. There is reason that they have spoken so powerfully to generations. As religious liberals we are called to move beyond literal interpretations of the bible. This doesn't mean an out of hand rejection of the worth or importance of the bible. The bible is filled with deep wisdom that is communicated through metaphor and poetry.
Let's start with the "give us this day our daily bread" phrase. Do we assume that the whole point is that we should request the big daddy in the sky to fulfill our most basic needs? Should we even assume that Jesus is suggesting that we petition an unseen deity for favors? Does the prayer tell us to ask the source of life to meet our basic needs but no more? I mean Jesus didn't teach his disciplines to say; "Give us this day our chateu Briant. Give us lobster and filet mignon? Why not?
I can tell you what it means personally. Saying the words "give us this day" becomes an affirmation that I know I will get what I need. I say the prayer as a statement of faith. It is as if there is an implicit "I know you will" before each statement. This prayer doesn't cause me to beg for favors. It does remind me that I am in relation to the source of life, that I am not isolated or disconnected.
As a religious liberal I take responsibility for my attitude toward the source of life. I choose to address the source of life with faith and affirmation. Saying "give us this day our daily bread" helps me to remember that I have been provided with what I need to live. It's like "I know I will get that much, and oh yeah, I'll be all right." I might desire pizza with artichokes today, but if I only get bread, I will be okay.
This prayer releases me from a distorted sense of what I need in order to be okay. I know that I am not the only person with a distorted sense of what is needed to be "all right." It strikes me that one of the challenges and burdens upon parents is how to protect their children from the societal messages that they must always have more in order to be okay. And the anxiety to know we can provide doesn't fall to parents only. Rev Jim Walls suggested that "never in the history of the planet has there been a people as affluent as Americans, and yet most of us remain anxious and act as if we don't have enough."
The Lord's prayer is followed with examples that illustrate that God will be responsive to our request for fulfillment of our needs. First we read of a midnight request by a friend for three loaves of bread. This moves us beyond the request for our daily bread and places us in the context of friends and family. It suggests asks "what do we expect from the source of life?". We humans have fears and survival needs that can lead us to look out for #1, and yet most of us are responsive to the requests of our family and friends. If the source of life already has everything, lacks for nothing and has no reason to fear, what reason would she possibly have for withholding support for us?
Some of us are reluctant to enter this discussion. We might assume that it asks us to believe in a super-person God governing over us. We may want to reject the idea of a God person who will treat us good if only we will ask in the right way.
Can we move beyond literalism in order to glean some meaning from the passage? Even if we reject the notion that a deity, a character created this world based on his will and design, we may still find reason to enter into a trusting relationship with life itself. "How would your life be different if you could trust the process of life to be there for you? How would your life change if you changed your attitude and relationship to life or the source of life?
This is the big challenge of the statement "man does not live by bread alone but by every word of God. I imagine that many of us still cringe when we hear the phrase "word of God." It has been used to justify some terrible harmful things. But do we automatically jump to a fundamentalist view? Do we assume that the phrase "word of god" refers to the words written in the bible? One of the basic premises dear to our movement is that revelation is not sealed. We honor direct mystical experiences of the divine as a source of revelation. We also honor science as a source of revelation. Why then would we expect the only source for physical sustenance would be the words written in the bible? The notion that we live by every word of God has been understood to mean that the source of life expresses herself in all of creation, and therefore we are nourished by the source of life in many ways.
We can move beyond the assumption that the only possible meaning of this passage is that there is a man who doles out the sustenance we need to survive. We can allow the three letters g-o-d to point toward something. Can you listen and direct ourselves toward power that feeds and enables life? If we have rejected the image of a deity that pulls all the strings, can we hear in this chapter of the bible, an honoring of the natural order that remains a mystery to us? I hear in this passage a prescription for paying attention to nature. We might find in this passage justification for venerating science because our study of the natural world can be seen as an attempt to follow more closely the sovereignty of divine order.
