Give Us Today Our Daily Bread: Enough, with Becca Ellis.

Give Us Today Our Daily Bread: Enough, with Becca Ellis. Series: The Jesus Prayer: 7 Spiritual Practices for the New Year A Spacious Christianity, First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon. Scripture: Acts 2.

Join us this Sunday, either online or in-person, as we dive deeper into the Lord’s Prayer. Becca has a powerful message on gratitude, abundance, and how to find true nourishment. It’s sure to challenge and inspire.

About the Series, The Jesus Prayer: 7 Spiritual Practices for the New Year: In the midst of their own uncertainty and anxiety, the disciples asked Jesus how to pray. Jesus replied, “Pray this way” and taught what is known as the Lord’s Prayer or Jesus Prayer. This series will focus on this teaching of Jesus as an invitation to 7 spiritual practices that will strengthen our faith and help us show up in the world with courage and compassion.

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At First Presbyterian, you will meet people at many different places theologically and spiritually. And we love it that way. We want to be a place where our diversity brings us together and where conversation takes us all deeper in our understanding of God.

We call this kind of faith “Spacious Christianity.” We don’t ask anyone to sign creeds or statements of belief. The life of faith is about a way of being in the world and a faith that shows itself in love.

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Keywords:

Gratitude, daily bread, community, abundance, scarcity, mutual care, reciprocity, generosity, compassion, spiritual nourishment, gratitude practice, community support, gratitude benefits, mutual relationships, radical compassion., presbyterian, church, online worship, bend, oregon

Featuring:

Rev. Dr. Steven Koski, Becca Ellis, Brave of Heart, Guests

Transcript

Whitney Higdon: 0:20

Music. Welcome to worship at First Presbyterian we at first, Presbyterian practice a spacious Christianity, which means, no matter where you are in your faith journey, you belong, and there is space for you at the table, there is space for your doubts and questions. We believe doubts and questions are a gift that invite us into deeper conversations and a more authentic faith. We believe diversity is a strength. Every story is sacred, and everybody matters. We do our best to live the spacious and radical love of Jesus so that all might have a chance to flourish in this world. We are so glad to connect with you in this way. We would also love to worship with you in person if you're ever in the neighborhood on Sunday mornings at 830 or 10am and never hesitate to reach out to us to learn more about us or how we might support You. I hope you enjoy this worship service. Welcome.

Steven: 5:13

holy, one source of all life and love. We thank you that Your love is always present, even when we're not always present to your love. Your love is present in the spaces between friends. Your love is even present in the spaces between enemies. Your love is present in the rubble of villages destroy because of hate. Your love is present with grieving families, innocent children caught in the crossfire of war. Your love is present with those still reeling from the devastation of hurricanes, floods, wildfires. Your love is present in the first responders, relief workers, aid workers bringing hope where there seems to be none, your love is present with those living in tents because they have no home. Your love is present with those in assisted living waiting for a visit or the phone to ring, your love is present with those who are numb with grief. Your love is present with those living with the uncertainty of illness. Your love is present with those living in the relentless shadows of mental illness. Your love is present, and the bedtime stories between parent and child, and even when we fail to recognize the presence of your love, which is nearly every moment you recognize us, you see us. You call us by name. You love us. You love us as we make space to be present to your love. Give us the grace to return even a bit of this love to you in the way we love one another, deep in our awareness of your love, that we might live as the presence of your love in this broken and hurting world. Amen,

