Their cry rings out over the Kidron Valley. Pilgrims young and old are streaming to the holy city for the festival as always, but this year, the psalm they're singing has met its heart. The Mount of Olives is crammed with those on the move, their forms a chaotic mess against the backdrop of the gleaming temple up ahead. But this year, their eyes are fixed not on that temple, but on a new temple in the shape of a man. For in their midst, moving steadily down the slopes, is a man in his thirties, seated atop an untamed colt's back, with the padding of his students' cloaks for a makeshift saddle. All along the dusty trail, the donkey's hooves tread down palm branches tossed before it in celebration. This man, think the crowds, is a new Moses come to make this Passover fresh as the first one when their ancestors were delivered from slavery to holy liberty. This man, think the crowds, is a new David, riding back into his stolen capital to reclaim his sovereignty. This man, know the crowds, is beyond their wildest dreams. For some in the crowds were one day at Lazarus' funeral, and the next week ate lunch with the living Lazarus, all because this man stepped in. And one in the crowd is Bartimaeus, who yesterday begged blind outside Jericho and who today names the colors of the sky, again all because this man stepped in.
For this man was Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, Son of David, whom they'd been waiting for. Surely, as the prophets had once spoken, he was riding into Jerusalem on a donkey colt to put an end to war, to restore peace, to renew the covenant, restore prisoners of hope, to take the reins of an untamed world as steadily as the reins of this untamed colt. So the ecstatic pilgrims raised their songs of ascent, singing out God's own praises as prayers to and through this Jesus. Listen – can you hear? “Hosanna ('save now'), we pray, O LORD!” (Psalm 118:25). “Hosanna to the Son of David!” (Matthew 21:9). “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD” (Psalm 118:26; Mark 11:9), “even the King of Israel!” (John 12:13). “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Luke 19:38). “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” (Mark 11:10). “Hosanna in the highest!” (Matthew 21:9). “Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest!” (Luke 19:38).
Indeed, even after Jesus had stepped off the donkey and onto the temple courts – even after he'd whipped the robbers out, welcomed the sons of the Greeks who sought him in Zion, taught the crowds, and healed the hurt – even then the children kept singing, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” (Matthew 21:15). And so pilgrims young and old glorified God. That night, the sound of their doxologies – their words of glory – still rang in the ears of the apostles as they retreated back to Bethany. Before they went to sleep, no doubt the disciples and Lazarus and Mary and Martha stood together, and from their lips said their prayers: “Our Father, who art in heaven...”
A thousand years before, not so far away, the leaders of all Israel were summoned to Jerusalem, not by the New David but by the First David, for the anointing of Solomon son of David as their future king, and to take up a collection of donations for the future temple of God. And when the people had given David their free-will offerings for the temple of God's glory as freely as the pilgrims gave Jesus their free-will praises, David prayed one of the most beautiful prayers in Israel's history, starting like this: “Blessed are you, O LORD God of Israel our father, forever and ever. Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and you are exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all. And now we thank you, our God, and praise your glorious name” (1 Chronicles 29:10-13).
That was the gold standard of prayers of praise. In Greek, you'd call it a doxology, which means 'speaking glory.' And so, centuries later, when the apostles wrote the New Testament, free-form doxologies spilled out, like gems from an overstocked treasury. All were plucked in substance (if not in word) from David's prayer. So Paul cries out: “To our God and Father be glory forever and ever, amen!” (Philippians 4:20). Peter cries out: “To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever, amen!” (1 Peter 4:11). John cries out: “Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever, amen!” (Revelation 7:12). And Jude adds: “To the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever, amen!” (Jude 25).
Over these past several months, we've been learning to appreciate and understand the prayer Jesus taught us, the Lord's Prayer. It was handed down to us in two Gospels – Matthew, giving the fuller version, and Luke, giving an abridged one. But each ends on a petition – Luke ends with “Lead us not into temptation,” Matthew goes further and adds “But deliver us from evil.” Neither Gospel-writer, at least in the oldest Greek manuscripts we have, writes in a doxology at the end. So why do we close the Lord's Prayer like we do? Well, much as the apostles filled their letters with doxologies, so they, as good Jews, would have capped their prayers off with doxologies. Jesus would have expected no less.
