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The Lord’s Prayer When Bread Is Scarce and Debts Are High

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.

Christian churches universally use Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer instead of Luke’s version. However, different churches use different wordings for the prayer.

Some churches retain the archaic English “thy” and “thine.” Protestant churches typically end the prayer with the phrase, “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory.” Roman Catholic practice omits this phrase.

The most significant difference between various churches is that some churches use the language of “debts,” some use “trespasses,” and some use “sins.”

The prayer Jesus taught his disciples was more than a prayer for spiritual nurture and forgiveness of sins. When he referred to daily bread and forgiveness of debts, he was referring to real bread and real economic debts.

In his prayer, Jesus makes clear that his followers are to pray for real bread and forgiveness of financial debts. In Greek, the word for debt is a financial term. Jesus’ concern for bread and debts is consistent with his social and ethical approach to his society. He focused on the injustices of his society against the poor and dispossessed.

The most critical element of the prayer is the reference to the Kingdom of God, which does not refer to an afterlife in Heaven. When Jesus prays, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” he is expressing his belief that God will end oppression, poverty, and suffering on earth. The Kingdom of God refers to the rule of God on earth.

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.

Jesus condemned the society, which had created such a vast gap between the haves and the have-nots. He criticized the rich for exploiting and oppressing the poor. He also criticized the religious system for judging so many groups of people in the society to be “unclean” and unworthy of God’s blessing.

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 prayer loses the double meaning of the word, “debts.” Instead, Luke uses the word “sin” rather than “debt.” This word choice loses the financial reality behind the metaphor and 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 meant his words to address suffering and injustice in his own society. His prayer for bread and debts referred to real bread and forgiveness of real financial debts.

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