It never ceases to amaze me...

Well, you'd think that I had said all that I have to say about churches and their Communion Tables.  And yet...

Yesterday was World Communion Sunday.  When I entered the sanctuary of the church I have been attending, the Table (at least it was on the platform, centered between a pulpit and a lectern) had a world map propped up across its front and small placards on the top, each bearing the name of one of the globe's continents.  I guess geopolitical notation must have something to do with World Communion Sunday, but for the life of me, I don't know what that might be.

Do you know what the perfect, the ultimate symbol for World Communion Sunday might be?  It is a bare table with the Body and Blood of Christ occupying its surface all by themselves.  Anything else takes away from the significance of the day.  A table with the elements reposing on it is free of distraction, devoid of indecipherable symbols and totally lacking in paraphernalia that needs interpretation in order to be comprehended.  What's the Table for?  Communion.  Where is it situated?  in a church.  For whom is the church and its sacraments intended?  The Body of Christ -- all of the children of God.  How does one enhance the significance of such?  It can't be done.

Bad worship symbolism is somewhere between confusion and heresy.  It's no wonder that United Methodists (yes, this table was in a UMC sanctuary) have so much trouble with their identity or with establishing what it means to be a part of the UMC in the twenty-first century.  

I believe that a lot of the Table-related "stuff" I have discussed recently is a result of poor thinking -- or no thinking.  We get back to the "appointments" versus "decorations" controversy.  I would have hoped we were past that by now.  

I'll be honest with you, a Communion Table with a placard on it that says "Antarctica" befuddles the life out of me, World Communion Sunday or no.  

I just don't get it.

The peace of the Lord be with you.

Ash Wednesday

 

Today is Ash Wednesday.  It is the beginning of the liturgical season of Lent.  The day gets its name from the historic Christian practice of retaining the palm branches that adorned the church sanctuary on the previous year’s Palm Sunday.  In making ready for Ash Wednesday the church burns the palms and then the priest/pastor applies the ashes in the shape of a cross to the foreheads of those who worship on that day.  Wearing ashes is a traditional sign of penitence. 

In the Bible persons frequently wore ashes as expressions of grief or penitence (2 Samuel 13, Job 42, Jeremiah 6, Daniel 9, Hebrews 9, Matthew 11 and Luke 10 among others). 

When Christian worshipers receive the imposition of ashes in worship, the presider usually says some form of Genesis 3:19, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."  The presider will often conclude with, “Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

Because the date of Ash Wednesday depends on the timing of Easter, this observance moves around the calendar a bit.  It can fall anywhere between February 4 and March 10.

Ash Wednesday marks the commencement of the season of Lent.  These are the forty days immediately preceding Easter (excluding Sundays, which are reflections of Easter Day itself and are therefore inappropriate occasions for denial). 

Some folks erroneously teach that Lent is an extended period of “getting ready for Easter.”  Lawrence Hull Stookey reminds us that

Lent, until its final week, is a time of disciplined consideration of our life and death as transformed by our covenant with God and is closely related to the administration and reaffirmation of baptism at Easter.¹

This season is a kettle that sits on its own bottom.  It is related to – but independent of – our observance of Easter.

The liturgical color for the day (and season) is purple.  This is a solemn hue that represents penitence in the lives of Christians.

The liturgy for the day includes confession and absolution in preparation for the imposition of ashes.  Psalm 51 is a traditional expression of confession and many churches use this as part of their ritual for the day.

^{1 Lzwrence Hull Stookey, Calendar: Christ's Time for the Church}

^{(Nashville: Abingdon, 1996).}

Of Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs

 

 I had a conversation with a pastor friend the other day in which my friend spoke of a couple in her congregation that had ceased to attend worship in that church.  Upon contact they told the pastor that they were attending another church, and that the reason was that this other group sang “the old songs” in worship.

