Sarx

Continuing with the posting of Rick Fabian’s Worship At St Gregory’s (with the permission of the author and the publisher).

The deacon introduces the Prayers Of The People. These begin with the Lord’s Prayer, continue with a free Littany — launched and prompted by the deacon — and finish as the Presider prays the Collect of the Day. The full order of prayers is as follows:

1. All sing the Lord’s Prayer, without its doxology (”for the Kingdom…”)

2. The deacon offers the first Litany petition, for peace, and the people supply further petitions and thanksgivings freely, ending each one, “let us pray to [or bless] the Lord.”

3. The people respond each time, “Lord have mercy” or “Thanks be to God.”

4. The deacon prompts fresh petitions occasionally to ensure that we pray for all appropriate concerns the Prayer Book directs [p. 383].

5. The Presider ends the free petitions with a petition for the dead.

6. The deacon says fixed concluding petitions for reconciliation and God’s Kingdom, and the litany commendation.

7. The Presider sings Collect of the Day — but in place of its doxology:

8. All sing the Lord’s Prayer doxology and Amen.

This use of the Collect of the Day best suits the Prayer Book rubric [p. 394], which recommends a collect appropriate to the season or occasion celebrated, as the first choice for concluding the prayers. Dr Boone Porter also recommends this use. Ending the whole prayer series with the Lord’s Prayer doxology unifies the petitions, thanksgivings and collect as extensions of Jesus’ own prayer — which St Paul tells us they are. (Romans 8:26)

The gospels and other sources imply this is roughly how Jesus’ first disciples used the Lord’s Prayer. A rabbi typically ended his sermon with a prayer embodying his teaching. By the Second Century AD these teaching prayers jelled into a standard form, now named among Jews by its first word Kaddish, or “Hallowed [be your name].” Luke’s setting for the Lord’s Prayer (”Lord, teach us to pray…” Luke 11:1) reflects this pattern. Some scholars hold the Lord’s Prayer is the rabbi Jesus’ characteristic Kaddish, emphasizing the distinctive features of his teaching, especially its Jubilee imagery. (*) Other gospel scholars attribute the Lord’s Prayer and Jubilee imagery in general to Christian community tradition, and not to Jesus himself.

After the rabbi finished, the deacon and congregation continued with a series of prayers (tefillah), at first freely composed around an emerging outline. (*) Among Jews this series developed into eighteen stylized collects; among Christians, somewhat later, into a litany of petitions with one collect at the end. For Good Friday the Prayer Book provides an older, intermediate form of this development, offering petitions in thematic groups, each group begun with an invitation and ended with a collect. At St Gregory’s we adapt that form to our familiar litany use by supplying, “…let us pray to the Lord / Lord have mercy,” after each petition. In this way our congregation can pray by heart, without books, whatever the season.

Historians debate why the Lord’s teaching prayer was eventually torn from its natural place in liturgy, following the sermon, and removed to the communion, where it now stands in most rites, while the accompanying prayers stayed behind with the sermon. Some argue the petition for feeding inspired this change; R. Taft and others favor the petition for forgiveness. By contrast, outside the eucharist the original Jewish format endured hardily. Despite a commonplace misconception, based on decadent devotional elaborations, that the Lord’s Prayer should conclude and “sum up” congregational petitions, Anglican Prayer Books actually follow the Jewish pattern, both during non-eucharistic services and whenever the daily office precedes the eucharistic meal: the Lord’s Prayer (without doxology) introduces other petitions — often quoted from the psalms — and these conclude in a collect (with doxology). This is the format we have restored and adapted for participatory eucharistic use.

Forgiveness The Lord’s Prayer itself includes a petition for forgiveness of our sins, and the deacon’s Litany prays for our enemies and for forgiveness and generosity throughout the world. Jesus exhorted people to forgive freely, and proclaimed forgiveness even to wthose who had not expressly asked for it. When the gospels express his teaching narratively, for example in the Zacchaeus story, the invariable narrative pattern is: first forgiven and accepted by God, then repentant and forgiving — a pattern all Christian reconciliation rites reverse!

The Jesuit writer George McCauley observes that sacramental theorists have blundered for centuries by focussing on what the faithful receive, instead of on what the Church does in obedience to Christ’s command — forgiving sins, baptizing the world, etc. By contrast, the gospels’ pattern repeats not only the verbal content, but the visible actions of Jesus’ teaching, healing, and passion, as a pattern of the way God works. This pattern belongs in the liturgy. So instead of asking for absolution in the litany, we pray for grace to forgive our enemies and for forgiveness throughout the world — switching our focus from receiving forgiveness to giving it, which is what both Jesus and the gospel writers urged. (Two or three texts direct us to seek forgiveness, while a hundred implore us to give it.) Then in the Great Thanksgiving we thank God for the forgiveness that Christ has brought us and all humankind.

Penitential Rites We make no further penitential devotions on Sundays or feasts; and the eucharist itself suffices for liturgical absolution — a provision that accords with Jesus’ own custom at meals. Corporate penitential devotions had no place in the eucharist at first, and the Council of Nicaea forbade their introduction on Sundays and throughout Eastertide (Canon 20). They became popular during the turmoil of Roman civilization’s decline (the sixth century “rogation period”), and the later middle ages provided them for the few worshippers making their communion — something most people did rarely — until these devotions became a regular addition to the Sunday liturgy. But they do not fit in, and modern liturgists despair of finding a workable moment for them in the service. The Prayer Book provides them for optional use; and we opt not to use them. St Gregory’s clergy have an active ministry of spiritual direction, and hear confessions from all who wish sacramental absolution.

On Ash Wednesday the Prayer Book begins the Lenten fast with an extended penitential service: this is our one regular corporate penitential action within a eucharist, excepting war or like emergency.

Worthy Communion Rigorists have promoted penitential devotions as preparation and qualification for communion. But Jesus welcomed the undeserving to his table: N. Perrin and other leading gospel scholars argue this was the chief offence for which his outraged contemporaries betrayed him and saw him crucified. (*) Dining with the undeserving was Jesus’ chosen prophetic sign, the embodiment of all he taught about God’s Kingdom already come, and our challenge to respond. It was a radical gesture, and led him to abandon baptism as a preparatory rite because incorporating the unprepared was the essential symbol. Although his followers resumed baptizing, they maintained his fundamental concept of God’s banquet shared with the impure — thanks partly to Paul’s arguments. The Church traditionally holds that no preparation can make us worthy of it; instead, the eucharist itself makes us worthy.

As for baptism, its true purpose is not to admit people to further sacraments, but to empower them for life and mission in the new humanity of Christ. Far from requiring Baptism before communion, then, the Church might more logically reverse the conventional order, and baptize for Christ’s mission those whom Christ has already welcomed to his table, and fed with his body and blood. The Book of Acts evidences this order of events as well as the other (*) and gospel scholarship suggests this order embodies more faithfully Jesus’ own teaching and practice.