By Rick Knuth (guest contributor)–
A few years ago, after the closing of a corporate merger deal I’d had a small role in, I attended a celebratory dinner and was asked to say grace before the meal. I offered the table grace from the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer, “Give us grateful hearts, our Father, for all your mercies, and make us mindful of the needs of others; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
After the banquet, one of the other diners complimented me on the prayer, but asked why I didn’t simply pray “from the heart”. He wanted to know if I agreed that unrehearsed, spontaneous prayers are more “sincere” than one read from a book or simply memorized. Knowing that he is a faithful member of a denomination that places great stock in extemporaneous prayer and not wanting to give offense, I replied with something flip, to the effect that we Episcopalians have nothing against prayer made up on the spot, but we prefer to write down our prayers, so that we can have a good argument about them before we formally address them to the Almighty. I regret the way I answered my friend’s question, and have given some thought to how I should have replied.
It is true that the liturgical churches — Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, the Orthodox, and Lutherans — do prefer written prayers. For Episcopalians and other Anglicans, for example, the Book of Common Prayer and what it contains is a big part of what defines us as Anglicans and Episcopalians and we are very careful about what goes into it. To change a syllable of the prayer book requires the action of two consecutive General Conventions. That’s a six-year window and, for us, serious stuff.
However, the reason Christians do and should take prayer this seriously is because of the way we view prayer itself: Prayers are the words we say to God, so what words could be more important than those? Therefore, it’s also important that we carefully consider what we are saying, especially when we are doing it as a community, since how we pray together makes us “church”.
Another thing I might have said is that much of what passes for “extemporaneous” prayer among Christians who really emphasize this kind of prayer — is really nothing of the kind. You don’t have to attend many such services to realize that where prayers are “from the heart” it’s remarkable how everyone’s heart seems to move them to simply copy one another. Folks who prefer extemporaneous prayers tend to use the same words and phrases in the same way, with the same intonation, addressing the same subjects, in the same methodical and often unthoughtful manner. There is a bland, rote sameness about them that is almost liturgical, but liturgical in an unskillful way. To my mind, if you’re going to offer what is basically the same prayer in the same way every time you do it, then what you are praying ought to at least reflect the thoughts of your entire community and the words you use ought to represent the “Sunday best” of your language.
I might also have pointed out to my friend that the one prayer all Christians, everywhere, say all of the time – the one that Christ himself taught us, the Lord’s Prayer — is not an extemporaneous prayer. The Disciples asked: “Lord, teach us to pray.” Jesus did not reply, “Just speak from your heart, and you’ll do fine”; or “Let the Spirit move you and say what you feel”; or even, “Say whatever pops into your head.” The Disciples were looking for a prayer that they could commit to memory, a prayer that would be pleasing to God, and that they could use. That is exactly what Jesus gave them. They memorized it and eventually the Gospel writers put ink to paper and left it to all of us to use, word-for-word.
I also confess to a fondness for the elegance of language and the consistency of theology one finds in prayer books and missals. For example, the Rite II Eucharist service from the Book of Common Prayer always begins with the presider reading this prayer: “Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.” That particular prayer was written by a man named Alcuin of York. Alcuin worked for the Emperor Charlemagne, and he wrote it in about A.D. 800. Not only are its rich cadences pure poetry, but these words reach back some thirteen centuries, uniting us with all those faithful saints who have gone before us. No extemporaneous prayer composed on the spot can do that.
This is not to say that extemporaneous prayer is bad or less worthy; only that, contrary to the implication of my friend’s question, it is not intrinsically better than a prayer that someone else has written for us. After all, we do not pray for God’s sake, but for ours, and any prayer that speaks to our inner and secret selves and moves us to lay that self before God is worthwhile and pleasing in God’s sight.
(Rick Knuth is an aging lawyer and the father of an Episcopal priest. He likes to tell people that he is religious, but not really spiritual.)
