Sermon preached at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. Originally published on RadicalDiscipleship.net.
Luke 11: 1-13
Genesis 18: 2-32
The disciples want to know how to pray. About time, huh? Actually, there is more going on here than we usually register. This is a typical disciple-request of chosen rabbis in 1st century Palestine. They are really asking for the Teacher to distill the heart of his teaching in a pray-able formula. They want the essence, the unadulterated core of what is being admonished. But here the ante is upped.
Jesus has just set his face to take his show to Jerusalem for the high-noon show-down with the Powers-that-be at the end of chapter 9. They are going for broke—like going up into White House today to shut down operations in protest of Palestinian genocide while carrying a green card from some place called “Galilee.” Jesus has just predicted his death in the process in a huddle with his inner circle. The disciples are beginning to entertain the thought that he might not be around much longer. So, indeed, what is it he is saying to do?
The so-called “Lord’s Prayer”—that the Black Church in this country more accurately calls the “Disciples Prayer”—is a stripped-down version of the more lyrical rendition we meet with in Matthew. And its heart is food and debt. “Give us this day our daily bread” is an invocation of the prime lesson of the Exodus walkout from Egypt when escaped slaves were directed to “gather”—as in hunt-and-gather—”manna,” which literally, in Hebrew, means “what the F is it?”
What it pretty clearly is, is aphid defecation. They are in the Sinai desert, having to learn all over again what Abraham also had to learn: how to live off the land; developing skills to recognize and embrace what the wild provides free-of-charge. Aphids were scale insects (often symbiotically herded by ants) eating tamarisk leaves 15 to 50 feet up off the ground, then pooping 130% their body weight every hour. So yes, the manna “falls” from “heaven”—15 to 50 feet up. The little sticky mounds at the base of the trees could be scoped up and baked into honey loaves—as they are even today by Arab Bedouin in the Sinai, who call the gift “man,” quite possibly the Arabic cognate of the Hebrew “manna” (Eisenberg, 15-16).
And the lesson is a quintessential “hunter-gatherer” lesson: take up enough for 1 day at a time and every 6 days, enough for 2 days. And not an iota more! The most primal lesson of the liberation event for these striking laborers whose coerced efforts in Egypt were directed to building “storage cities” for siloed grain for Pharaoh’s “Food as Weapon” policy (Exod 16; 31:12-17; 1:11).
The very first commandment—even more important than the 10 to come later in the journey—is to not do what they were doing in Egypt.
Do not store up goods stockpiled by coerced labor for the power machinations of elite control! Re-learn the gift of the land—whatever it offers! Including insect poop! Don’t despise the little ones! After all, gnats and flies had been crucial collaborators in Moses’ ability to get Pharoah to let them go. So yes, gather what is available. And even then, in gleaning from wild offering—every 7th day, let everything do its own thing, free even of being gathered. Let everything return to its wild state—the insects, the trees, the land, the animals, the humans, the waters, etc.
Sabbath!
Yes, as a form of rest, but not like stretching out for a day-long nap. Rather, everything free from having to answer to the needs and priorities of something/someone else. Re-wild everything! For a full day and night every 7th day. And then again, remembering all of this in the seven weeks of celebration and ritual action coursing between Passover and Pentecost. And again every 7th year, re-wild for a full year; hunt and gather alongside everything else for a 365-day cycle. And then every seven-times-seven-years, blow a ram’s horn, a joveli (a jubilee), and tack onto that Sabbath year, another year, a Jubilee Year of letting everything run free of the human demand for food by continuing yourselves to live through hunting and gathering.
The Sabbath-Jubilee continuum, the House of 7s lattice work of memory, so that once you again settle into doing agriculture when you get into Canaanite hill country, you do not forget that ultimately, Life is an Interdependent Mystery of Provision, not a bank account claim on other creatures as privatized “stolen goods.”
So, yes, give us our daily bread. And already it is way over the disciples’ heads! (Much less ours!). And then it gets thick culturally. “And forgive us our sins for we forgive everyone indebted to us.” Hmmm. We miss it because we don’t know the culture or languages being used. Jesus is speaking Aramaic, referencing Hebrew. Luke is writing Greek. We are thinking post-modern English, camped out on King James, itself giving spin to Latin, trying to Romanize the Lucan Greek. And if we are evangelical, we are so sure we’ve got it locked down! But that is another sermon.
