The Morning and Evening Sacrifice: A Sacrifice of Praise through the Psalms

by Walter Hampel

Walter Hampel (MA, ATS) is a teacher at Troy Christian Chapel in Troy, Michigan

The Need for Memory

Every nation must have a collective memory if it is to survive. Memory is the core of its history. Even though no living Americans have personal memory of President George Washington, we still remember him as our first president. Without a national memory, we would soon forget what it means to be American.

Memory serves us individually as well. It roots us to our community, family and even ourselves. It is not uncommon to find family photographs on our desks at work or stuffed inside a wallet. We do this not because we cannot remember these loved ones without such photographs. Rather, we do it because the photos serve as a periodic reminder during the day of those who love us and of our life beyond the confines of work.

Christians need memory too. Without it, we begin to forget the One who loves us and died for us. The world has a way of trying to force its attention and its priorities into our daily lives. David Wells likens the world’s influence on us to a constant pounding. He writes that such a pounding

is made up of the pressures, demands, and expectations of our modern culture that combine to deliver the message that we must belong to it, not simply in the sense that we must live in it, but rather that we must live by it.[1] (Emphasis added)

This threat is not a new one. Throughout church history, Christians have found various ways of fulfilling the command to “remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David.”[2] Numerous devotional practices have developed as Christians have sought to keep their minds on heavenly things rather than on the things of this world.[3]

Christians throughout the centuries have used various means of remembering God on a frequent basis. In many cultures, roadside “pilgrim crosses” were set up as reminders of Christ and to serve as sites for travelers’ prayers. These crosses acted as a “thread of memory” which connected the traveler to Christ.

There are two special “threads of memory” which can keep us connected to Christ. These threads have been used for millennia by those faithful to God. When woven together, these threads provide a time-tested pattern for communing with Christ and keeping Him in our memory.

The First Thread—A Timely Sacrifice

When God was preparing His people Israel to enter the Promised Land of Canaan, the LORD gave specific commands to Moses concerning the rituals of worship which He wanted of His people. Among the many requirements given to Moses, God commanded a twice-daily sacrifice. He commanded the daily sacrifice of “two lambs a year old. Offer one in the morning and the other at twilight.”[4] This set in place the pattern for the morning and evening sacrifice.

Over the next several centuries, the worship of God was centered in the Tent of Meeting described in Exodus 25–27. After King David made Jerusalem the capital of the nation, he desired to build God a permanent house to replace the Tent of Meeting. God told David that his son Solomon was the one to build the Temple. Yet, David was allowed to make plans and provisions for that future House of God. One of the provisions required a change of priestly functions for the Levites. Since the Levites would no longer need to take down and set up the Tent of Meeting, God, through David, gave them a new assignment. The Levites were now

to stand every morning to thank and praise the LORD. They were to do the same in the evening.[5]

The morning and evening sacrifice was beginning to take on a devotional character.

As Israel’s history progressed, the devotional component of the morning and evening sacrifice grew. Prayer was now being likened to the evening sacrifice. The Psalmist writes in Psalm 141.2:

May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.

The twice-daily sacrifices also had become time-markers for the people of Israel. In Elijah’s confrontation with the prophets of Baal, the writer of 1 Kings indicates that Elijah’s sacrifice to God occurred at the “time for the evening sacrifice.”[6] During the Babylonian Captivity, with the Temple in Jerusalem in ruins and all but a few of the inhabitants either dead or deported, Daniel offers a prayer to God and receives an answer from the angel Gabriel “about the time of the evening sacrifice.”[7] Even after the period of exile in Babylon, the writer of the book of Ezra points out that Ezra ends an hours-long period of abasement before the Lord and begins a prayer of confession for the sin of his people “at the time of evening sacrifice.”[8]

Enter the Church

The Church further developed the practice of a morning and evening sacrifice. Since Christ’s death was the ultimate, once-for-all, and perfect sacrifice, the original morning and evening sacrifice of a lamb would no longer be necessary or even appropriate. Yet, the Scriptures call us to a continual sacrifice. It is not a bloody animal sacrifice or an offering of grain or wine. We are called to a sacrifice of praise. The writer of Hebrews reminds us that

Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise — the fruit of lips that confess his name.[9]

Early in Church history, Christians continued the pattern of prayer and praise started by their Old Testament counterparts. Not only did morning and evening prayer continue but additional times of prayer developed as well. Using Psalm 119:164 as its mandate (“Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous laws”), Christians developed fixed-time prayer with up to seven times a day specified as special hours of prayer.

