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On Mammon and Manna
Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis February 27, 2005, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Exodus 16:1-21 Matthew 6:19-34
“We do not, indeed, bid farewell to God’s glory,” notes John Calvin, as we turn from God’s name, kingdom and will to the fourth petition. Now, says Calvin of our asking for daily bread, “God allows us to look after our own interests yet under this limitation: that we seek nothing for ourselves without the intention that whatever benefits God confers upon us may show forth God’s glory, for nothing is more fitting than that we live and die to God.” The interests Calvin refers to, lest we forget, are not private interests. As we did not pray “My Father,” so we dare not ask God to “Give me this day my daily bread.” Rather the five first person plural and possessive pronouns scattered throughout these next petitions presume we beseech God expansively, on behalf of the world God so loved. Bread for myself is a material matter, said Nicholas Berdyaev. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual matter. That noted, Calvin cautions us in prayer to look after these interests and needs within limits. “You may eat,” says God in the beginning, “from every tree of the garden but one.” The permission to ask after our own interests, according to Calvin, for the sake of God’s glory, was corrupted, according to Calvin’s heirs, and taken originally by humanity as license to live with no need of God. So our sin, our self-seeking desires, and our living and dying to other lords came to preoccupy later Calvinists in their interpretation of this petition. “What do we pray for in the fourth petition?” asked the Westminster Divines. “In the fourth petition,” roars back the answer, “acknowledging that in Adam, and by our own sin, we have forfeited our right to all the outward blessings of this life, and deserve to be wholly deprived of them by God, and to have them cursed to us in the use of them, and that neither they of themselves are able to sustain us, nor we to merit or by our own industry to procure them, but prone to desire, get, and use them unlawfully: [given all this] we pray for ourselves and others, that both they and we, waiting upon the providence of God from day to day in the use of lawful means, of his free gift, and as to his fatherly wisdom shall seem best, enjoy a competent portion of them…and comfortable use of them, and contentment in them; and be kept from all things that are contrary to our temporal support and comfort.” Phew! Luther, on the other hand, found first not judgment but delight in the petition, letting the prayer for daily bread open a veritable floodgate of human needs. “For example,” he begins, enumerating with many words all the needs of our body and our life on earth, “we might ask God to give us food and drink, clothing, house, home and a sound body; to cause the grain and fruits of the field to grow and yield richly; to help us manage our household well and give and preserve to us a good wife, children, servants; to cause our work, craft, or occupation, whatever it may be, to prosper and succeed; to grant us faithful neighbors and good friends, etc.” The etc. included in the next sentence, by the way, victory over the Turks! In sum, we should pray like this, he says, because “it is good to impress upon the common people that these things come from God and that we must pray for them.” How between the humorless caution of our Calvinist forbearers [caricatured in Babette’s Feast, by pious Christians huddled in a cold, plain sanctuary praying that they not enjoy the sumptuous lottery-funded feast afforded them by their village’s French interloper] and the consumptive excesses mistaken for blessings bestowed from on high by the gods of civil religion [caricatured by star-spangled evangelists saying grace over the pious princes of economic privilege]: how do we ask in truth this day for our daily bread? If we return to the original definition of the word “bread”, we find that it meant “piece, bit, frustrum [Latin for fragment]” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Give us this day our fragment of bread—not even the whole loaf! Surely Jesus had in mind the manna that rained down from heaven when he twice referenced the day and the day-by-day-ness of the bread for which we may pray. “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt,” the hungry Israelites murmured in the wilderness of Sin. When last they remembered eating their fill of bread, they were slaves literally (as we are unconsciously) to the earthly lords from whom all blessings trickle down. Fifteen days into the wilderness, Moses had nothing tangible to give them…had only the God of Abraham, the God who provides, to call upon. While they were still complaining and before any could ask, God causes bread from heaven to fall to earth: “In the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.” But the bread was theirs, as Calvin said, within limits: they were to gather only enough for the day, trusting God to give them bread again tomorrow. They were a people living and dying to God alone day by day. Some translations of the fourth petition read, “Give us this day the bread for the coming day.” If they instead stored up the fragments or hoarded