Difference between revisions of "Sermon for September 6th, 2015"

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Luke 11:1-4

1He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 2He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. 3Give us each day our daily bread. 4And forgive us our sins,for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.”

Matthew 6:7-13

7When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. 8Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11Give us this day our daily bread. 12And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.

Teach Us To Pray: Our Daily Bread

After watching sales drop off for three straight months at Kentucky Fried Chicken, Colonel Sanders calls up the Pope and asks for a favor. The Pope says, "What can I do?"

The Colonel says, "I need you to change the Lord's prayer from, Give us this day our daily bread to Give us this day our daily chicken. If you do it, I'll donate a million Dollars to the Vatican."

The Pope replies, "I'm sorry. That is the Lord's prayer and I cannot change the words."

So the Colonel hangs up. After another month of dismal sales, the Colonel panics, and calls again. "Listen your Excellency. I really need your help. I'll give you $10 million dollars if you change the words of the Lord's prayer from Give us this day our daily bread to Give us this day our daily chicken."

And the Pope responds, "It is very tempting, Colonel Sanders. The church could do a lot of good with that much money. It would help us support many charities. But, again, I must decline. It is the Lord's prayer, and I can't change the words."

So the Colonel gives up again. After two more months of terrible sales the Colonel gets desperate. "This is my final offer, your Excellency. If you change the words of the daily prayer from, 'Give us this day our daily bread' to 'Give us this day our daily chicken' I will donate $2 billion to the Vatican."

The Pope replies, "Let me get back to you." So the next day, the Pope calls together all of his bishops and he says, "I have some good news and I have some bad news. The good news is that KFC is going to donate $2 billion to the Vatican. The bad news is that we lost the Wonder Bread account."

My first class on my first day of seminary was a jaw-dropping, life changing experience. And it happened about 20 minutes into the class--which was New Testament Greek--when our professor put the words to the Lord's prayer (in the original Greek) up on the overhead projector. His reason for doing this was to show us just how much Greek we probably already knew and could recognize. He was right. Most of us could pick out the words for "Our Father" or "kingdom" or "heaven." And then he got to verse 11, and there was the word for "bread" and then he pointed to another big word and said what about this one? And most of us, eager and excited and quite over-confident said "Daily!" because what else could it be? We knew the Lord's prayer, after all...

Our professor said, "No, that word doesn't mean daily. Actually, no one really knows what it means. It only occurs two places in the New Testament. Once here in Matthew, and the other time in Luke's version of the Lord's prayer, same place. And this word doesn't appear in any other Greek writing from antiquity...so we really have no way of knowing what it means. Daily is just a guess, and not a very good one, since we know what the Greek word for daily is, and it's not this one." For all we know, Jesus could have said "give us this day our raisin bread."

And all of the first year seminary students left the room that day very humbled; some shaken to the core of their faith. After all, if we're wrong about this prayer we've prayed every week of our lives...what else could we be wrong about?

Many times since that day I've reflected on how grateful I am to be a Presbyterian pastor. We are one of the last remaining denominations in Christianity that requires all of its pastors to demonstrate proficiency in Biblical Greek and Hebrew before being ordained. Before seminary, I thought that was a stupid requirement and a waste of good ministry time. I don't think that anymore.

But that doesn't mean that now I know what the Bible "really" says--actually it's the opposite. I know enough to know how little all of us (Bible scholars included) really know about the Bible. In fact, I have often observed that those in our world who seem the most confident, the most certain that they have the Bible all figured out, usually are the ones who know it least, or know it only on a surface level, or only in their favorite modern English translation of it. Sadly, many of those are famous preachers and politicians.

A good education does not give you all the right answers. A good education teaches you to ask all the right questions.

Incidentally, the word that usually gets translated as "daily" (give us this day our daily bread) is, in Greek, επιούσιος. It's made up of two parts: the preposition επι (which can mean on, above, after, against, over, under, among, around, because, beside, beyond, or within) and the root word οὐσία, which means something like the English word "stuff" or "thing" or substance, essence, being. Hopefully you can see why it's a bit hard to translate.

Some early Christians translated it "Give us this day our supersubstantial bread," our "bread beyond bread" our "spiritual bread." Other early Christians took things the opposite direction "give us this day our ordinary bread" our "mundane" or "quotidian" bread. This is the path that eventually led to "routine" or "daily" bread, even though the clear word for "daily," used throughout the bible is καθ' ἡμέραν.