The following sections are taken from weekly bulletin inserts written by Pastor Jaime Nava and modified for the website. Much information has been gleaned from The Lutheran Liturgy : a study of the common liturgy of the Lutheran Church in America. by Luther D. Reed. You can also visit LCMS.org for more information. Another good read is Dr. Arthur Just’s Heaven on Earth
AN INTRODUCTION
Does it ever feel like you’re going through the motions? Maybe you’re the kind of person who is always thinking about later. When you get to church you start to think about lunch. Maybe you have had a lot on your mind. Getting up, getting ready, it’s all a blur while your brain keeps other things at the front. I would say that we Christians go through the motions in very critical moments. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, when we say the Creed, even when we’re singing hymns, it’s almost like we’re not even here.
I do not have the power (or the energy!) to keep your brain focused all the time in church. One thing I can do, though, is point us back to why we’re doing what we’re doing, why we are here in church. To help with that I am going to cover the things that we do in church.
I can give a teaser for what everything is about. We gather together on Sundays because we’re here to receive forgiveness. Bowling leagues can offer friends. Libraries can offer learning. Sunday morning is different. Today we are visited by the Monarch of the Universe. He decides that today we deserve a visit because He loves us. All throughout the service we talk about Jesus. Jesus forgives you. Jesus died for you. Jesus rose for you. In Jesus’ Name we ask our prayers. Today is mind-blowing because the Jesus we read and hear about isn’t some distant deity. He’s with us this morning and He has something to say. “I love you. I forgive you. I’m here for you.” That’s why He decides to show up. That is why your bulletin says “Divine Service” because Jesus has come to serve broken sinners.
That’s why we are here too. We need love. We need forgiveness. We need restoration. We need Jesus and He is here to serve.
INVOCATION
We begin the Divine Service with the Invocation. The word itself has two parts; In- (in or on) -Vocation (to call/calling). So Invocation just means we call upon someone or something. We are not invoking just anything, though. We are calling upon God in the Three Persons of the Trinity. This reflects our baptism, it means we’re here for the truth, and it means God is present.
First off, you are here because God called you out. How did He do that? In your baptism. In whose name were you baptized? Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19)! So every time we call upon God’s name in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are echoing the amazing moment in your life when you were buried with Christ (Romans 6:3-4). We are saying, “Don’t forget, you belong to God!” We are also reminding God that He made a promise. That’s not a bad thing.
The second point is that we set ourselves apart. Calling on the Trinity at the beginning tells the world that we’re not here to worship anything. We’re here to worship the one True God who was there at the beginning, is here now, and is the One who lasts for eternity. This isn’t some fad that we made up. We are calling on God who crosses space and time. We are telling the world we are open for God’s business.
The third point is that God is among us. Jesus said, “Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” (Matthew 18:19-20). When we call upon God’s name, He is here! The central idea behind coming to church is not to tell God how great we are. We show up because we need help. Only the sick need a physician, right? This is our spiritual hospital and the great physician shows up to serve and provide. He is not some distant deity that doesn’t care. He shows up because we need all the help we can get!
Even in something as short as this invocation, we start the service off knowing that God loves you because of Jesus. Like many of us started our lives, started by being given God’s Name and seal of the Holy Spirit, we start the service off knowing that God isn’t here just to tell us how rotten we are. He’s here to tell us that He loves us anyways. He’s not far away. He is here and He is true. In the Invocation, we’re off to a great start!
CONFESSION
You might picture detectives with a light shining in someone’s face, one is the good cop and one is the bad cop. Along those lines, sure, confession includes confessing our individual sins. You may notice the note in the hymnal where we take a moment to consider our individual sins. Confession is also bigger than the individual sins we have committed. What we say on Sunday is confessing what we are at the core. We admit that, without God, there is nothing good in us.
This image comes across clearly when we read Isaiah chapter 6. Isaiah sees God sitting on a throne with six-winged angels. There’s smoke everywhere and the foundations are shaking. Isaiah is driven to the obvious conclusion about 2 things. First he sees that he is in the presence of God. Second, he recognizes the difference between God’s holiness and his own corrupt human nature. There is no other response than to be terrified! Listen to his words, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
In the Invocation, we call on God to be among us. That’s a very bold move, little humans asking God to do anything! Yet He enters among us because He promised He would. So then God is actually present among us when we invoke His name. What is our response? “Hey God, ol’ chum!” No. Not even close. God shows up and now we must take stock like Isaiah does and we see we don’t measure up! So what do we do? We confess.
