When we think of the traditional Christian liturgical day, it’s important to remember that for its purposes the new day starts at sundown, not midnight or sunrise. So the first service of the day, the service that is supposed to set the tone for the full day to come, is Vespers, or evening prayer. Over the next few days I’ll be highlighting some prayers from these services, largely from the Orthodox and Anglican traditions. Today’s is as simple as they come, the call to worship that follows ‘the normal beginning’ in the Orthodox Vespers service:
Come, let us worship and bow down before God our King.
Come, let us worship and bow down before Christ, God our King.
Come, let us worship and bow down before him, Christ, our King and God.
As much as as a kid growing up in an individualist society I used to hate the first person plural of liturgical prayers, these days I appreciate it more and more. It’s an invitation to the gathered community to worship Christ (our King and God, as the text reminds us), together. Here, as the new day begins, we start it with both worship and community.
It’s so easy, especially in that same society that is even more individualistic than it was when I was growing up, to get lost in a kind of practical solipsism, living as though ‘I’ (whoever that I may be) am the only person out there: the only person with wants, needs, deadlines, cares, and concerns; the only one who matters. But that is far from the spirit of our Christian faith, which always compels us to turn away from ourself and towards both God and our neighbour.
And so the message of this prayer may be simple, but it’s also profound. It calls us to begin each day with a shared commitment to worship and to community, fracturing our tendency towards solipsism, ego, and their silent and pervasive consequence, loneliness.
Come, let us worship….
Matthew Root 