Standardized formats and fixed times for prayer arose early in church history. The Didache, a manual for church practice, dating to the late 1st or early 2nd century, regarded the Lord’s Prayer as a fixed format prayer to be said continually by the Christian faithful. It instructs its readers to pray the Lord’s Prayer and to “Say this prayer three times every day.[10] Early church fathers such as Clement of Alexandria (c.150-c.215) and Tertullian (c.160-c.225) suggested the use of fixed times of prayer throughout the day.[11]

Hippolytus, writing around AD 217, recommended seven specific times of daily prayer. The first is upon waking in the morning. The second at 9 a.m. The third at noon. The fourth at 3 p.m. The fifth at bedtime. The sixth at midnight. The seventh is at dawn. He used several biblical texts as patterns for these set times of prayer. He writes that the reason for a 9 a.m. time of prayer, for example, is that it was “at that hour, Christ was nailed to the tree.”[12]

John Chrysostom, writing in AD 388, urged believers in Christ to set aside a time of prayer in church at dawn, before going to work. This would be a time to thank God and “make your prayers and confessions to the God of all things.”[13] Likewise, he instructs the Christian

that at evening, he should return here to the church, [and] render an account to the Master of his whole day and beg forgiveness for his falls.[14]

Corporate morning and evening prayer was finding expression in places such as Jerusalem. In AD 384, a Spanish traveler named Egeria wrote a detailed account of her pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In this account, she noted that prayer services were daily held at the site of the Lord’s resurrection. These services were no small gatherings. Starting before dawn, the monks, virgins and some lay persons met for hymns, prayers and psalms until sunrise. There were also services at noon, 3 p.m., and the evening “Lucernare” at the time of the lighting of the lamps at 4 p.m. at which time further prayers, hymns and psalms were offered until dusk.[15]

The monastic movement continued this practice with the development of seven “canonical” (ordered by church rule) hours. These hours roughly correspond to Hippolytus’ hours. They are Matins & Lauds (dawn), Prime (6 a.m.) Terce (9 a.m.) Sext (Noon), None (3 p.m.), Vespers (Sunset) and Compline (night). In observance of these hours, the clergy were required to recite the Divine Office, “a complicated set of prayers that changed every day.”[16] These prayers consisted of various hymns, passages from Scripture and the Psalms with specific readings found in a book called the Breviary.

During the middle ages, it was not uncommon to have the morning and evening prayers sung in church. In England, these services were open to both the laity and the clergy. F.A. Gasquet wrote

In some of the larger parish churches a considerable portion of the Divine Office, as well as the Mass, was sung daily. A note in the churchwardens’ accounts of St. Michael’s Cornhill, London, written in 1538, asks prayers for “Richard Atfield, sometime parson of the church … for that he, with consent of the bishop, ordained and established Mattins [Morning Prayer], High Mass, and Evensong [Evening Prayer] to be sung daily in the year 1375.” This had been done regularly for 163 years, and the hours at which the various services were held would appear to have been: Matins at 6 a.m., High Mass at 9, and Evensong on work-days at 2 p.m.[17]

As Medieval piety developed, literate laypersons desired to copy the pattern of the prayers and special hours for prayer which the monks followed. Roger Wieck points out

With increasing wealth and education, the late medieval laity began to covet both the clergy’s prayers and its books, particularly the breviary… They sought a book like the breviary but easier to use and more pleasing to the eye. The Book of Hours became that book.[18]

Fixed-hour prayer was, once again, becoming a practice of the everyday Christian.

After the Reformation swept through Europe in the 16th century, the use of fixed-hour prayer continued. Luther’s liturgical revisions maintained the canonical hours of Matins (Morning Prayer) and Vespers (evening prayer). The Church of Scotland, in its 1647 Directory for Family Worship, instructed

…for secret (personal) worship, it is most necessary…to perform this duty morning and evening, and at other occasions.[19] (Emphasis added)

The Book of Common Prayer (BCP) is a collection of ancient Christian prayers, first compiled and customized for use by the Anglican Church in 1552. Among the prayers in the BCP are daily Morning and Evening prayer. Despite numerous revisions since 1552, the Morning and Evening prayers have been retained right up to the present.