Confession is really only us telling God what He told us in the Bible. Poor, miserable, sinners? Yeah. That’s us to the core. We confess our individual sins because the detective of God’s Law is shining the light on our actions. Even more, we confess that we are corrupt down to our deepest self. The Holy God, ruler of the universe is here, perfect and good among plotters, schemers, and people who talk behind other people’s backs. It’s time to confess.
ABSOLUTION
Confession means saying back to God what He had first said to us. When God shows up (where two or three are gathered) we fall to our knees and confess that He is God and we are not, like Isaiah did in chapter 6 of his book (“I am a man of unclean lips!). That wasn’t the end of the story, though.
You see, the truth is, where sin is confessed, absolution has to follow. This is the way God operates. Isaiah got a burning coal in the mouth (which was a good thing in the text). It meant that his unclean lips received cleansing from God. When we confess in the Divine Service, the pastor doesn’t stand up and say, “As a called and ordained servant of Christ, you’re darn right you terrible, horrible, no good, dirty, rotten scoundrels!” Nope. The pastor is then compelled to say something that God requires him to say.
The pastor stands there and he becomes an instrument. Like a musician plays music, the pastor becomes God’s sound to us in that moment. What comes out of his mouth is what God is saying. So what does He say? “I forgive you.” That may sound like your pastor’s voice but it’s God who is pulling the vocal strings. The keys of heaven are given by Christ (Matthew 16:19, Matthew 18:18, John 20:23) and in that moment those keys ascend to where God stores up his best stuff. They go to His treasure room, unlock the door which swings wide open, pouring down on us everything we do not deserve; love, peace, forgiveness, eternal life. The wealth of eternal life floods our ears and we are given everything God can give.
So this gives us a glimpse at how God treats poor, miserable sinners. In this Divine Service, we are given peace with God. Why is it so hard for us to forgive others, then? No one ever said it would be easy to forgive others. Just look at the cross. Even so, we have been given the wealth of heaven. Can we spare some change for other people?
INTROIT/PSALM
As we learn about the liturgy, we’ve made it to our first big transition. We covered the invocation, confession, and absolution. Our detail oriented friends might open the hymnal and notice that we’re now in a new sub-section, Service of the Word (check out page 186 to see for yourself). What does this mean? What we consider the beginning of the Divine Service is actually more like a preparation. We called on God’s name to be present among us (invocation), we recognized that God was among us like He promised so we’re moved to confess. Upon this your confession you heard absolution (God says, “I forgive you!”). All of that was actually preparation for two “services”, Service of the Word and Service of the Sacrament. It’s almost like saying that the invocation, confession, and absolution is God getting us ready for His Word to be heard and to be tasted.
The first part of the Service of the Word is the Introit (which means entrance). An Introit is generally a Psalm sandwich where there is a bible verse at the beginning in theme with the day, the psalm in the middle, and the first bible verse repeated again. The tradition of reading (or singing) a psalm is almost 1600 years old. The idea back then was to provide a sense of importance, that something epic was taking place at the beginning of the service. It set the stage for the rest of what was to come.
This gives us a model for each day, doesn’t it? As we wake up we can confess and thank God He has given us another day. Then we can dig into His Word. That sets the stage for us to see ways that God serves us and how we can serve others in our lives.
KYRIE
We come to the Kyrie (KIH-ree-ay) as we study the parts of the Divine Service. The word “Kyrie” comes from the Greek and it means “Lord” or “O Lord”. We sing in our service “Lord, have mercy! Christ, have mercy! Lord, have mercy!” One to each person of the Trinity. The usage of this goes all the way back to the 300’s AD. Over time it got more elaborate to the point where famous composers wrote complicated renditions (you may have heard of Mozart or Bach…).
The reason we sing it today is not only because it is old but because of what it means. It reminds us of all the times in scripture when people cry out to Jesus. Like the time the blind men cry out. They say, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!” People try to shut them up but they get even louder. Jesus did in fact have mercy on them. So at this point in the service we ask for mercy.
There is an ebb and flow we might see happening. When we called on the powerful name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we were driven to confession. That led us to hear about forgiveness. All of that prepared us for hearing the Word starting with the Psalm. Now we get to a point where we’ve started hearing the Word and we’re moved to ask God to keep His promise. “Have mercy!”
