Marathon Weekend

Whew!!! Started last evening with Saturday Divine Service. Yes, featured Palm Sunday procession, a Baptism for Chris and Amilia’s little one, Jonas Craig, the full liturgy with the long reading of St. Matthew’s Passion, my sermon on the processional Gospel, and the Sacrament. Pastor served as celebrant last evening because of the Baptism. It was like about an hour and a half service! And near the end of the sermon everyone’s phone or smart watch was squawking out a tornado warning (but it well to our south).

I thought about the Baptism a bit. You know, some Lutherans are troubled by all the ceremonies that cluster around Baptism as though they had an independent worth. The image that came to me was of a huge ROCK splashing down into a pool of water, and how the water splashes out in all directions. And so the Word of God that comes to the water at the very moment of Baptism is like that huge rock, and the splashes are both before and after. It’s not that the various ceremonies are independent of that Word, the rock (if you will), dropped into the pool of water; it’s that they are the result of it! So the signing with the cross, the little exorcism, the renunciations, the confession of the faith, the chrismation, the candle and so on: all confess the gifts that the Word splashing down into the water delivered most assuredly to little Jonas. 

Then this morning, sans Baptism, a rinse and repeat THREE times. I did shorten the sermon a bit after last night, but then there were more people to commune at all the liturgies today, and today I was celebrant for the three Divine Services. Let me tell you, this old man’s voice was dead tired by the time the last liturgy wrapped up. Nothing makes me feel my age quite like the way the voice isn’t happy after the round of services. Part way through the second Sunday liturgy, it’s already like a kid in the backseat asking: “We done yet? Huh? Huh?” Grr. 

Hurried home after late service to a wonderful lunch with the David Weedon family, Opa, Lois, and Cindi. Now I am thinking a nap is shortly in order.