APRIL 10 2016
THE LORD’S PRAYER (3): EPIOUSIOS.
Epiousios? If it is Greek to you, you are right. It’s a word that only appears in the Lord’s Prayer and nowhere else, which makes me wonder why Jesus used this unfamiliar term in a prayer which the Lord gave us as a template, a model of how we should pray and preachers should preach. So allow me to speculate because there is a hymn of which the first line is: “May the Mind of Christ, my Savior, live in me from day to day.” Thus, true to that prayer I may try to fathom why the Lord used that unusual word that appears nowhere else in the Scriptures.
Let me take a stab at the reason why Jesus created a completely new word. I think he threw it out as a challenge to make the preachers think creatively, to stir them from complacency and avoid conformity, and so following his example to go against the grain of the reigning religious rules. That’s also the reason why I single out this particular word that is translated as DAILY as in GIVE US THIS DAY OUR ‘DAILY’ BREAD, a line which, at first blush suggests that we want the Lord to help us in preventing us from starving to death. I think the church fathers favored this word because bread is a popular concept, and churches want to be popular, right? Today the Prosperity people use it as an excuse to get rich, as bread is also a slang word for money.
However. There’s always a however. Look at the context here. Why the sudden switch in a prayer that has nothing to do with keeping us physically alive and everything to do with focusing on the KINGDOM TO COME? That makes no sense.
The prayer appears in Matthew 6, part of the Sermon on the Mount. In that same chapter Jesus tells us (verse 25) “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink. (In other words: forget about that DAILY BREAD line) Is not (eternal) life more important than food?” That to me suggests that praying for DAILY BREAD simply does not at all fit into the outline for life Jesus gives us in that so famous speech.
What then does it mean? I tried GOOGLE, and searched for this word in that medium. Try it yourself! Lots of references there! Even the former Pope, Benedictus, when he still was Cardinal Ratzinger, wrote a few paragraphs on this word. He (no wonder he resigned as Pope) prefers the term SUPERSUBSTANTIAL, a word only a theologian would favor. Just imagine reciting THE LORD’S PRAYER and saying GIVE US THIS DAY OUR SUPERSUBSTANTIAL BREAD. His explanation is that this is not the bread – substance- that passes into the body, but the bread of eternal life, which sustains our souls. Baloney, I say.
Four points come to mind:
(1) I laud that the Roman church recognizes the difficulty with the word and has tried to do something about it by pointing out that DAILY BREAD does not mean what it suggests, a plea for regular meals, but has spiritual value.
(2) Personally I abhor this whole ‘soul’ business, because it denies us being real humans, made of ‘the adamah’ the earth which the Lord used to form us.
(3) Perhaps I read too much in the word, but I think that Jesus’ use of ‘epiousios’ betrays his keen sense of humor: how will the church handle this word?
(4) Of course, the word DAILY neglects to incorporate the all-pervasive theme that the LORD’S PRAYER HAS BEEN ENTIRELY INSPIRED BY THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM, something the Roman Catholic Church sees in a different light as it actually maintains that the RC Church constitutes the Kingdom.
So what does the word signify? One interpreter – also found in Google – suggest that epiousios could be a form of the Greek expression hé epiousa, or “that which is coming,” with “day” being implied, not stated.
According to this translation, epiousios would be a shortened version of “on the following day” (té epiousé hémera) which we find in Acts 7:26. That’s more like it, but still makes for an awkward translation: Give us this day the bread for the day that is coming.
Still this is not very satisfactory, so, no wonder, the church has stuck to the now so ingrained GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD, knowing full well that this really is not the correct translation.
In my own THE FOUNDATION FOR UNDERSTANDING THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT, Robert Guelich deals extensively with this word. Commenting on this petition he writes: “The eschatological element remains inherent in the request, since Jesus’ ministry introduces the new age.” That’s more to my liking.
I think that Dr. Diarmaid MacCullogh, who wrote CHRISTIANITY, THE FIRST 3000 YEARS (another of my books) comes the closest. Dr. MacCullogh is a professor of church history at Oxford University. On page 89 of this 800 page volume he writes: “Epiousios does not mean ‘daily.’ In other words: the line has nothing to do with making us comfortable by giving us our ‘daily’ bread. The Greek word means something like ‘of extra substance,’ and if we can assign any meaning to epiousios it may point to the new time of the coming kingdom”
That stirs in me the right vibrations. Based on these sources and the general direction of the prayer, the request “Give us today our daily bread” could mean something like this: “Grant us the wherewithal to prepare ourselves for the Kingdom to come.”
Next week I hope to conclude this issue when I will try to tackle the most difficult part: how to incorporate this much more likely meaning into this so universal prayer. Can the church – the entire church, all those who confess Christ – be moved to read this line in THE LORD’S PRAYER instead of GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD to substitute this with GIVE US TO WHEREWITHAL TO PREPARE OURSELVES FOR THE KINGDOM TO COME?
