Sermon 1st July 2012

 Today, Ben Hughes continues our study of The Lord's Prayer: 

GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD

We had toast for breakfast today…always quick and easy

‘Can you all say TOAST three times….’        ‘Toast, Toast Toast!’  is the reply

‘What do you put in a Toaster?’    ‘Bread!’ They all answer.

Too easy!

‘What did Homar Simpson say when he got his hand jammed in the bread making machine?’

‘Dough’

Now bread is not a laughing matter especially for the unfortunates who do not have enough to eat!

In fact ask people who are and have been hungry and they certainly know the true value of food!

And likewise….if you really know what it is to be a sinner and to know suffering then you know the true value of the bread of heaven the broken body of Christ made perfect in you

I we will come back to that in our Communion later if I may.

We have been looking at the Lords prayer with Cameron starting the series on Our Father…and then Jill covering last week the coming of God’s Kingdom.

If I may do their sermons the injustice of a one line summary it is pretty much as the Lord prayer describes: (you can check out both Sermons in full on the Church website)

Knowing the Holiness of God our maker and ‘Father’ and waiting in expectation for the coming of the righteousness and love of Christ in his perfect Kingdom…

Today as you might have guessed is ‘give us this day our daily bread’!

Very straightforward…likewise - exactly as it says!

Or is it?

Bread of heaven, Bread of Heaven, feed me now and evermore…Feed me now and for evermore…

That great hymn of the Rhonda valley describes Christ as the bread of heaven coming down to us like the manna falling uopon the Israelites in wilderness…

Bread of Heaven feed us now and evermore…

But Like most things written in the Bible it carries a form double speak, a paradox if you like…it is both simultaneously true in the real aspect of bread on the table and as the  metaphor and symbol of the body of Christ, that bread that we are about to participate in our Holy Communion.

The bread we ask God to Give us on a tables each breakfast … is the everyday start of a new daily covenant that we have with God as our provider. In doing that we are simultaneously asking God of his Son Jesus who he sent to save us…God our Saviour. In other words…in saying “Give us this day our daily bread” we are requesting to God the two – “give us food for our stomachs and the food that saves our souls”. That Bread being both Christ’s body broken for us being the same commitment to us in God meeting our daily needs. The important interrelation in this is that you cannot say give us this day our daily bread with out saying also forgive us our sins…

As a practical point and some wise advice perhaps is always to be thankful in this , and dare I use an old fashion idea, to be ‘grateful’ for all the gifts that God’s gives us. In being thankful and gracious reminds us, again an old fashion expression –,‘to count our blessings one by one”. To understand that, is to know  where our sustenance comes from and by acknowledging so -  doubles and increases ten fold the value of therefore of what God provides for us.  This action of thanksgiving helps us stay out of the trap of greed…never having enough and always wanting more. Saying grace before a meal I have heard (but don’t hold me to it)is a good way to diet. Because it regulates your greed by making you think about what the meaning of ‘what we are about to eat make us truly thankful’!  Try it – I think it works in a funny way. Being thankful for all God’s gifts places us in the correct position before God as well. Not grovelling - like dogs gathering up crumbs under the table but as his children in need of His love and sustenance. Finally, as we say thank you for what we are about to eat, turns each meal into a act of togetherness uniting those around the table in a simple act of worship. It helps us focus together as well. And if there are more than two people around that table then in the name of Jesus he will be there with us… a promise to claim. Much of Jesus ministry appeared to be  centred around food and drink, indeed, Tom Wright takes this point up in some detail in his book of the same chapter… commenting on the Pharisees serious accusation of Christ being a ‘glutton and wine bibber’- Serious enough to warrant a death penalty alone. Jesus on earth appeared to enjoy a good feast, not only for the food and wine but because it brought people together - people who eat together speak and share together. And they were often people whose paths would have not crossed otherwise for example, the prostitute and Doctor of the law, the tax collector and the fishermen and so on. The wonderful ministry of food at St Saviours and St Paul’s and the meals at alpha and in home groups are all positive in my view signs of a lively and healthy Church.  As in Cranmer’s book of common prayer states: When we share with one another in Christ ‘we are joined by the whole company of heaven as participants in the eternal  feast of love’.

But what about those who do not have enough to eat?

According to the World health organisation Bread is an official staple food. Along with rice, maize, potato and certain beans and pulses. It would be appropriate to say Give us this day our daily rice, or maize or beans. Some bible translations describe give us this day our daily food for this reason (Good News Bible) Any essential staple food stuff will do would do! But saying give us our daily coca-cola, caviar, braised steak might not be so right! Test it on yourself see how you feel about inserting your favourite food into the Lords prayer instead of the word bread? Yes it might be fine so then don’t worry, carry on. However,  I think Jesus was careful in his choice of using bread.  This is because staple foods are a right, something that everyone should have. Perhaps fizzy drinks are certainly a luxury but are they a right!