But between the prayer Jesus gave them and the doxology they were invited to add, they were also free, if they wished, to fill in freely any other prayer requests they had that were in harmony with the prayer they'd already prayed. Many rabbis set that example, adding in their own prayers after they finished the prescribed ones.1 So in later Christian use, when a church would pray the Lord's Prayer together, the priest or prayer leader might add something extra before getting to the doxology. And that 'something extra' was called an 'embolism' – literally, something sandwiched between, something that plugs up a gap. I've been to churches that use an embolism when they pray the Lord's Prayer.2 Our tradition, when we pray together the Lord's Prayer at all, generally doesn't insert an embolism. But it's good to know about, because maybe you'll find it fruitful in your personal prayer life: to start your prayers with the Lord's Prayer up to “Deliver us from evil,” then sandwich in the other concerns that weigh on your heart, and then to finish with the doxology at the end.
Ah, but we still haven't answered the question: Where do we get the doxology? Well, Jesus would expect the apostles and their churches to find their own ways of closing prayer with praise, drawing inspiration from David and his great prayer. In fact, we can guess how Paul ended the Lord's Prayer. At the end of his last letter, Paul says confidently, “The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom.” (Doesn't that sound a lot like an answer to the prayer “Deliver us from evil”?) And then Paul adds a doxology: “To him be the glory forever and ever! Amen” (2 Timothy 4:18). A few years later, we have evidence from Matthew's church in Syria, who wrote down how they prayed the Lord's Prayer. And after the last petition, they were accustomed to add: “For the power and the glory are yours forever! Amen.”3
Let a couple centuries pass, and churches all over have developed different doxologies. One place says, “For yours is the kingdom forever!”4 Another says, “For yours is the power and the kingdom forever and ever!”5 We find the familiar version in some places: “For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever!”6 And the Gothic tribes were taught a similar version: “For yours is kingdom and might and glory in eternity!”7 In Egypt, we find a personal copy of the Lord's Prayer that ends: “Through the only-begotten Son, for yours is the glory and the power and the All-Holy Spirit, now and always and forever and ever!”8 But in Milan in Italy, we hear an even more elaborate doxology being used: “Through our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom for you and with whom for you is honor, praise, glory, magnificence, power, with the Holy Spirit, from the ages, and now and always, and forever and ever!”9 By the Middle Ages, the Armenian Church was using: “Yours is the power and the kingdom, and to you the glory, dominion, and honor are fitting, now and ever and to ages of ages.”10 Even today, step into a Catholic Church, and you'll hear the Lord's Prayer mostly like we say it: “For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever.”11 But step into a Greek or Russian or Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and you'll hear: “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and forever and to the ages of ages.”12
All those doxologies are great! Any of these are fine to use! But maybe now you're wondering, “Wow, if there are so many different choices, how'd we get ours?” Here's how. A long time ago, in a few Greek manuscripts of Matthew's Gospel, some scribe was copying the Lord's Prayer, and in the margins, he jotted down the doxology he was used to singing in church – just as a reminder. Then along came another scribe, and when he copied Matthew's Gospel off the first scribe's work, he figured the marginal note was something the first scribe had left out from the main text by accident, and then stuck in the margin. Knowing it sounded familiar, thinking it was part of what Matthew himself wrote, the scribe added the line to the main text itself when he copied it. And from this scribe's work, an entire family of Greek manuscripts descended.
Now, up through the 1380s when John Wycliffe translated the Bible into Middle English, none of this mattered, because Wycliffe and friends were translating from the Latin Bible, which in this spot hadn't been affected.13 But then in the 1520s, a man named William Tyndale got the idea to do a fresh English Bible, not from Latin but straight from Hebrew and Greek. Just a few years earlier, a Dutch scholar named Erasmus had printed a Greek New Testament, using medieval Greek manuscripts he'd been given. And guess which kind? Yes: the ones descended from the work of the scribe who inserted the doxology. So while the first edition of Tyndale's New Testament leaves out the doxology, all the revised editions put it in.14 Some people actually criticized Tyndale's work for exactly this, since they knew from Latin that the doxology wasn't part of the text.15 After all, the official English prayer-book went straight from 'Deliver us from evil' to 'Amen.'16 But about eighty years later, the king of England, James I, gathered a team to produce a new authorized English Bible, again from Hebrew and Greek. But, working off the same copies, they got almost identical results. And to this day, if you open up a King James Bible to Matthew 6, you'll see our familiar doxology sitting there, as if spoken by Jesus himself: “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen” (Matthew 6:13 KJV). And once that became the official English Bible, what English-speaking church was going to pray differently? The next revision of the Book of Common Prayer changed the Lord's Prayer to match how King James printed it – doxology and all.17 So generations of Christians ever since have learned the Lord's Prayer with this particular doxology – as part of it.18 Our church grew up on the King James Bible, so that's where we got our doxology.
