The Lord’s prayer was presenting an increasing challenge for me.
The issue had surfaced one day when I was praying and came to the words, “Thy kingdom come.” I stopped there, wrestling with the words.
“Can I pray this truly,” I asked, “without committing myself to advancing the realm for which I’m praying?”
Going further, I asked, “Isn’t this coupling of entreaty and commitment descriptive of how the whole prayer is to be prayed: seeing that God’s will is done, finding forgiveness, forgiving others, avoiding temptation and safeguarding oneself from all that would destroy our souls?”
It was a new insight — but one presenting a new problem, one bound up with the words, “Give us this day our daily bread.” They didn’t apply! I already had all the food I needed.
So, when I would voice the petition, I would just “touch it lightly” and swiftly move on. (Some might say, I’d mumbled it!)
Then, I noted something I’d overlooked. The pronouns, “Our” and “us.” Throughout the prayer, they are plural.
It’s clear that the prayer is a corporate act, not an exercise in individual piety! This means that, even when I pray it alone, I’m not independent. I’m praying with a host of others.
The prayer assumes I’m part of humankind, and that bread is a basic need of humankind. “Give us this day our daily bread” — to pray this is to commit oneself to feeding others.
Feeding the hungry is close to the heart of the gospel. Was it to make sure we didn’t forget this that Jesus told the parable about the judgment at the end of history?
The divine judge announces, “I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink.” Amazingly, in this parable no distinction is made between my brother and sister and the Divine! We are all bound up together.
Who, then, is this “us” the prayer calls us to feed? Some are close to hand: 10.5% of all U.S. households – and 14.8% of households with children – are “food insecure.”
How can one come away from a deep reading of the scriptures without the conviction that food is a right of everyone born into our world? Sadly, hunger is a global reality with tragic consequences.
We hear a doctor in Nicaragua say malnutrition affects the brain development in children and that one in five in his country will have lasting effects in his or her ability to function mentally.
We see televised images of emaciated dying infants in hospitals in Afghanistan. We look at Yemen, South Sudan, Malawi – the list continues.
The U.N. estimates that as many of 811 million people in the world faced situations of hunger in 2020.
Yet, what impact can an individual have in the face of such odds?
The gift of community is that we extend ourselves when we join others. Consider your congregation’s food pantry and the organizations it supports, as well as your denomination’s ministries, along with organizations like Oxfam, Bread for the World, and such.
It’s a no-boundaries endeavor. We can feed others through political support of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and other bodies.
Desmond Tutu, one of Jesus’ true disciples, rightly said, “When people were hungry, Jesus didn’t say, ‘Now is that political, or social?’ He said, ‘I feed you.’ Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.”
The prayer Jesus gave us isn’t the comfortable prayer I once thought it was.
It is one that confronts me, links me with the whole of his family, awakes my conscience and causes me to join in his redemptive work.
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Retired pastor of Judson Memorial Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Edmondson previously served the First Baptist Church of Berkeley, California. He is an alumnus of Berkeley School of Theology and Regents Park College, Oxford University. Edmondson was a founding member of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America and in retirement taught in the College of Theology at Central Philippine University. He lives in Oakland, California.
