EXTRACT
The kingdom of God is at the center of the Lord’s Prayer. Most interesting to me are its petitions, as they are called. When we pray the Lord’s prayer we don’t ask for “my bread,” but “our bread.”
Accordingly, I know that my heavenly Father has heard my prayer not when there’s bread on my table, or on my immediate family’s table, but when there is bread on my church family’s table. (Perrin, p 216)
Perrin should have said “on everybody’s table.” Christ breaks open the idea of family, so that includes not just people like me, but socially undesirable others, alien others, strangers.
The Greek word for “us” is hemon (ἡμῶν, Strong’s number 2257), In every case the Lord’s Prayer refers to us, not me. Give us our daily bread. Forgive us our sins. Lead us not into temptation. I’m reminded of Reinhold Niebuhr‘s observation that the worst things we do we do as self-righteous collectives. Our sins include imperialism, colonialism, slavery. Our concern should be that everyone in the world has bread, for it is “our bread,” granted to us by “our father.” The Lord’s Prayer is a prayer in the first-person plural.
