Priest. O Lord open thou my lips;
Answer. And my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.

Here there is a specific petition made of God followed by a statement of faith as to what will be the result when the petition is granted.

In the second edition of the BCP in 1552, to accommodate to the new situation where Morning Prayer was being seen more as a public service for Sunday and weekdays than as a daily office to precede the Holy Communion, the plural was used in the versicle and response - our lips and our mouth. And the plural form has stayed in the various editions of the BCP since 1552 to cater for Mattins being "the people's service".

Minister. O Lord, open thou our lips;
Answer. And our mouth shall shew forth thy praise.

In origin, the words are from Psalm 51 verse 15, a psalm used for long centuries in the daily diet of psalmody by the religious in monasteries and convents, and of course, a psalm read as a Christian prayer. Miles Coverdale translated the lines thus for the Psalter of the Book of Common Prayer:

Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.

Here the prayer is less a petition than an assured and confident address to, and claim being made upon, God.

But the Authorized Version or King James Version (1611) and, surprisingly, the Revised Standard Version (1952) of the Bible followed Cranmer's 1549 rendering:

O Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.

However, the New English Bible (1970) followed by the Revised English Bible (1989) translated:

Open my lips, O Lord, that my mouth may proclaim thy [your] praise.

In all these various renderings the basic teaching is abundantly clear. It is only when the LORD God opens our lips that from our mouths truly proceeds the praises of God. Let us therefore seek to examine and apply this teaching or doctrine.

But before we do proceed to this examination and application let us note that in the BCP of 1549, 1552 &1662, together with the versicle from Psalm 51, there is also another versicle, this time from Psalm 70 verse 1 - Psalm 70 being yet another psalm much used over the centuries by religious in the early morning.

O God, make speed to save us;
O Lord, make haste to help us.

We may observe in passing that these lines were never part of the American editions [1789,1892 & 1928] of the BCP. The standard Prayer Books of the PECUSA went straight from "and our mouth shall shew forth thy praise" to the lesser Gloria. (Why they did so is I think explained in terms of latitudinarian influence in the 1780s, influence which also kept out of the BCP the Athanasian Creed.)

As we think about the double provision of versicles and responses in the BCP 1662, it can be said that they represent for us the Sursum Corda of the Daily Services, the "Lift up your hearts" of the daily offices. Yet the nature of this psalm-based Sursum Corda is not celebratory in the modern sense of this over-used word, for the versicles and responses are drawn from psalms which have a strong tone of humility and penitence before God, and this tone stays with them. We notice that the rubrics keep us kneeling until we have completed "make haste to help us." Further, it is probably to contain the penitential flavour that the music note to which the first of them is said is always a low one, being depressed as much as a fifth from the pitch in which the Lord's Prayer has previously been recited.

So these versicles provide a solemn type of Sursum Corda within the Daily Office.

O Lord open thou our lips.

Here we have not only the direct addressing of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord our God, the Father Almighty - as "O Lord"; but, also, a further direct looking to him by the use of the word "thou" which is not strictly required for the petition to make sense. By the addition and use of "thou" the petition is given absolute clarity. We recognize and accept the basic truth that we are not merely mortals whose life is from our Creator; but also, at the same time, we come to the further and more important truth that we are also sinners whose ability to say anything truly belonging to the praise of Almighty God is only and solely by his inspiration, guidance and enabling.

Further, in these days of vague, careless and sometime heretical thinking and speaking to and about God as God, the use of the second person singular pronoun emphasizes that we truly address and call upon One and only One God, with one Godhead, one Divinity and Deity.

We as creatures with free will may think we have the ability to use our lips as we will, but, in fact, we can only use them to utter the praise of the LORD if and only if His Spirit energizes and moves them. Otherwise what we say is mere words, words without genuine divine content and divine energy.

And our mouth shall shew forth thy praise.

What our mouth and our lips together achieve follows from what God does in our minds, hearts and wills. That is, the basic cause of the praising of the Father through the Son in Christian worship is the action of the Holy Spirit both in filling the soul/the heart with the desire to praise and providing the inspiration for the verbal content of the praise that we utter and shew forth.

What occurs in authentic worship, that is in spirit and in truth, and what occurs in spiritual worship, that is in the beauty of holiness, is that the assembled people of God experientially know God both within them and above them. The Spirit of God inspires them inwardly and then in, by and with the same Holy Spirit they adore, praise and thank the Almighty Father through the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Mediator.

When God is known within the heart and praised by purified mouths and ready lips, then the Gloria becomes a ready means of expressing adoration and praise -- Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost….

Yet before the assembled people of God are fully prepared to arise from their knees and utter the praise of their Creator, Redeemer and Judge, who is their heavenly Father, on their own behalf and [importantly] on behalf of the whole created order, they make one more petition of their Lord & God:

O God, make speed to save us;
O Lord, make haste to help us.

The Scriptures inform us that the people of God are those (a) who have been saved by the mighty, redeeming act of God in the once-for-all death and resurrection of Jesus, (b) who are being saved now in and from this evil age, and (c) who look forward to full, final and complete salvation after the resurrection of the Dead and the judgment of the nations. Thus in this versicle they renew their petition & call for retaining and experiencing God's salvation, which is always wholly and only by grace and mercy. God is faithful but they know their own unfaithfulness - thus their petition. They are conscious that if they are to utter the praise of God on behalf of the world and the whole creation, they should do so as the being-saved people of God, those whom he is preparing for everlasting life and communion with the Father through the Son and by the Holy Spirit for ages to come.

Thus it is that the assembled people of God, led and inspired by the Spirit of God, utter the praise of the Holy Trinity, first in the lesser Gloria and then in the appointed Psalmody.

Application.

Having looked at the teaching of these biblical verses used in Mattins as liturgical prayers, we ask: What would be a proper application of these biblical words to the members of the Prayer Book Society, assembled for their annual conference in this ancient university and college?

One such application is this. The best way - but not the only way - that The Book of Common Prayer can be commended and defended is in the use of it according to its own principles, that is, on the basis that its users need the Spirit of the Lord to be in them so that they can in his strength offer to God the adoration and praise, thanksgiving and confession, intercession and petition which will truly be acceptable to him through his Son our Lord Jesus Christ.

Congregations worshiping the LORD our God in the beauty of holiness and in spirit and in truth as they use the classic BCP are the best advertisement for its continuing authenticity and usefulness to that part of the Church of God which uses the English language.

I mean that the congregational use of the BCP for the purpose that it was created and in the spirit of its own content is the best way not only to worship the Lord aright but also to commend this most excellent liturgy. All other ways of defending and commending it - in books, articles and magazines, in conferences, debates and apologetics - and all other grounds for commending and defending [it] -- beauty of language, ancient heritage, etc." fall below this form of commendation. The reason is that by this method we truly do taste and see that the Lord is good and invite others to do so also

May the Lord open our hearts, our mouths and our lips to declare his praise each time we open and use the Book of Common Prayer for public prayer and worship.

And to the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost be ascribed all majesty, dominion and power throughout all ages and world without end. Amen.