The Art of Worship

As I continue to offer reflections on the practices of our faith for our considerations this Lenten season, I am reminded of the musings of Danish Lutheran philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was living in the in the early decades of the Enlightenment, where anything “supernatural” was to be rejected because it was not rational. At the same time, he experienced the worship of his Lutheran church, to which he felt called to ministry, as being pristine in its content and execution. It was filled with the music of Bach and performed by the finest vocalists and instrumentalists. But he found it lifeless. Not because it was performed unenthusiastically, but primarily because it was performed by the wrong people. Kierkegaard claimed that the people went to worship to passively receive. The scriptures are clear, we are to come to worship prepared to offer our gifts in concert with others as a corporate act of worship to God (1 Corinthians 14:26).

A Lenten Journey

I mentioned last week how seasons of faith are connected to the story of salvation in the scriptures, primarily the story of Jesus’ ministry, death and resurrection, the ascension of the Son, and the descent of the Holy Spirit. I also suggested that an image for Lent is a journey with Jesus on the way to Jerusalem, as he taught his followers more clearly what it means to follow as a disciple.

Time and Season

What time is it? If you are asking for the time of day, it depends on your time zone. If you are asking what day or season it is, it depends on what calendar you are referencing. If you are using the “typical” calendar, you will be reading this on Friday, February 17. But if you were using the sports calendar this would be the Friday after the Super Bowl and the end of the first week of spring training for pitchers and catchers. If you are using the church calendar, this would be the last Friday in Epiphany, two days before Transfiguration Sunday, and four days before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. All of these answers are correct, each in their own frame of reference.

State of First Covenant

I caught a bit of President Biden’s State of the Union speech before a meeting Tuesday night. President Biden was so positive and optimistic. My first response was admittedly cynical—the re-election campaign has begun! But upon further reflection, I thought that in a season when it is easy to be negative and cynical, it doesn’t hurt to be positive. Especially if there are legitimate reasons to be positive about present successes and optimistic about future prospects. So with such an attitude I offer some observations.

What time is it?

Yesterday was the last day of Christmas; or, at least, it used to be. Mary and Joseph, following the Law, presented their first-born male son, Jesus to the Lord’s service the fortieth day after his birth (Luke 2:22-40). The fortieth day after Christmas is called “Candlemas” or more descriptively the “Presentation of Jesus in the Temple.” This story was the last of Luke’s nativity stories, and celebrating it marked the end of the Christmas season or Christmastide. In many countries in the past, the Christmas holiday extended through all these 40 days, especially Sweden where people often had time off during Christmastide. Thinking this was a bit too generous the Swedes moved the end of the Christmas to the Feast of Knut, January 13, cutting the Christmas season in half.

Today was my first full day at the annual meeting of our Covenant Ministerium, affectionately known as “Midwinter.” For the almost four decades I have attended them, they have always been in late January or early February, hence its name. But from decade to decade, President to President, year to year they have different purposes, programs, and personalities. I thought I would reflect on my first day at this year’s Midwinter.

To begin with, today was a day of many types of meetings. I met with a staff member of Serve Globally to get an update on the Tangs.

Who gets what?

If you have been online or watching television lately, you have probably seen some of the efforts of the “He Gets Us” campaign. This is being funded by The Signatry, a Kansas based nonprofit organization that is spending upwards of $100 million to rehabilitate Jesus’ image in the broader culture. It hopes to offer alternatives to an ‘increasingly divisive and mean-spirited world’ as stated on their website. It seeks to connect Jesus with the variety of experiences of people—all sorts of people—in our world today. It seeks to emphasize the humanity of Jesus as an expression of the compassion of God in Christ. It also hopes to give Christians a foothold for conversations with their neighbors that they might not otherwise have.

