Praying for Bread

Proper 12/7th after Pentecost, Year C; Luke 11:1-13

Jul 22, 2025

The Revised Common Lectionary never sets the more familiar version of the Lord’s Prayer (or as it could be termed, the “Prayer That Jesus Taught”) found in Matthew’s Gospel (6:9-15), which is basically the version used in Christian liturgy since very early times. Luke’s distinctive version is presented in this Gospel reading along with two other related passages about prayer. Of these three episodes or sayings the last is also shared with Matthew, while the middle section—a parable about a traveler asking for bread in the night—is unique to Luke.

These instructions about prayer are also placed somewhat differently in the narratives of the two relevant Gospels. Matthew has both the Prayer and the teaching about God’s good response to faithful prayer (7:7-11=Luke 11:9-13) within the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus like a new Moses reveals the terms of the new covenant being made through him. Luke however places these teachings within his extended account of Jesus’ last journey to Jerusalem. In their contrasting ways, these two settings both make their point about the nature of authentic prayer: it belongs to enacted discipleship, not merely to some general notion of spirituality. In Luke’s case the teaching could be seen as prayer for the journey with Jesus—to his fate and glory—that discipleship constitutes.

In whatever version, the Prayer is thoroughly Jewish, as has often been pointed out; there is nothing in it that could not be prayed by many other people, for that matter. This may be part of why various protestant groups in modern times have balked at its regular use, despite Jesus’ clear command to say it (the other reason apparently being the suspicion of set forms of prayer per se). The Prayer is at best oblique to any piety centered on “personal decisions for Christ” etc. Its distinctiveness lies in the assumed centrality of the coming reign of God or as François Bovon puts it, “an eschatology that is in the process of being fulfilled” in Jesus himself.1 The Christian here is called to prayer with Jesus, first and foremost. Yet we are praying, Luke makes clear, on that journey of purposeful discipleship whose end is not the fulfillment of what we wanted when we asked how to pray, but the fulfillment of God’s reign.

While the versions are similar, we should be careful of overlaying Matthew’s text subconsciously, just because we remember it so much better. To summarize the Lukan Prayer then: first, God is addressed simply as “Father.” The Matthean “in heaven” seems redundant here; its point is to distinguish a heavenly Father from earthly ones (“who art in heaven” really messes that up though). Just “Father” is enough here; with Jesus, those who pray claim this intimacy and dependence. The two following phrases (“hallowed,” “kingdom”) are almost identical in both versions, but Luke’s version does not include “your will be done.” Once again simplicity seems to be at issue; if these two petitions are fulfilled, God’s will is done.

The petition for bread is similar in both, even to the point of including a curious term that our versions translate “daily” (epiousios), to which we will return. Forgiveness features in both versions, but despite Matthew’s Prayer being overall the more familiar to us, Matthew literally has “forgive us our debts” where Luke’s term is the more familiar “sins.” The difference is not as great as we might assume; while the Matthean version sounds more about economics, both refer to obligations incurred, to God and others. This comparison does remind us that “sin” is not a solitary matter, but has to do with our relationships, visible and not.

Back to the “daily” bread: the Greek word thus translated, epiousios, looks fairly normal to readers of that language, but is almost unknown otherwise. The Christian scholar Origen writing a bit less than 200 years later was perplexed by it, and thought the evangelists must have coined it. Jerome, translating early in the fifth century, thought it meant something to do with “essences” or being (cf. homo-ousios in the Creed)—so that he translated it as “super-essential” bread, whatever is truly and spiritually necessary (i.e., not bread!).2

James Tissot, *Lord’s Prayer*, Brooklyn Museum

Most scholars however see epiousios as referring not to “essences,” but to what is coming or imminent (if you’re still with me, perhaps a form of epi-énai and not epi+ousios). “Daily” conveys part but not all of that sense; it probably means bread for “the coming day,” or even of tomorrow. We should remember the conditions of daily need often referred to in these stories: on the one hand Jesus and his followers have made themselves dependent on hospitality rather than on their own wealth or labor, and on the other the people among whom they move experience poverty and cannot assume they will have more than a day’s wherewithall at a time. So to pray for bread for the coming day—whether it means the present day or the next—is an acute need, and cannot just be some code referring to other matters entirely. It may of course mean more than that, but it must mean bread first. Current and recent stories like the callous destruction of emergency food aid and the constant stories of Gazans dying to find bread underline how this has always been a matter not just of necessity but of urgency.

This same reality connects the instruction for the Prayer with the parable that follows. The friend has welcomed a guest late in the evening (hospitality) and has nothing for them (poverty), so seeks the three loaves (think round flattish items like pita) from another. This does not sound like many modern western meals, but it is exactly what most ancient Mediterranean meals centered on and many in the Middle East still do. This is a parable, not a moral instruction about giving people bread, so it does hint at a meaning somewhat broader than either hospitality or poverty; but it does not escape them as starting points. The centrality of bread in both passages reminds us of what is genuinely necessary for life. This is indeed about more than bread (cf. 4:4), but without bread the rest is beside the point.

Note that this bread does not appear by itself but through acts of sharing and mutual support. Gregory of Nyssa (380s), expounding the Prayer to his flock, links the simplicity of bread with the necessity of justice:

You are the true director of your prayer when your abundance does not come from what belongs to others; if your income is not derived from tears; if no one goes hungry because of your being full; if no one groans on account of your plenty. Indeed, this is the bread from God: the fruit of justice, the stalk of peace, the bread that is pure and unmixed with the seeds of weeds (On the Lord’s Prayer 4).3

The initial reluctance of the friend who was asked presents a theological problem though, or at least a pointed question, which the third section of this passage addresses. Ancient experience as much as modern has led to the observation that the ways prayer is met, and the terms on which it is met, do not always (often?) seem straightforward. Again, let us note, food features; with eggs and fish now added, we seem to have the side-dishes that were also a typical part of the ancient (or modern Mediterranean) bread-centered meal. So there may even be a measure of Lukan humor here in the assembly of these teachings into a modest banquet, and a hint in the images themselves of Jesus’ point that God’s goodness is in fact greater than that of the caring parent who feeds their family well.

There is however another distinctive feature of Luke’s passage, relative to the version in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. Matthew’s more familiar text affirms that “your Father who is in heaven give[s] good things” (7:11; note the “in heaven,” which is the same language as in Matthew’s longer version of the Prayer), while Luke here has literally “the Father, who is from heaven, gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask him” (11:13). This awkward expression (in English) refers not simply to the location of this Father but to his sphere of action, and “from heaven” is thus related to the rather different gift that Jesus here promises as well.

So while Matthew’s version promised “good things,” Luke’s has Jesus promising the Holy Spirit. There is no room for prosperity theology here,4 although doubtless Luke, like Matthew, considers God the “author and giver of all good things,” as Cranmer put it;5 here however the Spirit is apparently the greatest and best gift. This isn’t just telling us to seek spiritual virtues and to forget the material; it means that in the journey that constitutes discipleship, the Spirit is the thing we need most to sustain us, apart from bread. We do also need to sustain life, and the Spirit will lead us to act justly and compassionately, but accumulation is not the point. God cares for us more than we can grasp, and gives us not only we need but the capacity to care as friends or neighbors so that others will get their own bread too. In the power of the Spirit, we are led to this life in God’s economy, where all have bread and where sins, like debts, are freely forgiven.

Andrew’s Version

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