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Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my strength and my redeemer. In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Do you also wish to go away?”
Good morning, Epiphany. My name is Kyler. I have been coming to Epiphany for about a year and a half, regularly attending services with my girlfriend, Cadence.
I wonder how many of you have had a similar or similar enough experience to mine:
I did not grow up in the Episcopal Church; I am not “cradle.” I grew up Evangelical, and without making a blanket statement about Evangelical worship, I would say my understanding of “worship” and the “why” of it was deficient.
A few years ago, I fell into a spiritual crisis of sorts, I think in large part because of this. I’ve spent a good deal of time thinking about it, especially as it regards God’s mercy. So, worship, specifically ritual, is the context in which I want to discuss today’s Gospel.
Have any of you been a part of a Passover Seder? For those of you who aren’t aware, in Judaism, the Seder is the ritual meal that begins the celebration of Passover, commemorating the Hebrew people’s liberation from slavery in Egypt as recounted in the Book of Exodus. It involves cups of wine and ceremonial foods, including Matzah, the unleavened bread of affliction, which, through the ceremony, is transformed into the bread of liberation in its sharing.
Why bring up the Seder?
Well, one reason is bread. For the past few weeks, our Sunday Gospel readings have come from what is called the “Bread of Life Discourse.” This month has essentially been “bread month.” Four Sundays ago, we began with the multiplication of the loaves and Jesus walking on the Sea of Galilee; three weeks ago was when we first heard Jesus claim that he is the bread of life (vv. 35, 48), the bread of God (v. 33); two weeks ago we heard him say he is the living bread that came down from heaven (v. 51) as opposed to the manna—the “bread of angels” (Ps. 78:25)—the people of Israel ate in the desert (v. 49, 58), which was reiterated in last Sunday’s reading, as well as today.
A second is that I have a dear friend who has hosted a few Messianic Passover Seders in which I’ve had the privilege to participate. Having experienced those, it was illuminating to read as I was preparing this sermon from scholars pointing to how the overall structure of John chapter 6 could be roughly construed as following the pattern of Jewish Passover Seders of Jesus’ time. The text does say that all this took place near the time of the Passover (v. 4). You see, there are distinct parts to this ceremony. Now, over time, things have shifted. Still, for Jesus and his contemporaries, it went as follows: the meal, then young children are tasked with asking questions about the ceremony, and an explanation is given, centered on the mercy of God.
It is not always so apparent that the mercy of God is as immediately present as God has proven it to be. Sometimes, it feels like we don’t possess God’s mercy. Often, we take the mercy of God for granted. Continually, we fail to give mercy, and perhaps we don’t really know how to receive it. But the mercy of God is right in front of us; indeed, it is working in us, and we need to be reminded of it repeatedly. This is the wisdom of our ritual, of our worship.
Let me return to that spiritual crisis I mentioned earlier.
A year into my undergraduate studies in theology at Seattle Pacific University, I felt like I was being jolted awake, I would say, by the mercy of God. But I didn’t really know how or what to pray during that time. Near the end of October 2021—I remember—I found and purchased a little leatherbound copy of the Book of Common Prayer. I don’t recall why, and I most certainly did not know how to use it. It is a confusingly arranged thing, not the most intuitive. It requires a lot of flipping, and, in that little book of mine, from frayed ribbons that barely reached the bottom corner of an opened page. But I did not need to know exactly how to use it. I fell in love with it, nonetheless. The language of the Prayer Book and its liturgies comforts me, comforting me in the sense that I feel strengthened.
I want to share with you one of the prayers I have learned to love from that time. It is called the “Prayer of Humble Access,” and it is found in the Rite I Eucharistic liturgy. It was one of the first distinctly Anglican contributions to Christian liturgy. And just like the elements of the Seder according to its text, the Haggadah, this prayer’s place in the liturgy of the Prayer Book over the past 475 years has shifted. It now comes right after the fraction but before the invitation to communion. Let me read it for us:
We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful
Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold
and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather
up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord
whose property is always to have mercy. Grant us therefore,
gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ,
and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him,
and he in us. Amen (BCP, 337).
I understand why we don’t recite this prayer together, even at our 11:00 service. It isn’t present in Rite II and is optional in Rite I. Its penitential character, some might say, is overly penitential and more appropriate for use in a season like Lent, when the Church overall is more comfortable with such language. We might be tempted to stay on that phrase “we are not worthy” or that point about presumption and say, as some of the disciples did of Jesus’ own words, at their wit’s end: “This teaching is difficult” (v. 60).
But I love this prayer—I love this language.
