Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
March 4 2018 - 3rd Sunday
in Lent
'Give us this day our daily bread.'
Exodus 16.1-12
Deuteronomy 8.2-3
Matthew
4:1-4
How were
you affected, I wonder,
by the great ‘Kentucky Fried Chicken
Crisis’ of February 2018.
Do you even
know what I’m talking about???
Some do… Some don’t…
OK, well to
bring you up to speed, KFC,
(and may God Bless the Colonel’s
unique blend of 11 herbs and spices),
decided to switch their delivery
company
from a specialist food
transport company to DHL,
well known to most of us for the
little cards they pop through our letterboxes
telling us they’ve tried, and
failed, to deliver something.
As you may
have guessed by now, things didn’t go quite according to plan,
and KFC shops started running out of
chicken;
which, considering it’s basically
all they sell,
meant that they closed their doors.
At the
height of the drama, a couple of weeks ago,
about two thirds of KFC outlets were
closed.
Apparently,
according to the Daily Mail,
‘Panicked customers resorted to
calling the police’
because they feared they might lose
out on their ‘Daily Bird’.[1]
Well, so
far, so ridiculous.
However, if
you happened to be one of the zero hours contracted employees
of a KFC franchise that was forced
to close,
things were rather less amusing.
The gig
economy of hand-to-mouth employment,
exemplified by organisations such as
Uber and Deliveroo,
means that that if you don’t work,
you don’t get paid.
And an
estimated 10% of the KFC workforce lost out
on their expected earnings that
week,
while many
others were required to take annual leave to cover the closure.[2]
It is very
likely, given the demographic
of your typical worker in a fast
food restaurant,
that people went hungry as a result
of this fiasco.
And it is
in this context of tenuous employment and uncertain income
that I want us to encounter our
passage for this morning from the Lord’s Prayer.
‘Give us this day our daily bread’.
The daily
reality for many people in our city,
and indeed for many of those who
pass through the doors of this church,
is that the
prayer for daily bread has a level of anxiety to it
that is easily lost on those of us
who have enough resources in hand
to feed ourselves for the
foreseeable future.
This is not
easily a middle-class prayer.
And for
many of those in First Century Palestine,
to whom Jesus first taught this
prayer,
uncertainty
about their future ability to feed themselves
was a part of their day by day
existence.
It was only
the rich and the wealthy in Jewish society
whose future was assured.
For everyone
else, the only certainties were death and Roman taxes.
There was
no welfare state, no minimum wage, certainly no Living Wage;
there was no trades union movement,
no standardized terms and conditions
of employment.
If you got
ill, or lost your job,
the step from feeding your family to
destitution was a startlingly small one.
And it was
to disciples facing uncertain futures that Jesus taught the prayer:
‘Give us, this day, our daily bread’.
There is an
urgent simplicity to it when it’s heard in a subsistence context,
and I wonder if this is where it’s
first challenge to us,
in all the complexities
of our metropolitan lives,
might come from.
We live in
a society, and a city, of huge disparities of income and security.
Some of us struggle not to eat too much,
while others of us
struggle to know where our next meal is coming from.
Some of us struggle to know how to
wisely invest our resources,
rightly asking ethical
questions of our bankers and pension funds;
while others don’t have enough
income for even today’s needs
let alone the needs of
an imagined future retirement.
So what
does the stark simplicity of a prayer for daily bread,
say to a city where investment banks
and food banks sit side by side?
Well, to
me, it says that something has gone wrong.
But first,
the middle class caveat:
I don’t think there’s anything
inherently wrong
with having enough
resources in hand for the future
as well as for today.
It seems
prudent to me that we should, if we are able,
plan for our retirements,
and ensure the future wellbeing of
our loved ones.
The honest
and earnest prayer for the needs of today
does not negate the honest and
earnest planning for the needs of tomorrow.
However, it
might challenge us to consider
whether we have become guilty of the
sin of excess,
and it
might call us to review once again our own priorities,
and it might ask us to ensure that
we don’t neglect the needs
of those who are less well off than
we are.
But beyond
the individual challenge,
I wonder if the simplicity of the
prayer for daily bread
might ask
more wide-ranging questions
of the attitudes and practices
which drive so much of the economics
of our world.
And here,
for a moment, I want us to consider
the current dominant economic system
known as global capitalism.
The impact
of the internet-driven information revolution
on the centuries-old system of
capitalism
has been profound,
and the basis on which international
trade occurs has shifted.
We used to
have a world economy,
with countries linked via trade
agreements
such as the one we may
or may not have with Europe post-Brexit.
However, I
have a suspicion that all the wrangling
over trade and customs unions
is a bit like shutting the door once
the horse has bolted,
because
nations are now linked financially at far more organic levels
through the transnationalism of
production processes,
through the internationalization of
the finance markets,
and through the global accumulation
of capital.[3]
Even
so-called ‘closed’ countries are unable to opt out fully,
and no nation can exist immune
from the social,
political, and cultural impacts of global capitalism.
This
creates a largely unregulated context
for global inequality, domination,
and exploitation.
