Ash Wednesday

 

VENITE, EXULTEMUS DOMINO. Psalm 95.

COME, let us sing unto the LORD: /                                                                                                                     let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation.                                                                  

Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving,/                                                                                         and show ourselves glad in him with psalms.

For the LORD is a great God, /                                                                                                                             and a great King above all gods.

In his hand are all the corners of the earth: /                                                                                                          and the strength of the hills is his also.

The sea is his, and he made it: /                                                                                                                               and his hands prepared the dry land.

O COME, let us worship, and fall down, /                                                                                                           and kneel before the LORD our Maker.

For he is the Lord our God; /                                                                                                                                   and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.

TO-DAY, O that ye would hear his voice: /                                                                                                           ‘Harden not your hearts as in the Provocation, and as in the day of Temptation in the wilderness; 

When your fathers tempted me, /                                                                                                                              proved me,  and saw my works.

Forty years long was I grieved with that generation, and said, /                                                                       “It is a people that do err in their hearts, for they have not known my ways”;

Unto whom I sware in my wrath, /                                                                                                                           that they should not enter into my rest.’

GLORY be to the Father, and to the Son, / and to the Holy Ghost;                                                               As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, / world without end. Amen.

It seems fitting that the first assigned reading for Ash Wednesday (and for all of Lent for that matter) is Psalm 95, traditionally known as the Venite.  “Venite” is Latin for the first 2 words of the psalm – “O Come”.

 I was introduced to this psalm as a choirboy when I was 6 years old.  In those days we regularly sang Morning Prayer on Sundays and the Venite was the “Invitatory”- that is, the introductory psalm before the other assigned scriptures.  It is on page 6 of the Book of Common Prayer and that translation remains the one I love the most.

Those words, spoken or sung, have remained part of my prayer life.  At theological college, we daily prayed the offices (Morning and Evening Prayer, and often Compline) in expectation that we would regularly pray those services throughout our lives as priests and deacons.  Indeed, the words of Psalm 95, the Venite, spoken or sung, said alone or with others, have been a source of strength and sustenance  throughout my Christian life.

Steve, our Rector, and Brother Jason are faithfully leading the offices online and have introduced many of our church family to this ancient and wonderful practice of prayer.  So the words of the Venite are said in our midst morning by morning.

The Venite has been used as a preparation for congregational prayer since ancient times. Scholars think that it was sung or recited in the temple in Jerusalem. Even today, verses from Psalm 95 are recited in many synagogues for the Shir Shel Yom (the prayer of the day) at the Jewish morning prayer service called Shacharit. In the Christian community, the Venite has been used as the Church’s traditional call to prayer in the earliest Greek and Latin liturgical texts. This psalm was also used in the earliest monastic prayer services including matins from the Rule of St. Benedict written 1500 years ago.  When we pray the Venite, we are joining our voices and prayers with the people of God throughout the ages.

If you look at the Venite, on page 6 of the Canadian Book of Common Prayer, you will see that it is divided into 3 parts:  verses 1-5, 6-7a, 7b-11.

The first part is an invitation given by the worship leader to God’s people.  We are exhorted to praise and we are given magnificent reasons to praise:  God is the source of our salvation; the Lord is above all gods; He is the creator God who holds and sustains the hills, the sea and all the earth.

The second part of the Venite renews the invitation, calling God’s people to kneel before Him in recognition that God is our Good Shepherd and we are His flock.

The third part is the unusual one, for the whole tone changes from joyous invitation to solemn warning. Here we are challenged to not only worship God with our voices but to worship God by the faithfulness of our lives.  We are warned that if we want to hear God’s voice we had better not harden our hearts against him like the Hebrews in the Sinai wilderness. Many suggest that the third section , the “judgmental” section, should be omitted.  This would omit the most distinctive part of the psalm – the part that resonates with the beginning of Lent.  It would also be ironic in that the only New Testament use of Psalm 95 is a citation from this third section (in Hebrews 3 and 4).

 As we read this third section, we realize with a start that it is no longer the worship leader who is speaking, it is God Himself. The voice of God challenges us to not only worship – but to repent and pay heed to the scriptures that are about to be read. The first 2 sections of the Venite comprise a glorious invitation to worship God – a powerful message at the beginning of Lent. The third section, however, makes this the perfect psalm for Ash Wednesday.  It alludes to Israel’s 40 years in the wilderness, which reminds us of Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness, which in turn is the inspiration for the 40 days of Lent.  These 40 days are meant to give us time for repentance and preparation for the remembrance of God’s mighty acts of salvation in Holy Week and Easter.

As we begin our observance of Lent on this Ash Wednesday, I invite you to join with me and with Christians around the world and through the ages in contemplating the words of the Venite.  May these words go deep into you and me, as they call us to lives of worship and faithful obedience.

“O COME, let us sing unto the Lord.”

 - Canon James Robinson