Common Prayer

Many years ago, and in what was to become an enduring gift to the Christian Church, as a response to the problem ordinary people had trying to replicate an ordered prayer like akin to the monastic hours of prayer, the Church of England compiled and published the Book of Common Prayer.  In addition to orders for Sunday and pastoral services, the BCP offered an Office of Daily Prayer that included Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer to be said or sung in parish churches before and after the working day so that all could attend.  With it was published a calendar of readings that over the course of the year all of the Old Testament will be read once, the Gospels and Epistles will be read twice and the Psalms will be read 12 times.  This calendar also provided connections to the liturgical seasons and the commemoration of the saints of the church.

I recently discovered, through some internet networking, a new resource for a daily Office that was both refreshing and challenging, so I took the effort to secure a copy.  Published in 2010 by Zondervan, Common Prayer seeks to bring together in Common Prayer, people from diverse Christian traditions, liturgical or not, in order to celebrate a common life in prayer.

A number of principles underpin the structure and content of this resource.  "Liturgy is a workout for the imagination, because we are invited to see the reality of the universe through a new lens."  The creators of this resource firmly believe that our prayer life, through Common Prayer, can not only transform the way we see the world, but also the way we experience time, freeing us from the everyday world views that interfere with our spiritual life.  The calendar of readings, the solidarity of a Common Prayer, and praying with the saints, ancient and modern enable us, in our spiritual lives to transcend our captivity to self-centredness.  A recurring theme in the prayers is a call to radical life-style and a commitment to social justice - hence its appeal to the ordinary radicals among us.

The structure followed for the Office reflects a daily cycle of Evening Prayer, Morning Prayer and Midday Prayer.  But there is also a weekly cycle that acknowledges Sunday as Resurrection Day, the gathering of the Disciples on Thursday, the suffering of Christ in Friday and the preparation for the Feast on Saturday. This weekly cycle happens within an annual rhythm of seasons.  Special Morning Prayer liturgies are created for the moveable feasts of Holy Week and Pentecost.

Each day begins at sunset and the weekly cycle of Evening Prayer liturgies is simple and will become familiar, for it is the same each week.  The aim is to help us retire from the day altogether, but they also ground us in the weekly cycle of our lives.  

Morning Prayer also has a simple structure, but beginning on December 1, Common Prayer provides a unique selection of prayers and readings that reflect the annual cycle of Seasons as well as a celebration of the saints.  Some of your favourites may be omitted, but many more modern saints are acknowledged and for me this is a refreshing element of Common Prayer.  Each day provides a selection of a Psalm, a reading selection from the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, and a pithy quotation from a saint, such as Teresa of Avila, or Jean Vanier.  This latter element reminds us in a tangible way that the Communion of Saints reaches right into our modern time.

There is a single and very simple liturgy for Midday Prayer and its purpose is to carve out a space in the busyness of our days to centre us on Christ.  In addition there are occasional prayers and a short anthology of songs that are referred to each day in Morning Prayer.  Thought-provoking lino-block prints mark the beginning of each month's Morning Prayers, and a website supports the whole book with additional resources.

Two copies now occupy our votive space at home and we are looking forward to the freshness these new liturgies will bring.  Let me finish with a quotation from the Introduction.  "Truth is not simply imparted by a preacher or teacher; it is lived together in the context of community prayer, gathered around Jesus.  Praying in a circle or around a table can help us to be mindful of this fact, enabling us to see each others faces and remember that the centre of our worship is Christ, not a pulpit.  Each day, all across the globe, circles of Christians gather - in basements, living rooms, on street corners and in slums, in prisons and in palaces - holding hands and praying to the God of the universe to be with us.  So let us pray, and let us become the answer to our prayers."

 

A word from Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, two of the three editors:

"After several years of working with scores of communities, liturgy experts, artists, and musicians, we’re excited to announce that Common Prayer: Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals will be out in time for Advent. It’s more than a book… it’s a way of life. We’re excited to share it with you.
 
We’re so excited, in fact, that we’ve been working with friends across the country and around the globe to plan nearly 150 release parties. We hope you can find one near you.  But more importantly, we want you to come and see the beautiful art that’s been created for this project.  We want you to have a chance to pray these prayers with a gathering of friends.  We want you to sing these songs and take them home with you, knowing that you’re not alone, but part of an incredible family of fellow travelers that stretches all the way back to Abraham and Sarah."

Love Upside Down in a Quirky Kingdom

The latest offering for general readership by Steven Ogden, Love Upside Down, is remarkable for the ease with which it can be read.  Authors, when dealing with topics they have been passionate about for many years, can easily lose sight of the steps necessary to bring readers to the place they have occupied for a long time.  Indeed, such a criticism might have been made of his earlier offering I Met God in Bermuda in which Ogden wrestled with some of the big ideas of Paul Tillich and Karl Rhaner.  Ogden has not failed to bring his readers all the way.

Ogden establishes first that since LOVE is at the heart of this Quirky Kingdom that Jesus established, a fundamental shift is needed in the way we see things.  This is an invitation into a radical way of seeing God's Kingdom on earth in which the eyes are opened to see the frequent failings of church on earth to live up to its claim to be that Kingdom.

Fundamental to this thesis is that in the Church we generally grapple with responding appropriately to difference.  Churches tend towards homogeneity and that when confronted with those from the edges of society the church can be less than welcoming.

At the heart of Ogden's discussion is the current struggle in the Anglican Communion to respond adequately to Gays and Lesbians in their quest for full and open membership of the church as well as their qualification for ministry in the church.  In some sense Ogden uses this very current example to illustrate his thesis, yet I can't help feeling that the example is in some ways the whole motivation for the book.  This is not a criticism, rather an alert to the reader that there are many other fronts on which the Quirky Kingdom calls us to grapple with difference.

His sixth chapter Downside Up unpacks the heart of his thesis.  Step by step he calls into question the usual ramparts that some stand behind in order to exclude.  So often we seek to maintain a Principle at the expense of the People most adversely affected by the Principle.  Underlying the appeal to Principle is the assumption that it is self-evident, and that if you don't get it, it's your fault.  Ogden asserts that too often Principles are grounded in a bundle of our own deeply held feelings which can rarely be discussed with clarity or wisdom.

In the example of the homosexuality issue, the untested Principles at stake seem to be homosexuality is wrong, homosexuality is unnatural and procreation is the definitive measure of human sexuality and identity.  Step by step, Ogden demonstrates that these Principles do not hold the weight that those appealing to them seem to think.  He goes on to call his readers into an understanding of the Quirky Kingdom that Jesus calls us into as a place of subversive love, that undoes all that we think we know about love by calling us, as Jesus did, to love the other - the one who is different, the one who is vulnerable, the one who is forced by society (and too often the church) to the edges.

He calls us to celebrate this difference in what he styles a Queer Banquet.  He challenges us to understand that the PROBLEM is not homosexuality, but the Church and that if we address that problem with the clear teaching of Jesus then we will usher into the church this same Quirky Kingdom that Jesus talks about in which the ground of our being, our humanity, is what unites us all, and that nothing else - no other basis of distinction - can be used as the basis for exclusion, for none of us deserve our place at the Banquet Table.

This call for a radical and inclusive approach to church life is timely.  There is nothing in the Gospel that Jesus taught that invites us to hate others or each other - indeed quite the opposite is called for - and this is what creates the upside down world of Love that Ogden is reminding us of.

Thanks Steven.