Give Us This Day


    Everything before this line in the Lord’s Prayer is either an address, an identification, or a wish or desire. To whom are we praying? The Father, who has given us the grace to become his children. How can we pray to him? He is in heaven, that created “place” that he has provided so that he is accessible to us. And our first wish, our strongest desire, is that throughout the universe his Name would be hallowed and his will done.
    But now we ask. Grammatically, it is the imperative voice. Give us. Not even a “please,” not even an indirect “O that thou wouldst give us”: it’s a straightforward command. Give us this day our daily bread.
    If this were the first time you ever heard this prayer, what a shock it would be! You mean that I—we—mere human beings, creatures of this creator Father: we are just supposed to tell him what to do? We are to make demands of God?
    Yes. We are to tell him to do this: Give us this day our daily bread. Jesus has told us to pray with these words, in this way. We are the Father’s children, instructed by Jesus, commanded by Jesus, to make this command of the Father.
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    What are we asking for? Simply, it’s what we need to exist through the day that is at hand. We don’t ask for next week’s bread or for a new job next year, but rather for what we need here and now.
    I have learned that the words “our daily bread” have a resonance of the ultimate future, as if to ask for “our daily bread” is to ask to receive, now, a foretaste of the kingdom for whose coming we have already expressed our longing. In this sense, “our daily bread” may be a suggestion of the Eucharist. I have also heard that “our daily bread” could be taken as “our bread for the morrow,” which would open up the horizon slightly to include the relevant future, the future into which we are called to act.
    This line of the prayer opens us up to the dignity of our moral calling. To ask for our daily bread is to ask that God give us rightly to act this day, so that what we do may be pleasing to him and bear its proper fruit.
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    With this line, the Lord’s Prayer punctures grandiosity. It denies us our vain speculations of what great things we might do in a nebulous future that stretches before us, and it requires us to focus on the day at hand, the future that is before us right now. I may need, today, to plan for next fall’s program. I may need, today, to prepare for the baby who will be born six months from now. But what I need is not to fantasize the future but to do what must be done today.
    It’s very healthy, this focus of Jesus’ prayer. We go from the great cosmic truths about God and great cosmic aspirations for the healing of the world . . . down to the narrow focus of ourselves at this time and this place. Without hesitation, we tell God to give us exactly what we need, exactly where we are, exactly when we need it.
    Of course, we also need God to enlighten our minds so that we know what we need! Give us this day our daily bread—and give us eyes to see what it is!
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    Out & About. This Saturday and Sunday, June 15-16, I am to preach at All Souls’ Church in Oklahoma City: Saturday at 5:30 p.m., Sunday at 8 and 10 a.m.
    Sunday, June 30, I am to preach at the traditional services at Church of the Incarnation in Dallas: 7:30, 9, and 11:15 a.m.

 

 

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

Undone So Many

My host has the custom of taking his family to a cemetery on Memorial Day, so we paid a visit to the National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona, which is run by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
    Highway traffic comes to a crawl a mile or so out, and ahead one discerns a sharp row of flags lining the highway. The corner is turned, and the cemetery comes into view: a sea of individual flags, one at each grave, whipping in the strong wind. From a distance it’s a blur of pink. There is no grass but reddish gravel, and the graves are marked with uniform, bronze, rectangular stones. Only the flags rise above ground—with here and there some brave flowers, placed for the day.
    Although the stones are uniform, they have certain distinctives: many but not all with crosses, some with symbols of other faiths; some with two names, the soldier and a spouse or child; an indication of the service: navy, say, or army; Korea or World War II.
    Where we happened to stop, all the graves were of people who had died just about ten years ago, although their time of service varied.
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    My host quoted a line from T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”: “I had not thought death had undone so many.” Eliot himself was quoting Dante’s Inferno, where Dante sees the many dead, so many. There are, of course, more people on the other side of death than on this side, but that is a perspective that takes work to achieve. And an ordinary cemetery, with a variety of stones and periods, with hills and corners, with toppling old monuments and shiny new ones—such a cemetery does not convey the immensity of death as does a military one. Looking at thousands (it must have been) of identical flags, the simple geometry, the uniform spacing, the gravel, extending beyond one’s vision—and thinking, too, that all these people were united in the same purpose (the military): here was a transcendence of individuality that honored the individuals. They had their names; they had played their part; they had put precisely themselves at the service of something larger than themselves.
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    And so it is with the church. It is not “militaristic” to recognize that, in the church, we are lifted up into a cause that is greater than ourselves; that we are to give our own lives, it may be, that others may live; that we find our selves when we give up our selves. In the traditional burial office there was no place for a eulogy, but only for the name of the departed. His or her identity was taken up into Christ.
    There we place our death: there we place our life: there, where uncounted and unimaginable legions have preceded us.
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    Out & About. Coming soon: the next “Good Books & Good Talk” seminar, on The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery: Sunday, June 9, at Church of the Incarnation in Dallas, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Anyone who reads it is welcome.
    Monday, June 10, at the Ginger Man pub in Dallas, Dr. Elisabeth Kincaid and I will talk about justice, crime, and the death penalty. Elisabeth is the new ethics professor at Nashotah House. I am looking forward to our public conversation. We begin at 7 p.m., but those who wish can arrive early and order.
    Saturday and Sunday, June 15-16, I am to preach at All Souls’ Church in Oklahoma City: Saturday at 5:30 p.m., Sunday at 8 and 10 a.m.

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with
Tags: the episcopal church, victor austin, diary of a theologian, the episcopal diocese of dallas

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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: 

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