Bold to Say: the Lord’s Prayer

From the Episcopal Church (USA) Book of Common Prayer 1979

And now, as our Savior
Christ has taught us,
we are bold to say,

Our Father, who art in heaven,
   hallowed be thy Name,
   thy kingdom come,
   thy will be done,
      on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
   as we forgive those
      who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
   but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
   and the power, and the glory,
   for ever and ever. Amen.

Taking another look at the Lord’s Prayer, I offer what I suspect is a more familiar version of this prayer – it is, at least, to me. This version is one found in the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer (available online at www.bcponline.org)

What I especially like about this version are the preceding words, spoken by the celebrant:

And now, as our Savior
Christ has taught us,
we are bold to say,

Yes, these are bold words to speak! Here is a church full of people who, along with their sisters and brothers across the globe, are about to address the living God.

This reminds me of an oft-quoted passage from Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm:

The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”

Going to church and going through the same motions and reciting the same words week after week after week can cause even the most delighted and attentive among us to fall into rote recitation when perhaps we could all afford to live a bit more in the wildness and wonder—in the boldness—of what it is we are doing.

Alissa Goudswaard lives in Lafayette, Indiana, where she is completing her MA in rhetoric and composition, baking all the cupcakes, and attempting to teach herself guitar. Find this Calvin-grad-turned-stark-raving-Episcopalian online at episcotheque.wordpress.com and on Twitter as @episcotheque.