“The Lifting Up of My Hands”

People sometimes ask me “What is the strangest question you were ever asked in all your years of Orthodox ministry?”  I can recall many strange questions (such as “Did Adam have a belly-button?”) but perhaps few were stranger than the question which queried, “Are we allowed to lift up our hands in church when we pray?”  I was a bit puzzled the first time I heard the question.  I next expected to be asked, “And are men allowed to wear red ties at Vespers?”

My guess is that the query came from discomfort with some modern charismatic practices which include raising one’s hands in church whenever praying or singing. It is clearly a case of “guilt by association”:  those crazy charismatics seem to always raise their hands in prayer, so we shouldn’t. 

The argument is unsound— charismatics also read their Bibles and wear shoes but that doesn’t mean we Orthodox shouldn’t read our Bible and should go about barefoot.  In answering any question we must look not to what other people are or aren’t doing but to what Scripture, history, and Tradition teach us.

When we do crack open a book or two we see that anciently the normal posture of prayer involved standing (not kneeling, much less sitting) and the lifting up of hands. 

We see this from many references to it in Scripture.  The psalmist asked God to accept the “lifting up his hands” as equivalent to an evening sacrifice in Psalm 141:2. Thus also Psalm 134:2 which says, “Lift up your hands to the holy place and bless the Lord”, and Psalm 28:2 which says, “Hear the voice of my supplication as I lift up my hands toward Your most holy sanctuary”, and Psalm 63:4 which says, “I will lift up my hands and call on Your name”, and Psalm 143:6 which says, “I stretch out my hands to You”.

In 1 Timothy 2:8 St. Paul instructed the men in the congregations to “lift up holy hands”.  In saying this Paul took for granted that they would lift their hands in prayer; the only question was whether their hands (i.e. their lives) would be holy when they did so or unholy.  Similarly, we read in Isaiah 1:15 that God declared that He would hide His face from Israel when they “spread their hands in prayer” for their hands were “full of blood”—i.e. guilty of bloodshed.  In all these texts we see that all prayer involved lifting the hands.

The practice survived in iconography, in the so-called “orans” image—i.e. an image of someone praying (from the Latin oremus, “let us pray”).  (See inset images above for examples.)  According to the oracular Wikipedia entry for “orans”, the Oriental Orthodox continue the practice; the Copts pray the seven canonical hours lifting their hands.  The Ethiopian Orthodox lift their hands in prayer also. The practice survives among the Antiochians.  One such Antiochian commented on a Reddit discussion that “During the Liturgy, I’ve seen it done at ‘we lift up our hearts’ and during the Lord’s Prayer at every Antiochian parish I’ve been to.” 

Also according to the Wikipedia article, “The biblical ordinance of lifting hands up in prayer was advised by many early Christian apologists, including Marcus Minucius Felix, Clement of Rome, Clement of Alexandrea and Tertullian.”  

So, in summary, the practice is not unique to our exuberant charismatic friends but has a long history in the Old Testament, the Fathers, and in Orthodox liturgical practice.  The orans icons simply witness to this.

We may ask: why is this so little done in Orthodox churches now? Why in many Orthodox churches did the practice fall away? I suspect the answer is part of a larger question.  We may also ask:  Why in almost all Orthodox churches prior to the twentieth century did the practice of exchanging the Peace fall away so as to be done no longer by everyone but by the clergy alone?  Why did the practice of saying the prayers aloud fall away so that the prayers were heard by the clergy alone?  Why did the practice of weekly Communion fall away so that the laity received the Eucharist only once a year or so while the clergy continued to commune weekly?  In short, why did practices which were once universal and common to clergy and laity alike erode so that they were practiced only by the clergy? 

When we can answer this we also know why the orans posture for prayer fell away from those in the nave to be performed only by the clergy in the altar.  It was not a matter of “who was presiding or leading the prayers” for anciently all those who prayed lifted their hands whether they were leading the prayers or not.  One lifted the hands when praying, not presiding.

Perhaps the question is not so strange after all because it pertains not just to the question of who can lift up their hands at the Liturgy but to the larger and more basic question of clericalism.  The real and underlying question is this: what is the significance of the laity?  Are they the passive audience, silently listening to priest, deacon, and choir?  Is the Liturgy primarily a concert put on for their benefit?  Who performs the Liturgy— the clergy and choir or the Church as a whole?  Who are the laity after all?

The answer to these questions:  together with the clergy the laity are the people of God, the holy laos, a holy nation, a royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9). They are the Spirit-filled Church of God, whose “amen” seals the prayers of the clergy and makes them the prayers of the Church.  Why shouldn’t they hear the prayers that they are called to seal with their “amen”?  Why shouldn’t they commune every time the deacon at the Liturgy says to them to “in the fear of God and with faith and love draw near”?  Why shouldn’t they exchange the Peace when the deacon tells them to love one another—i.e. to exchange the Peace?  And, come to that, why shouldn’t they lift up their hands in prayer?

There is no necessity to lift up one's hands, of course, and it is legalistic to insist that they do so— or refrain from doing so.  Happily, the Church does not have the office of “Liturgical Policeman” among the minor orders of Reader and Subdeacon to keep tabs on people’s hands during the service.  Lift up your hands in church— or don’t.  But whatever you do, don’t allow yourself to be consumed by such things.  The center of our faith and liturgical practice is not here.  It is our hearts that matter— and these we do lift up unto the Lord.