This is the third installment in what was originally intended to be a four-part series on the four sections of our weekly worship service. As of this month it has now turned into at least five parts because I had so much to say about the Peace. My intention for this series is to help you better understand not only what we do in our worship service, but also why we do it.

            If you have an ELW hymnal handy, you can find a detailed list of everything I’m discussing in these articles on pages 92-93. Last Month I ended by saying that I would wait to talk about the sharing of the Peace until this month, even though it appears in the “Word” section in the hymnal and our bulletins. That because I think it really belongs in the “Meal” section of the liturgy. Likewise, I think the offering should be seen as a part the “Word” section (as a response to the gospel) even though it appears in the “Meal” section of our liturgy, and that’s why I covered it last month.

            The sharing of the Peace as we do it now made its way back into our liturgy in the Lutheran Book of Worship (LBW – the green hymnal). Before this it was simply a verbal greeting between the pastor and the congregation that came after the Words of Institution, so that it was scarcely noticeable as a discrete part of the service. But in the early church this was a greeting shared among all those gathered. And it was a kiss, not a handshake! In spite of the fact that we have been sharing the Peace now for 40 years in North American Lutheran circles, not all of us are quite sure about what’s going on here.

            First let me say what the sharing of the Peace is not. It is not the seventh-inning stretch. It is not a preview of the coffee hour. It is not the time socialize, to welcome visitors, or to strike up a conversation. I’m not trying to be a grouch here, and I love that the people of Grace are so friendly. But I do want you to appreciate what is supposed to be going on here. Sharing the Peace has a very specific function in the service. It is a sharing of God’s peace with one another for the important purpose of being reconciled and at peace with one another before receiving Christ’s body and blood in the sacrament of Holy Communion. It expresses the profound commitment that our relationship with God is deeply entwined with our relationships with one another. In the 5^th chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew, soon after the Beatitudes, Jesus says this to his disciples: “When you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” (Mt. 5:23-24). This is why the Peace comes before the offering in our order of service. But it is also a recognition of the communal nature of our worship as we draw near to what is for many people the most deeply personal part of the service. We are reminded that the Christian faith does not allow for an exclusively private relationship with God that ignores other people.

            One last thing on the Peace. I emphasized above that we are first and foremost sharing God’s peace in this part of the service, and only secondarily our own peace. It’s important to know that our ability to forgive one another is rooted in God’s forgiveness of us. On a given Sunday you might not be pals with everyone in the room. In fact you might be having difficulties with someone there. Share the Peace of the Lord no matter how you are feeling about them. In doing so you are proclaiming the gospel to yourself and to them, declaring that God’s reconciling love is at work in the church and in each of us. You are making the claim that though we might not be able or inclined to forgive and care for one another if it were left up to us alone, it is God’s intention that we do so, and God can make it happen.

            Did you know that the Peace was such a profoundly meaningful part of the service? You do now! Stay tuned next month for more on the Meal section of our weekly worship service.

This is the second installment in a series on the four different parts of our weekly worship service. My intention for this series is to help you better understand not only what we do, but also why we do it.

So, what is meant by “Word”? The constitution of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, our national church body, sets forth a three-fold understanding of the Word of God. First and foremost, Jesus Christ is the Word of God by which God both creates and redeems the world. Second, the proclamation of the message about Jesus, a message of both God’s judgment and God’s mercy in Jesus, is the Word of God. Third, the Scriptures of both the Old and New Testaments (a.k.a. the Bible) are collectively the Word of God. The order is important. Jesus is God’s Word-made-flesh (John 1:14). From the Christian perspective, anything that claims to be the Word of God must be related to Jesus. Our proclamation of Jesus – God’s promises of forgiveness, reconciliation, and abundant life because of Jesus’ death and resurrection – is the central and essential task of the church. It is the instrument that God the Holy Spirit uses to create faith in us and connect us to Jesus’ saving work. The Scriptures, finally, serve as the source and guiding principle of our proclamation. All three of these aspects of God’s Word are present in our weekly worship: Jesus is there (where two or three are gathered…), the Scriptures are read, and the Good News is proclaimed.