We come to a moment in our lives where we are faced with eternity. On the one hand, we want immediate help. Life is hard. We want the easy road. Instead God tells us to rely on Him. We do rely and we want to but it’s not easy so we cry out, “Lord, have mercy!” It’s more than that too. Maybe you’re tired. Not just tired because you stayed up too late. You’re tired because you’ve had to carry so much for so long or because you are dealing with something really big. This is our honest response. This becomes our cry. This is our Kyrie.
GLORIA IN EXCELSIS
In the Kyrie we cry out in our weakness to the Triune God. “Lord, have mercy! Christ, have mercy! Lord, have mercy!” In that moment we look at ourselves, our human weakness. We recognize our need for help.
Now in the Gloria in Excelsis* we cry out to the only thing that can actually help, God. We praise Him because He is the answer to our pleas for mercy. Jesus who was sent by the Father, who takes away our sin, who pleads for us at God’s right hand, who sends His Spirit as comforter, He is who we need. The move from Kyrie to Gloria in Excelsis is biblically natural because of Christ.
This part of the service started in the 300’s (or earlier!) and eventually took the form we use now. It comes from an angel telling the shepherds about the birth of the Messiah. The angelic host then join in the chorus (Luke 2).
The Church has kept the Gloria in Excelsis because it is an epic way of contrasting our need for mercy with God’s merciful work. The entire thing is not about us doing something for God. It’s all about God, how awesome He is, and what He has decided to do, even for people like us. Like I said before, the Church is not meant to be a gathering place of people who have it all together. It’s for broken people who need forgiveness. So as we gather today, we sing this song of praise to God because today He has mercy on us yet again.
*You’ll often hear Excelsis pronounced like Ex-SHELL-siss. Just think of “gloria in egg shell seas” when you sing the Christmas hymn and you’ll be fine.
THE SALUTATION
Greetings. Aloha. Hola. Guten Tag. Bonjour. Nǐ hǎo. Shalom! These are all greetings from many different languages. We start emails and conversations this way. It’s just what we do. You don’t just pick up the phone and start talking. You greet someone. I don’t know where this started. I suppose it provides a way for people to connect.
In scripture there is a great way that God’s people do this. Boaz says to to some, “The Lord be with you.” When the Lord appears to people in the Old Testament, like Gideon, we read, “The Lord is with you.” In the New Testament the angel says to Mary, “Rejoice, favored one! The Lord is with you!” Are you starting to see a theme?
Scripture is giving us a greeting that brings God into the picture. It’s not just one person and another. It’s asking that God would be present among them too. They look to God as Immanuel, God with us. So the greeting is more than just a simple, “Hello!” It’s almost like a prayer. We are asking that God would be with the person we’re talking to. We’re saying that if God is for you, nothing can be against you. No matter what is going on in your life, may the Lord be with you and carry you through it all.
It’s also a sign of unity. God brings us together as a family. We’re united to Him and we’re united to each other. It’s a beautiful phrase that says there is peace among us. It’s like a triangle where the closer we move to God at the top, the closer we end up to one another like the two lines that lead to the point.
It’s no wonder that we use this phrase throughout the service. We say it near the beginning of the service. We say it in the middle of the service before we take communion. We say it at the end before we receive the Benediction. We’re asking that God would have peace with others and that we would have peace with them too.
So I guess you can answer your phone with the phrase, “The Lord be with you!” It might throw people off but what a blessing. If nothing else, we’ll say it in church as a long-standing and helpful tradition. It’s a loaded greeting full of peace and grace. May the Lord be with you this day and forevermore!
THE COLLECT
Unions were certainly necessary when they came about. They helped to keep fair wages, a safe work environment, and provided an opportunity for people to move up the ladder. Benefits for workers came about through collective bargaining. You can’t have everyone shouting what they want all at once. That’s chaos, not an effective form of communication. If you sat and listened to each person, that can be too long and drawn out for any effective or immediate change. So, in the union, the members had representatives that would speak on their behalf and bargain for them collectively.
What does any of this have to do with church, or more specifically, the Divine Service? Every Sunday we have a Collect (pronounced KAH-lect). It’s been around for a millenium and a half. This Collect is a prayer that collects the theme of the day into one prayer. It brings together the theme based on the readings and where we are in the church year (for example, Advent or Lent). Not only that but the pastor becomes the representative of the congregation. It’s our collective bargain with God. I guess there’s no real bargaining because God holds all the cards. It’s more like a collective plea. The pastor pleads on behalf of the congregation and the theme of the prayer is based on the readings and the season.