But in the end, as I said, any of those doxologies are good! What matters is the principle. To our request to be delivered from evil, God answers back: “I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me” (Psalm 50:15). As the early church said: “Every prayer should be brought to its conclusion with the glorification of God through Christ in the Holy Spirit.”19 So pick one, choose one, make a new one yourself – so long as your prayers lose themselves in praise before you're through! And nowhere is this more important than when we pray together, “that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 15:6).
When we pray together, we're likely to stick with the familiar doxology, with that nice King James ring to it. So how are we glorifying God in it? What does it mean? That's our last question today. And we start out with a transition, with the word “for...” See, these words of glory and praise and blessing we're about to say – they're explaining why we ask all the things we ask. They're why we ask for God's name to be hallowed, his kingdom to come, his will to be done. They're why we turn to God to feed us daily bread and cut us loose from our debts, why we ask God to steer us from temptation's grasp and to rescue us out of the Evil One's clutches. Doxology is an establishment of our faith. It makes sense of what we've been saying – why we're talking to God about it.
So how does it go? “For thine is the kingdom...,” we say. Already, from everlasting to everlasting, God is in charge. “Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom” (Psalm 145:13). We've prayed for that kingdom to come to earth, to be enforced here as it is in heaven. But it's been real since the dawn of creation, and will be after all is swallowed up in perfection. David prayed the same thing: “Yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and you are exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all” (1 Chronicles 29:11-12). God's wisdom rules over us, and that's why his will ought to be done – his authority is right. God is the provider, the source of our honors and our riches, and that means he's the one we owe daily thanks for our daily bread. But the marvel here is that, in time, this eternal kingdom pushed into earth in the gentlest way: when a man rode a donkey – not a war horse, not a chariot, but a donkey – offering the riches of love and the honors of suffering, as the Lord prepared to be exalted above all, lifted high between heaven and earth... on a cross.
'For thine is the kingdom and the power...,” we say. From everlasting to everlasting, God is strong. In the days of the exodus, “he saved them... that he might make known his mighty power” (Psalm 106:8). All God's works and all his holy ones are to “tell of [his] power, to make known to the children of man [his] mighty deeds” (Psalm 145:11-12). David prayed for just that: “Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power... and the victory... In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all” (1 Chronicles 29:11-12). If God is strong enough to accomplish his will, then he's strong enough to deliver us from evil, if only we ask it in trusting faith. And if God is the one who gives strength, then he can strengthen us to not fall in temptation, if only we cooperate with him, if only we desire to not fall.
And this God marches onto our scene, declaring: “It is I, speaking in righteousness, mighty to save” (Isaiah 63:1). So heard Isaiah. And Zephaniah later stood in awe of the God who enters “in [Jerusalem's] midst” to be there “a mighty one who will save,” who will soothe the wounded by his love and who gathers mourners to celebrate a festival (Zephaniah 3:17-18). And so, in time, we see the pilgrims shouting out about the Lord's mighty deeds, the great miracles of deliverance they'd seen. Power and might were indeed in Jesus' hand, as he cleansed the temple courts, as he touched the broken and made them whole. But all the more were power and might in Jesus' hand when those hands welcomed the nails. It was in gentleness that the Lord most revealed his power. It was the power of perfect restraint, when Jesus suffered in our midst, the LORD showing his power of unfailing love, the LORD giving himself for mournful man at the festival. His is the power. So too must his be the victory – Easter will see to that.