The Second Thread—The Psalms

The Psalms have been called the “Hymnbook of Israel”. One hundred fifty in number, the Psalms make up the largest individual book in the Bible. They cover the range of human emotion and human interaction with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The Psalms offer praise to God in the midst of the circumstances of life. One finds joy, (Psalm 98), anger (Psalm 109), sorrow (Psalm 137), anguish (Psalm 6.3) and wonder (Psalm 8:3-5). In the midst of these emotions, God is the One worshipped and looked to as the ultimate meaning of human existence (Psalm 62:1-2).

The New Testament is filled with quotes from the Psalms. These quotes are not incidental references. The Lord Jesus used Psalm 110.1 to point to His true identity as a descendant of King David, yet possessing more honor than David.20 The crucified Lord’s anguished cry of despair to God was a direct quote from the first verse of Psalm 22.21 On the Day of Pentecost, Peter used Psalm 16 to prove that Jesus was truly the Messiah of Israel.22 The disciples understood Psalm 2 as a prophecy of Herod and Pontius Pilate’s complicity in the death of Jesus.23 The Psalms which sing God’s praise also provide a wonderful testimony of His son Jesus.

From the start of church history, the Psalms found a place in the hearts and minds of Christians. Early liturgies in the church featured a responsorial use of the Psalms in which verses would be chanted and the worshippers would echo back a single refrain.24 Even today, many Christian denominations still use responsorial Psalms in the course of corporate worship. A great love for the Psalter was attested to by the 4th century theologian Basil the Great. In his Homily 10 on Psalm 1, he wrote:

The Book of psalms has taken over what is profitable from all. It foretells coming events; it recalls history; it frames laws for life; it suggests what must be done…A psalm implies serenity of soul; it is the author of peace, which calms bewildering and seething thoughts…the voice of the Church…Therein is perfect theology…[25]

The early Christian devotion to the Psalms was evidenced in the 1984 discovery of a codex Psalter in Egypt. The completely intact book, written on 17 cm by 13 cm sheets of parchment, was found at an excavation site in a Christian cemetery 85 miles south of Cairo. This Psalter, bound with a wooden cover, was found under the head of the corpse of a 12-year-old Egyptian girl. The text was written in the Coptic dialect of Oxyrhynchos. Both the burial site and the book date back to the late 4th century. Such a burial gesture must have reflected the reverence in which the girl’s family held the Psalter. Gawdat Gabra, the director of the Coptic Museum in Cairo Egypt, where that old Egyptian Psalter was put on display in 1992, related that

I can imagine her parents, in their grief when she died, deciding to give her the most precious gift they knew: the Book of Psalms…It was the ultimate gift.[26]

The Psalms became the core of the Divine Office. They were chanted (sung) by monks as early as AD 500. As Andrew Hughes writes: “The main purpose of the [Divine] offices is the recitation of the psalms.”[27] It was an early ideal for the monks to chant the entire Psalter every day. Yet, in the Rule of Benedict, an early book of regulations and instruction for monks, a concession was made. The 150 Psalms would be chanted during the seven canonical hours over the course of one week rather than in a single day. While the entire Psalter would be recited during the week, the actual Psalms used during a given session of the Divine Office were not necessarily sequential (i.e. Psalm 1, then 2, then 3, etc.)

Like the fixed hour prayers, the structured recitation of the Psalms also found a place with the laity. An example from early church history is that of Macrina (c.327–379). Macrina was the sister of Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa. She was a student of the Psalms and avidly used them throughout her daily activities. In a letter to the monk Olympius, Gregory remembered that

She was especially well versed in the Psalms, going through each part of the Psalter at the proper time; when she got up or did her daily tasks or rested, when she sat down to eat or rose from the table, when she went to bed or rose from it for prayer, she had the Psalter with her at all times, like a good and faithful traveling companion.[28]