When I didn’t know what or how to pray, I was in a very uncomfortable space, a liminal space at the boundary of my previously held theological presumptions and all that I believed to be unapproachable, unworthy. Though it was about worship and ritual, there were many other implications—social, spiritual, vocational, etc. There still are. But through this prayer, through the elements of bread and wine, I found that “boundary” is a misnomer and truth is found “amidst.” I was being drawn into the Via Media, the way between—not of abandonment or compromise, nor of unwillingness or vacillation, but the more excellent way of love. Rather than finding this prayer marked by the weaknesses of the theology of the early modern period, of reformers of a seeming self-flagellant type, I find it as being marked by what I find most compelling about the Episcopal Church and the Anglican tradition I now call family and the God I know to the core of my being to be far bigger than I can ever know.
Here is where today’s Gospel helps us some more:
Let’s start with that point about presumption: “We do not presume to come to this thy Table…trusting in our own righteousness…”
The earnestness of the Jews and their seeking is marred by their presumptuousness. We can identify their presumptuousness by their complaining or murmuring. I don’t blame them. We might have done the same. The people thought they had found their king. In a way, they had. They had correctly identified him as the Messiah, the Christ, but they were going to “take him by force” (v. 15). Out of a frame of scarcity, they were willing to resort to violence for some sense of material security, for a temporal kingdom. They did not have a picture of the kingdom of God in mind—of abundance—nor a vision of what it would mean for Jesus, in the words of the great hymn, to “reign where’er the sun doth his successive journeys run.” Their aims were far too narrow. They were “trusting in [their] own righteousness.” They were self-willed.
Now worthiness: “We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table…”
When the Jews appeal to the narrative of their ancestors and ask for bread “always,” I relate that to worthiness. By this appeal, they are presuming Jesus will give them more of what they think they want. They ask Jesus to prove himself, to prove whether he is worthy—to which Jesus says, “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died” (v. 49). Twice, Jesus reminds them of this. What they think they want is the wrong thing entirely. It’s too small.
So, the antidote? “Serve him in sincerity and faithfulness” (Josh. 24:14).
As I said before, the Jews were earnest; they were “sincere,” in a sense. But employing sincerity here, I want you to think, “Serve him in wholeness.” This wholeness is of the Holy Spirit; it is “perfect freedom” (BCP, 57; 99); it is our language and action being rightly aligned with what God desires. It is what we ask for in the Lord’s Prayer when we pray, “Thy will be done,” or when we say after receiving communion, “Grant us the strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart” (BCP, 365). Another way to articulate “singleness of heart” is “sincerity of heart,” wholly desiring all that comes from God, God’s will, God’s desire.
The will of God is the mercy of God (see Rom. 11:32). However, as I said at the beginning, it is not always so apparent that the mercy of God is as immediately present as God has proven it to be. That feeling that I do not know my own words is ever-recurring. I often feel impeded, like Moses, when he tells God, “I am not eloquent…I am slow of speech and slow of tongue” (Exod. 4:10), especially when it comes to my time in prayer. But, Epiphany, this is the beauty of our tradition. We are given this gift of prayer, of “common prayer”—language discipled by the saints, words that are ever spoken around the world. That enlivens my faith. In that, I find abundance. So, I come to it, again and again, praying: “Give us that due sense of all thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful” (“A General Thanksgiving,” BCP, 59).
And “faithfulness?” This is not something Jesus coerces us into. Again, he asks his disciples, “Do you also wish to go away?” In the Prayer of Humble Access, we call God “O merciful Lord” because it is God’s “property…always to have mercy.” Always. Mercy is an act of relationship. Jesus’ question is an act of mercy. And, as I see it, faithfulness, responding to mercy, begs me to realize and say: “Lord, to whom can we go?” (v. 68). You are already here, present to us, and you desire to be with us. In the Eucharist, at your table, you say to us, “With desire, I desire to eat this meal with you” (Lk. 22:18).
Jesus does not need to prove he is worthy; Jesus is worthy—worthy of praise, of song, of all worship, always. He is worthy because he comes to us, for us, because he loves us, and his greatest desire is that we might abide in him, and he in us (v. 56). Because that is who he is—that is who God is. We are of infinite value to God. Why are we not “worthy,” then? Because we aren’t Jesus.
I’m not like Jesus. I’m not God. So, I ask that I might become more and more like him. Jesus wants you to come to him—just as you are. As he reminds the Twelve, he reminds us also, “Did I not choose you [for myself]” (v. 70). And does he not continue to choose us? We pray that we may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of Jesus because we want to be like him. I want to be like him. I want to receive like Jesus. I want to receive like Jesus that I might give like Jesus. I want to receive like Jesus that I might love like Jesus.
O merciful Lord, help us to receive like you.
There are Red Prayer Books in front of you, resting in the back of the pew. Before you join everyone in receiving communion, I encourage you to turn to page 337, look to the bottom part of the page, and reread this prayer. Let us make it our prayer today. Let us remember the mercy of God.