1. EVERYBODY’S GOT A HUNGRY HEART
When I was twelve, my mother told me she, “Gave her heart to
Jesus.” I wondered about what that really meant for a long time. Shortly after
her conversion, I was dragged to the Clove Valley Bible Fellowship Church where
I heard the words, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit
within me”1 strummed on an acoustic guitar week after week. After repeated
exposure to these words, I found myself involuntarily humming the tune
throughout the day; somehow, it had gotten stuck in my head. Being fairly disinterested in church at
this age, it was not long before I was looking for a way to replace the church
songs that were buzzing in my head with something that I could put in my
“heart.” I soon found Bruce Springsteen. To my liking, he sang:
Everybody needs a place to rest, everybody wants to have a
home, Don’t make no difference what nobody says, ain’t nobody like to be alone.
Everybody’s got a hungry heart, Everybody’ got a hungry heart, Lay down your
money and you play your part, Everybody’s got a hungry heart.2 I memorized
Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics. It wasn’t long before songs about clean hearts were
replaced with ones about hungry hearts.
By the time I was thirteen, I had had my first experience
with having my “hungry heart” broken by Barbara Amodeo on the grounds that good
Catholic girls like her should not be hanging around with rough irreligious
boys like me. Shortly after this, my own sense of morality began developing in
a way that brought me to the realization that, even though I was just entering
adolescence, I had willfully filled my hungry heart up with several packs of
lies that had left me feeling soiled. For the first time in my life, my heart
was aching. I truly realized at this time that I was deeply in need of God. It
was then that I embraced the words, “Create in me a clean heart, Oh God, and
renew a right spirit within me” and invited Jesus into my own heart; God had
rescued me.
2. THE HEART OF THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER
After being a Christian for nearly twelve years, I entered
the Episcopal Church. One of the things that I immediately noticed was the
plethora of references in the Book of Common Prayer to the heart. It seemed to
be everywhere I looked. As you can see, my own spiritual growth has been
greatly influenced by the language of the
heart; hungry, dirty, broken, and cleaned. Thus, I have always taken an
enormous interest in how references to the heart throughout the Prayer Book,
but more specifically the Eucharist, affect the worship of those who call
themselves Episcopalians or Anglicans.
A quick survey of the Book of Common Prayer yields an
amazing assortment of references to the heart, largely based upon Scripture. It
has been said that more then 85% of the BCP is taken directly from Scripture.
When we look at references to the heart in Scripture we see the heart mentioned
more then 950 times in the Old & New Testaments.3 Conversely, in the 1979
BCP the heart is referenced 353 times with 163 of these occurrences coming from
the Psalms.4
From Morning Prayer to the Burial Office, the heart is
called upon with a great variety of uses and meanings. In Morning Prayer, our
hearts are Rent5 and bend their knees to God.6 In the Service for Compline, we
are asked to speak to our hearts in silence upon our beds.7 In Evening Prayer
our hearts are called upon to teach us.8 When we offer our prayers to God as a
corporate body, we pour out our hearts to God.9 And, when someone we love is
crushed by death, we are given solace when we cry out, “Lord, you know the
secrets of our hearts; shut not your ears to our prayers, but spare us, O
Lord.”10
In the Psalter the heart is alive. Its shapes and depths are
astounding. We hear the Psalmist describing the heart as hot within 11 or as
melting wax.12 In the Psalms the heart given to God can be purified and made
right. It can be knit to God.13 It can dance, 14 be cleansed, and created
anew.15 The heart is also a place that can be cold and hard and can wither like
grass.16 Within our hearts, there can be destruction, 17 duplicity, 18 and a
massive collection of false rumors.19 The heart is complex and deep and the
Prayer Book draws greatly from the Psalms to offer up a full spectrum of
metaphors and meanings, which show many sides of the heart.
With such an array of references to the heart in our
culture, our literature, our music, and within the Scriptures, it is not
surprising that the place of the heart would also play a central role in our
central act of worship, the Eucharist.
3. ALMIGHTY GOD, TO YOU ALL HEARTS ARE OPEN
It was quite amazing for me to hear for the first time the
opening words of the Eucharist in an Episcopal Church. The priest stood in
front of the people. His intention: to deliver the Word of God to the people
and then to act it out with those gathered in the Holy Communion. In the words
of the opening acclamation he held up a Prayer Book and read,
“Bless the Lord who forgives all our sins.”