The Psalms were the heart of Christian worship well into the era of the Reformation. In early colonial America, the congregational singing during Sunday worship services consisted of the singing of the Psalms that had been put into metre (rhyming musical verse). The importance that this form of worship had with colonial American Christians is seen in the fact that the first book printed in British North America was the 1640 collection of metrical Psalms called The Bay Psalm Book. This devotion to praising God with the Psalms continued in the piety of the early New England home. The piety of praising God with Psalms in the context of home worship is found in the example of Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758). It was common for Edwards and his family to mark the start of the Sabbath on Saturday evening at sunset. At sunset, they offered a prayer, the lighting of a candle and the singing of a psalm.[29] The Psalter was also used as an instructional tool in Puritan New England. Psalters such as the Ainsworth Psalter contained not only the text of the Psalms but explanatory notes as well. Alice Earle points out that such a Psalter was

not only a dictionary but a perfect encyclopedia of useful knowledge. Things spiritual and things temporal were explained therein.[30]

The BCP also makes provision for a structured reading of the Psalms. In conjunction with its Morning and Evening Prayers, the Book of Common Prayer parses out the Psalms in numeric sequence, special church feasts and Sundays excepted. The BCP arranges the Psalms so that a handful of them would be read during Morning Prayer and another handful read during Evening Prayer. Rather than going through the entire Psalter in seven days (i.e. Benedict’s Rule), the BCP takes its reader through the 150 Psalms in a month.

The Two Threads Woven Together

As can be seen from the Bible and Church history, Christians have a rich devotional background in fixed hour prayers such as the Morning and Evening Prayers as well as the rich use of the Psalms as the premier hymnbook of Christian praise to God. These practices have transcended language, culture, time and place. They provide for us a time-tested pattern for keeping Christ in our memory and thoughts. Our spiritual ancestors found it important to set aside at least two times (morning and evening) every day for prayer. They also made use of the Psalms as their primary text for prayer and praise. We would benefit to make their pattern our own by offering these readings to God as a morning and evening sacrifice of praise.

The advice of Hippolytus, given in the 3rd century, applies just as much in the 21st century. Concerning cultivating a discipline of regular daily times of prayer, Hippolytus advises his readers then and advises us now:

if you act so, all you faithful, and remember these things, and teach them in your turn… you will not be able to be tempted or to perish, since you have Christ always in memory.[31]

Notes

1. David F, Wells, Losing Our Virtue—Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) 31.
2. 2 Timothy 2:8
3. Colossians 3:1–2
4. Exodus 29:28–39
5. 1 Chronicles 23:30
6. 1 Kings 18
7. Daniel 9:21
8. Ezra 9:5
9. Hebrews 13:15
10. Didache, as found in Early Christian Writings (New York: Viking Penguin, 1984) 194.
11. James F. White, ed. Documents of Christian Worship (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992) 78.
12. Ibid 80.
13. Ibid 85.
14. Ibid 85
15. Egeria, Pilgrimage of Egeria, XXIV-XXV, transl. John Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels (London: Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 1971) 123-126.
16. Roger Wieck, “The Book of Hours—The Medieval Best Seller,” Bible Review IV/3 (June 1988) 24.
17. F.A. Gasquet, Parish Life in Mediaeval England (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1922) 150-151.
18. Wieck 24.
19. White 96.
20. Luke 20:41–44
21. Matthew 27:46
22. Acts 2:25–28
23. Acts 4:25–27
24. L. Duchesne, Christian Worship—Its Origin and Evolution (London: Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 1931) 113-114.
25. Basil, Homily 10, in Saint Basil—Exegetic Homilies, The Fathers of the Church, Volume 46, transl. Sister Agnes Clare Way (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963) 151-153.
26. Times of London, September 14, 1992, page 1.
27. Andrew Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office, A Guide to their Organization and Terminology (Toronto: University of Toronto, Press 1982) 50.
28. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of St. Macrina, in Saint Gregory of Nyssa— Ascetical Works, The Fathers of the Church, Volume 58, transl. Virginia Woods Callahan (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1967) 165.
29. David Levin, ed.,Jonathan Edwards, A Profile (New York: Hill and Wang, 1969) 4344.
30. Alice Morse Earle, The Sabbath in Puritan New England (Detroit: Singing Tree Press, 1968) 135.
31. White 81.