My discussion with this pastor speculated on some of the possible reasons why these folks had chosen an alternative to their long-time fellowship.  One is as likely as the other, and we’ll never know for sure.  But for the moment I am going to take this couple at their w

 At first glance it seems a small thing.  How many songs/hymns does the average congregation sing in a weekly worship service?  Three?  Four?  Factor in an anthem, maybe a choral introit, a prelude, a postlude and an offertory and the musical opportunities do begin to stack up.  But truth be known, I don’t think I have ever heard anyone say, “Well I just got tired of the constant new music during the offering and I decided to go somewhere else!”  So, what is at issue is three, maybe four singing events per week.

It is easy to dismiss such a small percentage of all the goings-on in worship.  But in many worship orders the singing is one of the few opportunities for congregational participation that Sunday morning offers.  Some churches may include a unison Affirmation of Faith.  Many pray The Lord’s Prayer together.  We ask the folks in the pew to put money in the plate when we take up the Offering.  But a given congregation may not do all these things every week.  Other participatory acts may be infrequent at best.

So, hymn-singing is one of only a handful of non-passive elements in many of our churches.  If the few chances for people to join in are made up of the unfamiliar or the uncomfortable, it is a fair criticism to say, “I am more comfortable somewhere else.”  This would be especially true, I think, in a setting where the change in music had been abrupt.

Music often touches the heart in a way that prose cannot.  I am not speaking of mere “feel good” moments.  Music is evocative.  It can transport us to times and places from which we are far removed.  I remarked in a sermon recently that people can think of times when they have buried loved ones more than fifty years ago.  They can’t quote a single verse of scripture from that day, nor do they remember any word that was spoken.  But often they recollect every piece of music that was played or sung. 

Church music is one of those “all things to all people” topics.  It is difficult to include A Mighty Fortress is our God and Bringing in the Sheaves in the same service.  But in a time of fragile balance, most of the churches of which I am aware could benefit from being more intentional in their consideration of their music.

I hope my friend’s folks come back.

A Bible reading with some size

In a previous post, I observed that we are currently involved in the Revised Common Lectionary’s (RCL) Cycle B.  This year’s Gospel lessons come primarily from the Book of Mark.  But, in the month of August, the RCL directs us instead to the Gospel of John.  Again as I pointed out earlier, the Fourth Evangelist has no yearly cycle of his own.  Instead, the Lectionary scatters selections from John throughout the three-year rotation.  When it does so the RCL tends to employ the John readings over several consecutive Sundays.  The Lectionary avoids having isolated readings from John appear from time-to-time.  Instead, these larger blocks of material give the church an opportunity to consider a larger sweep of ideas over several weeks’ time.

 The format of the RCL is to give the church suggestions for manageable selections of scripture for consideration in Sunday worship.  While there are exceptions, the Gospel lessons don’t usually run more than about twenty verses per week.  When we consider the Fourth Gospel, we find that it resists this carving up into segments.  Chapter six moves around the Sea of Galilee geographically.  But, as a narrative, it is one long piece that requires our consideration. 

The entirety of the chapter is seventy-one verses in length.  That alone makes it prohibitive as a single reading.  (Besides everything else, “Let us stand for the reading of the Gospel,” would be met with more than a little grumbling over a lesson of this magnitude.)  Chapter six is not one long miracle story or parable.  It begins with the feeding of the five thousand and the narrative of Jesus walking on water.  Following these stories there are a series of questions to which Jesus offers replies.  These responses provide a kind of commentary on the opening action.  These reflections take up the remainder of the chapter.

The basics of bread
As we move from week to week, we find an ongoing theme throughout the chapter. That is the appearance of bread. Jesus multiplies the fish and bread in order to feed five thousand men, in addition to any family members they may have brought along. Jesus spends no little time talking about the importance of physical nourishment. We need “our daily bread.”

