The Pastoral Prayer
What a nice email to get from a church member to start the day:
Of the many things that have deeply blessed me at our worship services, one of the most significant has been the pastoral prayers. Here is an excerpt from what I read this morning by author Eugene Peterson that puts perfectly the reason why.
"We commonly think of prayer as what we do out of our own needs and on our own initiative. We experience a deep longing for God, and so we pray. We feel an artesian gush of gratitude to God, and so we pray. We are crushed with a truckload of guilt before God, and so we pray. But in a liturgy we do not take the initiative; it is not our experience that precipitates prayer. Someone stands in front of us and says, "Let us pray." We don't start it; someone else starts it, and we fall into step behind or alongside. Our egos are no longer front and center. This is so important, for prayer by its very nature is answering speech. The consensus of the entire Christian community upholds the primacy of God's word in everything: in creation, in salvation, in judgment, in blessing, in mercy, and in grace. But in the practice of prayer, inebriated as we often are by our own heady subjectivity, we boozily set aside the primacy of God's word and substitute the primacy of our words. We are so sure that here, at least, we get the first word!
But when we take our place in a worshiping congregation we are not in charge. Someone else has built the place of prayer; someone else has established the time for prayer, someone else tells us to begin to pray. All of this takes place in a context in which the word of God is primary..."
So I just wanted to take a minute to express my appreciation for all the pastoral staff whose prayers, centered as they always are on God's word, have at least for a few moments, freed me from my own ego and enlarged my soul. The work that goes into composing them has long been deeply appreciated by me.
Of the many things that have deeply blessed me at our worship services, one of the most significant has been the pastoral prayers. Here is an excerpt from what I read this morning by author Eugene Peterson that puts perfectly the reason why.
"We commonly think of prayer as what we do out of our own needs and on our own initiative. We experience a deep longing for God, and so we pray. We feel an artesian gush of gratitude to God, and so we pray. We are crushed with a truckload of guilt before God, and so we pray. But in a liturgy we do not take the initiative; it is not our experience that precipitates prayer. Someone stands in front of us and says, "Let us pray." We don't start it; someone else starts it, and we fall into step behind or alongside. Our egos are no longer front and center. This is so important, for prayer by its very nature is answering speech. The consensus of the entire Christian community upholds the primacy of God's word in everything: in creation, in salvation, in judgment, in blessing, in mercy, and in grace. But in the practice of prayer, inebriated as we often are by our own heady subjectivity, we boozily set aside the primacy of God's word and substitute the primacy of our words. We are so sure that here, at least, we get the first word!
But when we take our place in a worshiping congregation we are not in charge. Someone else has built the place of prayer; someone else has established the time for prayer, someone else tells us to begin to pray. All of this takes place in a context in which the word of God is primary..."
So I just wanted to take a minute to express my appreciation for all the pastoral staff whose prayers, centered as they always are on God's word, have at least for a few moments, freed me from my own ego and enlarged my soul. The work that goes into composing them has long been deeply appreciated by me.
posted by M Clark at 6/13/2006 08:41:00 AM
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