Cultivating Common Prayer: Word

On Tuesday evening, Fr. Blake continued our “Cultivating Common Prayer” series with a lesson on the relationship between Common Prayer and Scripture, and used Psalm 1 as a primary reference. This introductory Psalm sits at the beginning of Israel’s “Book of Praises” to remind Israel that their worshiping, liturgical life is always premised upon Yahweh’s covenant with Israel and his word to us. Our praises are always a response to his prior gracious address to us, in word and in act.

We have therefore been given plenty of cause to respond in grateful praise, but Israel’s history reveals just how hard it has been for God’s people to obey that benevolent word, and that dynamic is no less apparent in our own ambivalent hearts. In fact, through the vicissitudes of history, the only truly obedient “righteous” man left standing is Jesus Christ. Our relationship to God’s powerful and loving word has become a conflicted one, and the whole history of Israel continuously plays itself out in our own hearts.

It is in this context that Jesus’ call to abide in Him (John 15) becomes such a joyful comfort. His word spoken to us makes us “clean” (Jn 15:3) in the sense that it enables us to engrafted into his very life like a branch drawing sustenance from a vine (or like a communicant drawing sustenance from bread). Jesus Christ is the winner of the Psalm 1 “race,” as it were, making revealing us all to be losers of that race, but then he turns in makes us partakers of his victory. Or as we have been saying in the opening sentences of evening prayer during the Easter season, “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 15:57).

I’ve written this interpretation of Psalm 1 into song and offer that, along with lyrics, below.

Happy Ascension,

Chris