As I’ve written about before, we’re in an awkward place in contemporary Christianity with the idea of sin. Burnt out or turned off after an over-emphasis on sinfulness, whether from childhood or from cultural baggage, to a lot of people today, any mention of sin is tantamount to an obsession with sin. There can be no doubt the old received prayers from our traditions talk a lot about sin, but as I hope to show as we talk about these over the next few weeks, those same prayers place their sin-talk within the proper theological framing of a God who is merciful and quick to forgive.
One of my favourites of these old prayers is sung at the end of Orthodox Vespers and is simply called “the Evening Prayer.” It’s not a prayer of confession as much as it is a prayer of protection. It goes like this:
Grant us, O Lord, to keep this night without sin,
Blessed are You, O God of our fathers,
And praised and glorified is Your name for ever, Amen.
Let Your mercy be upon us, O Lord, even as we have set our hope on You.
Blessed are You, O Lord, teach me Your statutes.
Blessed are You, O Master, make me to understand Your commandments.
Blessed are You, O Holy One, enlighten me with You precepts.
Your mercy, O Lord, endures forever: despise not the works of Your hands.
To You belongs worship, to You belongs praise.
To You belongs glory:
To the Father and the to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
Now and ever and unto ages of ages, Amen.
We see here that sin, and specifically its avoidance, is the topic of the prayer, but the focus is still very positive. It spends far more time on what it wants to cultivate. Right at the start we get an example of the ‘we pray what we believe’ principle: We pray for protection from sin and immediately bless, praise, and glorify God. Why? Because we believe God is the kind of God who delights in answering this kind of prayer.
It then shifts to a request for mercy and a threefold (ancient Christian prayers love multiples of three because the tradition’s trinitarianism is more deeply embedded than it is in today’s Christian expressions) petition for enlightenment (”teach me,” “make me to understand,” “enlighten me”) in God’s ways (”statutes,” “commandments,” “precepts”).
Finally, again praying what we believe, we praise God for being persistently merciful. The prayers prayed at Vespers involve a lot of praise. What’s noteworthy is that, while yes some of this praise is due to God’s power and wisdom, most of it, including here, tells us that God is worthy of praise and glory not because of God’s power but because of God’s character. Why do we praise God? Not because we are cowering in fear of an almighty power god who is just waiting to punish anyone who steps out of line, but because we exist in relationship with a God who is patient and persistent in love, mercy, forgiveness, and grace, and to the main point of this prayer, who is pleased to show us the way in which we should walk.
Blessed are You, O Lord, teach me Your statutes.
Blessed are You, O Master, make me to understand Your commandments.
Blessed are You, O Holy One, enlighten me with You precepts.
Amen.
Matthew Root 