Bread as the Word of God
But Jesus’ observations do not end there. He goes on to make a transition in referencing bread not only as a staple of our diet, but he also refers to bread that nourishes beyond the meal table. He speaks of “the bread of life” as being the teaching of God. God’s instruction preserves our spirits in the same way that table bread preserves our bodies. Jesus is a master of taking well-recognized objects and using them to teach truths about the Kingdom of God. At various places in John’s Gospel. Jesus talks of birth, water, bread, vines, sheep, shepherds, and gates to help you and me comprehend something of the nature of God’s Kingdom. So, when Jesus moves his conversation from the bread that we make with our own hands to the bread that comes down from heaven he challenges us to use our understanding of the former to incorporate the truths of the latter into our spirituality.

Bread as the Body of Christ
That would be a good lesson in and of itself. John could have shut the teaching down there and we would have an enormous truth to ponder.  But Jesus does not leave things there.  He re-interprets “bread” yet again.  This time he gives it a Eucharistic understanding.  “Eucharistic” or “Eucharist” refers to Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper, or whatever title you may use to describe the Sacrament of the Table.  There is no account of the institution of the Lord’s Supper in John’s Upper Room story.  Jesus washes the disciples’ feet.  He identifies Judas as his betrayer – if only obliquely.  He predicts Peter’s three-fold denial.  He offers a long farewell discourse before praying his high priestly prayer.  But words about bread and wine and “Do this in remembrance of me” are nowhere to be found. 

 That’s because Jesus has already done it.  He has done it in chapter six.  While much of the Jewish community has made its way to Jerusalem to observe the Passover, in this chapter Jesus is in Galilee, and there he offers his own meal to the people.  Look at the language: Jesus took the food, blessed the food, gave the food.  This is Communion language.  Even if it does not appear in the context of the Upper Room, the language is the same: 

“In the night in which he was betrayed

Jesus took bread,

and when he had given thanks,

he broke it,

gave it to his disciples,

and said ‘Take, eat. 

This is my body which is given for you. 

Do this in remembrance of me.’

Likewise, after supper

he took the cup,

 and when he had given thanks

he gave it to his disciples,

saying, ‘this is my blood of the New Covenant,

poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. 

Do this as often as you drink it

in remembrance of me.’ ”

 

The last portion of chapter six interprets bread, which Jesus has already cast in terms of physical nourishment and the Word of God, as the Eucharistic body of Jesus. 

 This all happens pretty fast.  True, the chapter is over seventy verses in length.  But looking at where the discussion of bread started and then contemplating where it ended, that is a lot of ground covered pretty quickly. 

 Jesus’ teaching does not receive universal acceptance.  In fact, talk of eating Jesus’ body prompts a large number of people to withdraw from Jesus.  Jesus is OK with that.  He has drawn a bold line in the sand and understands that just everybody is not ready to cross over to his side.

 Even though we take five weeks to move from the feeding of the multitude to the desertion of the crowds there is plenty to digest on the way (no pun intended…).  I fear that often our consideration of the Bible takes the form of single verses or even fragments of scripture.  While there are certain nuggets of truth that are worthy of our study, it is more often the case that we require a knowledge of what has gone before and what comes after – the context – before we can achieve any real comprehension of scriptural teaching.  John six is a text with some size.  It has length and breadth.  It has layers of meaning.  Even in a month we will not discover all the layers of meaning that this chapter holds.  But we can give it our all.  The word of God deserves nothing less.

“It ain’t over ‘til it’s over” – Yogi Berra

In the time of 2020 and early 2021, the world in general and our neck of the woods in particular went through an extraordinarily trying stretch. It was the time of The Pandemic, the coming of Covid-19, or as many simply term it, Covid. I myself frequently refer to those days as “The Time When the Sky Fell.” We went through a season of an absence of in-person worship, when we substituted Virtual Worship for our gatherings. There were no Fellowship Dinners, no before-church coffee, and no real-live committee meetings – did we ever think we would yearn for the opportunity to assemble for a Finance Committee or Church Council meeting?

Then, as we eased back into “In-Person Worship,” we wore masks, had pews in the sanctuary roped off, participated in abbreviated services, washed our hands a lot, and observed other safety protocols. We made do because this was the only way we could come together. The masks weren’t comfortable. We didn’t always get to sit in our customary pew. But we were back together.

