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Over the past two weeks we've been looking at The Lord's Prayer – the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples, and commands us to pray:
When you pray – and this time I read from Luke's gospel – say:
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Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread.
4 And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial."
Your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread.
4 And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial."
- Luke 11:2-4
The earliest church taught people to memorize the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the Apostle's Creed.
How we pray
How we behave and
What we believe.
How we behave and
What we believe.
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We watched this video a couple of weeks ago – seeing as some of us missed it I thought we might enjoy it again.
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So we're on the how we pray bit – and maybe next lent we should look at the how we should behave part…
In the first week we looked at the first line:
"Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name."
Prayer begins with identifying who we are talking to and who we are in relation to the one with whom we are speaking.
Children speaking to a loving and powerful parent – Father in Heaven.
Our – reminds us that we who say this prayer – as diverse and different as we are, are a family.
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The next part –
"hallowed be your name,
your Kingdom come,
your will be done…"
your Kingdom come,
your will be done…"
All looks forward to a future hope – finally fulfilled in Jesus return to earth and his day of justice. But brought about in our world from day to day as we live as Kingdom citizens; the underlying value / constitution of the Kingdom of God:
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul and the second just like it – love your neighbour as you love yourself."
We ask God to put the world right, and help us to surrender to his will – to help us become better Kingdom citizens.
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Today I deal with two more parts of Jesus' prayer:
"Give us each day
our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone indebted to us."
our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone indebted to us."
God's provision for us – expressed in the term 'daily bread'; and our ability to provide for others and ourselves in the way that we forgive.
Why – 'give us bread'?
Why does Jesus bring something so earthly into such a heavenly prayer?
Food seems so normal – so – unspiritual, spiritual stuff for us is all in the mind / its limited to an hour on a Sunday. This prayer continues to remind us that the God we serve is intimately interested in us here and now – and not just later when we get to heaven.
So, when we get to this part of the prayer we begin to wonder: Should we be asking for food? Isn't it a bit greedy? Selfish? isn't that something we're supposed to undo?
Daily Bread
Jesus' phrase 'daily bread' speaks about all that we need to live – the basic necessities of life – everything we need in order to live in the way that God intends us to live.
Its interesting to see what people count as daily bread, I found some pictures in time magazine – what people eat in a month, and what it costs:
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The Ukita family from Japan – $317
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Italy – the Manzo Family $260
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US – The Revis family, $341.98
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Mexico – the Casales Family, $189.09
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Egypt – The Achmed Family, $68.53
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Bhutan – the Namgay Family $5.03
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Germany – Melander Family - $500.07
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Chad – the Aboubakar family $1.60
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Bread is civilization
Practically bread is a rich symbol of community – where community has been broken down by war – for example in Chad – there is not much bread.
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For most of us bread simply comes from the local supermarket – neatly packaged and pre sliced. We don't have to think about how it came to be – as far as we know it comes from a factory like bakery.
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In Jesus' day people were more aware of what was needed to make bread – it happened before your eyes:
A field to grow corn, rain, not hail, no Roman soldiers taking your corn or ground flour as tax – once everything has grown; the wheat threshed, ground, someone with skills to mix it into dough, some yeast… an oven.
For daily bread we need a whole community of people – each fulfilling their purpose in a network of activities.
Somehow – each of us is a part of that broad network that puts bread on the table.
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As we bring to God the needs we have in this world. Our jobs, our economy, our political leaders – we are praying this part of the prayer:
"Give us our daily bread."
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For the Israelites there was a time when that complicated network was not in place – when they wondered in the desert for 40 years in search of 'the promised land' – a place to establish the Kingdom of God – a place where they would be able to plant and harvest and bake bread.
On their journey in the wilderness they had no way to bake bread and God provided for them miraculously.
Praying for bread – is praying for food for the journey towards the Kingdom of God – a difficult journey for which we need sustenance.
As people who have chosen to follow Christ – praying for bread is asking for the strength to do his will.
Bread is spiritual
Bread is practical – meeting our physical needs, but it is more than that – we can not live on bread alone.
Our modern way of thinking tends to separate the physical and the spiritual. In Jesus' day – in Jesus' way of thinking – separation of the two is impossible.
Everything comes from God, everything is God's – our physical reflects our spiritual.
We keep trying to push God out – to let God be restricted to heaven and spiritual things – an hour on a Sunday. But the reality is that God is a part of all we do – involved – we just do our best to ignore him or only let him in where it is convenient.
In this part of the prayer Jesus invites us to make our practical needs spiritual. But he also helps us to make our spiritual needs, practical. Food – material – is not enough, we need the food of God in our lives.
And when we live a balanced diet – we become the people God created us to be in a most powerful way.
Us
A difficult thing about the Lord's prayer is how it challenges our self-centeredness.
We are taught to pray: 'Our Father…' we are also taught to pray: 'Give us our…' Not 'My Father,' and 'Give me my…'
Often we have prayed 'Give us our daily bread…' and when we got it we called it 'mine'. And God help anyone who gets between us and our bread.
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Being part of a wider community means that we share our bread – its great to be a part of the Methodist Church – here at Paarl we have a minister – but you share me with the congregation at Franschhoek.
Its good Christian stewardship to share our resources.
Whatever resources we have – it is our responsibility to share in a responsible way. Because we prayed to God and our prayers were answered.
Answered
The fact that you and I are here today – and although we've all had those times when there's been too much month left at the end of the money – somehow God has provided for us all we have needed.
Physical and spiritual food.
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We have received what we needed – but I think we often only take what we want – and complain about the rest.
A buffet dinner where we pile our plates only with desert and refuse to eat the vegetables…
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Are we as a church taking the best advantage of the opportunities God has provided for us?
Few of us manage to attend Bible study – is our diet off balance?
What about the bread of fellowship that God offers us in community? Have we taken full advantage of the rich meal that God offers us as Christian community?
What about the way God has provided friends and family – are we enjoying that aspect of the bread with which we have been fed?
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God has given us our daily bread – but I'm not really sure whether we have eaten it.
I'm not really sure whether we have always stewarded it as if it was really from God – and not from us.
I invite us – as we pray this part of the prayer – to remember how wide it is; and to remember how we have been provided for – and to ask for wisdom in how to share what we have so generously received.
Forgive as we forgive…
And that brings us to words about forgiveness.
'Forgive us our debts as we forgive those indebted to us…'
In Jewish law the phrase eye for an eye – does not mean poking each other's eye out – it's a law of reciprocity.
If you poke my eye out you should compensate me for its loss.
You have robbed me of my ability to earn my daily bread and so now you should help me to get the bread I need.
You are indebted to me.
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When Jesus teaches about forgiveness he often illustrates his teachings with stories about monetary debts being forgiven.
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Here Jesus reminds us to pray to God to provide for us, and then he reminds us to be as generous to others as God is to us.
Especially in the way that we forgive them their debts to us, Jesus teaches us to ask God to treat us – just as we have treated others.
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Forgive us our debts, just as we forgive those indebted to us.
Conclusion
I believe that when we learn to pray this part of the prayer – to realise that the bread we have is the gift of God, that we should make the best use of that bread.
When we learn to forgive those who hurt us – to hand their debts over to God, to ask God to forgive us as we forgive others.
I believe we will begin to see the Kingdom of God in this place.
AMEN
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