Our readings from the Scriptures follow the Revised Common Lectionary, prepared by an international, ecumenical group representing many mainline Christian churches. These include Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians/Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Disciples of Christ, UCC, and even the American Baptists. The text study I attend every Monday morning regularly includes participants from four of those church bodies.
The lectionary is organized on a three-year cycle of readings that takes us through each of the first three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Readings from the Gospel of John are included every year, especially during the seasons of Lent and Easter, but also during the non-festival half of the year of Mark, since Mark is so much shorter than Matthew and Luke.

The church year has much to do with what is read on a given Sunday. In the first half of the year, the half in which all of the major festivals of the church year occur, the readings are chosen thematically. So, for example, in Advent we get readings about John the Baptist announcing the coming Messiah, as well as the stories of Jesus’ conception. In the twelve-day Christmas season we get the stories of Jesus’ birth, of course, but also of its cosmic significance (e.g. John 1:1-14). Christmas ends with Epiphany, followed by the post-Epiphany green season, known particularly in the Anglican tradition as “ordinary time.” It is in this green season that we begin reading through the Gospel of the year. That is then interrupted by the Lenten and Easter seasons, but picked up again in the long green season that follows Pentecost and Trinity Sundays, which constitutes the second, non-festival half of the church year.

The sermon is meant to be the primary moment of proclamation in the service, connecting the Word of God with lives of those present in the assembly. As we will see next month, though, proclamation in the liturgy is not confined to the sermon. What follows the sermon are several opportunities to respond to God’s Word. First, the hymn of the day usually picks up on the theme of the day or season. Hymn take several different forms. They can be prayers to God of praise, thanksgiving, lament, or supplication, but they can also be continued proclamation of the Gospel, or mutual encouragement and statements of faith. Second, one of the creeds is said in response to the God’s Word. The creeds are reminders of the essentials of our faith, but can also be seen as continuing proclamation of the gospel, because everything in the creeds is good news.

Third, as a response to God’s Word we turn to God in prayer in the Prayers of Intercession. These prayers traditionally include the following five parts: 1. Prayer for the church, especially the universal church, 2. Prayer for the nations of the world, including our own, 3. Prayers for the sick and those in any need, 4. Prayer for the local community of faith, and 5. Prayer remembering those who have gone before us in the faith and looking forward in hope to the culmination of God’s creative and redeeming work in the world. To these five elements has been added in recent years a sixth prayer for God’s creation, which is placed following the first prayer for the church.

Finally comes the offering, another response to God’s gracious Word, by which the ministry of the local, synodical, and national church is supported. In our order of service, the offering is preceded by the sharing of the peace. But that really belongs to the liturgy of the Meal, to which we will turn next month.

+ Pastor Chris Repp

            Have you ever thought about why we do what we do in worship? Those of us who grew up Lutheran may think, “That’s just the way it is.” Those who grew up Episcopalian or Roman Catholic may have similar thoughts, since the traditional pattern of worship used by Lutherans is basically the same as in those tradition. Those who come from other traditions, or from no tradition at all, might find our worship quaint or confusing at first. Some, though, are struck by the profound grace of the words and actions we can come to take for granted. This was the case for Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber, nationally know for founding House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver. You can read more about that in her first book, Pastrix.

            It has been my ambition for a number of years to produce an annotated order of service that explains in some detail the different parts of our service. So after being prompted by a couple of Grace members, I have decided to start to tackle that project in a preliminary way by leading you through the four main sections of our liturgy in my newsletter columns over the next four months.

            The traditional pattern of worship that we use goes back to the early church. It consists of Gathering, Word, Meal, and Sending. You may have noticed those as the four major section headings in our order of service. As time went on this pattern began to be filled out and elaborated, especially once the emperor Constantine ended the persecution of Christians and adopted the Christian faith. In the earliest worship assemblies, the gathering was just about getting everyone in the same place, typically in someone’s home. As Christians began to use buildings dedicated for worship (adopting the architecture of the Roman basilica), and as larger groups assembled for weekly worship, the gathering portion of the service became more formal – and took a little bit longer. Songs and chants were developed to cover the procession of the worship leaders into the worship space.