It even has a structure. We call on God (O Lord!). We say something about God (You made heaven and earth). Then we ask for something (give us food today). Then we say why (so that by Your grace we don’t go hungry). Then we end with asking it in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’s name.
The Collect is a potent nugget of prayer! The pastor asks for things on the people’s behalf based on the theme of the day and using a specific structure. That is a tall order to write up. It’s no wonder the church has been handing these down for so long. Consider using a Collect at home before you go to bed. That way when you hear it on Sunday you see how we’re all collected together with all the saints and bringing it to God.
THE READINGS
We have been walking a hilly path of the Divine Service led by God Himself. We called on His name, we confessed our nature, we received forgiveness and were prepared for more gifts to come. As we journeyed, we lifted our voices again to God in a plea for mercy, gave glory to God, greeted one another in peace, and collected our prayers together. All of these things have been winding us toward the climax of the Service of the Word within the Divine Service. Now we get to hearing God’s voice in His Word.
The pattern for reading the Word together is as old as the synagogue and was something even Jesus did in His hometown (Luke 4:16ff). Remember the first Christians were Jewish so they obviously borrowed their structure from the synagogue, something Jesus seemed to promote. This is a long way of saying that the church has had readings in the service since the beginning. Over time the church made a list of readings based on the church year. Overall the idea is to listen to and experience the life (and death!) of Jesus for His people (that’s you). Some churches use a one-year series, that is, they use the same readings every year. Others use a three-year series that follows Matthew, Mark, and Luke with John’s Gospel sprinkled in here and there. The benefit of using a list of readings (called a pericope [purr-IH-ko-pee]) allows us to work through the story of scripture as a whole. One downside is we skip over passages. It is recommended that you read your entire bible at home. As if I have to tell you…
On our travel through the Divine Service, we get a chance to sit at the feet of Jesus and hear His own Word. It’s no wonder we have the Alleluia in between the readings. Praise the Lord that He has come to speak to us again today! People ask God to hear His voice. They want to know what is on His mind. Well, here it is! Here is His Word. Here is His will for your life. You don’t have to seek it on a mountaintop. Instead God has come down to give it to you today. So I encourage you to listen up! This is the Word of the Lord!
THE CREED
If someone asked you what you believed about God, what would you say? He is good. He is loving. The Father is God and He sent Jesus who died for us. What about the Holy Spirit. Let’s not forget about Him! It’s good to know what you believe about God.
Thankfully the early church put together the Creeds. They answer the question, “Who is God?” There are three Creeds, two of which we often use in church (Apostle’s Creed and Nicene Creed) and one we tend to save for Trinity Sunday (Athanasian Creed). Historically, the idea was that if someone could confess the Creeds in good faith, they were considered Christian but if not, they weren’t. Consider it a litmus test for Christianity. It basically sums up who God is in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
So why use it in the Divine Service? In some churches they started using it as early as the 500’s A.D. The churches felt a couple of ways about using the Creeds on Sunday morning. In some services it comes after the sermon. When that was the case, they saw it as the beginning of another part of the Sunday morning ritual. It marked a shift where the people who weren’t taught the faith yet had left and only those who were ready for communion would be around. That part of the morning kicked off the common and shared faith of the catechized with the Creed.
Another consideration for using the Creeds is that it follows after the readings. Using it between the readings and the sermon gave a summary of what we believe scripture says about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When we confess the Creed together we are confessing the entire story of God’s creation, redemption, and sanctification. The sermon then focuses on a specific part of that story.
If someone asks you what you believe about God, now you have something to tell them off the cuff. In fact, I have been by the bedside of people with dementia and the Creeds were something they never forgot. It’s something worth remembering and saying often, especially on Sunday.
HYMN OF THE DAY
I watched a video that I’m sure was posted on social (or is it anti-social?) media a couple of years ago. An old man was in a chair, slouched. A nurse approached him and he was pretty much unresponsive. He had dementia and was well affected by it at that stage. The nurse then took some headphones off of a table and placed them on the man’s ears. The man perked up and he even started to hum the tune. It was something he grew up loving, that tune. Despite dementia crumbling away memories, the music brought back some of his old self back.
