Real Bread and Real Debts In The Lord's Prayer

One of the most familiar Bible passages is the "Lord's Prayer," which occurs in both the "The Sermon On The Mount" in Matthew 6:9-13 and "the Sermon on the Plain" in Luke 11:1-4. Although it is not immediately obvious to most people who pray this prayer, economic issues are at the heart of the prayer.

Even though every Christian church uses the Lord's Prayer, following Matthew's version rather than Luke's, there are variations in the exact wording.

Some churches use the archaic English, "thy" and "thine." Protestant churches usually end the prayer with the words, "For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory." Roman Catholics do not recite this ending.

The most critical vocabulary difference is whether a church refers to "debts," "trespasses," or "sins."

The prayer Jesus taught his disciples was more than a prayer for spiritual nurture and forgiveness of sins. When he referred to daily bread and forgiveness of debts, he was referring to real bread and real economic debts.

The most basic meaning of the Greek word for "debts" is financial. This meaning is consistent with the approach of Jesus to the social and ethical injustices of his society against the poor and dispossessed. In the prayer, he makes explicit the need for real bread and for payment of debt.

The most critical element of the prayer is the reference to the Kingdom of God, which does not refer to an afterlife in Heaven. When Jesus prays, "Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven," he is expressing his belief that God will end oppression, poverty, and suffering on earth. The Kingdom of God refers to the rule of God on earth.

A prayer with the words: "Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" loses the economic foundation of the prayer when "bread" and "debt" become spiritual metaphors, with no connection to real food and economic debt.

For Jesus's audience, bread and debt were much more than metaphors. Hunger and debt were constant realities of life for an underfed, overtaxed population. Much of the misery of the peasants and beggars in Palestine resulted from debt. The peasants had to turn over much of what they grew to the king or other members of the urban elite class who claimed proprietary rights to whatever the peasants grew on the land. As a result, many of the peasant farmers were hopelessly in debt. Many of the beggars had been forced off their land by failure to pay their debts.

Jesus condemned the society, which had created such a vast gap between the haves and the have-nots. He criticized the rich for exploiting and oppressing the poor. He also criticized the religious system for judging so many groups of people in the society to be "unclean" and unworthy of God's blessing.

Jesus saw hunger, poverty, sickness, and suffering endured by most of the population. He saw how the rich landowners grew rich at the expense of the poor. He saw people who were homeless because they had been driven off their land by high rents and taxes. He saw the result of high taxes on the people who had to turn over most of what they grew, made, or caught. He also knew what it was to live under Roman occupation. Roman soldiers could force people to do whatever they wanted. He saw how the Temple system collaborated with the Roman occupiers to bleed the people of their money and their power.

It is also true that Jesus spoke Aramaic. In Aramaic, the language of "debt" and "debtors" was used regularly for "sin" and "sinners." And so in Matthew's version of the Lord's Prayer, Jesus was using both the literal and metaphorical meanings of "debts" to refer to both real money debts and sins.

In Luke, the prayer loses the double meaning of the word, "debts." Instead, Luke uses the word "sin" rather than "debt." This word choice loses the financial reality behind the metaphor and obscures the underlying concern with real bread and real debts.

If Christians want to pray as pray as Jesus intended, it is essential to recover the literal meanings of the words that have been treated as spiritual metaphors. Especially in these times, when basic staples such as wheat, rice, and corn are in short supply, prayer for daily bread is not simply a spiritual exercise. And prayer for forgiveness of debt is a reality for those facing foreclosure and bankruptcy, because they cannot pay their economic debts.

Jesus meant his words to address suffering and injustice in his own society. His prayer for bread and debts referred to real bread and forgiveness of real financial debts.

Article Source: http://www.rightarticle.com

Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D. What if much of what you were taught about Jesus and money is false? Get your copy of Going Broke With Jesus at www.GoingBrokeWithJesus.com to see how frequently Christians misunderstand what Jesus said about money.

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