That would really mean that the church in general would have to adopt a new KINGDOM gospel, would make THY KINGDOM COME the central part of it teaching. When Jesus named the apostle Peter to be the leader of the church – that’s why the Roman Catholic Church has named its worship center in the Vatican after this fellow – I think the Lord displayed some holy irony with the word PETER which means ROCK. It is next to impossible to move an embedded ROCK – think of the Rock of Gibraltar. The church is, indeed, like a ROCK: impossible to move. Peter himself, when a new vision was needed, required divine intervention to accept non-Jewish people in the new Christian movement. Today divine intervention – except on a personal level – does not happen anymore. In other words: I have very little faith – none at all, actually – that the church will adopt a KINGDOM VISION, a NEW EARTH stance. However, the Lord will force it, somehow. More about that next week. If I correctly read “the mind of Christ” then we all know that the church has not risen to Jesus’ challenge to buck the trend, to adopt the unusual and follow his example of going against the grain of organized religion.
Jesus’ words in the remainder of the prayer are also watered down and so become rather meaningless. We can dream the words: AND FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS AS WE ALSO HAVE FORGIVEN OUR DEBTORS.
Of course this has nothing to do with money or financial obligations. It has everything to do with the way we live and move and conduct our lives.
This line too must be seen in the larger context of THE KINGDOM TO COME. Both the words DEBTS and DEBTORS are, in my opinion the wrong terms. Of course, when we drone the prayer, the words are much easier to utter than TRESPASSES and THOSE WHO TRESPASS AGAINST US. Yet those are the proper words. In the light of the overall emphasis on the KINGDOM and, especially in the light of the preceding GIVE US THE WHEREWITHAL TO PREPARE US FOR THE KINGDOM TO COME, we know all too well, especially today, that we constantly sin against creation, trespass on God’s Holy Created Word. We all do this all the time. Except for the few hunter-gatherers still living in remote regions of South America and Papua New Guinea, nobody, I repeat nobody in the Western world lives a minute without trespassing, without somehow damaging, polluting, harming God’s Holy creation.
I believe that our greatest sins are of an environmental nature. We constantly sin against God’s creation, especially we people of the 21st Century, where each time we drive a car, switch on a light, eat manufactured food, we increase the environmental debt. (It takes at least 10 fuel calories to produce one food calorie.) At this stage of history we cannot ‘not’ sin in whatever we do. No holier than thou attitude is ever warranted. We can only expect to be forgiven when we at the same time forgive others of their ‘trespasses’. We all are in this together. If ever ‘grace’ is needed, it is in connection with our lifestyle. I wrote last week about “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life and only a few find it”.
That is disturbing language. All signs show that our current lifestyle by and large resembles ‘the wide gate and the broad road’.
“Forgive us our trespasses” points to our environmental sins. Friedrich Nietzsche saw this clearly when he wrote in THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA that the sins against creation are the greatest of all sins, because they directly affect God’s Holiness, his precious creation for which he offered his only Son to buy it back from the Evil One.
This ties in directly with the last line: LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION BUT DELIVER US FROM THE EVIL ONE. Not ‘evil’ but ‘the evil one’. Christ has delivered us from ‘evil’, but, according to 1 John 5: 19 ‘the whole world is under the control of the evil one’, that’s why we need to be fully aware of today’s evil dominance.
It is so easy to be ”LED INTO TEMPTATION. It is so easy to live a life of luxury and be seduced by what the world has to offer. Now more than ever the question “How then shall we live?” is relevant. I cannot lay down hard and fast rules. What is temptation for some is necessity for others. We live in complicated times, times that need a lot of reflection, almost made impossible by modern entertainment.
God is constantly testing us. He wants us to be ready for the New Creation where only tested people can enter, people that love God’s creation with a passion.
I feel so inadequate there. As a city-born and raised person – now living in the country – I know so little about real Christian living even though I try. John 17 makes clear that Jesus’ fervent prayer was to emphasize that we don’t belong to a world dominated by THE EVIL ONE. We belong to the world to come, to the Kingdom that is coming. That’s what this prayer is all about.
LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION is a very real danger. The world is constantly knocking at our door, wants us to be good citizens, partake in the race for economic growth, wants us to shop till we drop.
Perhaps the prayer line: LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION but DELIVER US FROM THE EVIL ONE is the last line but certainly not the easiest to implement. Our entire society is based on temptation. The minute we open a newspaper, turn on radio, watch television, we are exposed to temptation. And all, well mostly all, is inspired by the evil one.
What to do about this prayer? Jesus gave it to us for a purpose. That purpose is to make us ready for the Kingdom to come.
Next week I will try to flesh out this concept.