Free Prayers . . . Are they unacceptable?

Alastair has yet another thought provoking post. This time he tackles the subject of liturgy, mainly the subject of form versus free prayers. Alastair says,

The ‘heroic pose’ that Keillor speaks of is one in which the speaker presents God with his own words, deeming his own vocabulary to be sufficient. The reasoning behind such an approach is that the most authentic way of being is that of spontaneity as opposed to imitation. Prayers of spontaneity, no matter how rhetorically brilliant they are, will always fall short of truly public speech. True public speech is shared language, where the words are not the speaker’s own. Spontaneous speech always falls short, drawing attention to the speaker, who often has a desire for people’s praise.

While I can agree with Alastair that we should pray the promises of God back to him, I cannot agree that free prayers, prayers of spontaneity, in the worship fall short and only serve to draw attention to the speaker. True public speech is one where the language is shared, but does that necessitate that the words are not the speaker’s own? I do not believe this necessarily follows. Can a speaker not be the representative of people? Can a speaker’s own words not be concurred or agreed with by the people, or must they all share a book of prayer and the man must read a book of prayer to be truly public speech. Let us take this example out of the context of worship for a moment. President Reagan famously called for Ghorbachov to “tear this wall down” at the base of the Berlin Wall. Now Reagan was the representative of America, and his words spoke for me, and for thousands of others. The words were Reagan’s own, but they were still public speech because his words represented the will of America. He spoke for us. Why cannot a minister speak for his people in a similar way? I believe he can and does.

Alastair’s next point states,

In handing ourselves over to a language that has been handed over to us in tradition we confess that we do not have the words that are sufficient to approach God. Our verbal works are sinful and poor, so they are not the sacrifice of praise our tongues present to God. The words that we bring are words that have been given to us, words that are not our own. The shared language of liturgy is thus a natural extension of the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

Our own words are not good enough to approach God. I do admit that no one, no not one, is worthy enough to approach God on his own. Yet, the blood of Christ makes us able to approach the Lord in worship even with our own words. If man’s words are not worthy of approaching God, then they are never good enough to approach God. Man is then only allowed to approach God with the words of Scripture. Man made prayers that have been handed down to us through tradition are not made worthy by the passing of time. If they were not worthy when written, then they are not worthy today. Just because they are not my personal words does not make someone else’s personal words worthy. Alastair does grant later that hymns are sometimes acceptable, but if man’s words are not good enough then why are they good enough in song. The argument Alastair uses for form prayers is the argument often used by exclusive psalmody. A difference is also drawn between private prayers and public ones, but why a man’s words are not worthy in public, but in private found acceptable is not explained.

The other argument brought forth against free prayers is one of self-promotion. While I can see that this may indeed from time to time be a problem it is arguing that the personal faults of some destroy the worthiness of the entire system. Some people may try to show off in their prayers, but that does not mean that everyone shows off in prayer. Some may indeed draw attention to themselves during prayers, but others may not. The few certainly does not out weigh the many. One could just as easily argue that form prayers are bad because people mindless read, and do not understand what they are praying. Reading is not the same as praying; therefore, those who simply read, do not pray at all. Such an attack is probably true for some people. They may indeed not bother to pay attention. But does that necessarily mean the whole idea of a form prayer is corrupt? No, I do not think so. Each way has its own temptations, and it is good to be aware of them, but no way is temptation free.

My real point of contention with high liturgy is found in one of Alastair’s concluding points. One of the things that the Church could really benefit from today is a downplaying of preaching within the context of the liturgy and a denial of the primacy of the preacher. I believe in a liturgy, but one that is a pulpit based liturgy of which I believe free prayers are acceptable. Traditionally the high liturgy is an altar/table based liturgy that stress other elements than the word and the word preached. I am not against form prayers, in fact, we pray the Lord’s Prayer every week and we have responsive readings every week, but I do not think that one can be biblically against a representative free prayer either, which we also have every week.