Covenant Considerations in a New Year

As we begin a new calendar year, I would like to look back on the past year, specifically in terms of our denomination, our Covenant Church. In two weeks, I will be in Jacksonville, Florida for our Ministerial Midwinter Conference. One of the topics of discussion among my ministerial colleagues will be the decision announced by the Covenant’s Executive Board in October to involuntarily remove two churches from our denomination. Those churches are Awaken Church in St. Paul, Minnesota and Quest Church in our hometown, Seattle. This will come before our Annual Meeting in Garden Grove, California in late June.

Epiphany

Epiphany is a funny word, and a holy day (holiday) and season that sometimes escapes our grasp. To get a handle on it, let’s look at the word Christmas. Christmas comes from two words “Christ” or “Christ’s” and “Mass.” Christmas refers to the Mass (or worship service) offered to celebrate God’s gift of Jesus as God’s anointed one, or Messiah (Hebrew), or Christ (Greek).

Ending a Year

This is the last newsletter of the year. In the middle of this year, the name of the newsletter, and just about everything else about it, was changed, as was our church’s website. It was a year of many births (up to six, depending how you count), and appropriately, a renovated nursery. But this is just two of the new and renewed things that we as a church experienced this past year. But our year, with all its ups, had its share of downs. One of which was the tragic loss of a daughter by two of our missionaries, James and Rachel Tang.

Don't Let the Light Go Out!

In keeping with the tradition of trimming the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, I offer some late-Advent reflections strung together like popcorn and cranberries on a string.

It is almost Christmas. We held our last worship service in Advent this past Sunday. Christmas is almost upon us—and this may be good news for some, and not so good news for others. However much you want Christmas to come soon, or are praying for one more day before Christmas comes, I pray you find time to reflect and enjoy the promise of God’s light and love becoming flesh in Christ. In a hectic and sometimes abrupt holiday season, Christmas offers the promise of peace on earth and good will to all people.

Transitioning from Advent to Christmas

This Sunday is the fourth and last Sunday of Advent. The Sunday after this one is Christmas Day. Advent was originally a penitential season of preparation. In part it was preparation for a “High Holy Day,” in part because some people in Advent, as in Lent, were preparing for baptism. In the Western (Protestant and Catholic) churches, the day for Baptism was primarily Easter. In the Eastern (Orthodox) churches, the principal day for baptism is their Christmas (January 6) or the Sunday after, which celebrates the baptism of Jesus. Our Orthodox friends in Russia and Ukraine still baptize by immersion on those days. It makes baptism in Puget Sound look balmy by comparison!

Remembering: The Return of Old Friends

When our children were young we tried to have family devotions regularly on weeknights. We had songs we would sing, a Children’s Bible we would read from, and prayers we would pray. Each night we would begin by lighting a candle and extinguish it when we were done, with our children waiting anxiously for their turn to tend the candle. Except in Advent and Christmas, which were different in special ways. From Advent through the end of Christmas we had a six-sided tower with doors on each side to be opened like any Advent calendar. Behind the doors were “stained-glass” windows illumined by the battery-operated candle inside the tower. There were big doors on the bottom for each Sunday, and smaller doors for each weekday, with each side being one week. In each window was often a “saint,” or sometimes an event, with a Bible verse for that day on the back side of the door. We had an Advent wreath with its 5 candles to light along with special Advent and Christmas songs to sing. And our Advent/Christmas tower went all the way though Christmastide, starting on November 30 and ending on the Sunday after January 6. 

Conditions, Traditions, and Transitions: Stream of conscience ramblings in the first week of Advent

Last Wednesday some of you contributed to a worship service that I would describe as being heartfelt and inspiring gratitude. You offered your voices to songs, prayers and personal reflections. Those who attended in person had the opportunity after the service to practice eating pumpkin pie before you ate the “official” pie the next day. I cannot speak to what those who attended virtually did. If you did not attend this service in any mode, it is not too late. I encourage you to view the recording of the service. I believe you will consider it an hour well spent.