The whole congregation responded,
“His mercy endures for ever.”20
Then he spoke out among everyone gathered saying,
Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known,
and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the
inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily
magnify your holy Name;
through Christ our Lord. Amen.21
I have ever-since reveled in this prayer, known as the
Collect for Purity, where we are told that God knows our hearts. Moreover,
though they may hold secrets that the world cannot see, our hearts are open to
him. In this collect, we are also told that our hearts need to be cleansed. The
obvious implication is that our hearts are soiled, dirty, and in need of work.
They have been stained by the troubles of the week and the turmoil’s of our fallen
world and need to be “serviced” in the Eucharist.22
4. THE HEART AND ITS JOURNEY THROUGH THE EUCHARIST
As the Word of God continued to be presented, the service
moved us ever closer toward the Holy Communion with the full intention of
dealing with the secrets of our hearts and their need for cleansing. At the
time, I was unaware of other rites. I did not know, for instance, that there
was a rite based largely on a 1928 Book of Common Prayer known as Rite One
Eucharist. Later, however, I saw that in this service, there was a common
expectation that the Ten Commandments or a Summary of the Law 23 would be
rehearsed after the Collect for Purity. The effect of such a reading would
highlight God’s expectation that we be given to him with our whole hearts with
the reality that we cannot and have not entirely done so since we last communed
with him in the Eucharist. Hence, we have a dire need of a savior to reconcile
us to Him. Thus, a certain tension mounts as we are brought ever closer to
communion. The summary of the Law states:
Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the
second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two
commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.24
In the Rite Two Eucharist, we move directly into giving God
the glory he deserves by offering Songs of Praise.25 The service then takes our
hearts on a journey through prayer and through the hearing of God’s Word. The
celebrant and people call out in the salutation, based on the meeting of Ruth
and Boaz (Ruth 2:4), saying,
Celebrant The
Lord be with you.
People And also with you.
Celebrant Let
us pray.26
Passages from the Word of God are then read, and a sermon is
offered up to all gathered. The hope of the liturgy is that as we feed on the
Word it will do its work on our hearts. We then rehearse together the Nicene
Creed followed by prayers for the Church and the world. At this point, the hope
of the liturgy is that all the ‘hearts that are open to God’ will have been
softened, and searched and prepared for a confession to Him. The whole movement
of the liturgy brings us to the moment where we confess that we have sinned
against God in “thought, word, and deed”26 both by our actions and our inaction
with an eager anticipation that we will in fact be forgiven. Within the prayer
of confession, the heart which was admitted to God for cleansing in the Collect
for Purity, is now purged of sin and ready to be given up to God. In the Rite
Two Confession, we cry,
We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not
loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For
the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may
delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name. Amen.28
The Rite One Eucharistic liturgy states things even more
boldly, offering several options for all preparing for Holy Communion, to
examine themselves. An option for an exhortation is also provided. The
exhortation which has evolved since its first appearance in the 1548 Prayer
Book warns that:
For, as the benefit is great, if with penitent hearts and
living faith we receive the holy Sacrament, so is the danger great, if we
receive it improperly, not recognizing the Lord’s Body. Judge yourselves,
therefore, lest you be judged by the Lord. 29
Stephen Sykes, commenting on Thomas Cranmer’s concern with
proper preparation of the heart in approaching the Lord in Holy Communion says:
In due course, we shall see how pivotal has become the
liturgical instruction to ‘lift up your hearts’ in the ritual process of
pilgrimage to the Lord’s table devised by Cranmer. But, the start of the
journey, the exploration of the depths of the heart, show that the metaphorical
process is full of hazards and demands the closest attention. The Prayer Books
of 1549 and 1552 strongly emphasize to potential communicants that it is
spiritually and physically dangerous to receive the sacrament unworthily.
Repentance and restitution
are needed before hand, and a promise given to God that
one’s life will be amended. 30
Prayer book revisionists seem to have failed to recognize
the importance of identifying the need for the heart journeying to the Holy
Communion to be examined and purged of its sin. Instead, there is a definite
shift in newer liturgies to move more quickly into praise without considering
the need for the searching, softening, and setting apart of deceitful,
duplicitous, and hardened hearts on any given Sunday Morning. No one
articulates this shift more clearly then Charles Price, who, in his Introducing
the Proposed Book of Common Prayer, says
This theory of atonement (“he is the propitiation for our
sins.”) dominated Christian theology and liturgy in the Middle Ages and during
the 16th century reformation. It is not now very appealing, although it does
emphasize the seriousness of sin and the reality of God’s wrath. However, it
should not be the sole expression of God’s reconciling work, but it is
appropriate that it should appear as a sub-theme (cf. Rite I Eucharistic
PrayerI; Evening Prayer Rite I; Collect for Friday in Easter Week; Proper 22,
Proper 26; Great Vigil of Easter). 31
For Price and many other modern liturgists, the emphasis has
been shifted to creation, redemption, freedom, reconciliation, and forgiveness.
