Lutheran Worship - Gathering
Pastor Mathew Magera – 2/28/16 – Sermon 147
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from God our
Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It's Sunday morning. Another
week has finished. It may have been a long week. It may have gone by quicker
than you ever thought possible. You may have had new experiences this week. It
may have been a week within your normal routine. You may have laughed, cried,
or yelled. You may have comforted another person, introduced yourself to
someone new. You may have been sick. You may have been in the best shape of
your life. You may have had negative thoughts toward another person. You may
have honored another person for an achievement. You may have gone to bed angry.
You may have gotten the best sleep ever. You may have been worried. You may
have been at peace. Whether you find yourself in this list or not, you woke up
each day and went to bed each night which led to the sun coming up yet again as
it always does on Sunday morning.
My pastor once shared this
with me and I think you're going to like it. There is something special about
Sunday morning for each one of you as well as those who are not here
worshipping this morning. Every Sunday morning the Holy Spirit descends upon
your house. It's still early and everyone is still asleep. It descends upon
your house and enters through your front door, careful not to make a sound. The
Holy Spirit makes its way, ever so quietly, through the house and toward your
bedroom. Go ahead and picture that right now. The Holy Spirit enters your
bedroom and sees you in bed sleeping. It carefully moves throughout the room
and over to your bed. It leans in over you so peacefully and gently right up to
your ear. And in the most smooth and calming voice it whispers to you, "GO
TO CHURCH!" I told you that you'd like it.
Everything is different
today, you get to go to church. It's Sunday morning and it's time to take
whatever you have done last week, the encounters you had, the words you said,
the deeds you've done and it's time to put them all aside and go to church.
Everything is different now. The moment you walk into this place whether you've
done so for years or whether it's your first time you immediately recognize
that everything is different. There is something unique about being here but
what is it exactly?
Transitioning from living
out in the world to being in here for worship is such a drastic change that it
takes us awhile to get used to it. If you've ever been in a dark room and
walked outside into the sunlight, it takes your eyes awhile to adjust to the
light. Whenever I go to the eye doctor, they dilate my pupils and once they do
that it is just about impossible for me to go outside and hold my eyes open.
The last time I went, I think I had to stop at Meijer on the way home. It was a
very cloudy day. I'm walking in the parking lot toward the store with my
sunglasses on and my hand shielding my eyes. I felt like a vampire... it's too
bright, it's too bright and people around me a looking at me probably thinking,
"boy he doesn't get out much does he?" It takes the eyes awhile to
adjust to bright light and it takes us awhile to adjust to our worship.
Everything is different in here and we come in and we're not quite ready. But
the opening parts of our worship, the gathering, is not immediately about
shining a flashlight in your eyes, it's about adjustment. The gathering portion
of our worhsip is about getting us ready to hear God's Word to us. It sets the
mood and it aligns our focus. From the ringing of the bell to the prayer of the
day the gathering echoes three themes: Repentance, Confession, and Forgiveness
The Gathering
- Repentance
The gathering portion of our
worship is a process that starts with repentance, that turning around from our
worldly desires and walking the other direction. In fact, repentance can start
as early as your alarm clock going off on Sunday morning. If you have every
intention about coming to worship, the moment you make that effort to be here
shows signs of repentance.
When everyone is here and
ready there is always something that signals that worship is about to begin.
Sometimes, there might be an opening dialogue. Other times, worship will begin
with a processional hymn. For us, our signal that worship is about to begin is
the ringing of the bell outside. Not only is that bell a sign to the community
that worship is beginning but sometimes that bell can penetrate right into our
very hearts. Aside from the bell ringing, it's silent in here. The bell,
ringing, calling us to God's presence, calling us from the everyday world into
a glimpse of the heavenly life. It's reminding us we're in the presence of God
and it begins to encourage us to turn from our sin and place our eyes on God.