The upshot
of which is that if you want to solve hunger or poverty in one nation,
you immediately find yourself doing
battle
with global powers of
oppression
that will always act in the self
interests of the global elite who constructed them,
to the disadvantage of
the global poor.
And so,
worldwide, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Last year,
the nine richest men in the world
held more wealth than the poorest 4
billion people,
and most of
those men are rich
because they own the companies that
control international trade.
The richest
person on that list is Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon;
who are of course well known for
their excellent employment practices
and scrupulous corporate tax
payments.[4]
These
systems that we have created
are highly sophisticated in their
mechanisms,
but surprisingly simple in their
objectives.
They exist
to make money, to acquire wealth, to generate profit.
And because
one person’s profit is always another person’s loss,
they therefore also exist
to impoverish, exploit, and
dominate.
Unchecked
and unchallenged,
global capitalism causes vast
suffering across the world,
and to colludes in ecological
destruction on an unprecedented scale.
So where,
we might ask, will the challenge come from?
Well, I
want to suggest that it’s here,
in our little verse from the Lord’s
Prayer:
‘Give us this day our daily bread.’
Do you know
the parable of the fisherman?
The rich
industrialist from was horrified
to find the fisherman lying lazily
beside his boat, smoking a pipe.
"Why aren't you out fishing?" said
the industrialist.
"Because
I have caught enough fish for the day," said the fisherman.
"Why don't you catch some more?"
asked the industrialist.
"What
would I do with it?" replied the fisherman
"You could earn more money" was the
reply.
"With
that you could have a motor fixed to your boat
and
go into deeper waters and catch more fish.
"Then you would make enough to buy nylon
nets.
These
would bring you more fish and more money.
Soon you would have enough money to own two
boats . . . maybe even a fleet of boats.
Then
you would be a rich man like me."
"What
would I do then?" asked the fisherman.
"The you could really enjoy life."
came the reply.
“And what”,
said the fisherman, “do you think I am doing right now?"[5]
The
challenge is clear:
what if we focus not on what we
could acquire,
but simply on what we need?
What if we
were to decide, personally and communally,
that enough is just that, enough?
Firstly, it
would release resources for others,
but also it would begin to release
us
from the continual pressure to
acquire wealth, status, and success.
If we ask
for, and receive, our daily bread,
then we have enough for today.
This was
the lesson that the Israelites had to learn
in the story of the manna in the
wilderness,
which is clearly in the background
to Jesus’ words in his prayer.
If they
collected too much, and tried to keep more than they needed,
it went rotten by the next day,
except on the sixth day
when they had to collect enough for two days,
so they could rest from
their labour on the seventh day.
And what
if, rather than worrying about the question
of what this mysterious manna
actually was,
we simply take
this ancient story at face value
as a parable of idealized economics?
Here we
have a story, much like the parable of the fisherman,
which speaks of simple living,
where enough is enough,
where unnecessary
accumulation is pointless,
where rest is
sanctified,
and where people can be
content
and stop
complaining about their lot in life
because they
simply have enough.
Of course,
the question of ‘how much is enough?’
is always going to rear its head,
and be open to interpretation and,
dare I say it, abuse.
The
teaching you meet in some churches,
often known as the Prosperity
Gospel,
says that wealth is a sign of God’s
blessing;
and one of
its most well known proponents,
the preposterously prosperous pastor
Benny Hinn,
has been in the news
this last week,
having apparently decided that,
even for someone whose
whole career has been built around prosperity,
sometimes enough is
enough.
In an
interview reflecting on the ministry of Billy Graham,
Hinn acknowledges that he has been
guilty of taking prosperity teaching
a bit beyond what the
Bible teaches.[6]
Which may possibly be the
understatement of the century.
Anyway,
Hinn has now apparently given up his private jet, poor chap.
But I do
think the question
of what we think we’re asking for
when we pray for our
daily bread
is an important one.
Is it just
a prayer for food,
or is it for shelter, warmth,
security,
love,
self-determination, mobility,
a car, a
private jet…?
Where do we
draw the line?
Studies
have shown that there comes a point,
and it is lower than you would
think,
beyond which additional wealth does
not lead to additional happiness.[7]
The
temptation to excess is ever before us,
just as it was before Jesus in his
own experience in the wilderness.
He didn’t
wake up every morning of his 40 day Lenten fast in the desert
to find fresh manna waiting for him.
He starved.
And then he was tempted to use his
divine power
to command stones to
become bread for him to eat;
and in his reply to the tempter he
quoted words from Deuteronomy,
originally written to
reflect on the Israelite experience
of their 40 years
wandering in the wilderness:
This
passage Jesus quotes
tells us that the lesson of the
daily manna from heaven
is not that God meets all your needs
and invites you to a life of luxury;
but rather
it is that abundant life
is not found in the abundance of a
person’s possessions,
or even in the abundance
of the food they consume,
but in obedience to every word that
comes from the mouth of God.
The
discipline of praying, each day, for daily bread
is not some ritual to get God to
give us what we think we need;
as I said a
couple of weeks ago,
that kind of prayer has more in
common with magical incantations
than it does the articulations of
the longings of a humble heart.