We might be tempted to become condescending and judge as inferior those who believe that there is a God-guy or guy-God in charge of the world. Some of us might think that its foolish or even harmful to suggest that God is in charge. We might point out that this passage suggests obedience and that obedience to God has routinely translated into obedience to various earthly authorities. We have seen leaders and groups hide behind God's will. They deny their own bias, their own will and justify it by making it the will of God. Leaders urge obedience to God in order to strengthen their own Earthly authority. The people who are led to have zeal are then used as tools or pawns in some scheme set on glorifying the earthly ruler's ego. God's will also becomes an excuse to blame a group of people. An example of this was the pronouncement by some that Katrina happened because of the liberal and wanton ways of the population. "Obey God or be destroyed" becomes a way to avoid having compassion for each other.
Knowing this tendency of Earthly authorities to encourage obedience to God in order to support their domination, exploitation and manipulation it's understandable that we might reject the whole idea of obedience to God, or even the idea of God entirely. I have no attachment to the letters g-o-d, or to a notion of a supernatual deity. The question I would ask is what do we believe? If we say that no one, no personality, no God-guy is in charge of the Universe does that mean that nothing is in charge? Does it mean that there is no order to the Universe, to life and the turn of events of history? When we experience or witness suffering in life, it may strengthen our idea that life is totally random or that there couldn't be a benign power that governs life. We may even come to the view that if there is an "intelligent design to the Universe" that the designer must be cruel, capricious or out to get us.
It's easy to develop a distrust of life. It is easy to develop a view that says I have to look out for number one because no one or nothing cares. It's easy to become cynical and even mocking of anyone who chooses to believe that there is something greater that cares and supports for us. Interestingly enough the actions of many who urge obedience to God also seem to think suggest an attitude of the indivual being at odds with nature. Many who claim loyalty to God believe we must strive to conquer and dominate the forces of nature.
I apply the caution against having false gods to any idea we have about life that keeps us from really seeing and embracing life as it is. In todays readings, I hear a warning that there are consequences when we fail to recognize the authority of nature. I hear a warning of the consequences of denying the web of life that supports us. I think of the destruction that is being heaped upon humanity and Earth creatures, and I tell myself that it has come because we have failed to acknowledge the ultimate authority of nature.
When I read in Deuteronomy "You may say to yourself, "My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me, " it reminds me of our myth of the self-made millionaire. It reminds me of our cultural encouragement to advance ourselves as individuals without encouraging proper concern for or awareness of the communities that enable our life. I think of our culture's glorification of the rich and famous. We hold out individual achievement and privilege as the only correct and worthy goal. I see this as the establishment of false gods, and the result is great suffering in the land.
The emphasis of this talk so far and perhaps of the biblical passages is how to receive abundance from the source of life. The passages tell us that when we can have faith in God's willingness to provide. Said another way it tells us that we can trust that the process of life to be willing to support us. It tells me that when we acknowledge and see the bounty, the miracle, the splendor of what has been provided for us, that we can find reason to acknowledge that there is power that is far greater than us that is worthy of our trust. I hear an assurance that it's not me vs. the world, and even a caution not to fall into that thinking. I hear an invitation to move into a trusting relationship with the source of life.
Perhaps what's missing and needed for us to be able to develop a sense of trust in the process of life is a realization that we are not merely passive recipients. We are also not separate from the source of life. When we learn to listen to life we recognize that every living being exists not only to receive but to contribute.
Deep inside each of us is the desire to participate and contribute to life, to contribute beyond ourselves to others. I believe that this may be the reason that churches exist. At best the church provides us with opportunities to give of our gifts and give of ourselves. When we fulfill our desire to give we we gain the sense of being part of something greater than ourselves. We move beyond our sense of isolation and we gain a new sense of ourselves. We are no longer isolated individuals fearfully scrambling to avoid death. We know ourselves as part of an interconnected web. Some refer to this source of life as God. For many of us it is a picture of a Universe extending far beyond what we can see or even imagine. We sense its grandness. We feel its power. We experience its beauty. And life draws us to participate. It draws us to give and receive.
The truth of the song the children sang become evident. To you I give, from you I receive, together we share and from this we live. In the days ahead, holidays and mundane days may we eat the bread of life, and know we are supported and loved. May we be sustained not only by bread but by every word from the source of life. May we also remember our capacity to love and offer support. May we be blessed to know ourselves as a part of the miracle of giving and receiving that we call life.
So be it.