leftovers for themselves, the bread bred worms and became foul. Manna, it was called, which literally translated means “what is it?” A mystery! God’s providence is a mystery! So too in Matthew’s feeding of the five thousand, Jesus holds up the fragments to heaven and bread enough is given for the day. Spare me sermons insisting a little boy inspired the crowd to share, credit thus given to our generosity: the glory is God’s alone, who provides bread in this Matthean midrash just as God provided manna in the wilderness of Exodus 16. The bread for which we may pray seems to be given in this way, given such that those who receive put their trust, day by day, not in the princes of this earth, not the priests of the present order, not in their own righteousness, but in God alone. Of course by the time the Lord’s Prayer is translated into Anglo-Saxon, the fragments, the panis of Latin, has become hlaf from which the word loaf comes: Give us this day our daily loaf; then soon the meaning is “Give us a whole meal” (we break bread together and so share a meal); and finally, dropping all pretense we demand: “Hey man, give me some bread!” Therefore entrepreneurial preachers and parishioners alike pray with the abandon of a post-modern Martin Luther: Give us this day, for Christ’s sake, our better way of life, fine cars, designer homes, DVDs, HDTVs, IPods, tax shelters, inherited wealth, as well as victory over the enemy de jour! “But I need one,” our children plead as though their reputation and happiness depended upon it. They have come by this interpretation of the fourth petition honestly, we must confess. Perhaps the Westminster Divines had a point worth making. For even though Luther reminds us to delight in the blessings bestowed upon our need and might be a better guide to the fourth petition in the third world, the Calvinist’s harsh catechism tells us the truth we already know from out of this present wilderness so barren in its abundance: that the outward blessings in life are cursed to us in our use of them and of themselves are unable to sustain us. We have prayed for manna and instead hoarded the gifts given which, once possessed, breed worms and turn foul. Our pleasure is short-lived (on to the next gadget), our security a sham (give to the poor when we will need every penny for our own retirement?), our trust is so completely misplaced that we can no longer discern truth from propaganda. Having quit any trust in the God who provides for our needs day by day, to paraphrase one theologian, the power of our accumulated resources, the means which are supposed to guarantee and secure our lives, become an end to be served with “its own weight, majesty and worth, the great or little barns, with the great or little [wealth] stored up in them for the future.” Instead of securing our lives, even our little wealth in our little barns profoundly disturbs us because “it promises, but only promises, that [we] may be of rest and of good courage.” Can we trust its promises? Do we really own what we have or is it the case that, for a very long time, our possessions have owned us? And since they might slip out of our grasp, should we not strengthen and consolidate the security they seem to offer by adding to them more and more? Finally it begins to dawn on us: if these resources are to serve us we must serve them! Thus, say the theologians, mammon is born. “It mounts its throne. The worship of it begins, whether wittingly or unwittingly, openly or discreetly, cheerfully or sighingly.” I think it no coincidence that Matthew—tracing the second exodus from sin over the first from slavery in this midrash on the mount--places Jesus’ teaching of the Lord’s Prayer in the same chapter with Christ’s warning against storing up treasures where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal: “No one can serve two masters,” he says as if to sum it up, “for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon,” King James once told us. And in case we missed the meaning, the new revised committee writes: You cannot serve God and wealth. And lest we misunderstand, the Westminster Catechism’s answer to the 193rd question concerning the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer is there to teach us that since Adam we have forfeited our rights to all the outward blessings of this life and deserve to be wholly deprived of them! What, then, to do? For God knows we would do anything not to be anxious about what we are to eat or drink, about the clothes we are to wear, the mortgages we have to pay, the tuition looming ahead, the retirement that seems anything but secure. We would do anything, it seems, anything but let go our stuff and trust, really trust God—who knows better than we what we need—trust God alone to provide. Trust, of course, begins with a relationship…and a relationship begins with a conversation…and a conversation begins with a word. God has first spoken the one Word to us in Jesus Christ; now we need only begin to speak back. Pray, say the Westminster Divines, for ourselves and others, that both they and we, waiting upon the providence of God from day to day may enjoy a competent portion and comfortable use and contentment in God’s blessings. How, we ask again like those gathered around him on the hillside? Pray, says Jesus, like this: Give us this day our daily bread. |