No, we pray
for daily bread
for the same reasons the Israelites
gathered manna,
to learn
obedience to God who guides us
into works of goodness, humility,
and charity.
The prayer
for daily bread, you see, is not about me, or even about us,
lest we think that God especially
favours us
by answering our cry for
food.
It’s a prayer
that takes us into solidarity with those who lack,
and which drives us into action to
see the hungry fed,
the poor raised up,
and the impoverished
released from the snares of debt.
It is a
prayer that takes us into good works of transformative charity.
It certainly did for the early
Christians,
as the book of James makes clear:
James
2:15-17 If a brother or sister is naked and lacks
daily food, 16
and one of you says to them,
"Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,"
and yet you do not supply their
bodily needs, what is the good of that? 17
So faith by
itself, if it has no works, is dead.
And
similarly in the book of Acts we read:
Acts 6:1
Now during those days, when the disciples were
increasing in number,
the Hellenists complained against
the Hebrews
because their widows were being
neglected
in the daily distribution of food.
And I wonder, in our complex, interconnected, globalised
capitalist world,
what such
good works might look like for us?
I said a couple of weeks ago that we are called, as God’s
adopted children,
to mirror
his likeness through doing good works.
So what would it look like if our commitment to good works
led us to a
commitment to good work,
where we become advocates for good employment practices
where
people are paid a fair living wage,
and receive
paid holiday, sickness benefits, and maternity cover?
What would it look like for our prayer for daily bread
to include
a commitment to alleviating food poverty?
I increasingly find myself drawn to the idea of a universal
basic income
in place of
the current cruelties of our social security system,
which would mean that every individual would get a basic income,
sufficient
to live with dignity, and unconditionally,
even when
they are not working.
The hungry in our city are not primarily those we see
begging on the streets.
These may
be the most visible,
but
as we have heard recently there are a variety of places
you
can go for daily food if you are street homeless.
The vast majority of those who are malnourished in our city
are in flats,
in blocks
like the tragic Grenfell Tower,
and they include children and the elderly,
and parents
skipping meals so their families can eat.
And what, I wonder, does a prayer for daily bread mean to
them?
And how
might we be part of the answer to that prayer?
And so we
come to the Communion table,
and all of the various themes that I’ve
been holding before us
coalesce around the bread before us
today.
The first
Lord’s supper was the celebration of the Passover meal.
The story of the manna was there
before the disciples
that evening in the
upper room;
and Jesus, while they were eating,
took a loaf of bread,
and after blessing it he
broke it, gave it to the disciples,
and said, "Take,
eat; this is my body." (Matthew
26.26).
Elsewhere,
in John’s gospel,
we read that Jesus described himself
as the bread of life,
saying that whoever comes to him
will never by hungry (John 6.35).
And in
Paul’s story of the Lord’s supper in his letter to the Corinthians,
he records Jesus as saying that
‘as often as you eat this bread and
drink this cup,
you proclaim the Lord’s
death until he comes’ (1 Cor. 11.26).
This is the
meal of sharing,
it is the meal of accountability,
the meal of sacrifice,
the meal of abundance,
the meal of life.
And it is
as we share this bread,
that we will find the answer to our
prayer for daily bread
taking shape in our
lives and in our midst.
It is as we
share this bread
that we discover together what it is
to be obedient
to every word that comes from the
mouth of God.
It is as we
eat bread together, that we find ourselves motivated
to good works in our world,
to share with those who have less
than we do,
to lift up those who are weighed
down by poverty,
and to offer all that we have to the
service of the one
who calls us to newness
of life.
It is not a
coincidence that our cash offering at Communion services
is dedicated to the hardship fund of
the church,
for the direct
alleviation of financial difficulty.
And of
course, because we live in a complex world,
if you want to give to the hardship
fund in a more structured way,
you can do so by filling out a gift
aid form if you’re a tax payer,
or by designating some of your
standing order to the Fund.
But in any
case, the Hardship fund is just an expression
of who we are when we gather around
the table,
to break
bread, to eat together,
and to pray once again the prayer
that Jesus taught his disciples to pray.
Our father
in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your
kingdom come, your will be done
on earth as
in heaven.
Give us
today our daily bread.
Amen
[1]
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5412007/KFC-crisis-700-870-UK-eateries-shut.html
[2]
https://news.finance.co.uk/one-10-kfc-employees-worse-off-chicken-delivery-crisis/
[3]
http://www.worldfinancialreview.com/?p=1799
[4]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/richest-billionaires-combined-wealth-jeff-bezos-bill-gates-warren-buffett-mark-zuckerberg-carlos-a8163621.html
[5]
http://anthony-de-mello.blogspot.co.uk/2007/09/contented-fisherman.html
[6]
https://relevantmagazine.com/god/benny-hinn-says-hes-guilty-taking-prosperity-gospel-outside-bible-teaches/
[7]
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/money-happiness-how-much-earnings-income-needed-study-perdue-university-indiana-gallup-world-poll-a8218086.html
