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Matthew 6:11; Isaiah 25:6-10; Revelation 19:6-10: 21:1-7
Being a minister, I get to go to more than my fair share of wedding feasts, except we like to call them receptions these days. I have to say that I’ve never been disappointed. They are always joyous and plenty of fun. The food is the complete opposite of what we read there in Isaiah. We don’t eat death. We eat prime rib or some kind of chicken cooked to perfection. The deserts are to die for. The festivities, the toasts are always a hoot. And then there’s the company. It’s a rare wedding feast that I know the people I’m sitting with. It’s sink or swim and sometimes like pulling teeth to get people to talk especially when they realize they’re sitting with the minister. There’s no worse dinner party Hell than having to sit with a minister. There’s hardly a worse punishment on earth than being seated with a minister. But I jest. Even when seated with people I don’t know, we’ve managed to become friends.
When we sit together at table for a wedding feast, it is not just a party. It’s a special meal at which we should take a moment to consider what we’re celebrating. Wedding feasts are special because we’re celebrating what is one of the foundational stones of human community – a union of persons and of families, the hope of a life of growing together, children, a celebration of the very goodness that is steadfast love and faithfulness, a celebration of God’s faithfulness.
Marriage and the wedding feast are also primary biblical images to help us understand the nature of the relationship between Jesus and the Church. That relationship is like marriage – steadfast love and fidelity through plenty and want, joy and sorrow, sickness and health. Ephesians 5:21 and following speaking of spouses says: Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord…. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her…”. One of Jesus most used metaphors for what the Kingdom of God is like is a wedding and the wedding feast. As we see in Revelation, when Jesus returns it is for his wedding to the church and there will be a feast – the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. On that Day, the old Creation, the sin-sick, dying creation ends and the New/renewed Creation begins with a wedding feast.
Moreover, Jesus ate a lot of meals in the course of his ministry and those meals pointed forward to that big, wedding feast coming. Jesus frequently taught during meals. Let’s not forget those two times when he fed crowds in excess of 15,000 and 12,000 people with just a few loaves of bread and several fish. Those two meals pointed towards that big wedding feast when he returns. In the early church, disciples gathered in homes on Sunday evenings, the Lord’s Day known as the Eighth Day of Creation which meant the first day of the New Creation. When gathered, they worshipped and shared a meal which included communion and it was in a sense a rehearsal and a partaking of that wedding feast coming. Early Christians appear to have believed that the meals they shared were a small taste of that future feast breaking into our time nurturing us for that Day coming, the Day of the Lord, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. It was in a sense, “give us today our bread of The Day” (capital D).
…and that, my friends, is how I and many other students of the Scriptures believe that we should translate Matthew 6:11 as opposed to: “Give us today our daily bread.” The Lord’s Prayer we’ve learned to pray is a Middle Ages adaptation of it that turns it into just a daily prayer as opposed to the prayer Jesus gave to his disciple to pray in longing for the end to come, for Jesus to come, and put things right. We’ve learned it as a daily prayer as opposed to a prayer focused on the kingdom of God coming to earth, breaking into our reality from the future. I don’t know if that makes any sense. We’re not just praying here, “Lord, give me the food and the things that I need for today.” We’re praying for God to give us the bread of the meal of the Marriage Feast of the Lamb.
The word we translate as “daily” is tricky. In fact, we don’t really know for sure what it means because the only known use of it is from Jesus’ mouth here in the Lord’s Prayer as if he coined it. The word is “epiousios”. Epi means across or over or above. Ousios means substance or being. We could make it mean daily bread, but in essence it’s more like “Give us the bread that’s of the above stuff that’s from across, over there.” It’s more like “feed us the real bread”.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus gave a very long discourse just after he fed the crowd of 5,000 men which would likely have been more that 15,000 if we included women and children. The subject of the talk was the bread of heaven. A bit of the discussion included talk about “manna”, the stuff that God daily fed the Israelites with during their wilderness wandering. But Jesus takes it one step further and calls himself the “Bread of Life” and explains that following him in relationship to him filled with the Holy Spirit is true life that will last to eternity. Jesus is the daily bread, the bread of the Day, the bread that’s of the above stuff from across, over there. In him together we are at the feast.
I heard a woman recently talking about the breadsticks they served at the chain of restaurants called The Olive Garden. The Olive Garden was famous for their breadsticks. At the beginning of the meal, they brought you a basket of breadsticks which you ate while you looked over the menu and ordered your dinner. The menus had pictures and everything just looked mouth-watering good and you ordered and you just couldn’t wait to get your meal. But those breadsticks…those breadsticks were just so amazingly good. You can’t stop yourself from eating them. Soon, you don’t want your food anymore because the breadsticks were a good enough meal. You wish you hadn’t ordered anything because the breadsticks are amazingly more than enough. Then, the food arrives but you don’t want it yet you try to eat it anyway all the while eating more breadsticks and you wind up miserable because you should have just let the breadsticks be enough.
Jesus, the bread of life, is like those breadsticks. Once you’ve had a taste of him, the peacefulness of his presence, the rest, his faithfulness towards you, his working in your life to strengthen and heal you, when he speaks words of assurance to you – Don’t be afraid. I am with you. When you get a hold of Jesus and he gets a hold of you, you don’t want the flashy, overpriced stuff from the menu of life that you ordered thinking it would satisfy you and make you happy. You just want him; to spend time with him in prayer, studying Scriptures and listening for a word from him. You just want to share the love that he's made you feel by his faithfulness to you.
Jesus himself is the bread we are praying for in the Lord’s Prayer. He is daily at all times with us. He is the life from above, across, over there, life filled with the Presence of God. Sitting here at the table of life Jesus is all we need. When we pray, “Give us today our daily bread” be mindful that it is Jesus that we are praying for. We aren’t just praying for the food and stuff that we need for daily existence. We are asking to be filled with Jesus, with the Holy Spirit, the life that comes to us from the future healing of all things. Amen.