Psalm 119:105-112; Isaiah 2:1-4; John 12:44-50
Saturday 11 July
When I was in training to become a minister, and first met my ‘bishop’ (as we still call those parish ministers who act as mentors, and who we are placed with in congregations in order to learn), he asked me two questions. The first was, ‘So where are you on that spectrum which runs from Marcel Lefebvre on the right all the way over to Don Cupitt on the left?’ Well, I laughed at that one. My bishop had a good sense of humour, and I didn’t think he was being entirely serious. Both men had been in the news.
Lefebvre (1905 – 1991), a former French Catholic archbishop, had been excommunicated for refusing to disband a community he had founded in Switzerland committed to observing the Tridentine (Latin) Mass. This was antagonistic to decisions taken during Vatican II in the 1960s, and so he had to go. And Cupitt (born 1934), an Anglican priest and professor at Cambridge University, had by contrast developed a reputation, with his ‘Sea of Faith’ broadcasts on television, for espousing a sort of ‘anything goes’ theology instead.
And the reason I mention this is because of Eric’s next question. He then went on to ask me whether or not I was a fan of what he called prayers for the ‘just’. So that nowadays, every time I see that word (e.g. Psalm 119:106), I remember the question, and what he meant by it, which was whether or not I prayed extempore i.e. ad lib. He’d noticed, he said, with previous students, that if they did pray extempore then they tended to use the word ‘just’ a lot, as in: “And Lord we just want to say . . . and we just want to ask . . . and we just wonder . . . and we are just reminded . . .” Well, I laughed at that as well.
Eric himself, although he’d have supported me either way, wasn’t a big fan of ‘just’ allowing the spirit to move his trainees without any prior preparation. And one of the reasons for this was that he felt that style of addressing God resulted in far too much repetition.
One of the hallmarks of the Bible, however (and there have been, and are, some great impromptu pray-ers), is repetition, and we see that here in verses 105 – 112 of Psalm 119. Have a look and you’ll notice that there is only actually one out of the eight verses that doesn’t refer to the Jewish Law. The passage begins with ‘Your word’ as it then goes on to repeat that with ‘your just instructions’, ‘your commands’, ‘your laws’, ‘your commands’, ‘your commandments’, and ‘your laws’ once again. And it’s by these means (mentioning something as many as seven times in this very short acrostic) – like the chorus of a song – that we then come to learn what’s most important.
Let us pray (and this is a Latin prayer used at a school I attended as a grace before meals):
Benedictus benedicat (it means ‘May the Blessed One bless’), Amen.
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