Luxuries and nice foods are certainly something that we can thank God for….but staple foods are a basic human right.  It is the functional nature of Christ teaching , like if you have two shirts give one away to somebody who need its…bread is enough, its our daily requirement and there should be enough to go around for everybody. Share it! And it is not give me my daily bread it is give us our daily bread!  And it doesn’t say give me my daily feed? We might be given that bread to pass on to others. Christ does not stipulate who the bread is for! God has given us all physical life and so it is right to ask him for that which sustains all physical life!

I believe - that if there are people who for whatever reason cannot ask God or will not ask God for their food then we - as our Christian duty - need to provide that staple food for them.

I say this to myself and it is hard thing to say…if I am enjoying the luxuries of life - whilst others are going without - then according to the judgement of God I might be in mortal jeopardy…only by His Grace can I be forgiven in ignorance or otherwise for feasting whilst others starve. 

But we are a generous Church and in many ways a generous nation many give way beyond our 10% demanded by God in our salaries but we need to be watchful that in hard times-  as we are now,  we do not forget the hungry. If the state doesn’t pay out of our taxes then we must do so instead and in addition. Jesus was sent into the world to feed the hungry and poor, the rich we are told will be sent empty away.

I think it no accident too that bread is also slang for money. Dough means healthy and liberal. The Yank GI’s  of WW11 were called dough boys not only because of their high pay compared with Allies and Axis troops but also because they looked so well fed and strong. To their credit they were generous too…my father was kept in chewing gum and bananas by local GI’s stationed in Highbury. Generosity buys generosity.

Generosity and giving back to God is what blesses us and others.  We talked about the Exodus, the Israelites brought out of slavery into the wilderness where they roamed for forty years…then they were bought the promised land and what they found  was it…a barren rocky hard dried up mountain region with a dried up sea of salt and where was the land flowing with milk and honey that was promised? …disappointed was not the word?

But the point was not lost on Joshua, if Israel was obedient and honoured God then this harsh sun baked goat scrub land  surrounded by vicious enemies would become a land - secure, rich and fertile -  which it did…for a time. The point is, that when God rules the heart, hearth, house and home He turns our rocks bricks and sand into a land of plenty.  When we give thanks and acknowledge God then He says ‘see I will open the flood gates of Heaven!

Give us this day our daily bread….is inviting God into our barren lives…it means covenant and security. It creates a Jerusalem in our hearts and like Joshua and Moses who understood that the true Jerusalem is the city of peace and that a city of peace is a right relationship with God.   Give us this day our daily bread…is placing God in the pinnacle and hearts of our lives. God is bountiful with us we must be the same towards others!

 And if you cannot cope with the daily bread, cope with the morning or the afternoon bread, and if not that then the hour.  If not the hour then the minute even the second. Give me what I need this minute oh Lord because I cannot cope otherwise…is a very legitimate prayer and something that we all need at times in these hard lives when the enemy is at the gate and your worried scared and afraid. Give us this minute our daily bread because tomorrow has enough worries of its own?

You might also notice that the metaphor of grain is used throughout the bible. Grain of course is used in bread. But grain on its own is generally inedible. It can also rot and go bad in a matter of days.

It is also hard work to sift and to break the germ form the kernel and husk

The threshing floor allowed the wind to blow across it was a clever way to separate the germ from the chaff and husks and is also used as a way to describe how God chooses his people…separating them out - allowing the detritus of life and our hard outer shells to be blown away leaving the germ stripped bare as grain sorted and separated from the chaff and rubbish of the things that enclose and wrap our hearts.

Jesus then uses the image of yeast to describe the working of the Holy Spirit in his people.

And again it is a wonderful and accurate description. Grain stored in barns is no good it is not food. You need to add some water salt, sugar, yeast, oil and heat to make it delicious bread

If we are the grain - sifted and sorted on the threshing floor….then the salt is our common humanity, the yeast is the Holy Spirit, sugar perhaps some love and water our baptism. Oil heals and fire is the refiners work in us – that then describes all the necessary ingredients of a Christian faith. We can then become the bread that can then feed the nations. 

Perhaps you say…this is all too much.

Bread is Bread. It is just that! But is it? There is the mater of purity.

But bread is not bread….Bread comes in many shapes and varieties. In the eighteenth century bakers added alum (lead) to bread. Bakers were prosecuted for selling bread loaded with sawdust.  Bread can be fake and hollow. Our Grandparents tapped a loaf because that right hollow sound proved its purity. Bakers went to the gallows for poisoning their customers

When we ask God to provide our bread we put ours and families well-being into his hands. Modern supermarkets do not cut chemicals into their bread today… well I hope not…but the image again works for as a good metaphor. Where others are fake insubstantial, cut with fillers and poisons the bread of heaven by comparison is guaranteed pure!

Many will come in my name and do marvellous things…Jesus says. The bread of heaven is the bread of heaven…the purest and most delicious bread, better even than manna of the desert, better than the best human baker in the world can bake.

Our Jesus - the bread of heaven who we are about to share in - as my Nana would say…’is the best thing since sliced bread’