Collect for the Fourth Sunday in Lent
God is a limitless ocean, and all we’ve gone is ankle deep
“Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.”
-Collect for the Fourth Sunday in Lent
“The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven.” These are the words that some ministers say as they distribute Holy Communion. I’ve always found them trite. An older alternative is “The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life…” This latter version has gravitas; the former struck me as sentimental at best.
I was wrong. In the book of Exodus, the people of God are sustained by the bread of heaven in the wilderness. Today’s collect proclaims, “Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world.” The Gospel of John makes clear that Jesus is the new and better manna. At the Eucharist, we are fed with God’s “blessed Son.”
When I was in college, I attended an Episcopal church for the first time. It was a new community that attracted evangelicals from the local Christian university. Most of us had never had Holy Communion every week. I remember the feeling of anticipation as I waited in line to receive the bread and wine. I saw students with tears in their eyes as they slowly moved toward the altar. We had come to believe that we were encountering Jesus. We expected this bread to give us life.
While the “true bread” of this collect refers to Holy Communion, it also includes the preached Word. Just as in the sixth chapter of John on which the prayer is based, the new manna includes the entirety of the Holy Eucharist. The Word of God read and proclaimed is the bread of heaven, too. This is food that is eaten and heard; it heals, sustains, and enlivens.
My college friends and I made that church plant our home, because we were fed by the preaching and the sacraments. We were simultaneously satisfied and made aware of an infinite hunger. The more we consumed the more we realized we needed, but, as we were consistently nourished, we began to become what we ate: a community defined by grace.
God is a limitless ocean, and all we’ve gone is ankle deep. The satisfaction that comes from experiencing the gospel, combined with the realization of an unending need, leads us to pray, “Evermore give us this bread…” Like the Israelites in the wilderness, we want more of this life-giving feast that we find in healthy churches and gracious communities. We need the “bread of heaven” “to live in us, and we in him,” so that we might continually be made whole.
Thank you. Enjoyed this as well as your presentation today. I’m going to try to incorporate the collect into my weekly prayer practice. My catechcumenate class at st James has introduced a number of prayer practices to try out. I will bring this up in class when I’m back.
This is awesome, Ben! Thank you!!