Thy Kingdom Come and the Bread That Lasts (3 of 9)

Two petitions, and both are usually heard as smaller than they are.

One asks for something on earth rather than after death. The other may be asking about a fear rather than a quantity.

What Does Asking for the Kingdom Do?

It gives history a direction, which is the first thing to notice about it.

Praying for a kingdom to come assumes there is one coming. Bailey’s point is that this affirms purpose and direction in history, and that the faithful hold that confidence regardless of how fast things are changing or how much suffering is in front of them.

That is not optimism about the present. It is a claim about where the whole thing is going, prayed by people who could see plainly that the present was not going there yet.

Is the Kingdom Now or Later?

Both, and the prayer will not let either half go.

It is near and far away. Its coming has signs, and Bailey adds a caution that is worth carrying: those signs can never be attached to events around us.

His reason is the one that ends the argument. What Jesus does not know, I do not know.

That single sentence disposes of a whole industry. Jesus said the day and hour were not known to him, and anyone claiming to match current events to prophetic markers is claiming access their teacher disclaimed.

What Does the Kingdom Include?

Four things at least, and the breadth is the point.

It is a gift of God at the end of history. It is also part of the daily life of the faithful now. The church matters to it. And the large human questions, peace, justice, ecology, racial equality, are central to its purposes rather than adjacent to them.

Then the line that reorganises most Western teaching about the faith. The central goal of Christianity is not preparing people for heaven when they die, though it accomplishes that.

The prayer says thy kingdom come on earth. It has said so every time it has ever been prayed, and it is difficult to reconcile with a religion primarily about departure.

How Does Thy Will Be Done Work?

It holds two things that do not obviously fit.

God’s perfect will is the good of all people and he is sovereign over everything. At the same time all people are free and responsible for what they do.

The petition holds both in tension rather than resolving either into the other, which is what most systems built on this question end up doing. Praying it commits you to neither side of that argument and to both realities.

What Is Daily Bread Actually Asking For?

Possibly not what the English suggests, and the alternative is worth knowing.

The Greek word behind daily is genuinely difficult and rare, and the traditional Western rendering is one option rather than a settled result.

Bailey argues the request can legitimately be translated as give us today the bread that does not run out. That shifts the subject from quantity to fear. It is no longer a request for a portion but a request to be delivered from the anxiety that there will not be enough.

Anyone who has watched a household calculate whether the money reaches the end of the month knows the difference between those two prayers.

Whose Bread Is It?

Ours, and it is bread.

Two small observations that Bailey draws out and that repay attention.

It is our bread, not my bread. The prayer is plural throughout and there is no version of it that a person prays alone about their own supply.

And it is bread rather than cake. The request is for sufficiency, not abundance, and it comes as a gift from the one who owns everything rather than as a wage.

That combination is difficult to pray honestly in a wealthy setting, which is probably a sign it is being prayed correctly.

Part of a series on the Sermon on the Mount, following Bailey’s treatment. See also Our Father.

Footnotes2

1. What Jesus does not know, I do not know, is the most useful sentence in Bailey's treatment of this petition. It is not an argument against interest in the return. It is an argument that a specific activity, matching signs to headlines, requires a claim its practitioners cannot support.
2. The plural is worth checking across the whole prayer. Our Father, our bread, our sins, lead us, deliver us. There is not a first-person singular anywhere in it, which makes it a difficult prayer to use as private devotional material without noticing what one is saying.

Sources

Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels (IVP Academic, 2008), chapter 9. Supports the reading of the kingdom petition as affirming direction in history, the caution against attaching signs to current events, the four components of the kingdom, the tension held in thy will be done, the alternative rendering of the bread petition, and the observations on our bread and on bread rather than cake. Supplied in full.

The biblical texts cited: Matt 6:9-11, Luke 11:2-3, and Mark 13:32.

Where the sourcing stops: the Greek word rendered daily is one of the genuinely difficult words in the New Testament and several translations are defensible. Bailey's rendering is presented here as a legitimate option rather than as the correct one.