I wanted to take this newsletter into the realm of music since we’re at the point between the Creed and the sermon. This is where we have the hymn of the day. The hymn of the day, by the way, became more embedded after Luther’s day because preaching increased in its importance too. The hymn of the day is meant to reflect the overall theme in poetic and musical form.
As I was saying, though, music makes inroads in our minds that astound scientists. Our brains light up when we hear music. Long, complicated poetry can be more easily memorized when we add a tune and meter. As we set God’s Word to poetry and music I have seen shut ins perk up. Although I’m not the best singer, I’ll try to make it a point to throw in a verse or two of Amazing Grace when visiting someone with dementia. You will see eyes light up and you’ll hear a small voice sing along. What a beautiful and spirit-filled moment I get to witness!
I suppose what I am trying to say is this, don’t let the hymns pass you by. Write down the ones you love. Sing them with your family often. Request them from your pastor! When our memories begin to fade, we can hear a hymn of the work of Christ for sinners, of the one who conquered death itself, and our mind is transported to a place of peace and holiness. Let the hymns permeate your life. “…be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart…” (Ephesians 5:18-19)
THE SERMON
We now come to a crescendo of the Service of the Word (recall that the entire service is three parts; Confession & Absolution, the Service of the Word, and the Service of the Sacrament). Now we come to the sermon.
The sermon is one piece in the entire liturgy. The sermon should work together with the readings, hymns, and prayers of the day. It’s all one cohesive theme. This way, if it’s a crummy sermon (I pray it’s not!), you’ll still hear the Gospel from the rest of the Service. The sermon is not the pinnacle moment of Sunday morning. It is one of the peak moments as the Service moves forward. We could say that Absolution and the Lord’s Supper are peak moments, too. Our pulpit doesn’t sit alone in the middle of the sanctuary. It’s not a performance on a stage. It’s way better than that. We are receiving Jesus over and over throughout the Service on holy ground. The sermon is just one more echo of heaven and earth overlapping, God giving Jesus to us in the liturgy.
Here are some tips to listening to a sermon (did you know you needed tips?!). One, listen to how the sermon deals with the text. If it’s not dealing with God’s Word, then you’re not getting a sermon. Two, listen to how the sermon brings you into the story of Jesus. You see, the Bible is not about you. It’s about Jesus. Thankfully Jesus considers you important. Three, listen to the problem the sermon is addressing. Sometimes it’s personal sin. Sometimes it’s how we struggle in a fallen world. Four, listen to how Jesus responds to the problem, how He died on the cross for sin or how He rose from the dead to say that this broken world won’t be this way forever.
A well-crafted sermon should not just be information. It should be an experience where we discover that even sinners like us are brought into the Kingdom of God. Take notes if that’s your thing. Doodle images if that helps you focus and remember. Experience how God offers Jesus in another creative way. Lastly, have some mercy on your pastor. He has to (gets to!) do this every week!
THE OFFERTORY
Take a deep breath. Now exhale. This is what we have been doing in the Divine Service. We sing to God (exhale). We hear the readings (inhale). Throughout the service we are receiving and giving, inhaling and exhaling. Now we come to a part where we exhale to God our thanks and praise. I first want to cover the attitude of giving and then I want to cover the daily connection this part of the service has with our everyday life.
Remember the first offering in the Bible? Cain and Abel brought their gifts. Now we can’t say we know for sure why God rejected Cain’s offering but we can make a good guess. Cain’s heart was not in it. He was probably giving because he had to, not because he wanted to. You see, the offering isn’t for the preacher to shear the sheep. Giving in the service is a posture of humility (God is in control, not me!) and in gratitude (God is not only in control, He loves me!). Most folks take the model of tithing (that is, giving 10%) but we’re not restricted to that in the Church. The point is to be a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:7)! Giving is about humility first and then a response of love. It all belongs to God.
Speaking of love, the offertory and offering are intertwined to your daily meals. Think of the Offertory and Offering kind of like preparing the meal, all the cutting, cooking, and plating. You smell the aroma and start getting hungry for the meal. The ancient Church used to bring their gifts forward to be blessed at the altar. Now we send the ushers to do the legwork for you. The pastor would choose the wine and bread from the offerings. All of this was in preparation for what was to come, the Lord’s Supper. Imagine the people hungry in anticipation of tasting the forgiveness of sins. In our day, on Sunday, while you are all giving your cheerful gifts, the pastor reveals the bread and the wine, preparing it for the Words of Christ for you.
