The Sunday Assembly

Lorraine S. Brugh, Gordon W. Lathrop

• Publisher: Augsburg Fortress
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781506425108
• eBook ISBN: 9781451478204
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Rituals & Practice

The Sunday Assembly addresses the general principles that have guided the shaping of Evangelical Lutheran Worship, considering that central liturgy of Christian worship, Holy Communion. This text examines how worship interacts with environment, music and the preached word, and features useful and practical suggestions for all those who lead the assembly in worship around word and table.

I

Part One: The Assembly on Sunday: Foundational Reflections

1

Evangelical Lutheran Worship
and the Assembly
on Sunday

Evangelical Lutheran Worship, a book bound in a deep-red color, lies open on the desk. Its contents can be surveyed on page 5. The red tabs on the outside edges of the first third of its pages correspond to sections of worship materials: The Church Year, Holy Communion, Holy Baptism, Lent and the Three Days, Life Passages, Daily Prayer. Where those tabs stop, the Assembly Song begins: first the 150 Psalms, then Service Music, beginning with a Kyrie at #151 and ending with the Great Litany at #238, then Hymns and National Songs, #239–893. The Additional Resources at the end of the book include a Daily Lectionary, notes on Scripture and Worship, the Small Catechism of Martin Luther, and various indexes. The important Introduction and General Notes on pages 6–9 can be read. The Leaders Edition, with yet further expansions, resources, and Notes on the Services, offers support for the congregation’s use of the book itself. The whole complex of materials is ready to be studied, understood, and used.

This book, The Sunday Assembly, is about that deep-red resource as it may come to be employed in your congregation, especially on Sunday, but also at other times when you are gathered. We will explore the contents of Evangelical Lutheran Worship (AE, for assembly/pew edition) and its Leaders Edition (LE), with an accent on the materials for the Holy Communion and for the related Service of the Word. In this volume we seek to engage readers about the ways those services in particular may be used by worshiping communities. This chapter and the three immediately following are introductory. Chapter 2 is about the centrality of the Holy Communion in Lutheran practice. Chapter 3 is about the basic structure of the service. Chapter 4 is about music and the arts in worship. Chapter 5 is about leaders in the assembly. In chapters 6–10 we examine each part of the liturgy, exploring its meanings and its options for actual practice. Additional volumes in this series address such topics as the relationship between Evangelical Lutheran Worship and baptismal life, the church’s year and daily prayer, helps for leading the church’s song, and a variety of reference resources.

But while this book and the series are about the red book, in a larger sense, this book — especially in this chapter — is about the title of the red book. We need to think about worship that is evangelical and Lutheran in the present time. We need to think about how that worship may be taking place regularly in Sunday assemblies. And we need to think about how that worship is not only evangelical and Lutheran but also ecumenical — how it is related to what other Christians around the world are doing, as all of our worship is gathered by the Spirit into God’s mission of life-giving mercy for the world.

Evangelical, Lutheran, Ecumenical

Evangelical Lutheran Worship is intended, in the first place, as a resource for communities of people in North America and the Caribbean to do worship that is both evangelical and Lutheran in this first part of the twenty-first century. Through formal denominational action, Evangelical Lutheran Worship has been “commended for use” in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and “approved for use” and “commended . . . as its primary worship resource” in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada. The book inherits much of the tradition and many of the insights that marked other worship books used before it among those churches and their predecessor bodies — especially The Lutheran Hymnal of 1941, Service Book and Hymnal of 1958, Lutheran Book of Worship of 1978, and the supplementary With One Voice of 1995. It is the result of a widely participatory process of reflection, composition, review, and editing that sought to inquire how those insights and that tradition might best be continued, refreshed, and enlarged now, in the practice of current Lutheran worshiping communities.

But the book intends also to welcome any community that wishes to use it. Its resources are not only evangelical and Lutheran, not confined to the church bodies that span the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean region. They are also ecumenical. By being faithfully Lutheran and evangelical, these resources also offer gifts that are deeply ecumenical and widely global in their resonance. Note that on the book’s spine is a single word: Worship. That is all. Perhaps the book will be picked up by communities in other parts of the world. Perhaps it will assist gatherings that are not specifically called Lutheran. Certainly, it will be used by assemblies — in homes and schools and hospitals, but also in large meetings — that are not formally constituted as congregations. Evangelical Lutheran Worship seeks to be a resource for worship that is evangelical, Lutheran, and ecumenical, offering its assistance to any assembly that is interested in those characteristics.

But what are those characteristics? What is it to be evangelical? Or Lutheran? And what do we mean by ecumenical in this context?