In Aramaic, the word we translate in English as “forgive” is more literally “release” as in canceling debt (aphiemi in Greek; Myers, 24). That is to say: jubilee. Every time you read “forgive” in English, try substituting the word “jubilee” as a verb form. To “jubilee” something, to “release” it, to let it go free and wild again!
And in this mother tongue of Jesus, the word for sin and debt are one and the same: you can’t differentiate them. So the entire concept is rooted in a more communal experience of interdependence, not an individualistic, “me and God” concern.
Debt is the big deal, in a way that boggles the mind of us civilized modern city-dwellers, not sin in a one-on-one relationship with a personal Bell Boy answering our every summons called “God.” The real issue for human beings in life is not original sin, but original debt.
We are born into a big, magnificent Womb of Life called “Nature” or “the Wild” or “Creation” that is our on-going placenta. And we compose our bodies out of Her, pulling in the Creature called Air every few seconds, the Creature called Water every few hours, the Creatures called Plants and Animals multiple times every day when we are not fasting, the Creature called Sun to warm our bodies and the Creature called Crushed Rock or Soil to bear up our feet so we don’t sink down to the molten core of the planet.
We rip holes in the fabric of Beauty that we didn’t create that is all around us and compose our bodies out of the bodies of these Other ones that we kill in the process of consuming. What do we owe for the hole we leave behind?
To give beauty back; to be respectful and cognizant of the gift we are constantly being given, to live within the interdependence and reciprocity and mutual exchange and co-limiting that allows everything its day of flourishing before it disappears into the mouth of another being that needs it for nutrient.
Even when we eat insect poop by scooping it up from the ground to bake it into bread. We thereby deprive other creatures of that sustenance, and the soil of the mineral input the poop would otherwise grant. Indeed, I have Filipino and African American activist friends who are doing work as we talk to call us to stop using flush toilets and return our pee and shit to the earth from which we took it and to which we owe it back, not in the form of chemically-treated effluent that is poisoning the planet, but raw and rich as it comes out of our bodies. Just saying!
And thus the real petition here is to be released from indebtedness not as if our taking is okay and we owe nothing back, but rather by recognizing and participating in the circularity, releasing what we take, back to where it came from, in a form worthy of life. Participating in the on-going give-back for creatures indebted to us, who need what we can give so they can live.
And yes, at a merely human scale, this includes releasing the stupid invention peculiar to human machinations called money that is actually an illusory form of wealth, an empty cipher that has allowed us to project ourselves for an evolutionary second as supreme and not dependent on everything else.
And that delusion is now coming due all around us with increased virulence that is not likely to stop before we are absolutely face-to-face with our 5,000 year old truculence and hubris and planet-destroying incontinence that may well render us extinct—like all the species we are rendering extinct—in very short order.
But yes, then, pay heed to someone who has undergone misfortune of some kind and has had to turn to you for support—for food, for seeds, for tools. And the great sacrality in ancient Hebrew understanding is not in paying off your debts with this thing called money—as if you are some independent tech-bro billionaire-operator on the planet owing nothing to anyone—but rather in releasing those indebted to you, by re-circulating what you have been gifted with and have taken up.
Restoring balance. Restoring community. Restoring ecology. And I know for many of you I have gone off the deep end: you wanted a sermon, not a dissertation.
But in Greek the two words translated “sin” and “debt” here in Luke are different (“sin” is hamartia and “debt” is opheileema), and just here it is telling that Luke parses them out such that the relationship with God is determined by the relationship with other humans and with the land. Release of sins is secured by cancelation of debts and mortgages. Ecologically-informed economics decides divinely-shaped spirituality. You want intimacy with divinity? Respect the wild and re-circulate the goods. Aiyeyeye! How far, how far, how far (!) we are from this basic prayer-admonition!
But Jesus doesn’t stop there—he tells a parable to bring the desert vision of re-learning the land as pastoral nomads just escaped from Egypt “home” to settled agricultural life in Palestine. “What one of you has a friend,” he begins, and we nod and think, “Ah yes, John or Gloria or Tammy or Bob.” But the story will quickly go to the heart of the social order of his time.
