Monday morning and baking bread. I just got the loaves out of the pans and the house smells like home. But it was a bit of a wrestle.
I went to the garden centre this morning while the bread was finishing its rise, and came back with a great selection of seeds. So, as I was prepping the pans for the loaves, I was thinking ahead to my glorious summer garden. I buttered the sides of the pans as usual, and then forgot the bottoms. I usually slip a rectangle of non-stick stuff on the bottom of the pans, but that slipped my mind completely. In went the loaves, despite the naked bottoms, and away they baked. I didn’t remember at all until it was time to get them out of the pans. Wrestle, struggle, blerg. I had visions of tearing three loaves in half, their bottoms firmly affixed to the hot pans, their soft and steamy insides suddenly ripped opened and unslicable. Very hard to stay calm when the integrity of a week’s worth of family toast and sandwiches is at stake. But, in the end, the loaves all came out more or less unscathed. And I suppose so did I.
Now for some deep breathing, and Monday morning reading.
Matthew 6 – the Sermon on the Mount continues. And I find myself reading over the Lord’s Prayer.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Give us this day the food we need. I like the plurality of this; it’s our bread, not my bread. Yes. And I like the necessity of it. This is the nourishment of the moment. God, give us enough to live on. Meet us in this hungry moment, find us and fill us here and now.
Maybe it’s also a reminder to ask for God’s help as we try to focus on the daily rather than tomorrow’s gardens. Maybe it’s a prayer to call us into this moment. This day our daily bread. That’s a good prayer.
Here are a couple of other prayer thoughts and resources that you might find helpful.
– From the SALT project: praying with colour
– From Relevant Magazine: Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove on ancient prayers
Leith Fisher suggests that we might create a discipline with the Lord’s Prayer. “For the next month, pray the Lord’s Prayer in the morning, in the middle of the day and at night. Reflect on your prayer.” [But I Say to You p.87]
He also includes this synopsis of the Lord’s Prayer, which I found set the old words in a new and helpful light.
“What does the prayer say? Give praise, honour, glory to the Maker of all things, hidden source of love and life, whose being is always beyond us. Pray and work for the coming of God’s ways to become real in the life of this world, pray and work with others for that which feeds the body and soul and leaves enough for all. Live the reconciled life with God and the community around you, forgive and know you are forgiven, and pray that the burdens of the day be not more than we can bear.”
I marked that passage with a tick – a definite yes passage for me.
The one I marked with an exclamation mark as I found it surprising was the thinking around Jesus use of Father when referring to God. Fisher uses the work of Julian Sheffield (as found in A Feminist Companion to Matthew, 2001) to suggest that emphasizing the fatherhood of God displaces the human father and relativises patriarchy. So often we think of it the other way around – that suggestion that God is Father reinforces male power. But here, Fisher suggests that if God alone is Father, then gender, class, race, and established privilege are all to be reconsidered as kinship comes for our relation to God. In the highly patriarchal context of the writing of the Gospels, this was radical stuff. And I think it still is today, just as it is radical to use other sometimes-neglected Biblical images of God, like that of Mothering God. This radical naming of God is something that I will hold onto through this Matthew read-along.
Here are the Matthew readings for the coming week:
7. Inside Out – Matthew ch.6:1-18
8. True Treasure – Matthew ch.6:19-34
9. Open to Others – Open to God – Matthew ch.7:1-12
10. Going the Distance – Matthew ch. 7:13-29
11. Healing and Peace – Matthew ch. 8
12. Healing from the Heart – Matthew ch. 9
How was your reading of Matthew last week? What did you find in there?