Becca Ellis: 7:36

our current series has been focusing on the Lord's prayer, the prayer Jesus taught His followers, and a prayer some of us have heard so many times we repeat it, perhaps without taking a moment to pause and consider what we are really saying. So we're going slowly through each line, reflecting and considering what practices we might be able to draw out of Jesus. Words, Jesus teachings always invite us into a way of living that challenges the status quo and questions what values we are actually living out. This week, we come to the line Give us today our daily bread. Now this line might seem simple and obvious, a petition to God for daily sustenance, whether that be physical or spiritual nourishment. But I think there is a further invitation here. In those days in culture, bread was an essential part of the everyday diet. But unlike our modern world, where we can simply go to the store and purchase a loaf of bread or buy already processed flour, if we bake our own, making bread was a daily and necessary and time consuming activity for the people of Jesus. Day there was the grinding, mixing, kneading, rising, baking, all by hand. Without an electric mixer or bread machine, there would have been a deep appreciation for the work involved in the process. This is not a prayer simply asking for bread sustenance to appear out of nowhere, but rather words wrapped in gratitude for the labor involved, as well as a trust that there will be enough. This phrase, no doubt, brought to the mind of Jesus followers the Old Testament days of the Israelites wandering in the desert when God provided a type of bread they called manna, which they relied on day by day for food. The Israelites had been enslaved in Egypt before Moses led them out into the desert, where they wandered for 40 years. The story in Exodus tells how the Israelites complained to Moses, saying how they were better off when they were still slaves, because at least they had food. Dramatically, they accused Moses of leading them out of one bad situation to simply starve to death in the desert. So we read that God sent a dew that covered the ground, and as it dried out, it became a flaky substance they could gather and eat. They called the bread manna. The Israelites were instructed to only gather as much as they needed for the day if they saved any for the night. Next day, it would begin to rot with maggots in it and stink. Only on the day before the Sabbath could they collect twice as much and it would keep as God provided. Even for a day of rest, the Israelites had to learn and trust that there would be enough food every day. Hoarding out of greed or a fear of scarcity was not the answer and would not save them. This also might remind us of the story of Jesus feeding the 5000 if you grew up going to Sunday school, you most likely heard it many times in childhood, but if not, here is a quick recap. Jesus has been teaching crowds of people, and he hears news that his cousin John the Baptist has been killed, so he withdraws to a solitary place to be alone, but the crowds find out where he is and follow Him, even in his grief and loss, Jesus is moved with compassion for the people, and they bring their sick to him to be healed. It is getting late in the day, so the disciples approach Jesus, asking him to tell the crowds to go home, as they are in a remote place, and people will become hungry and they do not have enough food to feed them all. Jesus replies, saying, they don't need to go away. You give them some food. The disciples push back a little, saying it would take more than half a year's wages to feed so many people. Jesus asks them how much food they can find. So they bring five loaves of bread and two fish from one boy's lunch, Jesus breaks the bread and gives thanks and asks the disciples to distribute the food. In the end, everyone has enough. I wonder about the story, because I find it hard to believe that only one small boy in that entire crowd would have been thoughtful enough to bring food with him. I have heard one take on the story being that people would have had some food on them, and once one person started sharing a child, in this case, everyone would have taken out their food and shared amongst the people around them. So in the end, there was plenty to go around. However you read this story, we see that Jesus offered a lesson about community and abundance. At first, the disciples were worried, caught up in a mindset of not enough, operating out of scarcity and fear. And I get that because in life, especially in the society we live in, which is built on consumerism, it's easy to get caught up in what is lacking. Scarcity is the story the system we live in needs us to believe in order to keep us buying into the lie that if we just achieve and acquire and keep upgrading our life in some way, we will eventually feel satisfied. We will eventually have enough. But this is just a distraction from the real thing that is lacking, feeling like we ourselves are enough. At the beginning of the year, I asked the question of you, what is the story you want to tell with your life? There is a different story we can choose here, one grounded in gratitude, reciprocal in nature, where flourishing is always mutual, and we find the nourishment of true belonging, where our daily bread doesn't necessarily rain down from the heavens, but we find it through mutual care. We find it in community, in one another. We recognize what is a want and what is a need, and we begin to let this prayer and practice of gratitude change us and how we navigate through life. And I think what this line Jesus taught us to pray is really inviting us to consider. Is the same thing he says in other places, to be present, to not be caught up in tomorrow, because today is all you are really promised. And when we look out for each other, there is enough. Clea wade in her book Heart Talk, writes, learning the Power of Gratitude is not only wise, it is practical. When