“For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory...,” we say. From everlasting to everlasting, God is glorious – he's important, he's central, he's worthy of attention and adoration. There's no question where he's not at the heart of the answer. There's no problem where he isn't the meat of the solution. There's no well-ordered space that isn't ordered to him. There's no healthy mouth where his name isn't praised, no healthy heart where his touch isn't felt, no healthy mind where he isn't lifted high. All the reasonings of God's people lead from him, through him, and to him. And gratitude is our lifeblood. For that reason, God's works and holy ones are to “speak of the glory,” of “the glorious splendor of [his] kingdom” (Psalm 145:11-12). David prayed for that: “Yours, O LORD, is... the glory... and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. … And now we thank you, our God, and praise your glorious name. … O LORD..., direct their hearts toward you” (1 Chronicles 29:11,13,18). God is our Father, but our heavenly Father, not an earthly one. He's majestic and glorious: he transcends heaven and earth, because everything in them is his, is defined in terms of him. That's why his name is the name that must be hallowed, treated as holy. God is implicated centrally in everything we do, inside and out, because all our actions take on their meaning only in light of God. That's why his is the forgiveness we need more than anything. That's why it's his life of love we aim to imitate in mercy to others.
But the great marvel is that, in time, this glory of God was announced as Jesus rode into Jerusalem's midst, as he was hailed with imploring hosannas and celebrated with blessings in the LORD's name. To the chief priests and scribes, who knew not God's glory, it seemed like a disruption, like a disorder – that's why they asked Jesus to put a stop to it, to plug up the praise-projectors. But it's also exactly why he refused. This is what the temple was for. It's for God's glory, God's majesty, God's praise. That was why Jesus had come: to seek the glory of the Father who sent him (John 7:18), the same Father who fully glorified Jesus in return (John 8:54). On that Palm Sunday, as even Greeks observing the Passover begged to see Jesus in the temple courts, Jesus declared: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23). As the feast approached, he said again: “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God glorified in him” (John 13:31). How was God then glorified in Jesus? At the sacrifice – at the cross. “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power... and honor and glory and blessing!” (Revelation 5:12). And, Jesus adds, “If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once” (John 13:32). And what Jesus means in those words, only Easter will tell.
“For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever,” we say, or “forever and ever.” Again we take the words from David: “Blessed are you, O LORD God of Israel our father, forever and ever” (1 Chronicles 29:10). God's blessedness – God's worthiness to be spoken well of, God's supreme fullness of life – cannot be ended, cannot be impeded, cannot be subtracted from. Not even by the cross. Perhaps especially not by the cross. It's an eternal truth; and our heavenly hope – the beatific or blessed vision – is simply to see and know and experience everything in and through God's eternally perfect, eternally blessed life, which God himself is. And so we rightly end our prayer on the theme of God's eternity – looking back before creation, looking ahead beyond salvation, celebrating in these words that we're embraced by a Love that knows no beginning nor end.
And in a way, you could say that this doxology of ours is a mini-Palm Sunday, each time we pray. It's a chance to bless this eternal God who rides into our lives in gentle humility, yet to claim his kingship over us. It's a time to bless this eternal God who reveals his power of deliverance in the most unexpected places. It's an opening to bless this eternal God who makes manifest his glory within our lives. When we say the doxology, we lay down palm branches and cloaks upon our hearts, and offer those hearts as Jesus' seat. And in doing that, our prayer makes a triumphal entry, not into the Jerusalem of sticks and stones, but into the Jerusalem above, into heaven. For whereas here we pray for God's kingdom and power and glory to be made known, there we hope to dwell where God's kingdom and power and glory are more obvious than 2 + 2 – where they always have been and always shall be. Through this God whom we glorify – Father and Son and Holy Spirit – may we find ourselves at last glorified with him in his powerful kingdom, forever and ever! “Blessed be his glorious name forever! May the whole earth” – and heaven above it – “be filled with his glory! Amen and amen!” (Psalm 72:19).
1 Babylonian Talmud: b. Berakhot 16b-17a records many of these preferred prayers, usually with a preface like: “After Rabbi So-and-So concluded his prayer, he said the following...”