New Dawn, New Year, Coming Promise

As I write this, the rain and grey has returned to the Emerald City. What a contrast to last week, with its cool, crisp sunny days…and its unforgettable sunrises.

I confess I am a morning person. I love the quiet of the predawn dark. It is such a pregnant time of the day, filled with possibility and potential. It is also a time when much of our continent has already been awake and productive, giving me incentive to start catching up. After I have been up for a bit, doing some morning tasks, I will walk out to the end of our drive and get that morning’s paper. When I am returning and getting near our front door, on a clear day, I can look right and see Mount Rainier. Last week I saw some of the most beautiful views of Mount Rainier I have ever seen. The air was so clear it made Rainier appear so much closer than typical. And the early morning rays of the just-dawning sun wrapped themselves orange around that still sleeping volcano, like a glowing, warm hug.

Thanksgiving, Mission, and Stewardship

When I have been asked what I believe is the central theme of the Christian faith, I more often than not answer that it is stewardship, for two reasons. First, everything we have is a gift, it is grace. A steward is a person who cares for other people or other people’s things. We are stewards of the life God afforded us and all that we encounter while living, for it is all God’s and we are simply managing it. Second, having been given a gift, it raises the question of what we will do with what we have been given. This determines what sort of steward we are. The range of answers to that question is wide. Do you acknowledge that what we have is, in fact, from outside ourselves? Do we consider ourselves worthy, or having earned, our life and all that it offers us? Do we care about how our choices affect others? The scriptures begin with God declaring creation good and entrusting responsibility for creation, including other people, to people. This is a theme that runs from the beginning to end of the Bible. Stewardship cannot be avoided either in the scriptures or in the life of a Christian.

In last Sunday’s epistle lesson we read these three verses.

“In (Christ) you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.… And (God) has put all things under (Christ’s) feet and has made (Christ) the head over all things for the church, which is (Christ’s) body, the fullness of God who fills all in all.” Ephesians 1:13, 22-23

A week ago tomorrow (Saturday), will be one week since I tested positive for COVID. Susan had become ill on Tuesday and tested positive on Wednesday. Susan by far had the worst case: more severe symptoms and they lasted longer. We are both on the mend and we thank you for all your expressions of support and offers of help, even as we apologize for not responding to you all individually. We are not unique, unfortunately, in having COVID in our church family. We pray for all of those who are enduring this virus as I write this, some with mild cases, some with severe, but hopefully all soon behind us.

I had mentioned in one of my earlier writings, that northern Europe in its pre-Christian era had seen the darkening days of November as a season when the light of the life and the darkness of death intermingled into the grey of Autumn. In this season, they believed, that the separation between the living and the dead became thin, allowing communication between the living and the dead. Today early, pre-Christian practices are can still be found in some places where the dead are remembered and communicated to. It is in response to this tradition that the Christian church in the West instituted All Saints’ Day, All Souls’ Day, and November as a month of remembering the dead.

This cultural approach was, and is, quite common in the ministries of Christian missionaries. Those bringing the gospel to a new people would find a theme in their culture and connect it to a theme of the gospel, in this case the resurrection of the dead and the communion of saints to these autumnal festivals of the dead.

This week’s cool temperatures seem more like October in the best ways. When I was a boy the cooler temperatures, the autumn palette of colors that carpeted the hills and valleys in my homeland all pointed not only the end of summer and first gasp of Fall, it ushered in a whole new rhythm of life. It was high school football on Friday nights, JiffyPop popcorn and watching television with family, the World Series and intramural crab soccer games after school, and anxiously awaiting the Holy Grail of gift dreaming, the Sears “Christmas Wishbook.”

It wasn’t all pleasant however. Sometimes it meant disagreeing with your parents about whether you needed to wear a snowsuit under your Halloween costume — “but no one else is going to wear a snow suit under their costume.” Oftentimes it meant being warmer than your friends while trouncing through the snow on Halloween, and feeling glad you were, but never admitting it to Mom and Dad.