Hence, says Price, ‘a fuller array of words dealing with Christ’s work on the
cross are employed.’ However, one must question if this is completely healthy
for persons seeking to reform their hearts in a liturgy designed to bring the
heart on a serious journey from the darkness of a fallen world to the heights
of heaven. Price defends himself saying,
It has been said that as assurance of immortality was the
acute spiritual need of the early Church, and assurance of forgiveness the
acute need in sixteenth century Europe, community is the acute need in our
time. Some critics of the Services for Trial use (1970) and the Authorized
Services (1973) have felt that the accent on the “horizontal” dimension of
worship has threatened to supplant the “vertical.” 32
In reflecting on Price’s comments, I am convinced that he is
seriously mistaken in his attempt to lodge the need for forgiveness in the slot
of history we call the sixteenth century. A deep need for forgiveness has been
felt across the church from its inception. Yes, the postmodern church may need
community. We are desperately alone. However, removing the penitential aspects
of the Prayer Book and simply replacing them with affirming words will not cure
the human heart or its isolation in sin. Only a serious view of the human
condition which relies on Christ’s atoning sacrifice for our sin sick hearts
can cure us and bring us into authentic communion with others. The problem has
been the same from the time of Cain to the present. Positing a deep need for
forgiveness, only at the end of the Middle Ages does not solve our community
problems, it creates new ones.
The great Carolinian Divine, George Herbert, who was
nurtured in Prayer Book spirituality, seems to have had a wonderful grasp at
what Cranmer was attempting to do in the Prayer book. Like Cranmer, Herbert
took the human dilemma seriously. He saw the heart as a closet with many rooms
that held drawers, that held boxes, which held tills or lock boxes, which held
secret sins that were meant to be hidden from God. He shows in his poem
confession how God is able to search the heart and bring us to a place where we
are able to purge our sins and be free of all guilt and shame. Rather then
being irrelevant or a product of the reformation, the idea of freeing the heart
from guilt and shame is as relevant and needed for people living today as
anything I have ever encountered. Herbert says:
Oh what a cunning guest,
is this same grief.
In my heart I made closets,
and in them many a chest.
And like a master in my trade,
in those chests boxes,
in each box a till;
yet grief knows all
and enters when he will.
Only an open breast doth shut them out,
so that they cannot enter,
and if they enter
cannot rest,
but quickly seek some new adventure.
Smooth open hearts
no handles have;
but fiction
does give hold and handle to affliction.
Wherefore my faults and sins,
Lord I acknowledge,
take thy plagues away.
For since confession pardon wins,
I challenge here the brightest day.
The clearest diamonds
let them do their best
they will be thick and cloudy
(compared) to my breast.33
In the Eucharist, the heart has journeyed through the
liturgy of the Word’s Collect for Purity to the confession of sin, the offering
of the peace of reconciliation, and the absolution given by the celebrating
priest. Now cleansed, offerings of praise and thanksgiving are appropriately
made to God. As the celebrant
begins to prepare Holy Communion our hearts are now ready to be offered to as
pure and spotless gifts. Standing before the Lord, the celebrant then ushers
the congregation into the presence of God in the Eucharistic Prayer, saying:
Celebrant The Lord be with you.
People And also
with you.
Celebrant Lift
up your hearts.
People We lift
them to the Lord.
Celebrant Let
us give thanks to the Lord our God.
People It is
right to give him thanks and praise.34
Finally, in the Holy Communion, which is for us a great
moment of praise and thanksgiving for the redemptive work done for us on the
cross of Calvary, we lift up our hearts to God. What is so important for us to
see when looking at the subject of the heart in the Prayer Book, and in the
Eucharist, is that the heart has needed a great amount of servicing in order to
come to a place where it can rightly be offered to God.
The act of lifting our hearts to God is wrought with danger.
Hopefully we have journeyed well. Yes, much of the time it is a dramatic
journey. Some of the time we are better to walk away from the Holy Communion,
if we have been unable to truly offer our hearts to God for forgiveness.
