Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. (Rom 1)
Who speaks you this morning saying,
“And behold, some people
brought to Him a paralytic, lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith, He
said to the paralytic, ‘Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.’”
In an act of Liturgy, these men from the Gospel reading act
out their new life of Faith in procession and ceremony in their act of bearing
their neighbor on a bed and bringing him to Jesus, the center and focus of all
Church life and rightly the end of the work of these men.
And that is literally what “liturgy” means: “work for the
people” or “public service”. You can almost hear the word “litigate” in there,
as it was mainly used as courtroom language. Still, it is a service done for the
public, thus you already can hear the Christian usage of the word to define
“God’s work for the people”, in other words, the Divine Service.
In ancient Greece, it signified the often expensive,
mandatory offerings that wealthy Greeks made in service to the people, and thus
to the city and the state. Through the
leitourgia, or liturgy, the rich
carried a financial burden in society and were correspondingly rewarded with
honors and prestige. The
leitourgia were assigned by the State and the
Roman Empire, and became obligatory in the course of the 3rd century A.D. Most
of these “offerings” went to the required religious festivals, which were
numerous for the numerous gods.
Eventually, under the
Roman Empire,
those obligations devolved into a competitive and ruinously expensive burden
that was avoided when possible, as taxation usually goes.
Regardless, this “leitourgia”, or liturgy, was then employed
by the Church to teach eternal truths about God. As we have said, the
wealthiest man is God and it is His liturgy in which we live and breathe. For
God’s liturgy is not simply a charitable donation, but a charitable self-donation.
In the beginning was God and only God. Nothing that is made
was not made without Him. All things are from Him and of Him and through Him.
He is not a God Who makes deals, neither is He a God Who can be repaid. No gift
you can give will be accepted by Him. So it is that we say and believe that God
is the Absolute Giver; He always gives.
James 1:17 says,
“Every good gift and every perfect gift
is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no
variation or shadow due to change.”
[Even our church building confesses this. You think the
ceiling going up to one point are all your works and prayers ascending to one
God? No.]
It is the one, true God descending to you, to bring gifts to
you. Therefore He says,
“No one has ascended into heaven except he who
descended from heaven, the Son of Man” (Jn 3:13).
Repent. Liturgy, worship, praise, thanksgiving. These words
have been given to you and their definitions are far from you, in your sin. For
you use these words to define what Church is and yet the way you use these
words leaves Christ completely out of the picture.
Liturgy, if you even use that word anymore, has simply
become another word for worship and of course, what we do for God. When in
fact, the liturgy is God’s movement towards us.
Liturgy is simply the fancy word we give to describe God’s
movement towards and among us and our response to God’s movement among us. And
what is God’s movement among us? Look at your Gospel again. Jesus had to do
three things before the friends of the paralytic even thought of bringing their
needy compatriot to Him.
First, He had to make Himself known. The Gospel says, “came
to His own city”. By this we know two things, not only that God has a home
town, but also that He became a part of the human family in order to do so. In
other words, God was made man on Earth.
Second, Jesus had to move around to those people who could
not be everywhere that He is. He did not just set up one shop in one place and
expect people to flock to Him. He went to where the people were. He travelled
to tell them the Good News that God was living with the people.
And third, when He did set up shop, He did not require a
cover charge or a passport to enter into His presence. Instead of requiring, He
offered forgiveness and salvation to all who came to Him. It was exactly the
reverse of what our sin expected. With the true God, He gives and you receive
and that’s that.
God’s work, or liturgy, is what Christ does for us upon the
cross. Out of His abundance, He makes Himself poor. Out of His eternal
vitality, He suffers and dies. Out of His works, He creates rest. Out of His
movements, His Liturgy, He creates His Church on earth in order to house the
means of salvation for all.
He speaks and the heavens are created (Ps. 33:6). He moves
and the mountains quake and the seas shake (Nahum 1:5). He descends, and the
Spirit of His Glory overshadows His people and they are forgiven.