            In our order of service, the opening hymn, the Kyrie, and the Hymn of Praise comprise the Gathering Song that begins the service. In the 8:00 service at Grace, we have tended to shorten the Gathering to the opening hymn and the Prayer of the Day. At the 10:30 service we add the Kyrie in Advent and Lent or the Hymn of Praise for most of the rest of the year. The exception to that rule is the season of Easter and major festivals of the church, during which we sing both the Kyrie and the Hymn of Praise.

            Kyrie is short for Kyrie eleison, which means “Lord, have mercy” in Greek. This phrase is used by a number of people in the Gospels as they approach Jesus for help. So it has seemed good for us, who also need Jesus’ help, to begin our worship this way. In the longer version of the Kyrie, though, we pray not only for ourselves, but for the whole world, the universal church, and for our particular congregation.

            In the Western, Latin rite, in which Lutheran worship developed, the Hymn of Praise has traditionally been the Gloria. The text is taken from the angels’ greeting of the shepherds in Luke 2. “Glory to God in the highest, and peace to God’s people on earth.” This is a fitting response to the Kyrie. It is God’s answer to our appeal for help, a reminder that in Jesus God has sent us a savior, born among us as one of us.

            Since the introduction of the Lutheran Book of Worship (LBW) in 1978, another option for the Hymn of Praise has been This is the Feast, based on Revelation 5. This is especially appropriate during the Easter season, when the Christmas promise of the Gloria is now seen to be fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Christ. Easter means that “the Lamb who was slain has begun his reign” in our lives and in the world. This is an even fuller response to our plea in the Kyrie.

            After the Gathering Song comes the greeting, patterned after the greetings found in the New Testament letters (epistles) and the angel’s greeting of Mary in Luke 1, “Hail Mary, the Lord is with you.” The Greeting is followed by the Prayer of the Day, which sets the theme for the Sunday and finishes the Gathering.

            You may have noticed by now that I have said nothing of the Confession and Forgiveness or the Thanksgiving for Baptism, one of which we begin with every Sunday. That is because these are not technically part of the worship service, but are rather preparation for worship. In the LBW the Brief Order of Confession and Forgiveness had its own page, emphasizing that it was really a separate service – a warm up for the main event, if you will.

            I hope you will think about all of this the next time you worship. There is a lot of meaning packed into the few minutes of the Gathering. It is designed to help us be intentional about coming into God’s presence, asking for God’s help, hearing God’s gracious invitation, and preparing ourselves to hear God’s word for us. And that’s where I’ll continue next month.

+ Pastor Repp

            The congregation that I was baptized and confirmed, and to which my parents still belong, was founded in 1930. It experienced remarkable growth in the 1950s and early 1960s. In 1963 the University of Missouri St. Louis was founded a quarter mile down the road. In that same year I was born, and my father was called to be its part-time assistant pastor, while keeping his full-time day job as a teacher at the Lutheran high school three miles away. As it happens, my father was ordained on the same day I was baptized. His ordination took place at the early service, and then he baptized me at the late service. And here’s a Grace connection that I only just discovered 2 years ago: The organist for both of those services was our own Mike Marty! But I digress.

            In the 1970s membership and attendance began a long slow decline, attributed in part to demographic shifts in the neighborhood. Many members moved out to the more distant suburbs. Today, weekly attendance averages well below 50. At the same time, those who do attend are remarkably dedicated. The choir there is about the size of our choir here at Grace, which means that on some Sundays there are nearly as many people in the choir as in the rest of the congregation. Still, there are very few children in the congregation these days, and it is not clear to me how long they can continue to remain viable.

            My home congregation is like many congregations in the U.S., and it reflects a broader trend both in our country and in the larger developed world. Over the past 50 years there has been a measurable and significant decline in church attendance and church affiliation. And that trend has accelerated in the past two decades. The reasons are complex, but linked to broader social and cultural changes. Despite the recent recession and a persistent pessimism about the economy, the overall trend for many people – especially those in Grace’s demographic – has been positive. We have become more affluent. And for many people, as their expendable income increases, their connection to church decreases. They travel more. They are able to enroll their children in club sports, but those clubs play their games on Sunday mornings. Another reality is an increase in blended and single parent families that live with shared custody arrangements. Practically speaking that means that children simply aren’t available to be in church half of the time. Yet another factor is the information revolution and a trend toward do-it-yourself spirituality, combined with an increasing distrust of institutions of all kinds, and a growing secularization in the broader culture. For these and other reasons, it will become increasingly difficult to organize the church the way we did 50 years ago.

