Read
10When you are invited to be a guest, go and sit in the worst place. Then the one who invited you may come and say, “My friend, take a better seat!” You will then be honored in front of all the other guests. 11 If you put yourself above others, you will be put down. But if you humble yourself, you will be honored.
Reflect
The other day I stood in our almost empty church, groggy and with a serious case of bed head. It was pre-coffee and almost pre-dawn – 7:00 am on a December Wednesday.
Our congregation, an Anglican Network in Canada church, had recently launched a traditional communion service, held really early in the morning mid-week. Those who craved this particular type of poetry of praise (as in, beautiful language and beautiful liturgy), and an intimate time with God and others, would roll out of bed a little bit earlier and come. I came.
And this is part of what I said that morning: “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…”
It is called the Prayer of Humble Access. And it is as old as the hills and as Anglican as a glass of sherry after Sunday service. It was written in 1548 by an Anglican bishop, as a matter of fact.
I love it because it reminds me of who I am, and who he is. It rearranges the order of things for me, an order that too often becomes disordered. It acknowledges God first with his mercy, then me last with my mess.
It expresses awe and wonder at the magnitude of his compassion. It is humble. And it is access to God’s forgiveness and beauty.
During Advent, when it is all too easy to be swept away each and every day by the craziness of what we have done to Christmas, prayers like that one remind me of the lasting Eternal.
We often talk about the King of Glory born in humility: the donkey ride, the hay, the shepherds, the swaddling, the fleeing to Egypt.
How often do we remind ourselves of our own call to Christ-like humility? Now is as good a time as any.
Respond
Heavenly Father, We are only worthy because you have made us so. Help us remember that this season as we reflect on your humble beginnings and your majestic now. Amen.
Karen Stiller
Karen Stiller is a senior editor of Faith Today magazine and an award-winning freelance writer. Her work has appeared in magazines and journals across North America. She is co-author of two books about the Church: Shifting Stats Shaking the Church: 40 Canadian Churches Respond (2015), Going Missional (2012); and editor of Evangelicals Around the World: a global handbook for the 20th century (Thomas Nelson, 2015), and The Lord’s Prayer (Wipf & Stock, 2015), by faculty at the University of Toronto (Wycliffe College). She lives in Ottawa.