2 Today, the Roman Catholic Church uses an embolism: “Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, and graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ” – see The Roman Missal: English Translation According to the Third Typical Edition (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011), 665, 751. But the medieval Armenian Church used a different embolism: “Lord of Lords, God of Gods, Heavenly Father, we beseech you, do not give us over to temptation, nor to condemnation, but free us from evil, save us from temptation” – see Xosrov Andzewats'i, Commentary on the Divine Liturgy §§145-146. It can be seen how both these embolisms build off of the final petition of the prescribed prayer.
3 Didache 8.2 (late first century)
4 Apostolic Constitutions 7.24 (late fourth century, probably southern Asia Minor or Syria)
5 Evagrius Ponticus, On the Our Father (late fourth century, northern Asia Minor)
6 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 19.10 (late fourth century, Constantinople)
7 Gothic Bible Codex Argenteus, MS DG 1, folio 5r: <http://www.alvin-portal.org/alvin/imageViewer.jsf?dsId=ATTACHMENT-0009&pid=alvin-record%3A60279&dswid=2341>. See also Albert S. Cook, “The Evolution of the Lord's Prayer in English,” American Journal of Philology 12/1 (1891): 66.
8 Papyrus Duke inv. 778 – see Greek text in Csaba A. La'da and Amphilochios Papathomas, “A Greek Papyrus Amulet from the Duke Collection with Biblical Excerpts,” Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 41 (2004): 98.
9 Ambrose of Milan, On the Sacraments 6.24 (late fourth century, Italy)
10 Quoted by Xosrov Andzewats'i, Commentary on the Divine Liturgy §147 (tenth-century Armenia)
11 The Roman Missal: English Translation According to the Third Typical Edition (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011), 665, 751. But note that, prior to the liturgical reforms of the late 1960s in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, the Latin-rite Mass included the Lord's Prayer without a doxology (though doxologies found other places in the liturgy) – see, e.g., The Roman Missal, Translated into the English Language for the Use of Laity (Philadelphia: Eugene Cummiskey, 1865), 39.
12 From the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, at <https://www.goarch.org/-/the-divine-liturgy-of-saint-john-chrysostom>. But a slightly older translation is preserved in George Mastrantonis, ed., The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (New York: Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America, 1966), 79, and in The Orthodox Liturgy: Being the Divine Liturgy of S. John Chrysostom and S. Basil the Great, According to the Use of the Church of Russia (London: SPCK, 1968 [1939], 17, 102, 119.
13 Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden, eds., The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments, with the Apocryphal Books, in the Earliest English Versions Made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and His Followers (Oxford University Press, 1850), 4:14. See also Albert S. Cook, “The Evolution of the Lord's Prayer in English,” American Journal of Philology 12 (1891): 60.
14 J. P. Dabney, The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by William Tyndale, the Martyr: The Original Edition, 1526, Being the First Vernacular Translation from the Greek (Andover: Gould & Newman, 1837), 100, 118.
15 In this era, Baptist theologian John Smyth defended the primacy of (late) Greek manuscripts that have the doxology over (early) Latin ones that lack it – see John Smyth, A Paterne of True Prayer: A Learned and Comfortable Exposition or Commentarie upon the Lord's Prayer... (London: Felix Kyngston, 1605), 171-172.
16 See The Booke of the Common Prayer and the Administration of the Sacramentes, and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Churche: after the Use of the Churche of England (London: Edward Whitechurche, 1549), folio 1. Compare Edward Cardwell, ed., The Two Books of Common Prayer, Set Forth by Authority of Parliament in the Reign of King Edward the Sixth, Compared with Each Other (Oxford University Press, 1838), 28.
17 See The Book of Common Prayer: 1662 Version (David Campbell Publishers Ltd., 1999), 71.
18 Today's Lutherans use the doxology – see Lutheran Book of Worship (Augsburg Publishing House, 1978), 71. So do Presbyterians – see The Presbyterian Hymnal: Hymns, Psalms, and Spiritual Songs (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), 16. So do Methodists – see The United Methodist Hymnal: Book of United Methodist Worship (United Methodist Publishing House, 1989), 11, 894-896.
19 Origen of Alexandria, On Prayer 33.1 (early third century)
No comments:
Post a Comment