FREE ESSAY ON OVER AND UNDERFAMILIARITY WITH MATTHEW

OVER AND UNDERFAMILIARITY WITH MATTHEW

Over and Underfamiliarity with Matthew 6:11
Hearing something repeatedly can diminish its significance. I suspect
that this is particularly true of Scripture. Overfamiliarity with a
biblical passage can contribute to its misunderstanding. Sometimes it
can reduce a profound saying to nothing more than a cliche.
The Lord's Prayer (Mt. 6:9-13) ranks among the most popular passages in
the New Testament. Most people who regularly attend a church can recite
it from memory. It is a prayer that we have heard and said many times.
One of the more memorable lines of the prayer is Give us this day our
daily bread (Mt. 6:11). Let us pause for a moment and consider this
entreaty phrase by phrase.
The line begins with the blunt imperative, Give us! This is a curious
manner in which to address God. I have heard parents scold a spoiled
child for using similar language.*
The middle phrase is this day. I suppose that Jesus intended for his
disciples to say this prayer each morning, as they looked forward to
God's provision throughout the day.**
The third and final phrase is our daily bread, which seems simply to
mean the necessary portion of food that a disciple needed to sustain him
or herself. Apparently, Jesus taught his disciples to expect that God
would meet their fundamental needs day by day.
For the majority of Christians who live in Western Europe, North
America, and other prosperous areas, Give us this day our daily bread
has little relevance. As audacious as this assertion may be, it can be
easily verified: simply go to the nearest refrigerator and take
inventory of its contents. This line of the prayer is largely irrelevant
for me, too. My kitchen contains ample food for at least a week.
Unfamiliarity with Jesus' social and religious environment can also
muffle the significance of his words. Give us this day our daily bread
makes excellent sense within the rich conceptual world of late Second
Temple-period Judaism. More specifically, this imperative aimed at God
belongs to the culture of what would be called at a later time _talmud
Torah_ (the joining of oneself to a sage in order to learn Torah from
him).
Jesus gathered disciples around himself like the tannaic rabbis would
continue to do in the second century A.D. Jesus' agenda, however, was
distinctive in that it centered on the Kingdom of Heaven. His agenda was
firmly rooted in Israel's Torah. He never dishonored nor violated it,***
but in focusing upon God's Kingdom he stretched its parameters.
Jesus' demands for entering the Kingdom of Heaven were high. Among them
was a readiness to leave family, property and careers (cf. Lk. 5:11, 28;
14:25-33; 18:22). After a person joined Jesus' band of disciples, the
demands for remaining at the center of God's Kingdom remained high.
Give us this day our daily bread resonates with the values and
priorities of this cultural context. Jesus expected his followers to
make moving with God's redemptive activity their priority. Once
committed to this program, they had no reason to worry about their basic
necessities -- food, clothing and shelter. God would take care of these.
Jesus reiterated similar ideas on other occasions. Just before sending
out his disciples two by two, he said: The harvest is plentiful, but
the laborers are few…Go your way…Carry no purse, no bag, no
sandals…Whenever you enter a town and they receive you…heal the sick in
it and say to them, 'The Kingdom of God has come near to you' (Lk.
10:2-9). As the conclusion for a short homily on anxiety, he exhorted
his audience, Seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness, and all
these things will be added to you. So, do not worry about tomorrow…The
day's troubles will take care of themselves (Mt. 6:33-34). (These
things refers to food, drink and clothing.)
These sayings of Jesus were apparently not intended as hyperbole or
metaphor. Jesus said what he meant. Our hectic lifestyles and the
prosperity and materialism of modern, Western society make them,
however, difficult to accept. When a sprawling food market is just
minutes away by foot, and fewer by car, Give us our daily bread
resists a literal interpretation. Nevertheless, despite the difficult
choices of re-ordering priorities and re-building the marco-structure of
a lifestyle -- which are often necessary for entering the Kingdom of
Heaven -- tremendous liberty and privilege accrue to those who make
them. They may confidently pursue a life full of assisting those in
need: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, educating the unlearned,
visiting those in prison and hospital, caring for the forgotten, and
praying for the sick. Such a program can be pursued without the
financial backing of a charitable organization or church. It requires
only the vision, tenacity and fortitude to pray Give me this day my
daily bread! 
________________
*Note the Parable of the Spoiled Son in Joseph Frankovic's The Power of
Parables, Jerusalem Perspective 48 (Jul.-Sept. 1995), p. 11, and Brad
Young's Jesus and His Jewish Parables (Tulsa, OK: Gospel Research
Foundation, 1989), pp. 86-88.
**Compare Matthew 6:11 to its Lukan parallel: Give us each day our
daily bread. Apparently, even Luke struggled with the radical
implications of Jesus' instructions to pray Give us this day our daily
bread. See David Flusser, Hillel and Jesus: Two Ways of
Self-Awareness in _Hillel and Jesus: Comparisons of Two Major Religious
Leaders_, eds. James Charlesworth and Loren Johns (Minneapolis, MN:
Fortress Press, 1997), p. 72.
***This remark is based upon the portrait of Jesus that emerges from the
Synoptic Gospels. A different portrait of Jesus' attitude toward Torah
emerges from John's Gospel. (Compare Jn. 5:10; 8:17; 9:14.)