The other day Sheila baked spelt bread. For 5000 years spelt wheat has been grown and used in bread-making, and it was one of the staples of the Roman army. The recipe used was basic but with a little honey and olive oil added to it, the taste, texture, crunch....mmhmm. The smell of it baking is the unique aroma of food for the hungry, an invitation to eat and also a call to patience, waiting for it to be baked, to cool and then....then to eat it.
"Give us this day our daily bread" is one of those lines in the Lord's prayer that, for me, is a mnemonic device to make sure as I lead a congregation in saying it my mind doesn't skip a track. In the centre of a prayer about the hallowing of God's name, the coming of the Kingdom, the forgiveness of sins and scary temptations there is a loaf. God's will is done and his Kingdom comes when people have daily bread. Daily bread, a phrase that sounds straightforward in English but which translates a word used nowhere else in Greek literature. The classicists and linguists have had a field day suggesting its meaning, but the more settled view is that it means 'bread for the coming day'. So if I pray it in the morning I'm thinking of today; if I pray it at night, I'm looking to tomorrow. Either way bread enough for one day - and this prayer reflected a society in which people were paid daily. Think about it, if you're sick and can't work, how do you eat?
Which brings me to food banks, the Lord's Prayer and the feeding of the five thousand. Food Banks are both a disgrace and a place of grace. That they should exist is a scandal, that they do exist is a mercy. A Food Bank by definition is a place where food is deposited; the hungry and poor are by definition the current account holders. Scotland (or UK if preferred) is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, so the existence of Food Banks is a scandal, a disgrace the indisputable evidence of political and economic failure. It is possible for an economy to grow out of recession and be a failure, because the economy is not an entity, a person or an agent; the economy is the word we use to describe how we do things in our country. And the way we are doing things means that for many people the Lord's Prayer asks the impossible, because for those without money the daily bread isn't forthcoming in an economy that trades in money.
Jesus knew about bread, and about hunger, about the rich and the poor, the powerful and the vulnerable. "Give us this morning bread for the day...Give us tomorrow bread for the day..." The same Jesus looked on a hungry crowd and multiplied five loaves and two fishes into an ad hoc food bank. That act of extravagant mercy is defining of the church, bread for the hungry, rest for the weary, a place to sit down and be nourished, space to be human. "Jesus took bread and blessed and broke it.." and so the Eucharist was handed to the church in broken bread gratefully shared. No the church isn't a food bank, it is a mountainside with loaves and fishes; and it is a community which resists the iron systems of economic discrimination, which calls in question cash value by demonstrating the genius for generosity, which contradicts the barcode with the made marketing that tells the customers don't buy one and get one free.
And just so we are clear. Food banks are centres of hope for the hungry, places of refuge for those harassed and helpless in a society where for some folk life just doesn't work.They are, however, an embarrassment that they have to exist at all in a country where austerity has become a godless mantra. I wondered about that phrase, godless mantra, but I leave it in. The God referred to in the Lord's Prayer is self-excluded from any set of policies that make it impossible for some folk to pray with trust for that loaf, stuck in the middle of the liturgy to remind us of our humanity.The God I believe in multiplies bread, gives thanks and breaks a loaf. We don;t live by bread alone, but we won't live long without it.
And yet. As a follower of Jesus I give food to food banks, and encourage churches to have donation boxes as prominent as the offering plates.Likewise, as a follower of Jesus I am called to match compassion and generosity on the one hand with a chronic discontent with things as they are so long as they stay the way they are. So the war on benefits, the minimum wage, the myth of 'the deserving poor' as if poverty is a choice, the in-built cycles of poverty, the loneliness of those on the margins, the convenience to the economy of zero hour contracts, and a bureaucracy increasingly heartless and sanction obsessed. Alongside these I place the scorn of Amos my favourite Old Testament political radical,'You sell the poor for a pair of designer trainers...you trample the poor in the dust...you who oppress the poor and drink expensive wine...you build your businesses but you won't prosper...but let justice roll down like a river, and righteousness like a never failing stream..."
Ok. Let us pray, "Our Father,...Give us this day our daily bread, and lead us not into the temptation of thinking that food banks are unnecessary, but deliver us from the evil of putting up with dehumanising poverty for the sake of the deficit." Or words to that effect.
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