we understand how to feel grateful for what we have, we are free from the uneasy state of constantly wanting. When we are thankful for what we have and understand the difference between what we want and what we need, we are able to relax the mind and put less pressure on ourselves to obsessively upgrade the things in our life, release the energy of more more more, and replace it with the energy of Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This is a powerful practice and shift in perspective, but not always easy. Some of you know that my mom passed away very recently. It was both expected and sudden, but it has been striking to me how much perspective on the brevity of life surfaces in the midst of such loss and grief. With my mom's death, I have found myself sifting through old memories and facing existential questions about what really makes a life. There have been many times in my own life where the fear of not enough was very real. I'm one of six children, and I recall on a few occasions, even as a kid, being asked to rummage through the couch for loose change just so we could buy gas or milk for the week. There were times I was afraid we would be evicted or not have enough. But. One thing I always felt very strongly was that I was being watched out for, and somehow we always managed to get by. Many times the help we needed came unexpectedly through the people around us. One such moment that has stuck with me happened when I was 16 years old. I was attending technical school, enrolled in a professional pastry chef program, and there was a sweet older woman, Sui who was employed by the school and faithfully made donuts every morning in the bakery. I was very young compared to the other students, and she sort of took me under her wing. Would bring me fruit and chat with me about my dreams and home life. She asked me once why I didn't have my driver's license, and I said it was because my family couldn't afford Driver's Ed. She asked me how much it cost. I told her, but didn't think much about it again. Then one day in the following week, she walked up to me and handed me $375 cash, the price of the class, and said it was so I could get my license. I'll never forget that generous act of kindness. It changed everything for me, allowing me to get a job and continue school the year after at another college, which I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise, I graduated from that program and moved on and never saw sui again. But that gift imprinted in me, a reciprocal response to give to others in what ways I could I realized this is something I learned from my mom's life too. She didn't necessarily have financial resources to give to others in need, but if there was a need to be met and no one was doing it and she could, she would always offer to help. She taught me how our lives are meant to be lived in service to others, and this act of giving is where we experience true abundance. There is a story Robin wall Kimmerer shares in her essay and now book The serviceberry. She writes about a report from a linguist, Daniel Everett, who was learning from a hunter gatherer community in the Brazilian rainforest. He shares how a Hunter had brought home a sizable kill, far too much to be eaten by his family. The researcher asked how he would store the excess. Smoking and drying technologies were well known. Storing was possible. The Hunter was puzzled by the question, store the meat. Why would he do that? Instead, he sent out an invitation to a feast, and soon the neighboring families were gathered around his fire until every last morsel was consumed. This seemed like maladaptive behavior to the anthropologist who asked again, given the uncertainty of meat in the forest, why didn't he store the meat for himself, which is what the economic system of his home culture would predict, store my meat. Replied, The Hunter, I store my meat in the belly of my brother. Robin Kimmerer goes on to explain another place the storage of that meat was in the good relationships, in the feasting and the storytelling and the singing that accompanied his sharing the gift of the forest with the people. And this notion of I store my surplus in the belly of my brother means, of course, that you're creating relationships of reciprocity, and that those reciprocal relations manifest themselves in food security down the line, in those scarce times, you then have the sense that the people who came to your feast will share with you when they have a big net full of fish, you're going to be invited to their feast. The food security comes from good relationships with your neighbors and a trust that abundance will always be shared. It seems like those in the early church took this practice to heart also in Acts two. We read about how Jesus' followers shared everything in common, broke bread together and had enough. They found both physical and spiritual nourishment in community and mutual care. But when you look out at the world, in our society, so much is driven by greed. I think back to COVID, even in the hoarding of toilet paper and other goods, driven by a sense of fear and scarcity. Flourishing, however, is meant to be mutual. Even the balance of nature itself is rooted in reciprocity. We see this in how natural systems give back to one another, how one thing feeds another, feeds another, even in death and decomposing life is made when we practice gratitude for what we are given, we are much more likely to respond by giving back in some way, whether that is to the original gift giver or paying it forward to someone else or the Earth. We even take better care of what we are given as we attach more meaning to it than something we might buy for ourselves. I could purchase mittens or a mug on my own, but if a friend or family member saw the same item, thought of me and gave it to me, I will think of them when I use the item, take better care of it, and will want to offer something back out of that swell of