The Lord's Prayer: Petition
Matthew 6.11
Introduction
“I don’t want the Father I want a vending machine.” These lyrics are from a song released about 10 years ago called “the Spirit vs. the kick drum.” The artist, critiquing contemporary American evangelicalism, sees many who don’t really understand prayer as the sovereign benevolence of a heavenly Father, but more like a cosmic vending machine. If we’re not thoughtful prayer can be treated like a genie in a lamp.
Oh how guilty we are when we get to this point in the Lord’s Prayer, give us this day our daily bread. This is where the pool is warmer for Low Church Protestants. We historically spend most of our time in prayer offering petitions to God, especially around meals. This petition is kind of like the evangelical sweatpants of the Lord’s Prayer; our most comfortable spot. And it is also the cause of frustration for some. When the Father is viewed as a vending machine, a genie in the lamp, then we get frustrated when we don’t get what we want when we want it.
NT Wright said, “The danger with the prayer for bread is that we get there too soon.” Petition finds its fitting place in prayer following adoration and submission. Adoration gives birth to submission and it is only from a place of submission to God that we can offer appropriate petition. CS Lewis said, “Aim for heaven and you’ll get earth thrown in, aim for earth and you’ll get neither.” The same is true with prayer. If you truly pray your will be done you’ll get give us this day our daily bread included. If you start with give us this day you’ll get neither your will be done nor the daily bread.
Bread for Life
When Jesus taught us to pray give us this day our daily bread, he was teaching us to bring our needs to the Father in prayer. We first have to get our mind’s Delorean up to 88 mph to get into the cultural mindset of Jesus’ hearers. To them bread meant life. Jesus prays this prayer in a 1st century culture where people didn’t know where they next meal might come from. It’s hard for us to fathom because we can hit a drive-thru or order shipt on our phone; we can go to the grocery store and porous endless isles of relatively inexpensive food. Not only that but our image-obsessed culture bounces from whole 30 to paleo to keto and we have the luxury to not eat bread for purely aesthetic reasons. To a 1st century Palestinian bread meant life.
A more wooden translation of the petition would be, “our daily bread, give to us today.” There’s some debate among scholars about the exact meaning of the adjective ἐπιούσιον, daily. There’s some room for speculation because as Origen stated ἐπιούσιον, “may very well have been coined by the Gospel writers.” Regardless of emphasis, the point is that we acknowledge, “Lord I need you, every hour I need you.” The prayer for daily bread is the humble recognition that we are creatures who live daily because of the good gifts that come from the Father of lights (Jas 1.17).
St. Augustine said that daily bread is a metaphor for necessities rather than luxuries. He rephrases the prayer, “give me neither poverty (lest I resent you) nor riches (lest I forget you)” (Prov 30.8). Luther says, “Daily bread includes everything that we need for our bodily welfare, such as food and drink, clothing and shoes, house and home, fields and flocks, money and goods, a godly family, good workers, good government, honest leaders, good citizens, good weather, peace and order, health, a good name, loyal friends and good neighbors.” CS Lewis reminds us that our daily bread refers to “all that we need for the day.”
While the noun and adjective are insightful, the verb - Give us (δὸς) - brings comfort. (1) It’s comforting in a theological sense. Give us is the fourth imperative in the Lord’s Prayer, but the first involving us directly. The other three – hallowed be, kingdom come, and will be done – all focused on God. But the first verb in the Lord’s Prayer that speaks to us is the petition that God would give. And the comfort is that we do have a God that gives. Jesus is teaching us to ask God to give. Remember Tim Keller said “the only person who dares to wake up a king at 3 am for a glass of water is a child and we have that kind of access.” Not only that but the king wants us to ask him for the glass of water.
It also (2) brings anthropological comfort. Jesus isn’t proclaiming a religion that ignores or minimizes human need. He isn’t teaching that the spiritual element of humanity is all that matters. He doesn’t disregard physical wants and needs. He teaches us to pray, give us this day our daily bread. Jesus acknowledges that we have need for bread every single day and that we ought to ask the Father to give us our bread every single day.
