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We are Bold to Say
“And now, as our Savior Christ hath taught us, we are bold to say…”
Book of Common Prayer, p. 336
These are the familiar words that preface our communal recitation of the Lord’s Prayer during our Holy Eucharist services. Ever since interviewing the Rev. Jacob Breeze for a recent episode of "The Wayside Podcast[1]," I've been thinking a lot about how even small moments in our prayer and worship guided by the Book of Common Prayer shape what we believe and give fresh embodiment to our words and actions.
A major theme from our conversation with Fr. Breeze is how liturgy serves a catechetical function. Put another way, how we worship teaches us something about who God is and who we are as His beloved. And, since our bodies remember what we enact as we participate in prayer and worship, even small moments like that preface before the Lord’s Prayer have profound power.
So, why are we “bold to say” such a widely known prayer, especially in the moments right before we come to the Table?
On one level, we are “bold” because we are positioning ourselves at a critical moment in our worship within the power of a prayer that Jesus Christ himself gave us. If, as Rowan Williams puts it, “we are never more fully our baptized and renewed selves than when we are coming to eat and drink at Jesus’ table,” there is no more fitting way to prepare ourselves to partake in Christ than with His very words on our lips.[2]
At an even deeper level, though, we are “bold” to say these words of the Lord’s Prayer because, frankly, they are audacious. They take some nerve to say. But, as Williams also puts it, “[in the Lord’s Prayer] we have been given license to say something miraculous and outrageous because of God’s goodness.”[3] We have the right to call the God who made the Cosmos our Father because of the bread and wine that is about to be in our hands. We get to be participants in God’s plan to bring all things together through Jesus Christ because we are about to receive the Body and Blood of the very same Jesus Christ, given for us.
Our liturgy reminds us that there is nothing prosaic about the Lord’s Prayer, especially when we wrap ourselves in its powerful words of love before coming to the Lord’s Table. That is why we are bold to say to them.
[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-wayside-podcast/id1648717722
[2] Rowan Williams, “Tokens of Trust” (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007)
[3] Ibid.
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