Journey into Prayer

We Make Bold to Say

Henri Nouwen has described the core activity of the life of prayer using these words and images. We have, individually and as a community, come to a way of prayer, through years of practice and experience. The Lord's Prayer is a part of that experience. We say it at the heart of every public service of worship. We encourage its use devotionally. We exercise obedience to the Lord when we do so. It is the prayer he has instructed his disciples to pray.

For the past two years, we at St. Paul's have used a version of the Lord's Prayer in our public worship that was developed for use during the decade of the 1970's and offered as an option in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. Some have found this to be a difficult change. Others have welcomed refreshing insight into the prayer through its alternate texts. Both forms are acceptable for public use.

This summer, we ask you to give attention and thought to your pattern of prayer and to the way we pray in the St. Paul's family. We will be doing two things to create an environment to reflect on the Lord's Prayer. We will return to the using form of the Lord's Prayer in the Traditional Form. As we do this, a series of bulletin inserts will be offered to stimulate your reflection on the issues that surround the use of prayers in our public worship. Every two weeks, an installment in the series will be inserted into the bulletin. They will be entitled:
    July 27th Will the Real Lord's Prayer Stand Up?
    August 10th Trial, Testing and Temptation. . .
    Which is it?
    August 24th Getting on the Same Page,
    Ecumenically.
Our hope is that these inserts will raise issues for informal discussion and thought for our entire congregation. Of course, our practice in worship has been and will continue to be inclusive of a variety of forms from posture to prayer forms. We want to use the Lord's Prayer, as with all elements of worship, in ways that move you forward in your prayer and devotion. This experiment is offered as a chance to reflect on the place of the Lord's Prayer in our history and our present as a community, as well as in your own personal way of prayer.

What is my way of prayer? What is our way of prayer? What is the prayer of my heart? We hope that a growing awareness of these questions can be a part of the fruit of this summer's experience with the Lord's Prayer.

During the months of July and August, the St. Paul's Community embarks on a period of reflection on our corporate use of the Lord's Prayer. This is the second of four bulletin inserts designed to promote reflection on the past use and emerging issues surrounding the language we use in worship.

Will The Real Lord's Prayer Please Stand Up?

As nearly as we can tell, these are the ways the congregations of Matthew and Luke might have said the Lord's Prayer, if they spoke our language. Over the centuries, we have come to an edition of the Lord's Prayer that has been recognized for common use. Save for minor variations, it is the same in all English speaking congregations. Most English versions have added a final petition of praise to God, "for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever."

It is confusing to speak of the Lord's Prayer in the right or wrong forms. There are many. It is more precise to say that one form or another is familiar. . . it is the prayer of my heart. Some of us can identify exactly why this is our prayer and when we took ownership of it. That is good information to think about and understand.

During the months of July and August, the St. Paul's Community embarks on a period of reflection on our corporate use of the Lord's Prayer. This is the third of four bulletin inserts designed to promote reflection on the past use and emerging issues surrounding the language we use in worship.

Trial, Test, Temptation. . . Which is it?

The people answer: But deliver us from evil. Amen

Book of Common Prayer, 1549

Had you been alive in Thomas Cranmer's time, you would have seen the Lord's Prayer in this form in his "new prayerbook". There is a different way of saying it than we use now, but it is in form the basic Lord's Prayer.

The Lord's Prayer as we have received it through the scriptures and into an English language prayer is a collection of wisdom. It tells something about who and where we look for God, God's designs for the human race, our need for nourishment and forgiveness, and a final concern which we have voiced with these words. . . "lead us not into temptation."

Many find the revision of the Lord's Prayer confusing because the word temptation has been removed. And temptation is an important part of our lore and heritage. It is imagery associated with the experience of the battle of the personal will to pursue faith, when we are faced with some alluring alternatives. Visions of sin, flesh and the devil are identified in that word, temptation.

Now, we come to this phrase, "Save us from the time of trial" or "Do not bring us to the test." These words trial and test are the translations of what we had called temptation. They call us back to the flavor and sense of the original wording in two ways that temptation does not.

First, temptation is a word that has come to speak about a personal experience. . . something that happens to me as an individual. But the trial and test in the New Testament is both a personal and a community event. My time of testing will be the time of testing of the entire community of faith. It is an idea that arises out of a climate of persecution.

Second, the time of trial is set in the context of the end of human history. The people who developed the way of praying we know as the Lord's Prayer did so in a lively sense that the world was coming to an end.

Now, we know neither dimension in the prayer that we have received from the 1549 version. Some see this as a diversion. Others see it as an enrichment. Whatever your feeling, the rendering "save us from the time of trial", more faithfully reflects the outlook of the original writers.

During the months of July and August, the St. Paul's Community embarks on a period of reflection on our corporate use of the Lord's Prayer. This is the final of four bulletin inserts designed to promote reflection on the past use and emerging issues surrounding the language we use in worship.

Getting on the Same Page, Ecumenically

The so called "new" Lord's Prayer has come to us this way. It began in the early sixties when the Second Vatican Council decided to translate Roman Catholic liturgy from the Latin into the vernacular languages. It seemed, to Roman Catholics, a good time to look at all the texts we use in liturgy. Concurrently, the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod was having the same idea in the United States. Through the efforts of both denominations, a group was formed made up of Roman Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, and Presbyterian representatives.

This group formed the seed of what was called the Consultation on Common Texts, which pursued their work in the two year period of 1967-69. They developed texts for the Nicene Creed, the Sancta, the Apostle's Creed, the Lord's Prayer and the Gloria in Excels. In 1969, they merged with the official body of the Roman Catholic Church working on English Language texts for liturgy, forming the International Consultation on English Texts. It was this group that produced the Lord's Prayer in the new form that is printed in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

These are the texts of the Lord's Prayer that have been adopted for use by all of the Ecumenical Churches. They are, therefore, forms which will be available to our Ecumenical friends and neighbors in the years to come, for use in their worship. The hope of the Consultation, clearly, was to produce materials that could put all of our churches on the same page in these minimal, but important ways.

Since the Chicago-Lambed Quadrilateral meeting of the House of Bishops in Chicago in 1866, we have laid out the foundation for ecumenism in our country. You can find a copy of the full statement printed in the Prayerbook on page 876. It has been our heritage to provide leadership in ecumenical matters in the American church since that day. Many are the accomplishments we have made by virtue of our leadership.

The "new" Lord's Prayer, affirms our history as ecumenical leaders and partners in the larger communion of Communions of the Church Universal. It can be a sign to us of our heritage as leaders and partners in that movement.