gratitude. Now, I am not suggesting that we should be motivated to do things to get something in return. In fact, I'm saying quite the opposite. Gifts are meant to be given free of charge. And I'm not proposing that we pretend everything is just fine in the midst of pain, loss and uncertainty, that if we just focus on the good, somehow the hard things and. Life will just go away. But I wonder if this line of Give us today our daily bread has less to do with asking God for what we want and need and rather trusting in the abundance of enough, recognizing how we might find this through community and watching how adopting a posture of gratitude can change us. Like Cleo Wade says, gratitude is a spiritual and economical form of stress relief. We don't pray to just get what we want, but to see our own inner landscape change, and then we are better able to look at what we have, what we actually need, what gifts we are able to extend to others. Anyone can Google the physical benefits we experience through the practice of gratitude, but as a community, gratitude leads to true care for one another. I love how Robin Kimmerer puts it, gratitude is so much more than a polite Thank you. It is the thread that connects us in a deep relationship, simultaneously physical and spiritual, as our bodies are fed and spirits nourished by the sense of belonging, which is the most vital of foods, gratitude creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you have what you need. In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver. If our first response is gratitude, then our second is reciprocity, to give a gift in return. When we are stuck in scarcity, we tighten our fists, grasping at whatever little we can find. I wonder in what ways we are being called to loosen our own fists and give generously to others. This might not be a physical good or commodity. It might be our time. It might be a word of encouragement or just letting someone know they aren't alone. I can't tell you how many people have said to me over the past couple of weeks, after hearing about my mom, I don't really know what to say, but I'm here for you and you are loved. That has meant more than any perfectly poetic string of words ever could, and it has helped me get through those waves of grief just knowing I'm not alone. So in what ways are we being invited to offer at least some daily sustenance for others? How are we nourishing each other with a sense of belonging? Are we slowing down enough to be present, to cultivate in ourselves this radical compassion and a societal system that seems to operate from a place of scarcity, greed and consumption. How do we follow the radical teachings of Jesus that point instead to gratitude, service, abundance and generosity of heart? And Do you notice how when we begin to loosen our fist, we also become positioned to receive more freely with open hands and heart. Teek nya Han teaches how the antidote to greed, violence and hate is compassion. He says there is no other medicine. Unfortunately, compassion is not available in drugstores. You have to generate the nectar of compassion in your heart. If we are too busy, if we are carried away every day by our projects, our uncertainty, our craving, how can we have the time to stop and look deeply into the situation our own situation, the situation of our beloved one, the situation of our family and of our community, and the situation of our nation and of the other nations Give us today our daily bread. This has nothing to do with offering carefully crafted prayers to a God that gives us what we ask for, but rather how we might be transformed as we focus on the enoughness in our life, as we remind others that they are enough too, as we don't take as much for ourselves as we teach our children what it means to share, as we find the joy that accompanies giving and gratitude, may we recognize what enough is. May we store our meat in the belly of our brother. May we treat each day, moment, breath as a gift. May we honor that gift by responding with gratitude? May we release the energy of more, more more and replace it with the energy of Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ah, friends, it's easy to get caught up in what is lacking, but where can we instead find abundance? How can we trust that God will give us the sustenance we need, both physically and spiritually? How can we offer the sustenance others might be looking for? I invite you this week to pay attention to where you have enough. Ask yourself, what do you have? This doesn't need to be a physical item or commodity that you can offer others. The world can be a harsh and lonely place, but Jesus' teachings call us into a more alive existence, not one where we chase after hollow achievement and race to acquire more, but one where we know there is nothing that can make us more lovable than we are right at this moment, may we remember that we are enough, just as we are. May we be brave enough to cultivate compassion, generosity and gratitude in our lives? May we release the energy of more, more more, and replace it with the energy of Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Amen.

Whitney Higdon: 28:29

Thank you so much for joining us, and we hope you enjoyed this worship service. If you would like to make a donation helping make these podcasts possible, or support the many ways, first, Presbyterian seeks to serve our community. You can make a financial gift online at bend fp.org, every week, we hear from someone thanking us for the gift of these broadcasts and what a difference they make. Your support makes that possible. Our church is committed to reach beyond our walls, bringing hope where there is despair and love where it is needed the most. Your generous support helps us to be generous in love. Go to our website, bend fp.org, and click on the link. Give online. Your support is really appreciated and makes a difference in people's lives. Thanks again. I hope to See you next week. You