Evangelical, Lutheran, Ecumenical

Worship can be called evangelical when it is centered on the gospel of Jesus Christ — the evangel, the good news of his life-giving death and resurrection — and when it is genuinely interested in continually welcoming people into this gospel. Currently, the word evangelical has a number of connotations throughout the world. American English has especially applied the word to those Christians who are inheritors of the practices of American frontier revivals, with their accent on experiences of emotional response, individual conversion, and individual salvation. “Evangelical” has come to be synonymous with this theological emphasis on personal decision, and even with certain political emphases that have come to be related to this individualism.

Lutherans generally do not use the word in this way. Rather than religious individualism, they mean by evangelical their own deep interest in communities that gather together around the gospel of Jesus Christ — around the gospel-books that tell the story of Jesus, around all the scriptures that bear witness to God’s judgment and mercy, around preaching that speaks God’s gift of forgiveness and life in Christ, and around the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper that proclaim and give this same gospel in visible and tangible ways. For Lutherans, it is the presence of these things that makes worship evangelical, not the quality of our response. Lutherans believe that the Holy Spirit brings people to gather around this gospel-gift, and — by enlivening the word and the sacraments, the “means of grace” — brings them to trust and believe in God again. Lutherans think that the people who gather are thus formed together by the Spirit to embody and give away to others the very gospel that they celebrate. Interestingly, in many other countries throughout the world and in many other languages, the Lutheran churches are usually called not by the name of Martin Luther, but by the word evangelical. For example, in Germany they are the evangelische Kirchen, the evangelical churches — that is, churches that understand themselves to be centered in the gospel, the euaggelion, the evangel.

In any case, for Lutherans, worship is evangelical when —

• it is worship in word and sacrament,
• the gospel of Jesus Christ stands forth in clarity as a gift of God in that word and those sacraments, in preaching and singing, baptizing and forgiving and communing,
• everyone is welcome to this life-giving, faith-making gospel-gift, and
• the assembly is sent to bear witness to this gift in the world.

Evangelical worship, by this understanding, does not so much focus on what we do or decide as on what God has done, is doing, and will do. Evangelical worship knows that all people — young and old, insiders and outsiders, old-timers and newcomers alike — are in need of this gift, this word of forgiveness, this taste of mercy and life, bringing us again and again to faith. Lutherans hope that this gospel in word and sacraments and this open accessibility to all people mark their own gatherings for worship. But they rejoice whenever and wherever accessible, gospel-centered worship in word and sacraments is found. A community does not need to call itself Lutheran to be evangelical.

Evangelical Lutheran Worship intends to help worship be evangelical in exactly this sense. It serves best not simply as a resource for any kind of worship — but for worship that finds its center in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Evangelical Lutheran Worship’s accents on —

• the word and the sacraments as the heart of worship;
• the presence and gift of Jesus Christ in the assembly;
• the need we all have for God’s forgiveness and grace;
• the importance of the preaching of God’s word of law and gospel;
• prayers that reflect the wideness of God’s mercy for the whole world;
• the normal practice of the holy communion every Sunday;
• baptism enacted within the assembly and remembered with thanksgiving;
• accessible, biblically-formed language that embraces all; and
• the sending of the assembly in mission and witness

— are evangelical accents!

Evangelical, Lutheran, Ecumenical

These evangelical accents, however, are also classic Lutheran accents, for all the Lutheran churches understand themselves to be evangelical churches, whether or not that term is in their official title. More may be said about Lutheran worship, however. Lutherans confess that the God they trust and praise is a triune God. They believe that this God has created and continues to sustain all things. They believe that this same God has acted in Jesus Christ to save sinners and justify the ungodly, giving both the word and the sacraments so that the assembly that is called “the church” will be centered in Jesus Christ. And they believe that this same God has sent the Spirit to bring us all to faith through this word and these sacraments and so to bring us to faith-active-in-love, turned toward our neighbor and toward the whole world in its deepest needs.

Furthermore, Lutherans confess that the use of the gift of word and sacrament is what unites the church, rather than the required use of uniformly-practiced human ceremonies, whether new or old. Among Lutherans, pastors are appointed to serve this word and these sacraments in local assemblies. And Lutherans confess that the whole participating assembly — not just the clergy — makes up the church. These articles of Lutheran confession come to expression in worship. A Lutheran service of worship is not at its heart something we intend to do for God, but something we believe that God is doing for us and for the world. Faithful Lutheran worship is thus marked by —

• trinitarian faith;
• trust that God’s gift of the world is good and is to be cared for;
• the knowledge that all of us are sinners but that God has acted in Christ to save us;
• the reliable centrality of the word and sacraments that proclaim these things;
• a diversity of local ceremonial practice;
• a strong willingness to receive the patterns of worship that have been used by the church down through the ages;
• the use of song, richly varied in forms and genres, as one principal way that all the people are invited to participate in the whole service; and thus by
• a participating, singing assembly drawn together by the Spirit of Christ in the word and the sacraments and sent into the world to serve.

