Dear Lord,
this bread you break and offer
to my greedy body
Serves only to swell already bursting cells,
Excite demand for after-worship brunch:
“all you can eat.”
This sacrificial wine blessed by your
own hands, soon to be nail-driven,
Courses through thirsty veins and
quickens my addiction to things
of the world,
The symbolism observed but the baser instincts are easily surmounted.
In serving you I serve myself as pride
wraps itself around my words and works.
It is not what I have done but what I have left undone that names my sin of laziness,
My own needs so often provided for first, and the dogs eat the table scraps.
The righteous anger I display at your
children despoiled by war and hunger
Mask envy and gluttony over the
spoils of the victors.
I lust after my neighbour’s wealth
and his triumphs, though well earned,
I would claim as my own.
Lord, my Lord, even the mighty
are brought to their knees;
You rain sulphur and fire on Sodom
and Gomorrah, and Lot’s wife becomes
a pillar of salt.
Yet you let me pass through the
gates of the city
Unsullied, my sins unknown, unrecognized,
Over and over again to test your love
in acts of lawlessness,
To dare to call on you from places
of degradation and depravity,
To race homeward on prodigal’s feet,
pig-mucked and stinking of the gutters
of every city in which I have defied death,
The death of body and soul entwined – because you have claimed me for your own.
Where is just anger of what I do not only
to myself but to your good name,
Testing like the Pharisees,
plotting my own downfall…
“God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for he has appointed a time
for every matter, and for every work.”
(Ecclesiastes 3:17)
“Come, not because you are strong,
but because you are weak.”
I hear the words,
I hear,
I am here.
Is it enough?
