Deuteronomy 10:12-22
Psalms 40, 51, 54
Hebrews 4:11-16
John 3:22-36
Psalm
51 v15 – “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise” - sounds
familiar doesn’t it? The phase is used
frequently in our liturgies. However,
for me it brings back most memories of countless Morning Prayer services in the
days before the current practice of weekly Holy Eucharist. In Morning Prayer it comes just after the
Confession and before the Venite or Jubilate.
Somehow
although we gain in Communion at the table I miss the beauty of the former, and
now little used liturgies. They had such
beautiful flowing lyrics - in the Venite:
O come, let
us worship and fall down,
and kneel
before the Lord our Maker.
For he is the
Lord our God,
and we are
the people of his pasture
and the sheep
of his hand.
Strange
that after over 30 years of the new Prayer book I should be reminiscing over
the change. Change is inevitable, our
culture demands change. Our church is
changing and adapting, in whole or in part, to developing social culture. If we
do not accommodate the modern way we will lose out.
That’s
not to say we should throw the baby out with the bath water. We do have to recognize, for example, that
while methods of interactive communication have drastically changed, Christ’s
message can be just as effective in a “Podcast” or a “Live Stream” and can be
effectively heard in a coffee shop or bar in person or on an I-Pod.
That’s
not to say we can’t still enjoy the glory of the Morning Prayer, of course we
can. However, we also must accommodate
the new social media and use it to further the message of Christ.
John McGarvey