A silly word for it, perhaps. But that's how I find it: the Divine Service. It's satisfying. I walk away from the Divine Service with a full tummy - spiritually speaking. I mean, the joy of confessing our sins and receiving the holy absolution; of singing the praises of the Blessed Trinity with angel hosts and in words of the Psalms (and today even in the words of Ecclesiasticus!) and hymns - some from long ago and some from not so long ago; of hearing as God speaks to us in His Word; of offering to Him our tithes and thank offerings and above all, our intercessions; of bowing with angels and archangels before the Blessed One who comes to us in the name of the Lord, bringing salvation, the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world; of feasting together as one family with those beloved saints in our congregation and all Christians throughout the world and the saints who have gone before us; of receiving His blessing and being sent forth as witnesses to our Lord and the miracle of His Church - truly a haven of peace in a troubled world.
When folks can no longer get to Church who have made the Divine Service their life-long habit, the sorrow of missing this gathering is palpable. They long for it, ache for it. They are among those who were "glad when they said, 'Let us go up to the house of the Lord'" (today's Introit).
"Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it!" says the Lord in Psalm 81. As we open our mouths to confess our sins, to declare His praise, to receive the Savior's body and blood, He does indeed fill our mouths with good things beyond all our imagining or deserving. "Bless the Lord, O my soul... who satisfies you with good, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's!" (Ps. 103)
P.S. The truly odd thing is that thoroughly satisfied, it rouses a hunger for more.
14 comments:
I would like to feel that way too. Unfortunately, I have not seen anything like what is pictured in either of the two synods two which I have belonged, ever.
Terry,
I grieve that you would find it so. Surely SOMEWHERE in Omaha there is a LUTHERAN Church offering the Divine Service???
http://www.vineandbranchesconference.org/pages/Welcome.html
Notice what the topic is for the first speaker.
Best Regards,
Rev. Olson
Jon,
Sweet!
There's a whole bunch of them offering the Divine Service, but since we've got five now and two lectionaries and calendars, none that I know of offering the third DS and the traditional lectionary and calendar.
DSI is the new "common service". The RCL lectionary and calendar is all I have ever seen.
I know of no ad orientam altars.
Our Saviour's in Pipestone MN uses the LSB One Year Lectionary, DS III, and worships ad orientem!
(going in a completely different direction from previous comments) - I had the privilege yesterday of bringing the blessings of the sanctuary to the world at the Nursing Home chapel service to ease the sorrow of those who long to go to the House of the Lord.
May the Lord preserve me from my bad days when I think of that service only in terms of it getting in the way of me relaxing on a Sunday afternoon at home.
Does the Word of God cease being the Word of God because it is being read from the three year lectionary and not from the one year lectionary? Are God's gifts of forgiveness of sin, eternal life, and salvation in Christ less present in Word and Sacrament because a congregation is using a liturgical order of service other than the Common Service? That seems to be what certain comments I've read on this blog are implying.
Pastor Yount,
Not this pastor at any rate. Although I prefer historic lectionary & common service, I certainly don't regard either as problematic.
The Word of God remains the Word of God if I sit at home and read it too and not participate in any order of worship. The Eucharist remains the Eucharist anywhere it is rightly celebrated, not just LCMS.
But I go to LCMS for reason, and I no longer go where I once went for a reason. And the reason is, to be most fully in the line of the BOC, and not in the line of those who created an entirely new ordo and lectionary in the 1960s since jumped on by all the other heterodox churches, with revisions here and there, to be in line with those who retain the ceremonies previously in use, pruning by the light of what contradicts the Gospel, rather than the line of those who create new ceremonies based on "scholarship" and some other agenda such as recreating a supposedly more pure patristic or whatever past.
I knew some of the guys who put to-gether the original "new order". Their agenda isn't even Catholic, let alone Lutheran.
I humbly ask forgiveness for the rather beligerent tone of my previous comment. Sometimes I take things too personally. I inferred that some folks were implying that I was being somewhat less than a faithful confessional Lutheran pastor by using Divine Service Setting One and the three-year lectionary in my congregation, and so I got defensive.
For the record, I've gotten to appreciate the Commnon Service more than when I was younger, and I had my flock using it all the way through the Sundays after Pentecost (except for the fourth or fifth Sundays of the month when we used Matins) before I had to go on disability leave. I was also thinking about suggesting a switch to the one year series, but that will have to wait until, Lord willing, I return to the ministry when my disability ends.
Hope you are mending, Pr. Yount. I was so sorry to hear about the disability leave.
I really do recommend the One Year - not that it is without its annoyances, but there is something wonderful about digging ever deeper into those texts each year and screwing them down into the people's hearts and minds.
Thanks for your kind words, Pr. Weedon. I am blessed to report that I am feeling much better - better than I have felt in years. I wish that this improvement had come about before it became necessary for me to go on leave, but our heavenly Father has His reasons for allowing it to play out this way, and since He has freely given salvation in His Son, I know I can entrust my future into His hands (Jer. 29:11; Rom. 8:31-32).
My prayers are with Cindi's mother and with you, Cindi, and the rest of your family in this time.
In light of the fact that many of our churches are dispensing with the liturgy altogether in the name of "outreach", I find it bizarre that certain Lutherans would complain about things like using the "wrong" Divine Service setting or the "wrong" lectionary. My church currently uses DS I and II and we use the three-year lectionary and I find it to be just as "spiritually satisfying" as Pr. Weedon finds his service to be. Maybe it's because the liturgy is so relatively new to me, I don't know. Reading Terry's comments was kind of like a poor person who has lived on nothing but garbage all their life watching a rich person complain about their filet mignon.
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