On festive occasions like
Christmas and Easter we'll have a procession. We had one at my ordination
service as well. We'd sing a hymn while the leaders of the service would walk
in. There might be a banner. You'll see the acolyte bringing in the flame. If
we had a processional cross, that would lead the procession. The opening hymn,
itself, will not be a very deep or slow hymn. Typically the opening hymn will
be very celebratory and welcoming. There should be a lot of fanfare with the opening
hymn. You might even find images of coming together. The general purpose of the
procession and the opening hymn is to turn our eyes from the outside world and
onto Christ.
You may have been to a
church at one point where people would face the cross as it was being brought
in. Some people may even bow as it passes right by their pew. This is not
worshipping the cross as some might think. Rather, what is being done when you
follow the cross with your eyes and body is you showing reverence to Christ who
died on that cross for the forgiveness of sin. It is also the physical turning
around that the word repentance actually means. While following the cross was
not meant primarily to symbolize the turning of reptentance, we can see it when
we do turn. We are setting our eyes on nothing else but the sacrifice of Christ
on the cross. We finish the opening hymn facing the front, facing the cross,
completely turned around and prepared to move into the next portion of the
gathering process, confession, as we hear the words spoken "In the name of
the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." These words confirm
who it is we are worshipping. We're not worshipping the cross, or the altar, or
the outside world, we are worshipping our triune God, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit and we are turned around and ready to confess.
The Gathering
- Confession
When we think of confession
we might automatically think purely of confessing our sins. If we were
Catholic, we would be thinking about that one-on-one time with the priest. Yes,
the next part of our worship, and rightly at the beginning of the service, is
the confession of sins but we also make confession of the condition of our
world as we seek God's mercy in this and every place in the kyrie prayer, kyrie
meaning Lord, have mercy. With the limited time that we have I want to focus
just on the confession of sin. It always begins in the name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and I make the sign of the cross. Now, before
we go any further I should let you know that as a Lutheran it is okay to cross
yourself. Some people do. Some people don't. It's not something that says to me
that you're Roman Catholic. The sign of the cross is a reminder of the blessing
of who you are. When I give you the sign of the cross during the confession I
am reminding you that you have been claimed by Christ by his death on the
cross. You know you'll see people with bumper stickers on their car or t-shirts
that declare who they are, a Christian, yet will be absolutely terrified to
make the sign of the cross. Oh, I'm not Catholic. The sign of the cross isn't
Catholic, it's Christian. It's okay to make the sign of the cross for someone
else and it is okay to give yourself the sign of the cross as well. It's
reminding us who we are as baptized believers in Christ, again aiming to center
us and prepare us for the worship we are beginning.
So, we even use words
directly from the Bible in our confession. That's what I like about it. It's
biblical. 1 John 1:8-9, "if we say we have no sin..." It's true and
it's right from the Bible. Then we kneel. This is another topic that people
aren't so sure about. Kneeling is weird. Why do we do it? It's all in the theme
of confession. As repentant sinners we confess everything that is deep down
inside us. We're very vulnerable when we express something bad we've done. You
know the feeling. Kneeling, in a way, emphasizes that vulnerability because
when you're kneeling, you're not going to go anywhere very fast and your center
of gravity causes you to be unstable. It wouldn't take much for someone to push
you on the shoulder and cause a domino effect down your pew. We're vulnerable
when we kneel just as we are vulnerable in confessing to God our deepest
secrets and sins. It's part of that confession. Repentance requires us to turn
around. Confession requires us to become vulnerable. It's uncomfortable.
Earlier this week, we were
having dinner and we were just starting to say our dinner prayer when Skye
interrupted and said she wanted to do a different prayer. She described it as
the one we say at church when we are kneeling. Now, she had been out with me
doing visits and I often use that prayer when giving Communion to our shut-ins.
So, here we are at the table, about to eat our dinner, and I start off...
"Most merciful God... We confess that we are in bondage to sin..." It
was the first time I think I ever used that prayer as a dinner prayer. It felt
strange and uncomfortable.
