Why Common Prayer? — SACRED COMMONS

“No doubt, we can pray to God by ourselves; for centuries both monks and evangelicals (and lots of people in between) have prayed solitarily. There is something beautiful about a God who is personal, who talks face to face with Moses, wrestles with Jacob, and becomes fully human in Jesus, a God who needs no mediation, with whom we can speak as a friend and Lover at any moment and in any place, in a cathedral or an alleyway.

Common prayer is certainly not to take away from the intimacy each of us can have with God. Personal or devotional prayer and communal prayer are not at odds with each other. In fact they must go together. Just as God is communal, God is also deeply personal and intimate.

Certainly one of the unique and beautiful things about Jesus is his intimacy with God as he runs off to the mountaintop or hides away in the garden. Jesus daringly invites us to approach the God of the universe as Abba (Daddy) or as a mother caring for her little chicks. Our God is personal and wildly in love with each of us.

Some friends who have experienced only liturgical worship and prayer are moved to tears by the childlike winsomeness of charismatics and Pentecostals as they pray with such sincerity and honesty, with tears and holy laughter. That kind of prayer is a gift to the church and has much to offer liturgical types, just as liturgy has much to offer Pentecostals.

Just because our prayer lives are personal does not mean they are private. Many of us have grown up in a culture where rampant individualism has affected our prayer lives. When we think about prayer, our imaginations may be limited to evening devotions or a daily “quiet time” with God. As wonderful as these times of solitude can be, prayer moves us beyond what we can do on our own.

It’s certainly possible for people to customize their religion, sort of like the “create your own pizza” menu at a restaurant. Ironically, both conservative evangelicals and liberal New Agers often fall to the same temptation to create a religion that is very self-centered and very lonely. You can be religious and still be lonely. But part of the good news is that we are not alone. If we see prayer only as a private affair, we miss out. To talk with God is to get caught up in conversation with brothers and sisters we didn’t know we had.

There is something to this idea that “when two or three of you gather in my name, I will be with you.” Prayer is a communal practice.

There is a reason the Lord’s Prayer is a communal prayer to “our” Father, asking for “our” daily bread and asking God to forgive us “our” sins as we forgive others. Our God is a communal God. It is not enough to pray for “my” daily bread alone.

The gift of liturgy is that it helps us hear less of our own little voices and more of God’s still, small voice (Psalm 46). It leads away from self and points us toward the community of God. God is a plurality of oneness. God has “lived in community” from eternity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God as Trinity is the core reality of the universe, and that means that the core of reality is community. We often live as if the essence of our being is the “I”, and as if the “we” of community is a nice add-on or an “intentional” choice. But the truth is we are made for community, and if we live outside of community, we are selling ourselves short. We are made in the image of (holy) community.” - COMMON PRAYER, A LITURGY FOR ORDINARY RADICALS

Christians from the beginning of the faith have read the same scriptures together, sung the same songs together, and prayed the same prayers together. Jesus prayed from his prayer book, the Psalms. On the cross he prays to the Father from Psalm 22. In Acts chapter 2 we’re told that the early church devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and “the prayers”. The church in Acts 4, in unity “raised their voices together in prayer to God” reciting from Psalm 2 upon the release of Peter and John.

The greater reality is that we never pray alone, even when praying by ourselves. The beauty of common prayer is that saints from all over the world are praying with you, towards the same end. Through common prayer we pray “impossible” prayers, prayers that the world would tell us will never be answered but we have a greater hope. Through common prayer we pray beyond the narrow lens of individualism and “wish-list” self-centeredness. Through common prayer we enter into prayer that is already taking place across the globe. We do not start and stop common prayer, we enter and exit. The prayer continues throughout time within the Church. Through common prayer we pray well formed, faithful prayers that, in reality, aid our extemporaneous prayers. We are praying prayers crafted not by our lonely piety but by the entire body of Christ through her history. We are praying prayers whose origin is in another time and place, going all the way back to the early church, and thus we are mysteriously connected with believers who have gone before us. For many, common prayer will be a discovery of lost memories and treasures from the past, digging up amid all the clutter of Christendom old pictures and keepsakes from our ancestors and wiping the dust away.

Mt 13:52 He said, “Then you see how every student well-trained in God’s kingdom is like the owner of a general store who can put his hands on anything you need, old or new, exactly when you need it.”