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.

Most Protestant churches end the prayer with the words, "For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory." Roman Catholics omit this phrase. Some churches use the archaic English "thy" and "thine."

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

Jesus was referring to real bread and real debts when he taught his followers to pray for daily bread and forgiveness of debts. He was not simply teaching a prayer about spiritual nurture and forgiveness of sins.

The most basic meaning of the Greek word for "debts" is financial. This meaning is consistent with the approach of Jesus to the social and ethical injustices of his society against the poor and dispossessed. In the prayer, he makes explicit the need for real bread and for payment of debt.

The prayer cannot be understood without also seeing it in terms of the Kingdom of God, which does not refer to an afterlife in Heaven. It refers to the expectation of the rule of God, in which God will end oppression, poverty, and suffering on earth. "Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

A prayer with the words: "Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" loses the economic foundation of the prayer when "bread" and "debt" become spiritual metaphors, with no connection to real food and economic debt.

No one who heard Jesus speak would have limited his words about bread and debts to spiritual metaphors. Jesus spoke to a population who were underfed and overtaxed. Most of the peasants were in debt, because the king and the elite class owned the land. They claimed proprietary rights to the land and everything grown on it. The demands from the ruling class were so high that the peasants were deeply in debt. In addition, many of the beggars were people who had been forced off the land because they could not pay their debts to the ruling class.

When you read the gospels, you can see that Jesus continually spoke about the real human needs of people in a society divided between the haves and the have-nots. He condemned the rich for their exploitation and oppression of the poor. He also condemned a religious system which identified so many groups of people as "unclean" and cut off from God's blessing."

Jesus saw 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 the result of high taxes on the people who had to turn over most of what they grew, made, or caught. He also knew what it was to live under Roman occupation. Roman soldiers could force people to do whatever they wanted. 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.

Especially in these times of food shortages and rampant debts, Christians who want to pray as Jesus intended need to restore the basic economic meaning to the prayer. This is especially significant at a time when basic staples such as wheat, rice, and corn have become more and more scarce. It is also significant for the millions of people who are swamped in debt and 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.