Give us this day our daily bread

 During a recent town hall meeting, a questioner asked the President of the United States when she would get a house and a car. The woman who asked this question in what is likely the one chance in her life to speak with the president was consumed by her own neediness. In a meeting about the best way to help our country through an economic crisis, the only thing she could think of was herself. Before you assume that I am crass and lacking in compassion, I must point out that I have great compassion for someone who has no place to live. Yet I observe that people who look at the problems of the USA and think only of themselves do not make life better for anyone.

The woman who asked the president for a house is very needy. She needs the attention of people. She needs to pull the President of the United States down from worrying about all the citizens and make him worry about only her. The house itself is much less important than the ego trip.

A lot of our needs are like that. I need food, but my neediness makes me feel slighted if my food is not filet mignon. I can’t be grateful for pizza, because I see someone else who has filet. I’m not hungry for filet so much as I need to have what someone else has. My need might even be so great that I can’t feel grateful until I can deprive the other person of what he has. If I had not seen that person eating a filet, I could have enjoyed the flavor of my pizza and I could have satisfied my hunger with the pizza. Seeing someone with a meal I could not afford kicked off a need that transcended my body’s need for food and my spirit’s need for food that looks appealing, smells delectable and tastes good. In fact, my yearning for the filet might even make me despise the person who is eating it. My neediness has not only made me unhappy, but it has also broken my relationship with the person eating the filet. I can’t love that person or respect that person or serve that person in the name of God, because I don’t have what that person has. I cannot be grateful to God for what he has given to me, because I think he should have given me exactly the same as he gave to someone else. My sense of injustice demands either that I get filet or the other guy is compelled to eat pizza.

If this image seems trivial, let’s ramp it up. The news lately has been full of diatribes against CEOs in general and the CEOs of financial companies in particular. In the world of corporations, a CEO has huge responsibilities, the greatest of which is to find ways to generate profit for the stockholders. It takes intellect and innovative thinking to do that job well. Historically, there have not been many people who could pull it off. The competition for the best CEO has resulted in high wages, big bonuses and generous severance plans for the talented CEOs. Many people lately complain that the CEOs do not deserve their wages, or their bonuses, or their severance plans, because their companies are failing. Without taking a position in regard to either the economic or political action required to fix failing companies, I listen to the rhetoric, and I hear the expression of profound neediness, growing out of profound personal emptiness. One would expect the stockholders in failing companies to hold a CEO accountable for producing a profit, and one would expect the board of directors to punish or dismiss a CEO who does not produce the profits he was hired to produce. However, it is hard for me to understand the neediness of a person who is neither a stockholder nor a board member who wants Congress to strip CEOs of their wages and benefits simply because that person is jealous of their earning power. It is even hard to imagine that someone who does not own stock in a company believes he or the government ought to control what the CEO or any other employee in that company is paid. That attitude expresses an inner emptiness that seemingly can’t be filled without consuming other people. I think it shows a world view that looks to people instead of looking to God for the provision of real needs. It demonstrates an outlook that demands other people be dragged down or destroyed in order to produce equality. Worst of all, it measures the concept of human equality before God in terms of money, not God’s currency at all. The public sense of injustice demands that either everyone get CEO pay and benefits, or that CEOs are paid what everyone else gets.

In the prayer Jesus taught us, we begin by acknowledging that every person is already equal before God in the act of worship. Every person owes to God worship and praise and obedience. We owe him respect. We put his will ahead of our own. We recognize that before him, everyone is in need. We all need some very basic things. Further, each of us is created with talents and dreams inspired by our divine creator. The Lord’s Prayer teaches us that the means of sustaining daily life and the means of achieving the dreams with which God invested us are all provided by God. We rely on God to heal our relationship with him and with each other, and we trust him to protect us from the power of Satan.