While accessibility is different for us, basic human need remains. All human beings need food, clothing, and shelter. Jesus teaches us to petition God to provide; and he’s teaching us that our heavenly Father provides. You may be thinking, “What’s the point?” God provides for humans whether they pray give us this day our daily bread or not. This is where we remember that prayer is primarily for us. We don’t ask for the things we need so that God can find out we need them. We ask for things from God so that we might remember that we need them and Him.
Pastor Kevin and Valerie have a piece of wall art in their kitchen that reads give us this day our daily bread. I love that; it’s so simple, and so accurate. The Lord’s Prayer isn’t archaic religious platitudes; this phrase lives in the kitchen, next to the dining table and we’re right to remember that we need bread daily and that our Father gives us this day our daily bread.
Bread of Life
Give us this day our daily bread certainly teaches us nothing less than to pray for our daily physical needs, but it also teaches more. Throughout the Old Testament bread and feasting point forward to the great eschatological day when God makes all things new. The law spoke of a land flowing with milk and honey, the writings sing of God preparing a table for us in the presence of our enemies. The prophet roars:
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined…He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces (Isa 25.6-8)
Christ
This great and final feast was inaugurated by Jesus Christ. He shows up and feeds the thousands. He eats with sinners. He rebukes the religious leaders for fasting because the wedding guests mustn’t fast while the groom is present. Christ explicitly reveals this when he refers to himself as the bread of life. He says
“Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst (John 6.32-35).
Jesus reveals that the bread for Israel in the wilderness was pointing to the final satisfaction that comes in the gospel. Matthew has been cluing us in as he’s been telling the story of Jesus. The structure of his Gospel is a recapitulation of the story of Israel with Christ as the hero. Just as Israel went through the Red Sea so Christ went through the waters of baptism. As Israel was tempted in the wilderness for 40 years, Christ was tempted after 40 days in the wilderness by the Devil.
In the wilderness Israel came to Mount Sinai and received God’s Law. After his temptation Jesus gives the Sermon on the Mount and expounds on the law of Christ. As Israel received manna from YHWH every day Christ teaches us to pray give us this day our daily bread. And in John 6 Jesus shows us that the manna for Israel was a providential picture pointing us to the bread of life.
Our physical hunger points us to our deeper need, our spiritual hunger. Ever since we ate in the garden our souls have been starved to be right with God. We need our sins forgiven. We are always consuming the empty calories of the world, the flesh, and the devil and they never satisfy. But Jesus Christ is the bread of life and if we will feast on him we will never hunger again.
It is through the sinless life, substitutionary death, and saving resurrection of Jesus Christ that we alone can be satisfied. Christ is the great spiritual provision of the Father for us. And the call of the gospel is to take Christ by faith. Repent of your sin and trust in him alone. The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever; we can do that through Christ alone.
Communion
One of the ways that we respond to and remember our satisfaction in Jesus Christ is through the Eucharist. Jesus hints at this also in John 6:
Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever” (John 6.49-59).
Jesus foreshadows Holy Communion as he teaches about his identity as the bread of life. In order to be a follower of Christ we must spiritually eat and drink of Christ. That means we must consume all of him, we don’t have the liberty to pick and choose what we want of Jesus. It’s all or nothing. We then act that out every week in the sacrament. Christ left the church with the Lord’s Supper so that we are reminded every single week of our great spiritual need. As real as the bread and wine is that’s how real our salvation is.
And so Matthew writing his Gospel decades after Christ actually gave the Lord’s Prayer leaves Eucharistic echoes in the petition give us this day our daily bread. We need physical bread to live and we need the living bread to live forever. Communion is where those two realities meet. The bread of the Eucharist is literal bread that leads to the living bread. The Lord’s Supper is where heaven and earth are linked in the petition give us this day our daily bread.
Conclusion
In a moment we will stand and come to the Lord’s Table and eat of Jesus’ body and drink of his blood. As we do so we’re acting out our prayer give us this day our daily bread. We don’t pray to a cosmic vending machine picking and choosing what we want. We don’t pray to a genie in the lamp. We pray to our Father in heaven whose name is hallowed, whose kingdom comes and whose will is done on earth as it is in heaven. It is only when we first pray thy will be done that we can then pray give us this day. Our Father has given us the bread of life in the gospel of his Son. And if he wouldn’t spare his beloved Son, will he deprive us of our daily bread? The Eucharist declares otherwise.