Daily Bread
Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren
Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – March 5, 2023
Daily Bread – Matthew 6: 7-14
The Greek behind the words “daily bread” in today’s prayer does not reveal much meaning in addition to what the English conveys. It’s just “daily bread,” sustaining in a vital way, and for any of us who have never known hunger, it can be rather ordinary and even taken for granted. “Give us this day our daily bread.”
I used to not think too much about my dad’s morning ritual. He would sit with his tea and toast, waiting for the moment when my mom, my sister, and I were all finally in the kitchen at the same time in our chaotic morning rush to get out the door. Then he would pounce, revealing The Upper Room daily devotional from under his newspaper pile and proceed to read it aloud, after which he would pray for protection of all his family and friends, naming us each by name.
I had entirely forgotten about it until just a few years ago when I was visiting my parents. My dad had just finished his toast when he said, “Well, I gotta go,” which was apparently the preamble to launch into his morning prayer in which he prayed for God to watch over me, my husband, my kids, my sister and her husband in New York, his mom, my mom, people from his church and his golf league, and of course his favorite sports team.
I smiled recalling all those other mornings and asked, “Do you still do that every day? Do you pray for me even when I’m not here?”
“Every day.” He said with a wide grin, “I pray for you every day.”
I don’t know what that was supposed to mean, but for a long time after that, I would have breakfast at my own table several states away and remember that he was praying for me. It held me up in a way I never appreciated as a child.
It isn’t that he uses fancy words or well-formed phrases that would get good grades in a seminary class on prayer. It isn’t that he’s otherwise the most pious or disciplined person I know. This is the man who, when told by a doctor that he might want to cut back on alcohol and red meat, so that he could live longer replied, “Will I live longer, or will it just seem longer?” No. It’s that he does it every day. It means something to him, and it means something to me, too.
There is no need to heap up lots of empty phrases to get God’s attention Jesus teaches in Matthew chapter 6. Rather, God always hears our prayers. Indeed, God knows all about our needs before we sometimes are even ready to name those needs for ourselves or even give them words. At other points in this chapter Jesus even teaches we don’t need to worry about making sure other people know how good and pious we are. It’s not about checking a box. It’s not about impressing other people. What’s important Jesus is teaching is that we feel connected to God.
I’ve run into all manner of beautiful ways of finding that connection. Some people walk in the woods. Some turn to poetry or photography. Some read devotionals. Some sing. Some bake bread. Some talk to God while driving in the car. I once knew someone who had a prayer white board. They put the white board on their fridge and wrote notes to God on it whenever they felt like it. Sometimes they just wrote, “Hi.”
When I was in my 20s, I got really into silent prayer. It’s not something everyone gets into, but I found it to be an incredible way to feel connected with the mysterious presence of God and to let go of my worries. After I had babies though, I complained to a mentor that I no longer had the ability to spend these long hours in silence like that–just when I could have used the grounding and stress relief the most!
She laughed and suggested that I may be in a different time of life. Maybe my prayer life these days was more like folding the laundry in the presence of God. She was referencing the Carmelite monk, Brother Lawrence, who lived in Paris in the 1600s and wrote what would become an enduring piece on spirituality called The Practice of the Presence of God.
Brother Lawrence never became a priest or anyone of higher authority because he didn’t have the education, standing, or ambition. What he had was a knack for seeing everything as an opportunity to practice being in the presence of God.
He spent most of his days in the kitchen, peeling potatoes and washing dishes. He wrote, “The time of busyness does not differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great a tranquility as if I were upon my knees.”
Brother Lawrence and my living mentor, assured me prayer is not so much what I do as how I do it. Can I find a way to approach life with the awareness of God’s presence with me whether I am alone and silent or busy and surrounded by chaos?
Truth be told, some days I do it better than others, and now that my kids are getting bigger, I am very happy to welcome back 15 minutes of silent prayer nearly every morning. I do find that when I’m in the flow of that habit, I’m more likely to catch my breath at a beautiful sunset evening even while caught in traffic or to be genuinely overcome with gratitude the moment all four members of my family sit down together for a meal or to be moved to tears watching a friend having a hard time quietly squeeze another friend’s hand before joining them in a pew for worship.
Like the likely original hearers of the Gospel of Matthew, I grew up saying a version of the Lord’s Prayer in church. It was easy to memorize because we said it every Sunday. I think habits like that tend to go into us deeply. We may not always notice but over time they become part of us. Like the food we eat, they start to make up our bones and our blood.
All the world’s great religious traditions teach about building habits that bring us closer to the presence of God. These habits can take root in church, and whether we practice them or not in our in-between days, they have a way of holding us up, if we let them.
As a parent, I haven’t always been great about saying grace before meals in our home. But in the thick of the pandemic isolation, I realized without regular worship or Sunday School attendance, saying grace at meals might be my family’s best chance at sharing some spiritual practice together. So, we started singing Johnny Appleseed, and we haven’t stopped. Every night–or every night that we remember to pray at all anyway–it’s Johnny Appleseed. Yep. It’s quite a habit. Someday maybe we’ll learn a new song. But right now that’s the crowd pleaser, and it’s a habit I’ve grown to cherish.
If we keep reading today’s scripture selection all the way to Matthew 6: 15, we find that it ends with a verse that could be understood as a less than cheery admonition to forgive others or else. I don’t like it, honestly. I’m not sure forgiveness can be forced. In my experience forgiveness takes its own sweet time, if it’s going to come at all. I don’t like the idea that God’s holding out on forgiveness until I become a superhuman at it. That just doesn’t work for me.
It sounds sort of like an equation though. If you forgive then God will forgive. If you don’t forgive then God won’t forgive. If this, then that. It’s like a line of computer code or a law of physics. That I can understand. Because I do find whenever I’m able to let my heart soften toward others, I feel softness coming right back at me. And whenever I harden my heart whether I’m aware I’m doing it or not, that hardness visits upon me, too. Maybe grace is like a law of physics. I trust it swallows us up whole in the life that is to come. But, while we yet breathe, maybe the more we lean into it the more it leans back.
If there are any little ways–any habits, even if they’re entirely ordinary–that help me better experience the flow of that grace, then I want to do what I can to indulge my hunger for them and pray you will for yourself, too.
This Lent, whatever our habits, whether we find ourselves at a table or not, may we find holy, sustaining grace enough for each day.
May it be so. Amen.
