Worthy

We aren't. And that's a good thing.

Leaving the faith tradition of one’s birth is a bit like moving to a new country. Everything is new and exciting for a bit, then the culture shock sets in. The rose coloured glasses come off. You begin to realize that the problems you had at home have found new ways of expressing themselves and the new place has issues of its own. When I came to Anglicanism and made my spiritual home there, I found a haven where I felt like I could exhale for the first time in years. It quite literally saved my life and my faith in God. I loved the depth of liturgical possibility, the academic tradition, the history, and the delightful tension of Catholic Protestantism (or Protestant Catholicism). I still love these things. What I was not prepared for was the legacy of theological and liturgical infighting that lingers today, particularly in the Canadian church. I chalk this up to exvangelical naïveté. Most of the internal, institutional struggle is inside baseball, shielded from public view, and really only relevant to those who are up to their eyeballs in Anglicana. As fate and the Holy Spirit would have it, I am now one of those people - a priest, whose life revolves around this tension, whose spirit is often troubled by it.

To borrow a phrase from a new Christian in my parish I was “raised on the BAS (Book of Alternative Services)” as a convert. I attended a very evangelical, low church parish that formed contemporary liturgy around a BAS skeleton. This was very accessible for me having just left the land of praise bands and skinny jeans and I didn’t think anything of it. The BAS was and is the book that informs the worship of the majority of the church. It has done so since its publication in 1985, despite still being known as the “new book” in many parishes. I was only dimly aware of the 1962 Book of Common Prayer by the time I enrolled in seminary. The BCP was largely handled as a stuffy old embarrassment, no longer relevant, an antique that “no one really uses anymore” but was nonetheless part of the seminary formation experience when I started. We learned to preside at morning prayer, to chant the creeds and the collects, how to vest for choir dress. Throughout first year, I fell in love with the BCP because it helped me make sense of Anglican identity coming from an external Protestant tradition that owes its existence to the Church of England. It was poetic, rich, timeless, and most importantly (for me and my spiritual needs) realistic about the condition of the human heart and the unending need for God’s grace. I met other students who felt similarly and who felt it was important to keep the prayerbook tradition alive.

Maturing through seminary and getting out into the “real world” of parish ministry showed me that the internal struggle with worship was actually a minefield of historic grudges, spiritual harm, and politicization coming from several directions. The privilege of being newer to a tradition is that you aren’t burdened with that knowledge, but the curse comes when you put your foot directly in it, inadvertently kicking a hornet’s nest. I didn’t know that desiring to preserve a prayerbook tradition was controversial or unpopular or laden with assumptions until I was on the receiving end. To its critics, interest in the prayerbook is shorthand for vain aestheticism, exclusionary theologies, and fetishization of Anglicanism’s imperial history. I know that this association is not without basis in reality, that we must understand the transgressions of the past, the weaponization of tradition, and our institutional failings.

I have to push back against the proposition, and what seems to be an increasingly popular one, that because something is old, has caused harm, or requires us to step outside the box of modernity that it must be abandoned and replaced. The prayerbook is over 80% Holy Scripture, organized and ordered for worship, personal and corporate devotion, and sacramental ministry. Do we no longer believe that Scripture is God’s Word and gift to us? Do we reject the possibility that the Holy Spirit can redeem and transform and reveal truth through imperfect means? If the same arguments that were levelled in support of the prayerbook’s shelving were applied to any other facet of church life, the basis of Anglican identity would be unspooled. The entire mystery of the Church, and of the Christian faith, relies on the tension between our continued failure as the people of God and His abiding faithfulness and love.

In seminary and once or twice in parish ministry, when I have asked people for their specific grievances with the prayerbook, most people come back to the Prayer of Humble Access. For those who have been part of the ACC since before the introduction of the BAS, I’ve noticed that there is considerable anxiety and anger about this prayer, particularly the clause for which this publication is named: "We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table." We are not worthy. That is what has stuck in people’s minds and hearts, to the exclusion of the phrase that comes immediately after: “But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy.” Being told you are unworthy without the assurance of God’s unending grace and love is spiritually abusive. It is not the Gospel. It is also not theologically compatible with the Book of Common Prayer.

---

My theological understanding of the human disposition toward God can be best summarized as “high Christology, low anthropology.” Or, Romans 7 & 8. There are at least a couple of reasons for this.

1. Growing up Pentecostal and being constantly reminded of my sin nature and the threat of damnation. Guys, I gave my heart to Jesus like so many times. At every altar call invitation until about age 13, because how can we ever be sure that we are saved? This is an unhealthy, fear-based way to define one’s faith and I’ve departed from the Hell-anxiety by the power of the Holy Spirit. Yet my sin is ever before me.

2. The world I inherited. It is exceedingly difficult to feel positive and uplifted about the trajectory the human race, given…*gestures vaguely* everything. I need Jesus Christ to be the Saviour and Redeemer of the world, who will return to judge the living and the dead, and bring the Kingdom here. This is what my hope is predicated on. This is the fount of all goodness, right now.

The BCP was the framework I needed to sort out my theological foibles because it balances the bleak reality of the human condition with the unending grace of God. For my inner child, that was the ingredient often missing from sermons and discipleship. (I told a cradle Anglican friend recently that the theology of the BCP was softer and more gracious than much of my early upbringing. She was blown away by this.) For my adult tendency toward pessimism, I need to be reminded of the assurance that God can and will sort out all of our vile bullshit, that time belongs to Him, and that there is no partiality. And that through all of that, his property is always to have mercy.

I’m not worthy. I don’t want to be. Because if I were, then I wouldn’t need Jesus Christ. Any worthiness I attain is imputed to me through Christ’s righteousness working in me. Not gained, not earned, but received with a glad heart.