ROUGHLY EDITED COPY LUTHERAN WORSHIP 2 06.LW2 Captioning provided By: Caption First, Inc. P.O. Box 1924 Lombard, IL 60148 ******** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ******** >> JOSHUA: Please allow me to ask one further question about Jewish worship. How did the people of Israel pray? Was there a structure to their prayers? >> DR. ARTHUR JUST: This is an excellent question because in order to understand Jewish worship, one must understand the way in which they prayed. There was a very clear structure to their prayer, and when we're talking about prayer here, we're talking about liturgical prayer, a public prayer. We're not necessarily talking about private prayer. We're talking about public prayer in synagogues and temples. There was a basic unit of prayer which was called the *Barrica which simply, translated into English, means blessing. And it had certain parts to it that allowed the one who prayed to follow these parts in a way that gave structure to the prayer and helped the hearer understand the different parts of the prayer. Let me explain what I mean. The Jewish prayer always began with what we might call a greeting to God. And if it was a true *Barrica, it blessed God. Now, we don't normally bless God anymore. We give thanks to God, or we give praise to God. But the Jews bless God as the creator of all things. And a typical Jewish prayer would start with this kind of greeting: Blessed are you, Lord our God, king of the universe. Now, after this greeting of God as the king of the universe, the next part of the Jewish prayer would state the motive for prayer, what they called the statement of motive. Why are they praying? This described what God was doing, or how God was acting. In many ways, what it was was a statement about God�s service, God�s *laetergia. It's very much in line with the biblical theology of worship starting with what God is about. So a typical statement of motive after that greeting would be: For you nourish us and the whole world with goodness, grace, kindness, and mercy. Now notice there in the statement of motive we are narrating, and this is oftentimes what it was called, the narration of what God is doing. And we're narrating there about God's goodness and grace and the fact that this is what nourishes us and sustains us in our world. That statement of motive of what God is doing was the foundation, the basis, for the people now to petition God, to ask God for certain things. That's when we really see the essence of prayer, that on the basis of what God is doing, we now come to God with our requests. So on the basis of God's goodness and grace, a petition would be something like this, and notice this is in the imperatival language. It's a command, in a sense, to God. It's a request, but it's a word that we would see as requesting in terms of a command what we would like God to give us. Continue, we would say, continue to give your children what they need. Now, notice what we've done so far. We have a greeting. We have a statement of motive. And we have a petition. And if we did those all together, this is what it would sound like: Blessed are you Lord our God King of the universe, for you nourish us and the whole world with goodness, grace, kindness, and mercy. Continue to give your children what they need. Now, one of the things about a Jewish prayer, even if it was a formal liturgical prayer, was that this part of the prayer, this part of the statement of motive and petition, was expandable. In other words, it could go on and on and on. This is something that was part of the way in which Jews prayed. Even though there was a structure to it, there was the ability to expand it, even in a spontaneous way. What I'm giving you here is a very formal, stylized, complete prayer. But one could continue to give other motives for why one would pray and certainly give many petitions. In a minute, I'll illustrate that in another way. But there was a final part, and that was the conclusion. Beginning with the greeting, the middle part was the statement of motive and petition. And the third part was the close to the prayer which, in a sense, kind of echoed what the greeting was. A typical close to a prayer, this prayer in particular, would be to go back to the blessing, blessed are you Lord for you nourish the universe. And so, again, just so you hear the whole prayer: Blessed are you, O lord our God, king of the universe, for you nourish us and the whole world with goodness, grace, kindness, and mercy. Continue to give your children what they need. Blessed are you Lord for you nourish the universe. Now, this form of prayer was used by Christians in their formal liturgical prayer, and many of you may know it as the collect. This is the prayer that we pray at the end of the entrance rite in the liturgy. The collect is basically the Jewish *baraca translated now through the incarnation of Christ into a Christian prayer. I'm going to read to you a collect that should be familiar to you from the office of matins. It's the collect of grace. It's usually the concluding collect in matins. And listen, now, to the prayer, and I will first of all read it by pointing out the parts of it. And then, I'll read