The example sketched is of someone visited by another friend showing up at midnight, worn out, hungry, unexpected. Presumably traveling so late because not having the resources to procure a room at an inn earlier in the eve. And indeed, the host himself has empty cupboards.
So where are we? Certainly not a city, not a well-furnished “suburb,” not a wealthy person’s house, but a peasant village. Parables interpreter William Herzog, making use of political theorist James C. Scott’s work called the Moral Economy of the Peasant, unpacks the social hierarchy in view.
Cities like Jerusalem, Tiberias, Sepphoris controlled the countryside, harboring elites who had accumulated large parcels of land by inveigling small farmers in debt, then foreclosing on them, sidestepping Jubilee “land-return requirements” in the Torah by way of a shell-game called the Prosbul.
Some of the small farmers so evicted, were then hired as tenant farmers on what had been their own land previously, and the rest were relegated to day laboring or begging. And early graves.
Less constrained peasants might turn to one of these fat-cat landlords for support in a patron-client relationship that though securing subsistence, demanded obeisance and allowed little room for initiative. Most of the peasantry and tenant farming strugglers however, dealt with the insecurity by going bail for each other in their small villages.
Knowing they had little other recourse, they crafted their own little “gift-economy of reciprocity,” functioning as “insurance” for each other, lending food and tools and help, to try to keep each other afloat as the landlord class became increasingly draconian in commandeering land and extracting surplus.
And this is the background to our little parabolic vignette here. One peasant villager going to another at midnight and appealing to this fellow struggler for help. Not an unusual scene of desperation.
But what is unusual is the highlighted motivation (Herzog, 212-214). The empty-cupboard-guy appeals to his neighbor as “friend.” Surprisingly in the story, he is rebuffed for this address. The other villager is in bed, hugging kids under covers, and voices refusal: “Too late; can’t oblige.” But, then the corker. Jesus says though he won’t get out of the sack as a “friend,” there is another consideration at work. Something bigger and bad-der-assed than mere friendship.
The word in Greek is anaideian. Our English bibles have no idea what to do with it, trying to tame it by rendering it “persistence” or “importunity.” As if the value at issue in the parable is a dogged refusal to give up. But that is not the focus. Anaideian literally means “shamelessness.” And the question is “shameless” about what?
Often elsewhere in the bible it is used of someone who violates purity regulations, taking too much food, excess greed or lust, or in a second tier of meaning, referring to a daughter refusing the submissive role allocated to her in the family, or a beggar willing to solicit anywhere, or a prostitute boldly on the prowl. And these then begin to hint the upshot.
In view is a shameless willingness to cross social boundaries, to violate taken-for-granted norms. But whose? The fat cat landlords live within the purity guidelines of Torah—eating right, dressing right, going to synagogue at the right time, tithing, etc., so they can continue to accumulate wealth at the expense of the poor all while appearing “righteous.” From their point of view, hosting a “sojourner” who shows up at midnight and giving them food, knowing that the next day they will go their way and never pay you back is ludicrous. It is why peasants remain poor. They are not savvy stewards of their meager resources. Such a willingness is patently “stupid!”
But one last detail in the tale brings home the challenge. Why three loaves when it is just one person? Here is insider code for the Jewish mindset. Where else do three loaves show up in the Hebrew tradition?
Oh, yeah, our lectionary for the last 2 weeks is pushing this agenda as well—even though probably clueless! Abraham and Sarah when they are visited by three divine reconnaissance agents, gathering intelligence on nearby Sodom in response to an on-going outcry that has arisen to heavenly ears from poor dwellers in that city boundary (Gen 18). Contrary to our typical evangelical preoccupation, the offense of Sodom is not something sexual, but rather the repudiation of empathy along the lines of an Elon Musk evaluation of the same:
Behold, this was the guilt of Sodom, says Ezekiel. The city exhibited pride, a surfeit of food and prosperous ease all while refusing to aid the poor and needy (Ezek 16: 49).