Then, around the end of June, after some fifteen months of these precautions, we were able to lift the most stringent of rules and we began to resume church activities as they once stood.

I would LOVE to tell you that this is all a history lesson, and that we have put all this in our rear-view mirror. I would love to say that to you. But I can’t.

Here’s the story: the newer, more virulent, more resistant “Delta Variant” is now the predominant strain of the virus in the United States, accounting for 83% of the cases in this country as of this writing. And, AND, there is a new mutation called the Lambda Variant. Early studies suggest that it is more transmissible than the original strain of the coronavirus.

Where the rubber hits the road locally is that the most recent statistics show that Hardin County has a 19.5% positivity rate for those tested for the virus. At the height of the pandemic closings officials considered anything above 5% to be quite risky. In the last 14 days, our county has averaged 14 new cases per day (as opposed to half that one week ago). In the face of this, only 34% of our fellow Hardin County residents have had at least one dose of the vaccine. I have been fully vaccinated since the shot became available and I encourage you to talk to your doctor about the vaccine.

All of this is to say that we haven’t heard the last of Covid-19. And, we have not come to the point of dismissing the necessity of precautions in our worshiping community. Shared air supply and close proximity to infected or exposed persons can increase our personal risks because of the airborne transmissibility of this virus.

Plainly speaking, the numbers are going the wrong way. Our leadership will be keeping a finger on the pulse of all this and will make plans appropriately. I hope that you will continue to be careful. I also encourage you to support the decisions of our officers as they make every effort to keep our church families safe.

The peace of the Lord be with you.

Do you follow the lectionary?

These days. one of the questions that comes along when there is a pastoral change is, “Do you follow the lectionary?” The curiosity behind this comes from several concerns. Worship planners and musicians are curious because they want to do planning and embracing of lectionary texts makes it possible to look well ahead in designing the worship experience for a congregation. Sunday School teachers and other small group leaders want to know if they will be able to tie in their lesson or programming material to those things that the church addresses in Sunday worship. Sometimes office people want to know about lectionary usage because they are looking for graphics and other material that they can use in bulletins, newsletters, and church publicity pieces. If a pastor commits to using the lectionary, people with a variety of tasks can look well ahead in gathering resources for their particular concerns.

What is a lectionary?
When the church speaks of “the lectionary,” it is generally referring to The Revised Common Lectionary (RCL). That is the resource that comes to mind, and it is the default meaning when we employ the simple term “lectionary.) But, since so many of our church endeavors refer to the lectionary in one way or another, let’s try to come to a little clarity.

A “lection” (pronounced /ˈlekSHən/) is a scripture reading chosen or assigned for a particular day. So, a lectionary is a table or listing of designated readings from the Bible for a specified period of time. The lectionary usually includes readings for an entire year, but compilers may create certain lists for a particular season such as Advent or Lent. The use of lectionaries is as old as the church itself. In fact, Judaism (as well as other faiths) have used lectionaries for their worship or devotional readings prior to the emergence of Christianity.

A Christian lectionary typically offers a reading from the Old Testament, a Psalm for the day, a reading from the Epistles and a gospel reading for each Sunday of the year. In addition, the lectionary may include lessons for observations that fall on days other than Sunday. Most lectionaries have readings for Ash Wednesday, the days of Holy Week and Ascension Day, for instance. There are denominations in which their own lectionary readings are requirements, while in others – such as the United Methodist Church – the use of these readings is voluntary.

In 1944 The Methodist Church issued The Book of Worship (The Methodist Publishing House, 1944) which included a on-year "Calendar and Lectionary for the Christian Year."  This listed two lessons for each Sunday and special day.  The first came from either the Old Testament or the Epistles, with the second reading being from the gospels.  The 1965 Methodist Book of Worship for Church and Home (Nashville: the Methodist Publishing House, 1965) included a one-year lectionary that contained Old Testament and Gospel readings for each Sunday and special day of the year.

