Hope, Bread, Persistence, and the Coming Kingdom
Each week at Hope & Bread Mission we introduce our worship portion by saying “We call ourselves Hope and Bread Church because hope and bread are two things we need every day.” Where there is hope, there can be nourishment; where there is nourishment, there will be hope, in spite of the fact that many of our Hope and Bread guests are on the edge of hopelessness. I would be, too, if I faced the obstacles, threats, and losses they face on a daily basis.
Bread is a powerful symbol in the spiritual and literary traditions of Western Europe, Russia, the Mediterranean, the United States, and Canada. Bread is a symbol of nourishment, hospitality, God’s provision, community...all the things we read about bread in the gospels all the time. Bread is all of this in our scriptures because Palestine is on the Mediterranean Sea. Its waves lap on the shores of Gaza, where there is currently no bread and fading hope. When you read about what is happening there, see the photos of starving children, it is hard to find hope where there is no nourishment.
Bread is not, however, universal. In much of the world, rice has all the same connotations as bread. In Mandarin Chinese, the question we would use to say “are you hungry?” or “have you eaten today?” translates literally: “Have you had rice today?” Rice is served with every meal and has much of the same symbolism in Asian cultures as bread does in our culture. Rice paddies are considered sacred, and prayed over as crops are prayed over throughout the world. Rice is associated with festivals honoring women and fertility. For starving people the world over, rice is often all they have to eat in a day.
In first people’s cultures through North and South America and in Mexican and Latin American culture today, corn is deeply intertwined with an understanding of the divine. The four colors of corn: black, white, yellow and red represent the four directions. Corn—most commonly in the form of tortillas—is served in almost every meal. Tortillas are round like the sun. Someone once told me that tortillas are like the sacred host of the Eucharist, and that every time we share tortillas, we make eucharist. Corn plays a role in religious festivals and is a sign of God’s fertility and abundance.
So when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, remember that bread is much more than bread. It is rice, it is corn, it is everything that reminds us of God’s presence in creation and God’s providence in our lives.
Give us this day our daily bread was a prayer for bread for the next day, and the day after that. Give us what we need on a daily basis to move through this earthly life you have given us. Not spoken here is our obligation to make sure that others have bread, as well.
When we pray “give us this day our daily bread,” who do we mean by “us” and “our”? Consider that we are praying that every person in the whole world will have enough to eat, today and tomorrow.
The parable that follows Jesus’ offering of the Lord’s prayer in this morning’s gospel helps us understand more about daily bread, even as it may be a bit difficult for us to wrap our head around.
Imagine: You’re lying asleep in bed. You and your family share a room, and no one can move without everyone being awakened. A neighbor knocks on the door because he needs some bread in the middle of the night. I don’t know about you, but over in SE Portland, the only time someone knocks on the door to my house in the middle of the night is when there is a dangerous emergency. But remember what the neighbor says: Friend, a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him. It would be unthinkable, in our world, to go to a neighbor in the middle of the night just because we have unexpected company.
In the culture in which Jesus tells this story, it would be unthinkable not to go to a neighbor in the middle of the night, in order to welcome a guest.
The one who knocks is willing to wake his neighbor, willing to risk the other’s irritation and inconvenience, for the sake of his guest. The guest in need of bread is the most important person there, and the person who is awakened in the middle of the night understands that, because, as Jesus wants to teach his disicples, hospitality was the responsibility of the whole community. This story applies to our community life, in this place and in the world. I am more and more convinced that the only way we are going to survive as a species is to understand that everyone is our neighbor; everyone is our guest. We want—to put forth our very best for our guests. Not a promise of nourishment next week or whenever it’s convenient, but when our guests arrive. Not one loaf of bread, but three. Abundant hospitality.
I imagine this parable would have emboldened the disciples for their work of going out into the world dependent only upon the hospitality of strangers. It also would strengthen their faith—our faith—in the promise of prayers answered. Again, think about whole peoples starving to death in places like Gaza, and Haiti, and South Sudan: faith and hope will come to them through people being willing to get up in the middle of the night and give them bread. Those people might only get up, like the guy in the parable, through the persistence of the person who knocks on their door. That might be you, or me. Our persistence must be fed by hope. Like pita bread, like tortillas, and like the sun for which they are shaped, hope, persistence, and bread make a circle. It is horrible right now on the other side of the world, we feel helpless and far away, and yet we must persist just as the sun persists.
We must persist in our faith in the reign of God, our faith in the world that God is ever creating, the that Jesus came to proclaim, and that we are called to show forth by our own prayers and actions. These prayers and actions start with the words we pray all the time: Thy kingdom come. Based on my understanding of the gospels, thy kingdom come is shorthand for “the reign of God in which all are welcome and all are fed, where all are forgiven and loved, the reign of God which is already among us and not yet among us, just within our reach.”
My friend Kenneth Leech, whom I have quoted before, wrote that
Christian prayer is Kingdom prayer...[it is] the stretching out of heart and mind toward...the justice and salvation of God.
This stretching of our hearts and minds toward the justice and salvation of God suggestions that we live out our prayers through actions. When we welcome the kingdom of God, we welcome a world where there is always enough bread and corn and rice, where collectively no one is hungry, literally or figuratively. We do our part to make sure this happens even when it means waking our neighbors in the middle of the night, even when it means calling our elected representatives a hundred times a day begging them to do something, or sending our next-to-last dollar to the Al Ahli Episcopal Hospital in Gaza.
Our hope and bread is at this table and in one another. Our hope and bread is in how we share hope and share bread with others. Holy God, give daily bread to all your people. Your kingdom come.