            Now I want to be as clear as I can that I don’t think that that is necessarily a bad thing, even though it creates difficulties for professional church people like me. And as much as I might dislike the idea of Sunday morning sports clubs competing with the church for attention, it’s the way it is. The church is losing the privileged status it once held in our society. We are no longer the social hub of communities the way were at times in our history. But this too is not necessarily a bad thing. Let us remember that the church had its most explosive growth under the Roman Empire, which outlawed and sporadically persecuted Christians during the first three centuries of the church’s existence.

            The way I see it, we can choose to approach our present reality in one of two ways. We can look to the past and focus on what we have lost in terms of social influence and privilege, and then attempt to recapture what the church once was. Or we can embrace the reality of our new context and see the opportunity that an increasingly secular culture presents for making the gospel known to those who have never heard it, or who have not heard rightly it as the good news it is meant to be. In my mind, only the latter is a real option. However that shakes out, and whatever institutional form that takes, the church will continue to be the church only by focusing on the central things: the message of God’s reconciling love for us and for all people in Jesus Christ, proclaimed first in the gathered community through word and sacrament, and then proclaimed in the world around us through our lives, in acts of love and service on behalf of others, especially those most in need.

            The future is upon us. May we face it with boldness and courage, trusting that God is with us and at work in our midst.

+ Pastor Repp

            Since Easter falls on April 1 this year (no foolin’!) the month of April is all Easter this year. The season of Easter extends from Easter Sunday (which technically begins the night before at the Vigil of Easter) and extends through Pentecost fifty days later, the seventh Sunday after Easter Sunday, which will be May 20 this year. Pentecost literally means “fiftieth day.” Before it was a Christian festival it was a Jewish one – but perhaps I should leave that for next month’s newsletter. This month I want to draw your attention to a feature of life in the early church during the season of Easter. The Vigil of Easter, the first Easter service, was the time for baptism in the early church. This followed a process of baptismal preparation for adults, at a time when adults made up the majority of those being baptized. That process typically took a year, and in some cases even longer. During this time, those preparing for baptism would be accompanied in the process by those who were already members of the church, who would spend time with them to explain the church’s rituals and practices, to read the Bible with them, and to share their own faith with them.

            This process of baptismal preparation led, of course, to baptism. But it did not stop with baptism. Newly baptized adults continued to be accompanied by longer-term members after their baptism. This phase of the process was called mystagogy, which means “leading into the mysteries.” That’s a bit esoteric without further explanation, so it helps to know that the Greek word for sacrament is mysterion. Mystagogy, then, is really about living into the sacraments, or, to put it another way, “baptismal living.” The church, in other words, was intent on helping lead the newly baptized person into the new way of life that baptism called forth. “Baptismal Living” was the theme of our midweek Lenten services this year, during which we went through the five sections of the baptismal covenant from our service of Affirmation of Baptism, which take the form of questions for those affirming their baptism:

You have made public profession of your faith.

Do you intend to continue in the covenant God made with you in holy baptism:

to live among God’s faithful people,

to hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s supper,

to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed,

to serve all people, following the example of Jesus,

and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth?

(“I will, and I ask God to help and guide me,” is the response.)

That, you might say, was an exercise in mystagogy. But precisely what baptismal living will look like will be different for each person. Exploring that is what the practice of mystagogy during the season of Easter is for. You might call it a “capstone project” for baptism. Each person, under the guidance of the church, through prayer, conversation, and continued engagement with Holy Scripture, works to discern his or her specific calling, what Lutherans have traditionally termed “vocation.”

            During the Easter Season, both the Adult Sunday School class and On The Way will focus on vocation, or mystagogy. In the Adult Sunday School class we’ll have presentations by various members of Grace, who will talk about some of the ways they find themselves to be called to live out their baptism, both within and outside of the church. I hope you’ll consider joining us for this and spending some time thinking about your own baptismal vocation. Even lifelong members of the church can benefit from such an exercise. May God be with us all in our discerning.