Pray it like you mean it

And when you don't feel like saying sorry

On Thursday 27th February, I will be performing God, the Bible and Everything (in 60 minutes) for the very first time at St Stephen’s Church, in Westbourne Park, not far from London Paddington. The following week, on Ash Wednesday 5th March, I’ll be at St Cuthbert’s Church in Wood Green, North London. You can book tickets for those gigs here. And then I’ll be in Endcliffe, Sheffield on Saturday 8th March. Book for that here.

If you’re a reader of Cary’s Almanac and we’ve not met before, do please come and say hello! I’d love to meet you. Honestly!

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Pic by Pbritti. Under CC 4.0 licence

Easter is late this year. I hope to write about why at some point soon. This means the high days and holidays are fewer and further between. St Scholastica’s day is on 10^th February, but I wrote about that last year. So this time, I’d like to write about something that’s running in the background of this Anglican almanac: liturgy.

I have changed my mind on liturgy. In my ‘Young, Restless and Reformed’ days, I was against it. In my ‘Older, Reflective but-still-Reformed-if not-more-so’ day, I am for it.

What is liturgy?

‘Liturgy’ comes from the Greek words ‘laos’ which means ‘people’, and ‘ergon’, meaning ‘work’. In Ancient Greece, the rich funded public festivals and maintained civic infrastructure. Over time, the word ‘liturgy’ came to be applied to religious festivals and services. Now it refers to a structured form of worship, either public or private, with prescribed – that is pre-written – prayers, creeds, readings, and rituals. Some of these prayers and readings change with the day or season. Others are to be said every day, like the Lord’s Prayer.

The Church of England, like many other Christian denominations, has large books of liturgy, containing orders of service and words to be said for any ecclesiastical occasion. There is liturgy for a Sunday Morning Service of the Eucharist (for the seventh Sunday after Trinity) to a Marriage ceremony to a collect (that is, a special prayer) for St Joseph of Nazareth’s day (on 19th March).

Told you.

Against Religion

For some, these forms of words and formularies seems overly proscriptive. Some low-church evangelicals, like me twenty years ago, feel this liturgy has a whiff of the religion of the Pharisees about it. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said:

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full… And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. (Matthew 6:5, 7)

With verses like this in mind, if you’d asked me twenty years, “are you religious?”, I might have answered, “no, I’m a Christian.” I know. The idea is to highlight that Christianity isn’t a religion, or a set of rules, but a relationship with Jesus.

One problem with that view – beyond the fact that most young men are not looking for ‘a relationship’ with another man – is what Jesus says next in his Sermon on the Mount. He tells them how to pray, giving them the Lord’s Prayer. This prayer does not look like something to be prayed individually, but corporately. And the request for ‘our daily bread’ also suggests this is a prayer to be said every day. The Christians who are keen on Matthew 6:5-7 are oddly resistant to the idea of daily corporate set prayer.

Private prayer is, of course, commended by Jesus himself. In fact, the verse I omitted earlier was verse 6 in which Jesus says:

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Low-church evangelicals are keen on this idea, hence the emergence of the ‘quiet time’. This is private Bible study, reflection and prayer. I’m all in favour of this and, as I mentioned last time, am writing a series of devotionals to aid this practice.

Feelings

There is another group who are concerned that liturgy is hampered by its rigidity. Prayer, by their reckoning, should be spontaneous, heartfelt and unlikely to coincide with the sentiment behind the pre-written collect for the Third Sunday before Advent. After all, the Bible is awash with prayers that seem to be suit the moment and mood perfectly. Why do we not do the same? Rather than pray the prayers of the saints, should we not pray like the saints that we are?

Yes. But here's the problem: most of us don’t know what to pray or say. And so we pray prayers just like the ones we’ve heard and the same apparently spontaneous phrases keep reappearing.

Learning to dance is often used as an example when defending liturgy against the sceptics. The idea is that you learn to dance so that you eventually enjoy dancing. This was essential in the days when you would likely meet your future spouse at a dance. The idea is that you’ve learned the steps. You’ve practised them many times. And now you have the freedom to dance.

But what if, as the song goes, you don’t feel like dancing?

I’m not done yet. If you’re enjoying reading this half as much as I enjoy writing it, I recommend you subscribe so that you get this missive every Friday lunchtime. It’s free.

Thank You Letters

But what if, as the song goes, you don’t feel like dancing? We should dance anyway.

Let us use the ‘thank you’ letter to illustrate the point, and in so doing, also highlight the hypocrisy of parents. When children receive a gift, the parents tell their children to say “thank you”. In the following days, they may also insist the child writes a letter thanking the remote aunt for the bizarre present. Ideally, we want them to mean it. But even if they don’t, we rightly want them to say “thank you” anyway.

Your feelings rarely serve you well. Your emotions are to be managed, not obeyed. Self-control is a Christian virtue. If I only ever prayed when I felt like it, I would hardly ever pray. It is right that I pray to God regularly, alone and with other believers, corporately. It is also right that we pray to God in ways that have been commanded by scripture, whether we feel like it or not. We confess our sins regardless of feelings of guilt. And as we confess our sins, we may call to mind certain sins and be thankful that we now have this opportunity to confess.

Say What?

I’ve never encountered a child who was eager to write a thank you letter. Why not? They know they’re going to run into a problem. After you’ve said thank you, what do you say next? You have a page to fill. You can’t keep saying thank you, can you? At this point, you are looking for suggestions so that your letter is appropriate and respectful.

That is why we need liturgy. Because, most of the time, we can’t actually think of anything to say or pray. So here are two things to consider doing, saying and praying:

The first is this: say the Lord’s Prayer every day. Jesus us tells us do. So we do it. You could expound on it. You could expand it. You could use it as a pattern for your prayers. At the very least, pray the Lord’s Prayer every day. I didn’t used to. But I do now. Or at least, I pray it much more often. I also pray it in that otherwise unused moment when I’m putting fuel into my car. And then I say the Apostles’ Creed.

There’s an App for That

Secondly, try the excellent Daily Prayer App produced by the Church of England. It’s truly brilliant, and provides the morning, evening and nighttime prayer with set Psalms for each day. It’s so simple. It’s clearly laid out. You have a ‘Common Worship’ and ‘Traditional’ settings. And it’s free. You are welcome. There’s even an audio version attached to the morning office, which you can also get as podcast. Why not start your liturgical journey there?

But if not there, then where? Make it somewhere.

If you found that interesting and think someone else might too, could you share it with them, please?

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Here’s what I wrote around about this time last year about St Scholastica: