Thanksgiving Eve
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church
November 26, 2014
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever. Amen.
MATTHEW 6:9a,11. (NIV84)
“This, then, is how you should pray: ‘… Give us today our daily bread.’”
To judge by the decorations and meals and even many, if not most, of the hymns labeled
as “Thanksgiving” hymns, the festival of Thanksgiving is focused on physical blessings. When I
was looking through a book of Scripture texts for Thanksgiving reading suggestions, the
Thanksgiving section was called “Thanksgiving and Harvest Home” - essentially identifying
Thanksgiving as a harvest festival.
The Thanksgiving festival proclamation which put this holiday on our calendars was
issued by Secretary of State William H. Seward on behalf of President Abraham Lincoln in 1863.
Among the reasons for the new festival, he lists fruitful fields, healthful skies, peace with foreign
nations, law and order, territorial expansion, abundant yields from the mines, and increasing
population in spite of the Civil War. In other words, it was instituted as a festival of thanksgiving
for physical blessings.
But since even Secretary of State William H. Seward directed the thanksgiving of the
American people to “our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens,” we do well on this
Thanksgiving festival to put all of these physical blessings into God’s own perspective. I can
think of few better ways to do that than to consider the petition in the prayer that our Savior
taught us that has to do with physical blessings, the Fourth Petition: “Give us this day our daily
bread.”
In order to consider this petition rightly, I hope you will permit me to share with you the
Greek word order of this petition, which is important.
All the other petitions in St. Matthew’s original Greek begin with the verb. If we were to
say them in English, they would go: “Let be hallowed your name, let come your kingdom, let be
done your will… And forgive us our trespasses… And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver
us from evil.” The verb always comes first.
Except here in the Fourth Petition. Here it does not. Here the object comes first and the
verb is put near the end. The first two words of this petition in Greek are: The bread.
The first word is not the verb, the first words are “The bread,” because the verb is “give,”
and we humans get excited when we get to begin a sentence with the word “Give.”
Toddlers who can’t speak still know how to say this word in sign language. They reach
across the table for what they want and make a grabbing motion, as if to say, “Give me cake.”
Little children fight with each other, tugging back and forth on toys, saying, “Give me
that!”
Older children look over the shoulder of their friends as they’re playing a video game and
say, “C’mon, give me a turn now.”
When parents ask their teenage children what they want for Christmas, they have no
problems expressing themselves. “Give me an iPhone.” “Give me an Xbox 360.”
Adults love to say, “Give me a break.” They love to say it to their bosses, though often
not in their bosses’ presence, or to say it to God when they see even more snow falling.
I played Bingo with a shut-in and all the other people gathered in the kitchen of that
assisted living home the other day, and whoever won each round got a choice between various
Christmas decorations and $0.50. When one older gentleman won and the moderator asked him
what he wanted, he didn’t have any problem getting the words out. He said, “Give me the cash.”
God doesn’t want us to get excited in a selfish way when praying to him about physical
blessings, so before we say, “Give,” he wants us to know what we should be asking him to give
us. He wants us to ask him for “the bread.”
How many of you have that at the top of your “I Want” list? Plain old, boring, ordinary
bread? Yet that is the only physical blessing that Jesus tells us to pray for.
Of course, he not does mean that we should only ask God for that mixture of flour, yeast,
butter, salt, and water that gives us a rectangular loaf thing to set down in the middle of our table.
But bread is a staple, a necessity. We need bread to live. So Jesus is telling us to ask God for the
things that we need.
In his Large Catechism, Luther lists some of these necessities: food and drink, clothing,
house and home, a healthy body, good harvests, a good spouse, good children, good workers,
successful occupation, good neighbors, and good friends, wisdom, strength, law and order,
victory over enemies, good weather, and protection from physical evils and disasters. But of
course these are not all necessities to the same degree, and so by simply saying to God, “God,
give us the bread,” we are leaving it to him to determine exactly what things we absolutely need
and in what measure we need them.
Now it isn’t that God does not want us to ask for extra, or that he does not want us to
thank him for all the extra blessings he gives us on top of our necessities. But the fact that Jesus
does not include them in this prayer and that he tells us, “This is how you should pray” - doesn’t
that indicate to us how we should feel if God takes the extra stuff away from us? If you had a
mansion last year, but a mobile home this year, should your prayers be filled with any less joy? If
you had 500 friends last year, but only 5 friends this year, should your thanksgiving be dimmed
even a bit? If the doctor gave you a clean bill of health last year but diagnosed you with a
terminal illness this year, have you lost “the bread”?
When our regular petition is, “Give us the bread,” we will always have reason to be glad
and give thanks.