it again. And then, I'll do something else to show you how the Jews prayed it and how we pray it as well. START 6:33And this collect is found on page 221 of Lutheran Worship. The greeting is a: oh Lord, our heavenly Father, almighty and everlasting God. " there's our greeting to God who is our heavenly father who is almighty and everlasting Now here's the statement of motive. It may not seem like much, but, in fact, it is "You have safely brought us to the beginning of this day. " what we're saying there is that the day that we have now given to us is a gift by God it is God's doing. He sustained this during the evening did he give us a restful night. He woke us up to greet this new day. That's the statement of motive. Now here are the petitions that, in light of that. " defend us in the same with their mighty power. Notice the imperative there, the command. "Defend us in the same with their mighty power. " and here's another one. "Granted that this day we fall into know send, and neither run into any kind of danger, but that all our doings, being ordered by or governance, may be righteous in your site. " and then the conclusion this is the close of the prayer which is very familiar to us. "Through Jesus Christ your son our Lord who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit one God now and forever. " Now, there's a whole career in its various parts. Listen to it now listening for the greeting of god, the statement of motive, the petition and ending. "O lord our heavenly Father Almighty and everlasting God, you have safely brought us to the beginning of this day. Defend us in the same with your mighty power and grant that this day we fall into know Sen, neither run into any kind of danger but that all our dealings being ordered by our governments may be righteous in your site through Jesus Christ at your son Albert Lord who lives and reigns with you and the whole spirit one God now and forever. Comment. " When you read a prayer publicly in the church, you should be aware of the fact that there are these parts and read it as such. But you know, for the Jews, it was very simple to be able to designate the various parts of the prayer, and they did it because they chanted the prayer's. And when the voice moved, or when there was a change in the voice, that marked the different parts of the prayer. Now, I think some of you are aware, perhaps you haven't had the experience, but you are aware, at least, that we will chant in a church, and we will chant our prayers' end of this particular prayer is very carefully pointed so that you can hear now, it in my voice as a chance to, the various parts of the prayer. Notice that my voice will descend when I get to the petitions and then come back up at the ending. And you'll see that in the the very changes in my voice as I chance, you can hear the various parts. Here it is impair chanted now. "O lord our heavenly Father Almighty and everlasting God, you have safely brought us to the beginning of this day. Defend us in the same with their mighty power and grant that this state we fall into know send, neither run into any kind of danger but that all our dealings being ordered by our governments may be righteous and your site through Jesus Christ your son our Lord who lives and trains with you and the Holy Spirit one God now and forever. " Now, did you hear that how my voice moved between the various parts? One of the things this shows us is the great continuity between the way in which the Jews prayed, Jesus prayed, and now, the way in which we pray. But let me just pause here for a moment and talk a little bit about pastoral prayer. Many of you will pray outside of the liturgyYou will go to nursing homes. You will go to hospitals. You'll have to pray with people. And certainly, you could use formal, liturgical prayers like this. There's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes, they say better what we ourselves can say but as a pastor, you will find that when you go to visit people, these are people you know well and you know their condition. And you want to shape the prayer for that particular person. When I was a pastor in a congregation, I always used to think very carefully about what I wanted to say when I did it somebody who was sick or in the hospital or who is in a nursing home. I always chose a very carefully the text that I read for them, the psalms that I prayed with them because we speak about freeing the psalms even though I never rode out the prayer, I always thought carefully about what I might trade with them. In other words, I thought about the statement of motive and petitions I would do. And even though I hadn't written them out, I basically followed this form of the * Bear, which is, again, just a wonderful guide and will give you great confidence when you go into a hospital room and you can pray spontaneously, what we call an * X Corps de Brouwer, a prayer from the heart, but do it with such a structure that only puts you in touch with the structure of Jews and Christians who have been praying for thousands of years in this way, but also have these prayers to have real characterTo them. Now, I'm going to make up a prayer rights now, on the spot, one that