As you prepare your meal, think of the offering we do in the service. Think of Psalm 51 that we sing as we prepare for the meal. Consider it an echo of what we do on Sunday and give thanks to God for His good gifts to you!
PRAYER
If you stand in the back of the sanctuary you can yell out, “Hey!” and you will notice there is a small gap in time between your voice throwing out the word and when it reaches your ears in return. Obviously this is called an echo (please wait to do it after the Service is over…). An echo only works if a word first goes out. Then it comes back like a sonic boomerang.
In a more church-y way, we could say this this boomerang is confession. Confession is an echo of what God first says to us. We are quoting God back to God and He loves it. Why? Because His Word is living and active. Because His Word gives life. Because His Word saves! The Word of God is rich with the Holy Spirit and it changes us. Confession is sharing God’s rich Word back with Him.
One way we echo God’s Word on Sunday is in prayer. The first thing about prayer is recognizing God is God and we are not. If God is little in people’s eyes, they won’t pray to Him. For us, though, God shows us how little we are in His Word. How we live for ourselves and run away from what is good. When our puffed up bubble of pride is pierced by this Divine realization, we recognize that we are fragile. We need God. We come before God, like coming to a king on his throne, and we echo His Words back to Him. We point to His promises in Jesus to forgive us, to hear us, to love us despite our fragile and tainted nature.
In our prayers, we pray for everyone, even our enemies (see Matthew 5:44). We pray for our governmental leaders (even if you voted for the other guy. See 1 Timothy 2:1-2). We don’t order God around to give us stuff. Instead we ask that God would keep us in line with His will in His Kingdom. We plead for healing for ourselves and for others. We ask that if we don’t heal, that we would have sufficient grace to get through our trials. We also thank God for the good stuff, too. Something we can often forget.
As you read scripture, let the passages be your prayer. As we gather together on Sunday, we prepare for a taste of The Great Meal. Like at the dinner table, we say our prayers, preparing ourselves to receive the meal at the “Table of the Lord”. We pray for everyone but we do it in the way God desires. We do it in Jesus name.
HOLY COMMUNION
I recently heard that your refrigerator is a morgue. I suppose that’s basically true. Everything in there has a shelf life and doesn’t last forever. More than that, it holds the essentials for life. Your fruits, vegetables, and meats in the fridge, it’s not a garden to look at. You eat what’s in there! What used to be living is now waiting for you to eat it. You could say that it’s a sacrifice. The life of the food for your life. This is one reason why we pray before we eat. We pray to thank God and we pray to appreciate that one life is given for another, for you.
Imagine I had food that could give you life, not just for another few days, but instead forever. How much do you think I could charge for that food? Powerful and rich people would fight tooth and nail, sell all they had, in order to cheat death and eat my life-giving food. What is mind-blowing about every time we eat is that it is an echo of food that actually gives eternal life. Every meal is a ripple of the food we receive on Sunday morning in Holy Communion. Think about it. We pray before we eat. Well, we do that on Sunday. Our daily food gives its life for ours. The bread and wine are the body and blood given and shed for us. One major difference is that Holy Communion is not just for the body but for the soul forever.
Packaged in, with, under bread and wine, mysteriously, is the entire body and blood of Christ (not just a pinky toe or something). Jesus says, “This is…” and so we believe that. In that Holy Food is everything good that God has to offer; forgiveness, life, peace with God, the wealth of God’s bank on your lips. What does this cost you? Nothing. It’s paid for by Jesus already. It is the sacrifice of Jesus to give you life. It is free. It is powerful. It is for you.
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Not only do we receive the full body and blood of Jesus in the Lord’s Supper, not only do we taste the entire wealth of God’s riches in a bit of bread and wine, not only do we receive peace with God to sustain us for the days ahead, there’s even more. At Holy Communion we experience Heaven on earth.
With our physical eyes we see bread and wine. We see pastor in his robe. We see everyone come to the rail and kneel. It takes another set of eyes to see what is happening in its entire breadth and height. With the eyes of faith, Jesus is there as King of the universe. By faith we see all the activity of Heaven. Like the Book of Revelation, we see the four creatures around the throne, we see the twenty-four elders praising God, we see angels, and archangels, and all the company of heaven giving glory to God. You see, where Jesus is, there is the Church, the Body of Christ. Even space and time are warped and bent to bow down to Holy Communion. In this mystery we see all of heaven connected together. That means we are communing and praising God with the entire Church. Heaven comes down to us and Jesus serves the meal of His body and blood for us in bread and wine and the entire party of heaven comes with Him.
