Our Daily Bread

One of my friends hosts an annual St. Patrick’s Day party. Typically, entertainment is provided through music from a local band that specializes in Irish music. One song frequently requested is called “The Fields of Athenry,” a ballad by Pete St. John. The lyrics tell the story of a young man who has been arrested for stealing food to keep his child from starving. As punishment, he is separated from his family and deported to Australia. If you’re not familiar with the song, take a minute to look it up on YouTube. There are many versions. I’m partial to the one by Paddy Reilly.

In the song, the accused is guilty of stealing “Travelyan’s corn.” I didn’t know Irish history well enough to understand the reference, so I looked it up (yes, I found it on Wikipedia; I also read accounts by the BBC and found mentions on a few history-related websites). I learned that Sir Charles Trevelyan, a British civil servant, held a position in Ireland during the middle of the nineteenth century, during a time called the Great Famine. Leading up to the crisis, political turns and government policies had contributed to a situation that left Ireland’s poor dependent on potatoes, which could be grown in small plots, as their main source of nourishment.

One governmental policy involved exporting food items to England where landowners and upper classes members could afford to pay higher prices than Ireland’s agricultural workers could pay. Because of the focus on market values, virtually all food commercially produced in Ireland was exported. When the potato blight struck, the food crisis worsened.

Travelyan’s duties included overseeing a government relief program. He believed that the famine was God’s will, that it represented a judgement against the Irish people. And, from his political perspective, he believed that goods should be sold in markets able to pay the best price. Because of these opinions, he limited access to aid. Estimates suggest that a million people starved to death. A million more emigrated.

The events are tragic. Their unfolding reads like a horror story. The human suffering is unimaginable. The human callousness seems unimaginable. Except that it repeats around the globe and throughout the centuries, even to today.

Famine and food insecurity seem to have touched every corner of the globe at one time or another, and everywhere, people still go hungry. Africa. India. Asia. The Middle East. Russia. Europe. Brazil. North America.

Perhaps you think the need for aid and compassion today occurs only in remote regions of the earth. You would be wrong.

I volunteer at a local food pantry. Recently I talked to someone who had tried to recruit additional volunteers. Among those approached was a young man who said that giving out food was contrary to God’s principles. He claimed God wanted those in need to take responsibility for themselves. God didn’t want them to be lazy and take handouts. A better way to serve the poor, he claimed, would be to permit them to suffer so they would be motivated to seek employment.

Never mind that many who receive food aid do have jobs; the jobs just don’t pay enough, especially when medical bills are also due. Never mind that better jobs are scarce in our rural area, and most of the poor do not have access to transportation. Never mind that many who receive food have physical and mental handicaps that make them unemployable. Never mind that many are elderly and infirm. Many have been ill served by corporate policies and political turns, some are descendants of slaves, and some are children of a generation denied access to education. Apparently, Travelyan still lives.

Jesus told his followers to request bread. At a strictly literal level, bread refers to a baked product made from some kind of floury dough. In a more figurative sense, bread commonly refers to a range of food products required for nourishment. It could even include water. Or the meaning of bread can encompass all things needed for physical life, including food, clothing, and shelter. There’s a reason that one of the slang terms used for money is “bread.”

Or, bread might not mean physical stuff at all. When Jesus said, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35), he probably didn’t mean that he had been baked in an oven and was now ready to be sliced and served with jam. More likely he was making a metaphor. Around the world and across many diverse cultures, breads are staples. A staple is something that is used routinely to fill a dominant need. Food staples vary regionally depending on what is available, but typically they are things that provide a foundational supply of a wide variety of nutrients. By making a metaphor based on bread, Jesus was claiming that he was a staple requirement for spiritual life.

So, when he gave his disciples instructions to pray for daily bread, perhaps he didn’t mean just by the slice or loaf. And, perhaps he didn’t mean just for physical sustenance. Perhaps he meant that his followers should ask God to provide all the staple requirements for their physical and their spiritual needs.

Furthermore, according to the footnotes in several Bible translations, translators aren’t exactly sure what the Greek word often translated as “daily” really means. They claim the form of the word suggests something that occurs repeatedly. The implication is that we repeatedly need to receive from God that which will meet our needs, but not to the extent that we stockpile a reserve that would make us be independent from needing God’s provision again.

The phrase may be an allusion to a prayer request found in Proverbs. “Two things I ask of thee; deny them not to me before I die: Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full, and deny thee and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’ or lest I be poor, and steal, and profane the name of my God.” (Proverbs 30:7–9). In his Old Testament translation, The Hebrew Bible, Robert Alter notes that the phrase rendered “food that is needful for me” in the Revised Standard Version (quoted) is a component of the prayer’s request for avoiding common temptations associated with being poor or with being rich. Alter explains that it means something along the lines of that which is allotted for the day. Not too much, and not too little.

An alternate suggestion is “for tomorrow.” In that case, the prayer would come out something like this: Give us this day our bread for tomorrow. If “this day” means this age (as in our life here and now) our bread for tomorrow might mean what we will need to sustain us as we transition into eternity (tomorrow).

Why is it important to rely on God to give us everything we need? Because when we know we can depend on God, we can relax. This is how it works: When I am not anxious about meeting my needs, I can be more generous about helping others. I don’t need to grasp for pennies and clutch them. I can let gifts flow freely through my hands and be used as God directs.

And yet, many people, even people who call upon God to uphold them, do not have and do not receive food on a regular basis. I wonder if God’s failure to meet this need is due to the lack of hands through which to deliver the basic necessities of life.

Our daily bread: It belongs to all of us included in the prayer. Let’s pass it on.