“A surfeit of food” (instead of daily bread); “prosperous ease” (like a $50 million Besos Venice wedding?); “rebuff of the hungry” (like a USAID budget Doged into billionaire tax cuts?). Abraham in the text is in front of his tent, under the oaks of Mamre (“Teaching Trees” that is, in Hebrew), offering the hospitality typical not of urban dwellers, but of pastoral nomad folk who know they need to take care of any wanderer showing up at the tent flap because it will likely be them needing such in a future moment. “Hospitality” in the ancient world is a herder tradition not an urban grace.
And this points to a huge discussion that cannot be had here. But suffice it to say: Abraham before his tent with his herds and Sodom with its walls and houses and mobs are told side-by-side as a diptych, a two-sided depiction of contrast. The story of Abraham and the three loaves and of Sodom and its abuse are intended to be read together as an archetypal image: pastoral nomad life versus city life.
The bible from Abraham and Moses, through the prophets and Jesus is decidedly suspicious of the possibility of city-living to be anything other than oppressive and destructive. Abraham and Sarah leaving Ur, Moses and company walking out of Egypt, Elijah going wild in a wadi full of ravens, Amos refusing Bethel for his herds and sycamores, John going Bedouin east of the Jordan, and Jesus adopted by a storm in a river, addressed by thunder, led by a dove, tested by rocks, and choosing his inner circle and giving his deepest teachings on a mountain all point the same direction.
This is a movement that has its roots in re-learning the land from plants and animals and waters, not from walls and streets and taxes. But enough for the moment about such a big topic.
More immediately for our little parable here—in Hebrew memory, as indeed in gospel articulation, Abraham is honored not so much as “father of the faith” but as “convener of the banquet.” He is one whose greatest gift is his table. And in other Jesus parables he entertains a beggar named Lazarus at the messianic feast in the afterlife.
“Three loaves” hints this: in a run-down peasant village, occupants barely scratching by in subsistence mode, refusing to adhere to the priorities of the rich or the wily-ness of the wealthy, but shamelessly daring to open what little they have to a stranger showing up at midnight—every instance of such hospitality is actually an incarnation of the messianic banquet of the afterlife, hosted by Abraham, provided for by Sarah, attended by God. Do we see?
Our pastor longs for the arrival of God’s reign in our weekly bulletins (listing it as TBA). But actually, it is already come. It is in the basement. It is called Manna Community Meal.[1] Or anyone in the midst of Palestinian rubble taking a crust of bread and sharing it with a neighbor right in the face of starvation and bombs.
And yes, given such then—how do we pray? Dare we pray for “daily bread” and not more? I am as compromised as all of you. City-shaped and refrigerator full. But let’s at least be honest about what the text says. Gather enough for one day. And if you have three loaves . . .
But also this: in the Hebrew text today, ex-urbanite Abraham bargains with God over the city. He has relatives in there. Will God let Sodom off the hook if there are 50 worthy folk? 45? 40? 30? 20? 10? Ha! Lot and his house are allowed to exit, but the city doesn’t make it. And Sodom is just an archetype. We see the same destiny at the other end of the tradition with the supposedly great metropolis of Babylon (Rev 18).
Cities are built on re-engineering everything, enslaving everyone not elite, polluting and then discarding as “garbage” the entire more-than-human world. Their infrastructure is dripping blood and their fate is predictable upfront. They are not sustainable. So, I imagine today there may be somewhere on the planet, an indigenous rain forest Abraham, or a Khoi San Abraham or a Maasi Abraham or an Ayta Abraham in the Philippines praying for the urbanized reality that is now global. Are we really any different than Sodom? I guess we could ask Native American folk. Or Palestinian Bedouin. Or maybe just ask whales and wolves. But unlike for Lot and company there aren’t many caves left for us to relocate to (Gen 19).
And yet we dare pray for “daily” bread. What will we do if that prayer is actually answered?
Bibliography
Eisenberg, Evan. 1999. The Ecology of Eden: An Inquiry into the Dream of Paradise and a New Vision of Our Role in Nature. New York: Vintage Books.
Herzog, William R. III. 1994. Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed. Westminster John Knox Press.
. Myers, Ched. 2001. The Biblical Vision of Sabbath Economics. Washington, D.C.: Church of the Savior.
[1] The soup kitchen run by St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Detroit, where this sermon was preached, for almost half a century).
Dr. James W. Perkinson 