Opening Sentences in Evening Prayer (1928 BCP)

Opening Sentences in Evening Prayer (1928 BCP) are the passages of Scripture with which the minister begins Daily Evening Prayer in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer. They are the biblical threshold of Evensong: words of reverence, evening sacrifice, vigilance, repentance, and redemption are heard before the congregation confesses sin, receives the declaration of absolution, and enters the office's psalmody, lessons, canticles, creed, and prayers.

The sentences are not a preliminary address composed by the officiant. The Prayer Book itself supplies them from Scripture and permits the minister to choose one or more. Some may be used generally; others are marked for Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, Whitsunday, or Trinity Sunday. Choice within an authorized biblical collection allows the opening of the same office to interpret the hour, season, and saving work of Christ.

Place in Evening Prayer

The opening rubric defines both the rule and its limited flexibility:

The Minister shall begin the Evening Prayer by reading one or more of the following Sentences of Scripture; and then he shall say that which is written after them. But he may, at his discretion, pass at once from the Sentences to the Lord’s Prayer.

The minister must begin with at least one sentence; discretion concerns how many are read and whether the confession-and-absolution sequence follows. A second rubric explains that, when confession and absolution are omitted, the minister may pass from the sentences to “O Lord, open thou our lips,” moving the Lord's Prayer to the later prayers. In every permitted route, Scripture remains the first audible word of the office.

This placement gives the sentences an interpretive function. They announce why the Church has assembled and how it comes before God. The opening may emphasize holy presence, evening prayer, watchfulness, penitence, or a seasonal mystery, but it always does so in words received from the Bible rather than in an improvised theme.

Evening sacrifice and holy presence

The sentence most particular to the hour joins prayer, incense, uplifted hands, and sacrifice:

Let my prayer be set forth in thy sight as the incense; and let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice.

Psalm 141 does not make Christian prayer a repetition of the temple offering. It uses sacrificial language to present prayer itself before God at the appointed evening hour. The sentence therefore fits an office derived from the Church's evening praise while also teaching the worshipper to offer speech, attention, and bodily devotion to God.

The surrounding general sentences widen that offering. Habakkuk 2:20 calls the earth to silence before the Lord in his holy temple; Psalm 26:8 declares love for God's habitation; Psalm 96:9 summons the whole earth to worship in the beauty of holiness; and Psalm 19 asks that spoken words and inward meditation be acceptable to the Lord. Together they move from silence to speech without opposing them. Silence recognizes God's holy presence; acceptable words then arise as prayer and praise.

Watchfulness at the close of day

The Advent sentence gives the evening hour an eschatological edge:

Watch ye, for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cock-crowing, or in the morning: lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping.

“At even” makes Christ's command especially direct when heard at Evening Prayer. The congregation closes the day under the promise and warning of the Master's return. Liturgical watchfulness is therefore not anxious calculation about times; it is faithful attention expressed in confession, hearing Scripture, confessing the Creed, and praying for the Church and world.

The day's decline also gives moral weight to self-examination. Evening Prayer is not merely a calmer version of the morning office. It places work done, duties omitted, injuries received or inflicted, and mercies enjoyed before God. The opening sentences turn that review away from self-absorption and toward repentance, forgiveness, and readiness for Christ.

Penitence before prayer

The Lenten group makes explicit why the General Confession fittingly follows the sentences:

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us; but if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

The sentence holds confession and gospel promise together. Denial of sin is self-deception, but truthful confession is answered by God's faithfulness, justice, forgiveness, and cleansing. The following invitation—“Let us humbly confess our sins unto Almighty God”—is thus not a detached liturgical instruction. It is the Church's immediate response to Scripture.

Other Lenten sentences give the same movement a fuller biblical range. Psalm 51:3 supplies personal acknowledgment: “my sin is ever before me.” Daniel 9:9–10 places rebellion against God's law beside divine “mercies and forgivenesses.” The sequence forms penitence by truth about both the sinner and God. Confession is neither an exercise in vague regret nor a claim that forgiveness is automatic; it answers the God who reveals sin and promises mercy.

The Good Friday sentence names the ground of that mercy:

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

The plural “all we” prepares the congregation's common confession, while the final clause prevents penitence from ending in the self. The Church confesses under the proclamation that the Servant bears its iniquity. This gives the later declaration of absolution its Christological setting: pardon is declared to those who truly repent and unfeignedly believe the holy Gospel.

The Church year proclaimed from Scripture

The seasonal sentences make the opening of Evening Prayer a compact proclamation of the saving history confessed later in the Creed. At Christmas the chosen text is not simply a recollection of Bethlehem:

Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

Revelation 21 interprets the Incarnation by its consummation: the Word's dwelling among humanity anticipates God's final dwelling with his redeemed people. Christmas Evensong therefore opens with both presence and hope. The sentence also links naturally with the office's canticles. The Magnificat praises the God who remembers his mercy, and the Nunc Dimittis declares salvation prepared before all people.

For Easter the Prayer Book turns from death to divine victory and the risen life:

Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. ... If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.

