Looking to improve my prayer life I cam across this. The author is Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, a British Orthodox rabbi and leading philosopher and theologian. He served as the spiritual head and Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Now, the Orthodox have some strange (downright weird) ideas. But what little I know of R Sacks I tend to like him.
I am an analytical person, and being by nature Baptist I can’t sing for …, well, I just can’t sing. So I found this intriguing and informative, and strangely a kind of parallel theology to what we practice:
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: The fact that Jewish faith was written into the prayers rather than analyzed in works of theology is of immense significance. We do not analyze our faith: we pray it. We do not philosophize about truth: we sing it. Theology becomes real when it becomes prayer. We do not talk about God: we talk to God.
The connection between prayer and sacrifice is deep. After the destruction of the Second Temple, prayer became a substitution for sacrifice. It is avodah shebalev, “the sacrificial service of the heart.” Yet it is just this feature of prayers that many find difficult to understand or find uplifting. What, then, is sacrifice?
The Hebrew word for sacrifice is korban, which comes from a root that means “to come, or bring, close.” The essential problem to which sacrifice is an answer is: how can we come close to God?
The circumstances of life tend to focus our gaze downward to our needs rather than upward to our source. Olam, Heb for universe is connected to the verb meaning “to hide.” The physical world is one in which the presence of God is real, yet hidden. Our horizon of consciousness is foreshortened. We focus on our own devices and desires. We walk in God’s light, but often our minds are on other things.
How then do we come close to God? By giving something back.
The sacrifices of the biblical age were ways in which the individual or the nation said: What we have God is really yours. The fundamental gesture of sacrifice is, on the face of it, absurd. What we give to God is something that already belongs to Him:
1 Chronicles 29:14 KJV But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee.
Yet to give back to God is one of the most profound instincts of the soul. Doing so, we acknowledge our dependency. We cast off the carapace of self absorption. That is why, in one of its most striking phrases, the Torah speaks of sacrifice a being rei’ah niho’ah, sweet savor to God.
Leviticus 1:13b KJV it is a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord.
This idea is continued in us in the apostolic scriptures of the New Testament:
Romans 12:1-2 KJV I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable [fully agreeable] unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
We are to give back of ourselves, echoing the Jewish idea of offering prayers at the time of the Temple sacrifices each day. Not saying we should pray any specific prayers at any time. But most do have times we set apart for prayer. However thinking about this as a sacrifice of our time and attention, giving that back to God; just the thought of that sacrifice as drawing close to God rather than giving something up (our time and thoughts) sheds a whole new light on our prayer time. This is not new to most Christians. But the parallel with the ancient sacrifices and our prayer life is impressive. The interwoven threads of the infinite Word of God never ceases to amaze me.
Footnotes:
1 Leviticus 4:13 KJV And if the whole congregation of Israel sin through ignorance, and the thing be hid [עָלַם âlam, to hide] from the eyes of the assembly, and they have done somewhat against any of the commandments of the Lord concerning things which should not be done, and are guilty;
I am an analytical person, and being by nature Baptist I can’t sing for …, well, I just can’t sing. So I found this intriguing and informative, and strangely a kind of parallel theology to what we practice:
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: The fact that Jewish faith was written into the prayers rather than analyzed in works of theology is of immense significance. We do not analyze our faith: we pray it. We do not philosophize about truth: we sing it. Theology becomes real when it becomes prayer. We do not talk about God: we talk to God.
The connection between prayer and sacrifice is deep. After the destruction of the Second Temple, prayer became a substitution for sacrifice. It is avodah shebalev, “the sacrificial service of the heart.” Yet it is just this feature of prayers that many find difficult to understand or find uplifting. What, then, is sacrifice?
The Hebrew word for sacrifice is korban, which comes from a root that means “to come, or bring, close.” The essential problem to which sacrifice is an answer is: how can we come close to God?
The circumstances of life tend to focus our gaze downward to our needs rather than upward to our source. Olam, Heb for universe is connected to the verb meaning “to hide.” The physical world is one in which the presence of God is real, yet hidden. Our horizon of consciousness is foreshortened. We focus on our own devices and desires. We walk in God’s light, but often our minds are on other things.
How then do we come close to God? By giving something back.
The sacrifices of the biblical age were ways in which the individual or the nation said: What we have God is really yours. The fundamental gesture of sacrifice is, on the face of it, absurd. What we give to God is something that already belongs to Him:
1 Chronicles 29:14 KJV But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee.
Yet to give back to God is one of the most profound instincts of the soul. Doing so, we acknowledge our dependency. We cast off the carapace of self absorption. That is why, in one of its most striking phrases, the Torah speaks of sacrifice a being rei’ah niho’ah, sweet savor to God.
Leviticus 1:13b KJV it is a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord.
This idea is continued in us in the apostolic scriptures of the New Testament:
Romans 12:1-2 KJV I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable [fully agreeable] unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
We are to give back of ourselves, echoing the Jewish idea of offering prayers at the time of the Temple sacrifices each day. Not saying we should pray any specific prayers at any time. But most do have times we set apart for prayer. However thinking about this as a sacrifice of our time and attention, giving that back to God; just the thought of that sacrifice as drawing close to God rather than giving something up (our time and thoughts) sheds a whole new light on our prayer time. This is not new to most Christians. But the parallel with the ancient sacrifices and our prayer life is impressive. The interwoven threads of the infinite Word of God never ceases to amaze me.
Footnotes:
1 Leviticus 4:13 KJV And if the whole congregation of Israel sin through ignorance, and the thing be hid [עָלַם âlam, to hide] from the eyes of the assembly, and they have done somewhat against any of the commandments of the Lord concerning things which should not be done, and are guilty;