Ponder this next time you come to the communion rail. This is not just a time to get a snack of bread and wine. It is God in front of us and we bow in awe of His majesty. It is all the saints, the people we love who passed on before us singing in victory. It is the people like Martin Luther and Moses and Abraham and everyone we look forward to meeting, they are all together with us cheering us on as we sit on this side of the veil waiting for Jesus to return. Our earthly eyes tell us it is nothing big. The eyes of faith tell us it is everything.
POST-COMMUNION PRAYERS
I was walking down to the corner market one dusk. I must have been nine or ten years old. I was crossing a small street in the neighborhood when a speeding car ran the stop sign and missed me by inches. I assume he didn’t see me. As close as the car came, I didn’t realize until after I crossed the street that I could have easily died if I was ahead of my pace by one step. I told myself, “I’m going to become a priest.” My desire for ministry after that near-death experience was my way of thanking God that I wasn’t hit. Where I could have been removed from this world, I was instead spared. It took some time before that promise became somewhat true (I was Anglican growing up).
We tend to thank God after those extreme moments. Thank you for getting me through surgery. Thank you for healing me. Thank you for sparing my child. Those are good times to thank God. Those should not be the only times, though. As we pray before our meal, as we pray before The Great Meal in the Lord’s Supper, we should also pray afterwards too. It is in part of keeping the Second Commandment (Read your Small Catechism on “Do not take the Lord’s Name in vain”). After we eat, thank God. Just as every meal points to the Lord’s Supper (and the Lord’s Supper points to the Feast of the Lamb in His Kingdom with no end!) we should pray after we eat just like we pray after we commune.
What is it that we pray after we commune? We sing the Nunc Dimittis (Latin for Let us depart) which comes from good old Simeon in Luke chapter 2. He saw the infant Jesus and the promise God gave Simeon, that he would see the savior before he died, it came true! So we sing the same song. We thank God that we have seen His salvation with our own eyes today in the Lord’s Supper. Simeon’s song becomes ours. We give thanks to the Lord for He is good. We also pray a prayer Luther wrote, refreshed through this salutary (i.e. beneficial!) gift.
As we come down from the mountaintop experience of God giving us His absolution, His Word of mercy and grace, even His own body and blood in bread and wine for forgiveness, as we process all of this, we thank God. It rolls us right along into an ancient blessing that will close out our series on the parts of the Divine Service. For today, be encouraged to thank God, not just for the big things, but for the little things and everything in between. And look before crossing the street.
THE BENEDICTION
Jesus changes everything. Here are some examples. Our calendar year is based on the life of Jesus. Hospitals, orphanages, human rights, ethics, democracy, all of these things have been revolutionized by Jesus. Even something as simple as a farewell. When people speaking English say farewell, what do they say? “God be with you.” They don’t even know they’re saying it. About 500 years ago people started saying “goodbye” which was a mashup of “God be with ye”. This was an impact of Christian culture even changing the way we say…goodbye. Jesus changes everything.
This all relates to our Divine Service, down to the very end. The presence of God was invoked, we confessed our sins, and we heard God’s words, “I forgive you all your sins.” We heard the Word, we praised God in prayer and hymns, we even tasted the mercy of God on our lips. We gave God what belongs to Him anyways. He gave us what doesn’t belong to us, mercy, love, peace, forgiveness, eternal life. He gave it because you mean more to God than you know. All of these things come to us in Jesus. In His humility, in His life, in His sacrifice, in His resurrection, in His ascension, in His promise to return, in His Holy Spirit He sends to keep us firm in the One True Faith. Jesus changes everything.
At the end of this service, God serving us, we receive one final gift. It is our goodbye, our holy “God be with ye”. What better words to use than scripture? We end with the Benediction God told Aaron to give the people in the Old Testament
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them, The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. “So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.” (Numbers 6:22-27 ESV)
As we began the service in God’s name, so we end with the Lord Yahweh blessing us in a trinitarian way. After having been changed by Jesus in the service, we are sent back into the world but we’re not sent alone. We have God’s name on us. We have His forgiveness over us. We have His Holy Spirit dwelling in us. We go out in God’s name, in Jesus’ name, because in Jesus changes everything.