Nonetheless, when we do come and offer our hearts fully, we share with him and
all the community of believers, a heavenly banquet. The Galasian Collect for
Ascension Day adapted by Cranmer to reflect the journey of the heart, sums up
this thought with great beauty:
Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do
believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the
heavens, so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him
continually dwell; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one
God, world without end. Amen.35
5. FROM HIGHWAY BILLBOARDS TO THE BREAD OF HEAVEN
Almost everyone will agree that we are a people who are
living in an age where information has run rampant. It has been said that we
see more information in a month then the average person saw in the Middle Ages
in an entire lifetime. Our hearts and minds are constantly being bombarded with
information. The late Henri Nouwen made the following observation:
"Recently, I was driving through Los Angeles. Suddenly,
I had the strange sensation of driving through a huge dictionary. Wherever I
looked there were words trying to keep my eyes from the road. They said,
"Use me, take me, buy me, drink me, eat me, smell me, touch me, kiss me,
sleep with me."36
It does not take long for even the strongest and most
disciplined of saints to be deeply affected by the noise, the constancy, and
the sheer volume of information that is running through our lives. For pastors,
and for parishioners, we are in desperate need of having our hearts searched,
softened, and purged of all of the stuff that attaches to our hearts from day
to day in our postmodern culture.
If there was any time in our life as a Church that we needed
to take our hearts on a journey through the Eucharist to have them softened,
forgiven, and then offered up to God it is now. Rather then encouraging the
faithful to drive to church (while being assaulted by billboards) and then jump
right into praise and thanksgiving, we would do well to recover the idea that
our hearts are rarely prepared to encounter God on his throne or to have our
hearts ascend to him in heaven. Just as Christians for centuries have known, we
need to prepare our hearts by taking them on a redemptive drive through the
Eucharist. Then, after we have fed on the Word, confessed our sins, and offered
ourselves to one another as a reconciled community, can we say with boldness,
Celebrant Lift
up your hearts.
People We lift
them to the Lord.
Celebrant Let
us give thanks to the Lord our God.
People It is
right to give him thanks and praise
6. END NOTES
1. Create in Me a Clean Heart. Contemporary praise song
based on Psalm 51 and very popular
in the 1970’s.
2. Bruce Springsteen. The River (NewYork: CBS, Inc.). The
Song is titled “Hungry Heart.”
3. A word search using Logos’ New American Standard Bible,
heart and hearts.
4. Galen Bushey, The Prayer Book Concordance (New York: The
Church Hymnal Corporation, 1988), p. 230-231. References are to heart and
hearts.
5. The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the
Sacraments and Other Rites and
Ceremonies of the Church (New York:
The Church Hymnal Corporation,
1979), p. 38. From Morning Prayer Rite One. This is a Lenten prayer
taken from Joel 2:13 which says,
“Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God; for he is gracious and
merciful, slow to anger and of great
kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.”
6. “BCP”, p. 91. Taken from Morning Prayer Rite Two, the
14th Canticle; A Song of
Penitence. The line reads, “And now, O Lord, I bend the knee of my
heart, and make my appeal, sure of
your gracious goodness.”
7. “BCP”, p. 128. This is the first of a selection of
Compline prayers, Psalm 4:4 known as
Cum invocarem reads, “Tremble, then, and do not sin; speak to your heart
in silence upon your bed.”
8. “BCP”, p. 115. One of a selection of opening
sentences for evening prayer,
the reference to the heart
teaching us comes from, Psalm 16:7, 8; “I will bless the Lord who gives me counsel; my heart teaches
me, night after night. I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall
not fall.
9. “BCP”, p. 471. From the Psalm used within the Burial
right, known as Quemadmodum, it
reads, “Now when I think thereupon, I pour out my heart by myself; for I
went with the multitude, and
brought them forth into the house of God.”
10. “BCP”, p. 492.
An Anthem for the Burial of the Dead: “Lord, you know the secrets of our hearts; shut not your ears to
our prayers, but spare us, O Lord. Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy and merciful Savior, deliver us not
into the bitterness of eternal
death.
11. “BCP”, p. 638. Taken from Psalm 39:4, known as Dixi,
Custodiam, it reads, “My heart was
hot within me; while I pondered, the fire burst into flame.”
12. “BCP”, p. 611. From the Psalter, Psalm 22:14, “I am
poured out like water; all my
bones are out of joint; my heart within my breast is melting wax.”
13. “BCP”, p. 710. From Psalm 86:10; “11 Teach me your way,
O Lord, and I will walk in your
truth; knit my heart to you that I may fear your Name.
