Repeat After Me
Deuteronomy 26:5-7
“And you shall make response before the LORD your God, ‘A wandering Aramean was my father. And he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly and humiliated us and laid on us hard labor. Then we cried to the LORD, the God of our fathers, and the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.’”
Perhaps you grew up in a high church environment where liturgy and congregational confessionals serve as an integral part of the worship service. But I didn’t. Of all the unique things my independent Baptist upbringing imprinted upon my faith, creedal recitations where everyone gets down on their knees to pray from the same hymn sheet wasn’t part of it. Besides, tending to be on the more artistic spectrum, preferring to follow the cadence of inner conviction rather than the cadence of an off-beat choir, I used to find formality like that off-putting. However, there came a point about six years ago when I recognized a sort of numbness in my heart regarding worship and I knew I needed a fresh shock to my system. As G.K. Chesterton’s wrote, “The things we see all the time we never see at all.”
The following year, the LORD drew my wife and I to take a sabbatical from our local church ministry and visit other churches to fellowship with a wider body of believers across our city. I’ll never forget the day we visited a Bible-teaching high Anglican Church, how I’d been arguing with Megan on the way there and felt cold and indifferent when walking into the new environment, but how God immediately softened our hearts during the confessional reading. As we all dropped down to our knees to read a prayer together, Megan slipped her hand into mine, we both squeezed hands earnestly, read the pre- scripted truths aloud with a crescendo of conviction, and God’s Spirit did the rest.
Creativity is the garnish of faith, but not the food. Truth is the food. And while it’s crucial that we find our own words to offer the LORD, it’s also good practice to proclaim our shared faith in unison. Creeds like Deuteronomy 26:5-7 are a picture of unity in Christ’s Body, and a call to it.