A, Midweek Lent 5 - Matthew 5:9-13 "The Lord's Prayer - The Now Bread"

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever. Amen

The fifth sermon in the Lenten series on the Lord’s Prayer centres on the petition Give us today our daily bread. We look at the diagram of the Lord’s Prayer and see that this petition is at the centre of the cross. And next to the petition is written, Bread or Tree of Life for believing sinners destined for Adam’s death.

But first we notice in the context of the whole prayer, we see that this petition is different to all the others. After the introductory invoking of God’s name through Our Father we confess and learn God’s character and will. God is holy, his holy kingdom comes, and his holy will is done.

Then after the petition Give us today our daily bread, we learn about our will and character, and therefore implore our holy Father to forgive us, lead us from temptation, and deliver us from evil, the evil one, and death into his holy kingdom, which is rightly God’s alone.

At the cross road of God’s holy character and will and our character and will to return to the old ways of the sinful self, we ask God in our present context between heaven and hell to give us our daily bread. This is a petition for now, so that at the cross roads we turn towards God and nothing or no one else!

What is this daily bread? In the small catechism Luther tells us… Daily bread includes everything needed for this life, such as food and clothing, home and property, work and income, a devoted family, an orderly community, good government, favourable weather, peace and health, a good name, and true friends and neighbours.

Notice Luther says our daily bread includes everything we need to live, and then gives us examples of what some of these things are. But these examples are not our daily bread in themselves. In fact, they are included in something much greater. What must this greater daily bread be?

We return to the diagram of the Lord’s Prayer and see that our daily bread is the Bread of Life, or the Tree of Life, from which we have been excluded, ever since Adam and Eve with all humanity were destined for death when knowledge of good and evil was desired more than peace with God in paradise.

So this is the background of the petition Give us this day our daily bread, because we are experiencing all types of afflictions and sufferings on our way towards the bitterness of death.

When we see the petition in its true light, we quickly realise that all the things included in our daily bread, are just that, included. They are a secondary food included with the one true Bread of Life.

But it is in these secondary things of food and clothing, home and property, work and income, a devoted family, an orderly community, good government, favourable weather, peace and health, a good name, and true friends and neighbours that we experience the reality of our sinful human condition and suffer as a consequence.

Even if we were to have all these things we would still suffer. Yet we place our faith in them, and are tempted to believe that if we get favourable weather, good health, wealth of property, a spouse or a family, etc., then life would be better. But even when we receive these blessings from God, our mirage of hope and peace in these things disappears, only to reappear somewhere else with something else.

God knows that we need these things, and we do well in the context of our earthly sufferings to see that in trusting God we can have hope in the midst of these trials. God will not forsake us.

After all why would God go to such trouble in sending his one and only Son into the world, to be born into all the strife of hunger and homelessness, toil and no earthly possessions, a family that questioned his ministry, a corrupt Jewish community and Roman government, treacherous weather conditions (especially on Lake Galilee), no peace as he absorbed the chaos of death with the illnesses of those he healed on his walk to the cross, to be born with a name that today is still bantered around as a curse word, and to have not one friend as he neared his death on the cross. And even further to this, why would God allow himself to suffer by turning his back on Jesus Christ; taking away his loving kindness and leaving him hang with the full weight of his wrath on his Son’s shoulders?

We need to ask ourselves as his children, why we endure even the smallest percentage of what Christ suffered, if God went to so much trouble to make us holy, and give us our inheritance of eternal life with him in peace forever?

When we suffer and struggle in this life, we might first worry that we are going to die, and doubt that God will sustain us unto eternity. But perhaps God is willing us to worry that we won’t die in him, that we must live and suffer forever, even with all the blessings of physical daily bread. Perhaps God wills us to see that our prayer for earthly things is not enough!

When we pray, Give us today our daily bread, we are not just praying for ourselves either, we are praying for all Christendom, hence we pray for us and for our bread. Speaking about this petition, Luther quotes Chrysostom, one of the patriarchs of the church who lived in the fourth century, who said, “All of Christendom prays for the person who prays for it.” (LW 42:60) In other words, “When we pray for the whole Christian church we join the whole Christian church in praying for it, and therefore pray for ourselves who are members of God’s church on earth.

So when we pray, Give us today our daily bread, we pray for God’s will to be done in and amongst us. And although God doesn’t cause sin and evil in the world — our sinful nature is the number one avenue through which sin, evil, and death enter the world — God does surely use our suffering in our sin to bring us back before he who is the Bread of Life, who died on the tree that gives real fullness of life.

Jesus is the bread of life, he is our daily bread. Jesus has given us access to his Father, his holiness, his kingdom, and his will, despite our being tempted, our continually being wooed by evil, and the desire to place our will first so that we turn from God’s will, to be forgiven and to forgive. God the Father went to all the trouble of sending his Son, and Jesus endured the curse of the cross and was stripped of all “daily bread”, so that as we suffer the crosses of lost daily bread at the hands of our sin and the powers of evil, we might turn to he who is the bread of life, so we might have peace with the Father who adopts us as his children.

As we pray, Give us today our daily bread, we allow God to discipline us as his children, since we acknowledge him as Our Father. And out of love our Father does discipline us so we turn to trust the one and only thing that will give us our eternal Sonship. And that is his powerful written word, where in it we receive the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, our daily bread, our Tree of Life who will lift us up in death and give us eternal peace and life with our Father in heaven.

Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:35, 38-40)

And he continues, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.” Amen.

Come Lord Jesus be our guest, and let your word to us be blest. Blest be God who is our bread, may the world be clothed and fed, Amen.