Vespers noun, plural in form but singular or plural in construction, often capitalized n: ves·pers | \ ˈve-spərz \
Definition of vespers
1: the sixth of the canonical hours that is said or sung in the late afternoon
2: a service of evening worship
“Vespers.” How can one not love that word? (Tho', in its singular form, she was the least of all the Bond women, IMO)
To my mind, Sunday evenings are Vespers time, and that appointment is ideal for a modern world. My concept of when Vespers may not rigidly adhere to the canonical hours, but neither does our common life. In truth, Sunday is the first day, the Lord’s Day, but in our backwards world, it has become the last day, the finish line of a rat race week. Accordingly, it's an opportune time to stop and reflect and consider what all is happening, and how I should understand it.
Besides the timing, my concept of why Vespers is probably somewhat different than the traditional liturgy. Yes, my concept includes prayers and psalms and worship, but maybe in the sense of forgiveness, a cleansing, a letting go, and a refreshing. Deeply personal, as my sins are my own, but also significantly communal, as I am one person in the Body of Christ, and I have to have my place in it refreshed, and often restored. Or, perhaps it's redemption.
Maybe because of that, Vespers inherits significance well beyond the ritual or religious. It becomes a relational communion. How meaningful it is to close another week with some humility and repentance for my continued routine of frustrations and failures, and with deep gratitude for the overwhelming grace and mercy and favor He has given me, regardless.
When I was a boy, I struggled with the conflict between religion and relationship. My parents were very devout and that meant Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings and Wednesday evenings in church. Sadly, there was no relationship in that, only religion and ritual, and I hated it.
The peace and hope that I find now in my personal concept of Vespers was absent then. In those shallow days, there was only dread. I remember hating religion so much at one point that in desperation for any relief from it, I threw myself down the staircase in our old farmhouse hoping I would break a leg or an arm and thus escape a week or two of religiosity. It didn’t work. I was young, and spry, and skinny and didn’t weigh enough to break a dry pine board, let alone the healthy bone of a farm boy who spent his days running and playing and being outdoors.
Fifty-some years later, there is little that has changed. In my spiritual longing for individual and communal worship, I still struggle. Vespers whispers to me of the sacred, of the divine, of the deep, meaningful, and personal connection between our God, His people and me. I don’t find that in the shouting of the Pentecostal, nor the rites and rules of the religious, nor in the pop-music, self-centered, mind candy of contemporary Christian music.