Real Bread and Real Debts In The Lord's Prayer | Culture and Society

By KalindaRoseStevenson,PhD
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One of the most familiar Bible passages is the "Lord's Prayer," which occurs in both the "The Sermon On The Mount" in Matthew 6:9-13 and "the Sermon on the Plain" in Luke 11:1-4. Although it is not immediately obvious to most people who pray this prayer, economic issues are at the heart of the prayer.

Even though every Christian church uses the Lord's Prayer, following Matthew's version rather than Luke's, there are variations in the exact wording.

Some churches use the archaic English, "thy" and "thine." Protestant churches usually end the prayer with the words, "For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory." Roman Catholics do not recite this ending.

The most important difference between various churches concerns the word meaning "debts." Some churches use the word "debts, some use "trespasses," and some use "sins."

When Jesus taught his followers to pray for daily bread and forgiveness of debts, it was more than a prayer for spiritual sustenance and forgiveness of sins. He was first of all referring to real bread and real debts.

The most basic meaning of the Greek word for "debts" is financial. This meaning is consistent with the approach of Jesus to the social and ethical injustices of his society against the poor and dispossessed. In the prayer, he makes explicit the need for real bread and for payment of debt.

The prayer cannot be understood without also seeing it in terms of the Kingdom of God, which does not refer to an afterlife in Heaven. It refers to the expectation of the rule of God, in which God will end oppression, poverty, and suffering on earth. "Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

When "Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" become spiritual metaphors, they lose the connection with real food and economic debt, which was what Jesus intended.

Jesus spoke to people who did not think of bread and debt as metaphors. The people Jesus addressed were underfed and overtaxed. Much of the misery of the peasants and beggars in Palestine resulted from debt. Many of the peasant farmers were deeply in debt because they had to pay heavy taxes to the ruling class who owned the land. The king and the elite claimed proprietary rights to the land and whatever the peasants grew on the land. In addition, many of the beggars were former peasants who had been forced off the land because they could not pay their debts.

Throughout the gospels, Jesus spoke about the real human needs of people in a society divided between the haves and the have-nots. He saw the vast gap between the rich and the poor, and criticized the rich for their exploitation and oppression of the poor. He also condemned a religious system which excluded whole categories of people from God's blessing, by labeling them as "unclean."

He saw firsthand the extent of hunger, poverty, sickness, and suffering endured by most of the population. He saw how the rich landowners grew rich at the expense of the poor. He saw people who were homeless because they had been driven off their land by high rents and taxes. He saw people living in poverty because the largest percentage of what they grew or made or caught was confiscated by taxes. He knew what it was to live under Roman occupation, where Roman soldiers could force people to do almost anything. He saw how the Temple system collaborated with the Roman occupiers to bleed the people of their money and their power.

It is also true that Matthew's version of the Lord's Prayer preserves an Aramaic idiom. Aramaic writings show that the language of "debt" and "debtors" was used regularly for "sin" and "sinners." Jesus spoke Aramaic and clearly intended that the word "debts" in the prayer refer to both money debts and sins.

In Luke, the financial reality behind the metaphor is lost because Luke uses the word "sin" rather than "debt." This obscures the underlying concern with real bread and real debts.

To pray as Jesus intended, Christians need to retrieve the original meanings of words that have been treated as spiritual metaphors. The cost of daily bread is especially significant in an era of global food shortages and rising prices for basic staples such as wheat, rice, and corn. And forgiveness of debts has particular meaning for those facing foreclosure and bankruptcy because of debts they cannot repay.

Jesus intended his words to refer to suffering and injustice in his own society. This prayer for bread and debts referred to real bread and forgiveness of real financial debts.

About the Author

Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D. What if much of what you learned about Jesus and money is not true? Get your copy of Going Broke With Jesus at www.GoingBrokeWithJesus.com to see how often Christians misunderstand what Jesus taught about money.

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