14. “BCP”, p. 619. From Psalm 28:8; “The Lord is my strength
and my shield; my heart trusts in
him, and I have been helped; Therefore my heart dances for joy, and in my song will I praise him.”
15. “BCP”, p. 657. From Psalm 57:11; “Create in me a clean
heart, O God, and renew a right
spirit within me.”
16 “BCP”, p. 731. From Psalm 102: 4: “My heart is smitten
like grass and withered, so that I
forget to eat my bread.”
17. “BCP”, p. 589. From Psalm 5:9: “For there is no truth in
their mouth; there is destruction
in their heart.”
18. “BCP”, p. 597. From Psalm 12:2. “Everyone speaks falsely
with his neighbor; *
with a smooth
tongue they speak from a double heart.
19. “BCP”, p. 642. From Psalm 41:6: “Even if they come to
see me, they speak empty
words; their
heart collects false rumors; they go outside and spread them.
20. “BCP”, p. 323, 355. These opening words of acclimation
where used during lent.
See also Marion Hatchet, Prayer Book Commentary
p. 318 for further comments.
21. “BCP”, p. 323, 355. The phrase, “cleanse the thoughts of
our hearts” is also used in the
following services: 323 HE RI, 337
HE RI, 355 HE RII, 512 Ordination of a
bishop
22. Stephen Sykes, Unashamed Anglicanism (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1995), p.24-25.
Sykes says, “It
is common biblical, patristic and catholic thought that the heart is open to God.” He goes on to show how
the collect can be traced from the Catholic rite used when the priest was vesting to a public confession
during the opening of the service.
23. Marion J. Hatchett, Commentary on the American Prayer
Book (New York: The Seabury Press,
1979), p. 319. The Summary of the
law in the BCP is based on Matt
22:37-40.
24. BCP. The
Summary of the Law is found on p. 324.
25. Marion J. Hatchett, Commentary on the American Prayer
Book (New York: The Seabury Press,
1979), p. 319-322. The Kyrie, The Trisagion, and the Song of Praise or offered as choices in the
BCP; see 324-325, 356 .
26. “Hatchett”, P. 322. This commentary on the salutation
gives a good explanation of the
evolution of the salutation and biblical sources.
27 “BCP”. The statement, “we have sinned against God in
thought, word, and deed is
found in both RI 331 and in
RII 360.
28. “BCP”, 359-360. Confession of sin.
29. “BCP”, p. 316. The exhortation has a long history. It
was first required to be used
seasonally as Holy Communion was not taken weekly. It was designed to be
said the week before communion. It
use is now not required. See Hatchett, p. 309-310.
30. Sykes. p, 31. His treatment of the open heart and it
journey through the Eucharist is
excellent.
31. Charles Price, Introducing the Proposed Book of Common
Prayer ( New York: The Seabury
Press, 1977). p. 39
32 . “Price”, p. 44.
33. George Herbert, George Herbert: The Country Parson, The
Temple (Ramsey: Paulist Press 1981), 248-249. The complete poem is quite
spectacular.
34. “BCP”,
p.361. Taken from Rite Two, though the phrase is used in all
Eucharistic Prayers in the Prayer
Book.
35. “BCP”,
p.174. For more on the history and commentary on the Collect for
Ascension day, see also Marion
Hatchet, p.226 and Stephen Sykes, p. 40 as listed above.
36. Os Guinness, Fit Bodies, fat Minds: Why Evangelicals
Don’t Think and What To Do About
It (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994), p. 94.Henri Nouwen quoted.
7. BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the
Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church. (1979). New York: The Church Hymnal Corporation.
Bushey, Galen (1988). The Prayer Book Concordance. New York:
The Church Hymnal Corporation.
Guinness, Os. (1994). Fit Bodies, fat Minds: Why
Evangelicals Don’t Think and What To Do About It. Grand Rapids: Baker Books.
Hatchett, Marion J. (1979). Commentary on the American
Prayer Book. New York: The Seabury
Press.
Herbert, George. (1981). George Herbert: The Country Parson,
The Temple. Ramsey: Paulist Press.
Price, Charles (1977). Introducing the Proposed Book of
Common Prayer. New York: The
Seabury Press.
Sykes, Stephen. (1995). Unashamed Anglicanism. Nashville:
Abingdon Press.
Toon, Peter (1993). Proclaiming the Gospel Through the
Liturgy: The Common Prayer Tradition and Doctrinal Revision. Largo: The Prayer Book Society
Publishing Company.
Wilson, Marvin (1989). Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of
the Christian Faith. Grand rapids:
Eerdmans Publishing Company.
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