Prayer of Humble Access
We do not presume to come to this your table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your abundant and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table; but you are the same Lord whose character is always to have mercy. Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.
My remix:
We do not presume to come to this your table, O God,
trusting in the delusion that our shit don’t stink,
but in life and love’s abundant and great mercies.
This non-stop junk food bullshit we binge on with brandnames like Self-Importance that’s all but convinced us we’re the reason for this cosmic miracle we call Earth, even though we act more like aliens are war with this planet even though we’re people who’d be nothing without it;
thank God creation wasn’t left to us
because we almost certainly wouldn’t have invented mercy or grace or forgiveness or love, much less flowers and trees and different colored eyes and skin and all those languages and the adorable sounds babies make while they’re sleeping or the dude who came up with Code Red Mt. Dew.
So grant us, grace-filled God,
to partake in a shared supper that draws us to one another like Jesus did and taught,
that our weak and marvelous bodies, and our selfish and poetic minds,
might be made clean by the humbling awareness of the body and blood that we all share,
and that we might live in or through or just more than we do now in something, like God, that’s _bigger _than us.
And that that big thing that we know, when we’re not being pompous assholes, dwells in us. Amen.
