You know that moment: the person blessing the sacrament looks at the bishop. The bishop shakes his head. And, instead of standing up and handing the trays of bread or water, the person repeats the prayer. The congregation may be puzzled the second time through. By the third, fourth, or fifth time, they’re holding their collective breath, praying that this time he gets through it.
The first time, his voice is clear, notwithstanding the small error. The second time, if you listen closely, you can hear it begin to shake. And every subsequent time, the shaking gets worse.
So what’s up with that? Well, some combination of tradition and the Handbook. But we should back up a little: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints doesn’t have a lot of liturgical prayers. By and large, we’re devotional prayer people. But we have a couple liturgical prayers. The big ones are the sacrament prayers and the baptismal prayer, two prayers that we get from our scriptures.[fn1]
Both the Doctrine and Covenants and the Book of Mormon lay out the sacrament prayers. But the scriptures themselves don’t say anything about repeating the prayers word for word. In fact, we don’t; here’s the scripturally-prescribed blessing on the water:
“O God, the Eternal Father, we ask thee, in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, to bless and sanctify this wine to the souls of all those who drink of it, that they may do it in remembrance of the blood of thy Son, which was shed for them; that they may witness unto thee, O God, the Eternal Father, that they do always remember him, that they may have his Spirit to be with them. Amen.”
(Emphasis added.) From enough experience, I can assure you that the cards we use to read the sacrament prayer don’t say “wine”; they say “water.” Which makes sense, because we use water, not wine, in our sacrament.
So where does the requirement that the sacrament prayers be said word-for-word come from? I don’t know how it developed, but it was codified in the church’s General Handbook of Instructions (now the General Handbook). But even in its codified form, it has changed over the last several decades.
In the 1985 Handbook, bishops were instructed that:
“The sacrament prayers were revealed by the Lord (see D&C 20:77; Moroni 4, 5), and the bishop should make sure that they are spoken accurately. When the bishop corrects an error, he should be careful to avoid causing embarrassment or distracting from the sacredness of the ordinance.”
In 1989, the church updated the Handbook and made one small (but significant) change to this instruction:
“The sacrament prayers were revealed by the Lord (see D&C 20:77, 79; Moroni 4, 5); the bishop should make sure they are given accurately. If the person blessing the sacrament makes an error in the wording but corrects it himself, no further correction is required. However, if he does not correct an error, the bishop should ask him to correct it. In doing so, the bishop should be careful to avoid causing embarrassment or distracting from the sacredness of the ordinance.”
I’ve underlined the changed language. In essence, prior to 1989, if the person blessing the sacrament erred, he had to start over. In 1989, though, if the person blessing the sacrament caught and corrected himself, he was good.
Fast forward to the current Handbook. Now it says:
“The bishop makes sure the sacrament prayers are spoken clearly, accurately, and with dignity. If someone makes an error in the wording and corrects himself, no further correction is needed. If the person does not correct his error, the bishop kindly asks him to repeat the prayer. The bishop uses discretion when asking for the prayer to be repeated. He ensures that doing so does not cause undue embarrassment or detract from the ordinance. Another person at the sacrament table can help as needed.”
(Emphasis added here, too.) The current version builds on the 1989 version. But it makes a truly substantive change: it provides the bishop with explicit discretion to not ask that the prayer be repeated, even if the person blessing the sacrament errs. It’s within the bishop’s discretion. And what should guide his discretion? Whether repeating the prayer will cause undue embarrassment or will detract from the sacrament itself.
Asking someone to repeat the sacrament prayer will, in virtually every circumstance, cause undue embarrassment. There may be a handful of people who are embarrassment-proof (I’d probably put myself in that category), but there aren’t a lot. In most cases, every additional attempt will lead to the person getting more self-conscious, more nervous, and more likely to err again. In my ward, I’ve seen a couple recent converts have to repeat the sacrament prayer a couple Sundays in a row; after two or three Sundays like that, I’ve never seen them at the sacrament table again, and some I haven’t seen at church.
Even for people who are embarrassment-proof, though, having the sacrament prayer repeated hugely detracts from the ordinance. It interrupts the congregation’s communion with God. It pulls us out of the ordinance.
That’s not to say that the person blessing the sacrament should never be asked to repeat it. I can see it if someone accidentally said the blessing on the water while blessing the bread, or said the baptismal prayer while blessing the water, or just recited the lyrics to “The Magic Number.”
But short of something like that, the bishop doesn’t have to have the person blessing the sacrament repeat the prayer for small errors. The handbook says to use his discretion, being guided especially by the potential for embarrassment and the potential for detracting from the ordinance.
In almost every circumstance, repeating the sacrament prayer will implicate both of those issues. And in literally every case, it will implicate at least one.
So bishops, please stop asking people to repeat the sacrament prayer.
[fn1] Of course, just because a prayer is in the scriptures doesn’t mean we use it. We don’t, for example, pray the Lord’s Prayer, in spite of it showing up in the New Testament in Matthew and Luke, and in the Book of Mormon in Third Nephi.
Image from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Media Library.