In 1969, in accordance with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church published the document named Ordo Lectionum Missae, a three-year lectionary. This greatly influenced the release in 1974 of a document entitled “A Common Lectionary” by the ecumenical group the Consultation on Church Union. In 1993 the Consultation on Common texts formally issued a new version of the Common Lectionary. Prior to the official distribution of that publication The United Methodist Church included its own adaptation of the RCL in its new Book of Worship (Nashville: the United Methodist publishing House, 1992). The United Methodist version omits readings from The Apocrypha that some denominational include in their sequences. The United Methodist version also modified some texts for the sake of continuity or clarity.

How is a lectionary structured?
The RCL is set up in a three-year cycle of readings. It designates the individual years in the rotation as Years A, B, and C. The years begin in Advent. We are currently in Year B, so the readings for most of 2021 began their progression in Advent of 2020. Year C gets underway on November 28 of 2021 and moves through most of 2022. The next Years B start in Advent of 2024, 2027 and 2030.

For each Sunday and “special day” there is an Old Testament Reading, a Psalter Reading, an Epistle Reading, and a Gospel Reading. In Year A the Old Testament Readings come primarily from the primordial stories concerning the Creation and moving through the Abraham and Isaac readings. The RCL offer a reading from the Psalms as a comment on the first lesson. The Epistle readings run semi-continuously through a portion of the New Testament, but the books that it considers are not sequential. That is to say that a series of readings from Romans will not be followed by selections from First Corinthians. The Gospel readings for Year A come mostly from the Book of Matthew. The Old Testament lessons from Year B concentrate on the David and Solomon narratives. The Gospel for Year B is Mark. In Year C the Old Testament moves through the Elijah/Elisha record, and the Gospel for that year is Luke. The lectionary makes use of the Gospel of John in all three years of the cycle, particularly in the Christmas Season and in Lent.

Even over a three-year period, the RCL omits significant portions of the Bible. To include all of scripture would necessitate either significantly longer lections for each day, or the lectionary would have to run considerably longer than three years. That is why The United Methodist Church designates the readings as “suggested” rather than “mandatory.”

Why use a lectionary?
The advantages to using the RCL are several. First, it offers preachers and worship planners a tool for doing long-range planning, perhaps even over the course of the entire three years. The lectionary provides a methodical way of moving through the Bible instead of a random selection of readings for a given Sunday. The RCL provides a way for multiple planners and leaders to interact while considering the same material. Preachers, liturgists, musicians, and those who work with visuals can be about their work without constant meetings and repetitive communication.

The use of the RCL also compels preachers and others to deal with material that they might not ordinarily consider. I know that I have observed to some people that, left to my own devices and desires, I might well preach 45 Sundays of the year on the Sermon on the Mount. The complex parables or hard sayings of Jesus would be easy to overlook without the encouragement of something like the Revised Common Lectionary.

There is also a spiritual strength in knowing that sister congregations are considering the same texts on Sunday morning as we ourselves study. Then when we meet members of other lectionary-employing churches later in the week, the conversation might well turn to last Sunday’s worship, and our friends might say something like, “You know, we read the exact same thing in our congregation, and here’s what our preacher said…” The RCL allows Sunday School teachers and other group leaders to look ahead, knowing that their lessons can be connected to what will go on in the sanctuary on a given day.

So, those are some of the reasons why I embrace “the lectionary.” Let me be quick to say that it is not a perfect tool, and I diverge from time to time (though I try to let our music people know about those instances in advance). The lectionary is a marvelous tool. But I would day that it is always a servant of our worship, never our master. There are times in the life of a church or community when events and lectionary readings just don’t intersect. Part of the pastoral task is to determine when the use of the lectionary is appropriate and when overriding concerns dictate an alternative.

I would be happy to talk about these things if I have left any stone unturned.

 Peace.

_______________

Our scripture reading for Sunday, August 15 is John 6:35, 41-51.