So as 1 John says, if we
confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins. So, once
we are finished with our confession, we continue preparing for worship in our
gathering with forgiveness.
The Gathering
- Forgiveness
The idea of forgiveness
comes across throughout the entire worship service but in particular to the
gathering, we find it in the absolution and in the hymn of praise. The
absolution is the part when I say, "Almighty God, in his mercy, has given
his Son to die for us and forgives us all our sins." In essence, it's the
part where forgiveness is announced for those who are truly repentant of their
sin. Later, except during Lent, we sing the hymn of praise which can either be
the Glory to God or This is the Feast. Both of these canticles express the joy
of the victory of Christ over sin and death, which is the foundation of the
forgiveness of our sin.
This is a great way to
prepare us to hear the Word of God that comes up next in our worship. We have
forgiveness, we are relieved of our iniquities, a giant load has been taken off
our shoulders and we are ready for what the Lord has for us today. The
absolution that I use is actually based on 1 Peter 2:9 but later editions of
the absolution have omitted the part of it that include words from the actual
verse itself. The absolution found on page 194 includes those words if you ever
care to look for them. Basically they refer to us as being brought out of the
world's darkness and into the splendor of God's light. We have been lifted out
of our sin. We didn't climb out on our own, we can't do that, but God has
lifted us out of the mud and washed our sin away. Now that we have turned from
our sin, confessed our sin and received the forgiveness for those sins, we have
breathed a sigh of relief and are ready to move into the next portion of our
worship.
This forgiveness is
referenced again, like I said, in the hymn of praise. Since we use This is the
Feast, I'll use that one. First of all, we are celebrating the victory of
Christ over death. This idea of a victory feast comes from references to Jewish
feasts and holidays that were actually centered around eating. The victory
feast of Christ therefore, is seen in the same fashion. When we are here in
worship, we are experiencing a foretaste of the feast to come. That's the
victory feast. It is mentioned in the book of Revelation where we also get the
imagery of Jesus as the Lamb of God. The feast imagery here is this way probably
also because of the people it was proclaimed to. The Gospel was brought to the
sick and the poor, the outcasts, those who wouldn't always have access to good
food or be invited to banquets. The idea of the victory of Christ mentioned as
a banquet tells those people that where the world rejected you, Christ has
invited you in. He says that to us today too. We still use feast imagery, but
whether or not it is an actual feast with food and drink, we think of the term
feast as meaning something that we are lacking in the world, something that the
world doesn't provide for us. Christ is saying, I am offering to you what the
world cannot offer and I am offering it to you freely. We do partake in the
victory feast of God in our worship. The food is the Word of God and the body
and blood of Christ himself in Holy Communion. Now the food has been prepared,
the banquet is ready, we are now ready to eat it up. We're hungry for the Word.
We're hungry for Jesus. Let's have at it.
God's forgiveness is given to us freely, let's partake of that forgiveness
and let it be the best thing we've ever tasted.
* * *
So, we have repentance,
confession and forgiveness that lead us into the hearing of His Word. We have
come from the outside influences of the world into something completely
different. We've been called here by the Holy Spirit and we've turned ourselves
to face God and worship him. We truly are called into this place. If you are
here it is because the Holy Spirit has called you here and you answered that
call. Someone may have invited you, yes. Or it may be the only church in town,
yes. But, God calls us in many different ways. He speaks to us through our
surroundings and through other people. He has called you here because he has
something to offer you just as he has something to offer the rest of the
community who is not in worship today. What God has to offer us is truly better
than anything the world can provide and God provides it for us. So, when you
wake up on Sunday morning, whether it is the alarm clock going off, or whether
it is the Holy Spirit "whispering" in your ear, go to go to church. Be
changed by God. Live into the life that we are offered freely in Christ, turn
from sin and embrace Christ who gives to us eternal life and listen to Him. To
God be the glory now and always. Amen.