And so that you know that the Son of Man has authority to
forgive sins and create His divine Service, He raises the dead and forgives
sins. The Liturgy, His Divine Service which you follow every Sunday, may
not have dropped down from heaven in a golden book, but it sure is followed by
heaven, all of creation, and the Church catholic.
When God moves, He can’t help but cause everything he has
created, including you to move. so it is that when He sets up shop to offer
eternal life, salvation, and the forgiveness of sins in your town, you can’t
help but hear, believe, and move yourself.
And what does this movement look like? Exactly like our
Gospel. You are the paralytic who is dragged towards God’s Body Shop, the
Church, by angels, messengers, and those who believe. You are tossed in front
of Jesus, Who has moved from heaven to earth. You are then looked upon with
favor, by the God Who created the universe and elevated to an heir of heaven.
As the paralytic was reminded of his sins that condemn him
in his body, you too are reminded of your sins each time you enter His Church
when you stumble over the Baptismal Font and when you stumble through the
Confession of your sins. In this, you are led by the Holy Spirit to believe
that you are dead in your sins (Eph 2:1), which is worse than being paralyzed.
The Kyrie and Gloria in Excelsis then lead you to recognize the
Lord of all, crucified upon the cross, Who has heard your confession, and
through His man the pastor, announces what He is going to do about it, by
Absolving you, just as He did for the paralytic.
And what happens then? Not a miracle of paralyzed to unparalyzed,
but a perfected work of unsaved to saved. A transfer from the kingdom of
darkness to the kingdom of His dear Son (Col. 1:13). In the Divine Service, the
Divine Liturgy, God is creating faith and saving you.
Here now is the importance to which we hold the Sunday
Service. That it is a dance, a communion with the God who moves among His
people and the Son Who communes to forgive sins. Every movement, every
sentence, every utterance in the Divine Service is done with the explicit
purpose of revealing this reality to you.
The Liturgy becomes that medium by which we come to believe
the plain fact that God sent His only begotten Son, not to condemn the world,
but through Him, redeem the world. If you ever wonder “what Good is the stuff I
do on Sunday morning”, this is it. This is the day that the Lord has made, to
rejoice and be glad in the day that He comes to commune with you in Word and
Sacrament.
So when we contemplate the meaning of God’s movement and our
movement in response, there are two levels of consideration concerning the
Liturgy:
First, the liturgy is the means by which God speaks and does
His saving and sanctifying, being present and accounted for, for His people. In
other words, the liturgy is God’s specific means of presence and operation
within the Church. The liturgy itself was instituted and ordained by Christ
Himself as the means by which God gives Himself for the forgiveness of sins,
life and salvation.
Namely, it is God’s gospel doing and being among us. Of
course, it is the sum and substance of Word and Sacrament, ministered by God
Himself. And because it is so specific, it is so readily identifiable. Meaning,
we know who the Lord is, where He is, and what He is doing. There’s no guess
work: God makes Himself known only through the means of the Spirit.
The second level of consideration is the expression of the
liturgy, in other words our response. These are the rites by which the Lord
delivers Himself and, consequently, all the benefits of receiving Him to His
people.
This includes all that has been handed down by way of the
Lutheran Reformation consisting of the five fixed canticles or Ordinaires, the
Kyrie, Gloria in Excelsis, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei. Also the Propers, the
assigned Scripture texts or lectionary readings of the Bible for the Sundays,
feast days, and seasons, and the sermon. And, of course, the Sacraments of Holy
Baptism, Holy Absolution, and Holy Communion. These rites are the forms by
which the Word and Sacraments are administered and applied to the people of
God. They are the liturgy and are thoroughly laden with biblical meaning,
promise, symbolism and efficacy.
Liturgy: God moves, then we move, as St. John Chrysostom
reminds us:
“Following His Ascension, the Lord sits with his Heavenly
Father in the heavens and at the same time, He is present with the faithful
Christians in the Divine Liturgy… His Presence fills the earth… and the
heavens! Thus, together with Christ, the Christian who is in the Church and
communes is at the same time on earth and in heaven.”
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