The word assembly recurs again and again in the pages of Evangelical Lutheran Worship. This too is a Lutheran accent, though not exclusively. The use of this word rehearses the basic Lutheran confession concerning the church: “It is also taught that at all times there must be and remain one, holy Christian church. It is the assembly of all believers among whom the gospel is purely preached and the sacraments are administered according to the gospel” (Augsburg Confession 7:1).

More deeply, however, this usage recalls biblical language, namely the New Testament word for church — ekklesia, a called-out gathering, a new assembly around Christ like that around the word of God in Deuteronomy 18:16 (“on the day of the assembly”) or Nehemiah 8:2 (“Ezra brought the law before the assembly”). The usage also points to the communally active involvement of everyone who is so gathered and thus points to the remarkable paradox of any gathering for Christian worship: God acts here, but God acts on, in, and under our coming together as an assembly. Just so, the bread that we break is the body of Christ (1 Cor. 10:16), given by God and not by us. Just so, the man Jesus whom we encounter is our God (John 20:28), coming toward us, full of grace and truth.

What is Lutheran worship? It is —

• a local and open assembly of people in need,
• gathered by the Holy Spirit
• to encounter God’s grace in Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen one,
• given by God through word and sacraments,
• so that these people together might signify how much God loves the world,
• might themselves come again to faith in God,
• and might so turn in love and service to their neighbors.

In worship, God gives to us so that we might in turn give to the needy world. This idea is itself a gift, needed in the world.

• Evangelical Lutheran Worship means to be a Lutheran book by —
  inviting us to be an assembly, actively gathered around word and sacraments;
• its very accent on song as a principal means of assembly participation;
• its strong expression of trinitarian faith;
• its invitation to the trust that God acts in the assembly of worship; and by
• its varied options for a local community to use for these central things.

The evangelical and Lutheran character of the book can be seen in yet other ways. The great tradition of Lutheran hymnody forms the backbone of its hymn collection, while the collection is also fleshed out with a diversity of song from around the world. The evangelical and Lutheran accent on baptism as a gift that gives us an identity and constitutes the church recurs again and again in the services, as in the very beginning of the Sunday services. The words at communion — that twice repeated “for you” — echo the assertions of the Small Catechism of Martin Luther (the Catechism itself is included in the book). The evangelical interest in sharing the gospel and the Lutheran interest in the well-being of the world are echoed by the missional accents of Evangelical Lutheran Worship. “Go in peace. Share the good news.” Or “Go in peace. Remember the poor.” These optional dismissals may conclude its Sunday services. And the important guiding reflections on word and sacrament, made by both the Canadian church and the U.S. church and adopted by their churchwide assemblies — the 1991 Statement on Sacramental Practices of the ELCIC and the 1997 statement on The Use of the Means of Grace of the ELCA (both printed in the appendixes of this book) — have functioned to shape much of the contents of the book. The very first words of the introduction in Evangelical Lutheran Worship are drawn from The Use of the Means of Grace (Principle 1):

Jesus Christ is the living and abiding Word of God. By the power of the Spirit, this very Word of God, which is Jesus Christ, is read in the Scriptures, proclaimed in preaching, announced in the forgiveness of sins, eaten and drunk in the Holy Communion, and encountered in the bodily presence of the Christian community.

But there is even more. The Lutheran character of Evangelical Lutheran Worship can also be seen in the many ways the book affirms and extends the worship renewal marked out by Lutheran Book of Worship of 1978. That book came to be known for introducing many important characteristics into North American Lutheran worship, characteristics that built on deep Lutheran conviction and well-grounded Lutheran practice as well as on Lutheran commitment to ecumenical developments. Through Lutheran Book of Worship, a Lutheran version of the ecumenical three-year lectionary spread widely in North American congregations, becoming the practice of the overwhelming majority of them. Lay assisting ministers were given integral worship leadership roles — leading prayer and other appointed parts of the service, reading scripture, ministering communion, animating song. Still other emphases included the strong celebration of baptism and its regular remembrance, the recovery of psalm singing in the Sunday liturgy, the local composition of Sunday intercessions, the importance of the hymn of the day, the use of current English language forms marked by biblical images and by inclusive words for humankind, the use of ecumenically drafted texts for prayers many churches hold in common, notable examples of evangelical prayers of thanksgiving at the table, the use of a dismissal to service at the end of the liturgy, the recovery of the liturgies of Holy Week...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Part One: The Assembly on Sunday: Foundational Reflections
• Part Two: Liturgy for Sunday: Reflections in Detail
• Appendix B: Hymn of the Day
• Appendix C: The Use of the Means of Grace
• Bibliography
• Index