I have not rehearsed. I'm going to pray for somebody who is sick, and listen to the prayer. Listen for the statement of motive. Listen for the petitions. Listen for the ending. Now, the person here is sick, and I'm at the sick room. And I will have just read a lesson of Jesus who was healing people in Luke 4. So I'm going to use that scriptural texts as the basis for my statement of motive. Lord God, heavenly Father, the great healer, the great physician of body and soul, you have shown us in your ministry that you are able to release us from our diseases, that you heal the sick, that you cast out demons, that you cleansed lepers and even raise the dead. We know also that in our baptisms, you have healed us eternally by bringing us to the presence of your son and having us share his eternal life. We now come before you on behalf of our sister who is suffering from cancer. We pray that you would heal her, that you would give her the kind of healing that only you can give, both in body and in Seoul we know that it is set your will, you will return her to full health. But we also know, through her baptism, she is in full health in your son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. We now ask you to give her strength in this time of her suffering to prepare her for, perhaps, some trials ahead, to give her comfort and consolation during these difficult times, to give strength to her family as they continued to minister to her, to guide the hands of her physicians and nurses as they come to her to help her in her bodily illness, and to be with me, her pastor, as I try to come to her and bring her spiritual healing. We give you thanks for the many blessings you have given her. And we ask that you continue to bless her with the presence of your son in her life as he comes to her in his word and has he comes to her in the sacrament. Give her strength Now, Lord. And show her in the wisdom of your spirit that she is always in your hands. We pray all these things in the name of your son, Jesus Christ our Lord. A man. " No, did you hear the various parts of the prayer, the greeting, the statements of motive, and then the long petitions where I petitioned concerning her health, her baptism, concerning the family? It is so important for us to understand the structure of prayer. But before we leave this, one more thing about Jewish prayer. There was a prayer that was a very important to the Jews, and it was the grace that they would speak after the meal in the Passover in the House liturgies which I'll talk about later on. But this prayer was call the * Bear cut, some which had three parts of it, and it really gets you into the mind of the Jews. They were basically three * proposed, three blessings of God, even though each one didn't bless God. So in other words, they were like three different prayers, but there would be considered one long prayer. The first prayer was a blessing of God for creation did it was a beautiful prayer that acknowledged God as the giver of the creation. The second prayer had to do with giving thanks to God for his redemption, that God was the one that redeemed Israel. And the third prayer was a petition, a petition to God that he would keep on a visiting Israel with the salvation. Now, notice the three things that they did there. The blessed God for creation. They give thanks to God for redemption. And they petitioned to have got a to keep on saving. If you think about those things, blessing, which is kind of like praising God, giving thanks to God which is where we get the Eucharist from, Eucharist meaning to give thanks, and then to petition God is really what is at the heart of prayer, like the Lord's prayer is a petition every prayer or repetition got four things. Those are the three things that for the Jews really made up all of prayer: blessing, Thanksgiving, and petition. I'm going to pray you what we have been able to reconstruct, and I mean scholars, liturgical scholars, as what would have been an a * Bear cut how Moscow degrees after the meal in the Passover Seder of the Jews at the time of our Lord and listen to the three coax, or the three prayer's, and notice how beautiful they are in their focus and in their content. Here's what a * Bear, I must might have sounded like. Blessed are you all lord our God King of the universe who feeds the whole world with goodness, with grace, and with mercy. Blessed are you who feeds all. We thank you all lord our God that you have caused us to inherit a good land, the Covenant, the Torah, life, and food. For all these things we thank and praise your name for ever and ever. Blessed are you, Lord, for the land and for the food. Have mercy, O lord, our God, on your people in Israel and on your city Jerusalem and on her temples and on your dwelling place and of Zion, your resting place, and on the great and hold the century over which your name was called an your kingdom of This Earth given blessed are you all lord our God for you have given us all these good gifts. There you see, in a sense, the essence of the Jewish prayers. And when you look at that beautiful theology of prayer, you can see how this was one of the foundation all structures for all of Jewish worship.