A Good Trade

When I was a boy, comic books cost a dime.  To get more mileage out of the dime, my friends and I would trade our comic books with one another.  Trading is in many ways a lost art these days.  When I was serving as pastor in Vidalia, I came to be good friends with Ron, the Episcopal priest.  He was there when I arrived and still there when I left after ten years.  Ron and I traded books.  He gave me a copy of "The Book of Common Prayer" and I gave him a copy of "The United Methodist Hymnal."  It seemed like a good exchange at the time, but as the years have passed, it seems to me that I got the best end of our trade.

 

I say that I got the best end of the trade because I have used that book more times than I can count.  I learned a new appreciation for written prayers and liturgy as I started using it.   My congregation benefited from it as I used some of the material within those pages in our Sunday liturgy.  But, what I really learned more than anything else was the value of a liturgy that has been used for more than just a generation.  I found power being unleashed in my own life as I became immersed in prayers and spoken words that the Christian community had been using for a long, long time.

 

I learned that our disdain for written prayers and liturgy is more of a judgment on ourselves than on a tradition which may not be as extemporaneous as ours.  There is this great stream of words and prayers and other liturgical expressions which has empowered believers and to stand within it with an open heart can be a powerful moment of worship.  Every community of faith has its liturgy.  It may not be filled with tradition, but it is still the order for the church.  To throw out something used for centuries simply because it is old is a great loss.