2012 Lent 7: Gathering for Worship

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to worship God and celebrate Holy Communion in three very different settings.

The first, of course, was the regular Sunday gathering of Lutheran Church of the Savior. We instituted some changes to our worship on Sunday in an effort to increase the visibility and experience of some central parts of our gathering. Our Assisting Minister carried our lectionary book - the book from which we read Scripture together - in our opening processional, following the Cross, to demonstrate the centrality of the Word of God to our gathering.

Later, our ushers also carried the elements for communion - bread, wine, grape juice - in our offering procession, along with monetary gifts. The idea here was to recognize that not only our money, but our whole lives and all of creation are part of our offering to God. Grains from the earth and fruit of the vine, fashioned by human labor into bread and wine, all come from God. We offer the first fruits of the earth and of our labors, our time and our money, to God the giver of all good things.


Also Sunday we introduced new liturgical music (much of it from Franz Schubert's Deutsche Messe), as we do for most seasons of the church year, as well as a new psalm tone. We started singing the Psalms one year ago this Sunday, so it seemed a good time to change things up.

Sunday morning worship was great, as usual (and 15 minutes shorter than in recent weeks, which met another goal!), but later I had the opportunity to experience some different ways in which Christians regularly gather for worship.

At 5:00pm I attended the new Emerging worship at our sister church, Sunnyside United Methodist. Filled with guitars and pop music (The Beatles! Bob Marley!) as well as more traditional sounds, this gathering seeks to engage folks interested in Jesus in new and authentic ways. During the sermon I had the opportunity to act out part of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Mine was the violent hand to which my new friend Jerry turned the other cheek. It was an interesting experience of worship, and I hope Sunnyside is successful with this new venture.

I drove straight from Sunnyside to the Wesley Foundation building on the campus of Western Michigan University to attend the regular Sunday evening worship of Lutheran-Episcopal Campus Ministry. An evening prayer service with Holy Communion, this gathering features music from the Taizé community, an important spiritual home for me. I enjoy the intimacy of these gatherings, and the worship leaders include some wonderfully talented WMU music students (actually, that holds true for Sunnyside's worship as well, now that I think of it - what a blessing to work in a university city!) Meditative music in a contemplative setting, this could scarcely have been more different in style than my previous experience.

And yet, of course, all three gatherings were in many ways the same. All three centered on the Word of God and the Sacrament of Holy Communion, shared and celebrated in community. Each featured prayer and song, fellowship with friends and spiritual nurture. Each gathering showed for the presence of God in Jesus Christ, presented differently for differing audiences, the same song of God's love for the world sung in three languages. We gather for worship to express some truth about ourselves and about God, to give thanks for what God has done for us and to witness to the power of God's love in our lives. That I had opportunity to do so three times, with three beloved communities, in a single day in Kalamazoo was a blessing and a gift I will not soon forget.