Dear friends,
December
28 is the day on the church calendar when we remember the Holy Innocents, the
children of Bethlehem killed by King Herod. I was reflecting that morning on
the tragedy in South Asia, the earthquake and tsunami whose death toll is
likely to be over 100,000. In addition to those killed, millions have been
displaced.
Making sense of the world is never an easy
task, but some situations seem utterly hopeless.
And yet . . . of course
"hopeless" is precisely what it is not. The questions about the ways
of God are not new with our generation, though we are conceited enough to think
so. People struggled with the slaughter in Bethlehem in Luther's time, and
Luther's response was to fall back on the mystery of God's ways:
And
that night in Bethlehem, the mother’s gave soup to their children and tucked
them in bed and heard their prayers, and in the morning there was not a house
in Bethlehem where one or two children had
been slain. And there was
weeping--'Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted.' Oh why did God let that happen? I’m not so sorry for the children because
they were taken straight to heaven as holy martyrs. But their fathers and their mothers! They didn’t understand that if God let his son escape, it was
because his hour had not yet come. For
to this end came he into the world, that he might lay down his life to save his
people from their sins.
His hour had not yet come, and yet even in
the midst of the Christmas feast there is a shadow of what is to come, a shadow
and a promise:
He will like us shed bitter tears,
Will know our needs, yet still our fears
And send his Spirit's power.
He will reveal his Father's will,
Our cup of woe with mercy fill
To sweeten sorrow's hour.
Struggling, suffering,
He by dying, dearly buying
Our salvation,
Opens wide the gates of heaven.
Reflecting on those words, the horror is
still present, but also the promise. And, of course, the hope.
May the God of hope fill your new year
with gratitude and grace.
Peace to you,
Pastor Richard O. Johnson
Classic Prayers
O Thou who art the protector of my soul
and my refuge in the day of misfortune, overshadow me with Thy defending
shoulders in every temptation and compass me with the shield of truth. Do Thou
Thyself be with me in my tribulation; O Thou who art my hope, defend and
protect me constantly from all dangers both of body and soul. Come then, and
after this exile show me Thyself, who art my dearest salvation. Amen.
St.
Gertrude
(13th
C. German mystic)
Liturgy
Notes: Renewing Worship
Currently the Evangelical Lutheran Church
in America is in the midst of a program called "Renewing Worship."
The result of this may be a new hymnal sometime in the next few years, though
that is not yet firmly decided. (Generally in the United States hymnals have
had a "shelf life" of about 25 years; the Lutheran Book of Worship is
now 27 years old.)
There are many components to this new
process. One is the proposal of some new musical settings to the liturgy. We
have been trying some of these new compositions in church since the beginning
of Advent, and we will soon give you an opportunity to give some feedback as to
how you like them. Many congregations are taking part in this "experiment"
as one step in the Renewing Worship process.
Perhaps less evident are some other
proposed changes in the liturgy—prayers, for example, a few of which we have
also incorporated into worship in the past few weeks. Renewing Worship has also
published a book of new hymns, and we’ve introduced a few of these over the
past months.
There is something of a tension among
Lutherans about worship. Some place high value on the liturgy, seeing it as a
strong witness to our faith and a kind of protection against the various fads
and fickleness of "what’s happening now." Others see the liturgy as
stifling and unresponsive to present reality, and so prefer a much more
"free form" and "contemporary" style.
Probably most Lutherans are somewhere in
the middle. Lutherans have always been a liturgical people, who find great
richness and depth in the traditions of the church. On the other hand,
Lutherans have always been willing to adapt those traditions to the needs of
particular times and places.
The approach taken by the Lutheran Book of
Worship in 1978, and the approach which is still generally being followed by
Renewing Worship, is to provide options. There is a liturgical core, a general
pattern of how we worship; but there is variety of musical style, variety of
some of the specific texts used, and lots of opportunity for fitting the
liturgy to the gifts and needs of a particular situation.
This is one reason why many churches have
moved to a "fully printed out liturgy" on Sunday morning. It enables
and facilitates greater variety, as we can incorporate hymns, prayers, and
other acts of worship which are not contained in the pages of whatever hymnal
or liturgical book we may happen to own. It also greatly facilitates the
worship experience for visitors who are not familiar with the Lutheran Book of
Worship. (It also runs the risk, of course, of the pastors and other worship
planners going off on some tangent and doing something really flaky!)
There is a wonderful saying of Jesus in Matthew 13.52: "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old." That’s the key to "renewing worship"—preserving and loving "what is old" while enriching and expanding it with "what is new." That’s how we try to do liturgy here at Peace.