Then Jesus gives us two modifiers for “the bread.” He calls it “the bread of us” or “our
bread,” which we’ll talk about in a bit, and he calls it “the bread of us which is needful or for the
current day.” That Greek word which is translated in our common Lord’s Prayer as “daily” only
occurs here in this prayer in all of the Greek literature that we possess. It very well could be that
Jesus made up the word just for this prayer. Some interpreters translate it needful and others
translate it for the current day or daily.
Either way, the point is clear, right? Jesus is first of all telling us to ask him only for
bread, only for necessities, and secondly, he is telling us not to ask for them in abundance. We
are not asking for so much bread that we have to throw away five loaves after every meal. We are
not asking for so much money that we can afford to throw some stacks in the furnace to
supplement the fire. We are asking just for what we need, and just enough of it.
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Now finally comes the verb: “The bread of us which is needful give.” But as in all the
examples I mentioned before, whenever we use this word we so often love to follow it with the
word me, so much so that we have actually invented one new English word out of the two Gimme. So Jesus, in order to guard us from selfishness and to encourage us in love, teaches us to
pray, “Give us,” and to ask God to give us “the bread of us, our bread.”
This means that we are just as much concerned about others, especially about our fellow
believers who also address God as “Father” with us, as we are about ourselves.
Do we reflect that in our prayer life? Do we even reflect that on Thanksgiving? When we
gather around the turkey and say the table blessing before digging in, do we thank God just for
the food in front of us, our family, and the many blessings he has showered on our household, or
do we remember also to thank him for the blessings he gives to our other fellow believers? If we
did that regularly, we would not begrudge them anything they have, and we also would still find
plenty of reasons to be happy in the lives of others if God in his wisdom takes things away from
us.
And let’s return to that verb give for a moment. Isn’t it amazing that Jesus teaches us
simply to pray to God the Father, “Give us”? Not, “Please give us”? In some languages like
German, there is an informal command, Gib, “Give,” and there is a formal or polite command,
Geben Sie, “Give, sir,” or, “Give, if you would.” But Jesus does not invent a polite form of the
Greek word for give. It’s just plain old give, just the same as if we were ordering a maid around.
Have you ever stopped to think about why we have good manners? Why we say
“please”? It’s because we consider it rude simply to tell someone else to do what we want,
because we assume that others are not naturally inclined to elevate what we want over what they
want. So we consider it polite to coax them into it with good manners. “Please pass me the salt.”
But in this case we don’t have to do that with God, because he has no qualms about
fulfilling this request for us. He wants to give us what we need. He is chomping at the bit to give
us what we need. It’s like God has stooped to become a waiter who comes out to our table and
gives us a menu of things he knows we need and then stands there shaking with excitement
waiting for us to place our order. “Give us everything you have here on this menu,” we pray in
this prayer. “Yes, sir!” God says, and off he goes.
Finally we pray, “The bread of us which is needful give to us today.” Not just necessities,
and not just necessities that are just enough, but necessities that are just enough just for today.
What is the implication? The implication is that we have no worry about tomorrow or the
future, because we know we have a gracious God who cares for us and already has the future in
his keeping.
And the implication is that we will be ready and eager to pray to him again tomorrow for
the same thing, needful bread, and that he will once again be ready and eager to hear and answer
us.
There’s one more thing we should take note of to put this Thanksgiving festival into
God’s perspective. This petition is one of a kind in the Lord’s Prayer. Before it are three petitions
that focus on God - “Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as
it is in heaven.” After it are three petitions that focus on us, but all deal with spiritual blessings:
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“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into
temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
But right here, smack dab in the middle is one little petition where we ask God for
physical blessings, and not a whole ton of gravy, but the necessities that we absolutely need just
for today.
Brothers and sisters, as you sit around the table and hold hands or fold your hands and
bow your heads and thank God for his blessings, remember which blessings are most important.
Remember to thank God most of all that you know him as a dear Father, that his name is
hallowed, that his kingdom continues to come, that his will is done, that he daily and fully
forgives all your sins and enables you to do the same for others, that he does not lead you into
temptation, and that he delivers you from all evil, one day completely, when you die and he takes
you to heaven.
Would your bread, your house, your food, your family, and all your other physical
blessings really mean that much to you if you didn’t have any of those other spiritual blessings?
And so tomorrow as we gather with family or friends, or even if the only other person
sitting at the table with us is Jesus, let us be eternally happy and pray:
Bless these your gifts, Lord, from on high,
That they may nourish us thereby;
Frail bodies do with strength imbue,
That we our duties well pursue.
But earthly bread alone would fail
To make us happy, hearty, hale;
Your Word alone does feed the soul
And make our health complete and whole.
So give us both, Lord God, we plead,
And help us out of every need;
Then all your goodness we shall praise
Both here and there, in endless days. Amen.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that
is at work with us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever
and ever! Amen.
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