The first sentence proclaims what God gives through Christ; the second directs how the baptized should live in consequence. Easter faith is victory received and life reoriented. The pairing also prepares for the Creed's confession that Christ rose, ascended, and sits at the Father's right hand.

The remaining seasonal sentences follow the same doctrinal pattern. Epiphany announces the nations coming to God's light; Ascension declares Christ's heavenly intercession; Whitsunday joins the river that gladdens God's city to the Spirit and Bride's invitation to the water of life; Trinity Sunday opens with the seraphic “Holy, holy, holy.” The calendar is therefore not imposed on Scripture from outside. Each season is announced by Scripture and then unfolded through the office's appointed lessons, canticles, creed, and collects.

Liturgical history and Anglican interpretation

The first Prayer Book of 1549 began Matins and Evensong with the Lord's Prayer. E. Clowes Chorley, Historiographer of the Protestant Episcopal Church, identifies the change made in the second Edwardian book:

In this Book, as compared with the First, appear for the first time the familiar Opening Sentences.

Chorley's fuller list includes the exhortation, General Confession, and Absolution. The sentences were thus introduced as part of a coherent penitential entrance, not as isolated devotional mottoes. The 1928 American book retains that inherited sequence while allowing the shorter routes described in its rubrics.

William Palmer's nineteenth-century study locates Evening Prayer within the older Western offices:

The office of evensong, or evening prayer, is ... a judicious abridgment of the offices of evensong and compline.

Palmer also notes older precedents for a short lesson or sentence before an evening office and for confession and absolution in connection with Compline. His claim is not that the Prayer Book simply reproduces a single medieval service. Rather, its reforming synthesis selects and orders inherited elements while maintaining close structural correspondence between Morning and Evening Prayer.

John Wallace Suter and Charles Morris Addison describe that correspondence while preserving the distinct evening sources:

The service of Evening Prayer is naturally assimilated to the Morning Prayer. It is taken from the Hours for Vespers and Compline.

Their interpretation helps explain the twofold character of the opening sentences. The penitential sequence resembles Morning Prayer, but the selection is not merely copied from the morning. Psalm 141 names evening sacrifice, Mark 13 names the watches of the night, and the seasonal choices lead toward the Evening Office's own canticles and nighttime collects.

Theological shape

The sentences embody the Anglican principle that public worship is governed and filled by Scripture. Their liturgical use does not turn biblical texts into ornaments. Each text performs a particular work: Habakkuk calls for reverence; Psalm 141 offers prayer; Mark 13 commands watchfulness; 1 John exposes sin and promises cleansing; Isaiah 53 proclaims atonement; Revelation 21 announces divine presence; and the Easter sentences declare resurrection victory and direct risen conduct.

They also prevent a false opposition between scriptural and fixed worship. The texts are biblical, but their authorized selection and seasonal arrangement are liturgical acts of interpretation. The Church does not replace Scripture with a theme; it permits Scripture to name the theme and to govern the response.

The sequence from sentence to confession is especially important. God speaks before the congregation answers. Scripture names holiness, sin, mercy, and Christ's work; the people then confess in words they hold in common. Absolution follows as a ministerial declaration of God's promise, not as denial of the seriousness of sin. Praise, lessons, creed, and intercession proceed from that scriptural and evangelical entrance.

Use in worship and teaching

The officiant should choose a sentence for theological and pastoral fitness rather than for novelty. Psalm 141:2 is particularly apt to the hour; Habakkuk 2:20 can gather a distracted congregation into reverence; a penitential sentence should normally lead directly into confession; and the marked seasonal texts should announce the mystery being celebrated.

When the shorter rubrical route is used, the chosen sentence carries added weight because the confession and absolution do not intervene before the versicles. Deliberate pacing and a brief silence can allow the sentence to be heard without adding unauthorized commentary to it.

In catechesis, the sentences can teach the whole movement of Evening Prayer:

• the Church assembles before the holy God;
• the day's prayer rises as an evening sacrifice;
• watchfulness replaces spiritual sleep;
• sin is confessed under the promise of cleansing;
• Christ's atoning, risen, ascended, and reigning work is proclaimed;
• Scripture leads into praise, hearing, creed, and common intercession.

The opening sentences therefore make Evening Prayer more than a devotional conclusion to the day. They place the Church's memory, penitence, hope, and expectation under the Word of God.

See also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• Daily Office (1928 BCP)
• Morning Prayer (1928 BCP)
• Evening Prayer (1928 BCP)
• Penitence in the Daily Office (1928 BCP)
• Magnificat (1928 BCP)
• Nunc Dimittis (1928 BCP)
• Collect for Peace in Evening Prayer (1928 BCP)
• Collect for Aid Against Perils (1928 BCP)

External links

• The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: Daily Evening Prayer
• The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book facsimile
• William Palmer, Origines Liturgicæ, Evening Prayer
• E. Clowes Chorley, The New American Prayer Book, chapter I
• Suter and Addison, The People's Book of Worship, chapter V