The Lord’s Prayer transcends our neediness, expressed as envy, jealousy, scorn and pure delight in the destruction of others. When we pray for our daily bread, we confess that we depend on God for everything. We also express our gratefulness that God does, indeed, care for us. The prayer does not ask that anything be taken from others in order to provide for us. The prayer does not even ask God to take anything from us to provide for others. Rather, the Lord’s Prayer speaks of a faith in God’s provision that allows us to be generous to others. It points us to an attitude of faith that God will always provide us enough to be gracious and generous.

When Moses said his good-byes to the ancient Israelites, he underscored his faith in God’s provision. He said,

When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings. When you beat your olive trees, do not strip what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow. Deuteronomy 24:19-21

Moses lived long before Jesus taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer, but Moses would have understood the petition, “Give us this day our daily bread.” He knew that God’s provision is rich enough that each of us has something to share. In the horror of the Nazi concentration camps, people shared and helped each other. Our world is far from that nightmare, yet the attitudes we see in public life look more like a brawl among five children fighting over four quarters than like a people whose prosperity is a beacon to the world.

The Lord’s Prayer lifts us out of the mire of neediness. By pointing us first to the God who created everything, we are reminded that he is in charge and his work is very good. We can trust this God to care for our needs. We don’t have to depend on people, who are pretty unreliable most of the time. We don’t need to have all the answers ourselves, which is good, because we usually don’t have them. We trust in God to provide everything we need, and we share what he provides, because we know he will always provide. We express our needs, turning to God our creator and provider, rather than our neediness, which destroys our relationships with God and our neighbors. 

I am glad that I can turn to God at any time and pray “Give us this day our daily bread.” The God who created a universe can be trusted to give me everything I need.

In the 16th century, Martin Luther wrote, “If we were to hang every thief on the gallows, especially those who do not admit it, the world would soon be empty and there would be a shortage of both hangmen and gallows.” There is little to indicate that the situation has changed much since 1529.

As we learn more and more about the diseased finance industry, we learn over and over that most people, rich and poor, want other people to pay the freight for their happiness. For example, a major factor in the mortgage crisis is the fact that in a time of low interest rates and rising real estate values, many people purchased homes at the limit of their ability to pay. Buyers speculated that real estate prices would only go up, interest rates would be static, and they would get regular increases in their personal income. Sellers assumed that once they had signatures on the dotted line, most people would pull out all the stops to pay a mortgage, no matter how high the interest rate grew. Sellers speculated that housing prices would only increase, guaranteeing recovery of the full value of the loan and maybe a profit if they had to foreclose and sell a house. Every party to these transactions hoped to make a profit on the deal and any consequences. It was not technically theft, but in the aftermath of all this speculation and fine print, we are seeing the bare bones of self-serving attitudes on both sides of desk.

Jesus said that self-serving attitudes are the real problem. He said that we are not to grasp at money, possessions and celebrity status. Instead, we are to “store up … treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.” (Matthew 6:19) Jesus knew that what we obtain, by theft or even by honest business dealings, is always subject to destruction or theft by others. Remember Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves? The whole point of the story is to tell what happens when thieves rob from thieves. When desire for money, jewels and property becomes a driving force in a person’s life, he can never get enough, and if he has anything, then he can be sure somebody else wants to take it away. Jesus said that the only way to avoid this cycle of theft is to drop out. If we want to serve God, which is the most important commandment of all, then we cannot serve money.

Jesus taught us not to steal by teaching us to give. He turned the commandment on its head. Jesus said, “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you receive.” (Luke 6:38) Jesus taught us to love and serve other people, giving generously when asked, washing feet and becoming the person nobody notices. He called on his followers to love one another, serve others and give themselves away. He taught us that the rewards we can earn by achievement or by winning the lottery or by being promoted or by duping someone into buying property in a flood plain are trivial and temporary. The rewards that matter are piling up in heaven, and they will last an eternity. We don’t need to steal anything in order to possess the greatest riches of all.

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. (John 3:16)