Lord’s Prayer: Our Daily Bread

(Continued from page 1)

Never has Jesus’s gospel of fellowship and acceptance had more relevance than today. In our modern age, we find ourselves increasingly overwhelmed and under–inspired. How many times have we screened out friends, family, and colleagues because we just can’t deal with them right now—choosing instead virtual experiences as safe substitutes for drama in the real world. Computers and television are wonderful inventions, but they can never take the place of true fellowship. God created us to engage each another in real time and in flesh and blood—regardless of the arguments and aggravation that can sometimes ensue. The life of Jesus is a testament to that fact.

Jesus’s life also testifies to the fact that when we allow our immediate actions to be driven by the Holy Spirit many people aren’t too pleased—especially those in authority positions. In Jesus’s case, that meant being regularly attacked by the Pharisees and Sadducees. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Spontaneous action has always scared establishment leaders—be it the religious hierarchy of Jesus’s day, our modern clergy, or the secular institutions that drive our daily life.

Our leaders are fearful because spontaneity is a direct strike at the source of their power: their ability to control our behavior. This is why throughout history those who are driven by the immediacy of the Spirit of Truth¹ are so often criticized and marginalized as idealistic, unreasonable, or just plain nuts; while the rest of the community gently is manipulated back into place by those folks who understand how the world works.

Jesus knew that his followers would face serious opposition, which is why he tells us that we can expect to be betrayed by parents, brothers, and friends; and hated by everyone for following the path of Christ.² Yet we can take courage in Jesus’s promise that a true life can be won if we but endure. We can also learn from his example. Jesus never withered when attacked by his own establishment, be it for breaking the Sabbath³ or befriending sinners. He always stayed true to his philosophy that wisdom is vindicated by her actions.⁴

Each one of us is called to become a vessel through which the Son (Christ) vindicates the Father.⁵ And that vindication process requires that we be given bread. In Chapter 5, we mentioned that the bread eaten at the Last Supper (and which we take during communion) symbolizes the Holy Spirit at work in our daily lives. But when Jesus tells us in the Lord’s Prayer to pray: Give us this day our daily bread… this does not mean that we are asking God to deliver us our portion of the Holy Spirit, for the spirit cannot be divvied up like pie.

What we are doing is gathering from the Father our shared inheritance of joys and sorrows, challenges and triumphs, blessings and losses, and making them our own. Because, just as yeast cannot become a rising agent without flour,⁶ we cannot rise in Christ and act “righteously” without genuine experiences to react to inside the living hour.

Read Chapter 8: Forgive Us Our Trespasses (Removing Our Hindrances)

You have been reading Chapter 7 from the book The Living Hour: The Lord’s Prayer for Daily Life (with New Testament Gospels). This faith book on life and the power of the The Lord’s Prayer is especially suited for Progressive Christianity workshops, Bible Study Groups, Unitarian Christians, and all who seek a richer life.

 

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1. I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you always—the Spirit of Truth. 17 The world cannot receive this Spirit, because it does not see him or recognize him, but you recognize him, because he is always with you, and is within you.” – John 14:16–17 [↩]
2. You will be betrayed even by your parents, and brothers, and relations, and friends, and they will cause some of you to be put to death, 17 And you will be hated by everyone on account of my name. Luke 21:16–17 [↩]
3. Jesus walked through the corn-fields one Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and began to pick some ears of wheat and eat them. 2 But, when the Pharisees saw this, they said: “Look! your disciples are doing what it is not allowable to do on a Sabbath!” 3 “Have not you read,” replied Jesus, “what David did, when he and his companions were hungry. 4 How he went into the house of God, and how they ate the consecrated bread, though it was not allowable for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests? 5 And have not you read in the law that, on the Sabbath, the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and yet are not guilty? 6 Here, however, I tell you, there is something greater than the temple! 7 And had you learned the meaning of the words: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned those who are not guilty. 8 For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” – Matthew 12:1–8 [↩]
4. ‘Here is a glutton and a wino, a friend of tax-gatherers and sinners!’ And yet wisdom is vindicated by her actions.” – Matthew 11:19 [↩]
5. For now that John the Baptist has come, not eating bread or drinking wine, you are saying that he has a demon in him; 34 And now that the Son of Man has come, eating and drinking, you are saying: ‘Here is a glutton and a wine-drinker, a friend of tax- gatherers and outcasts.’ 35 And yet wisdom is vindicated by all her children.” Luke 7:33-35 [↩]
6. “The kingdom of heaven is like some yeast which a baker took and covered up in three pecks of flour, until the whole had risen.” – Matthew 13:33 [↩]