The Divine Service 03 - the Service of the Word

We've looked at some of the ups and downs of the divine service.  I realize looking at my calendar that it's been a long time since I posted here.  Time to move ourselves the rest of the way through the service of the Word of God.   We have seen our Lord speaking to us in a call to repentance.  We have responded with repentance and prayer.  Our Lord has spoken again through the pastor proclaiming absolution.  We then pray the Lord will have mercy on this world as we pray for a variety of issues.  We sing to proclaim God's glory.  We pray, committing ourselves to our Lord.  Now it's time to hear from the Lord in Scripture and a sermon.

The readings are from a schedule which is used year after year.  The same place on the Church calendar will have the same readings, chosen to reflect what is happening in the Church year.  You can generally assume if you walk into any sort of a Lutheran church you will hear the readings from Scripture which you would expect for that Sunday.  Sometimes we may doubt the wisdom of a plan like this.  It does mean that the pastor will not exercise as much choice in selection of Scripture passages and sermon topics as you might find in Evangelicalism.  But then again it means the pastor will be walked through the Scripture in a systematic manner and will not have opportunity to camp out on one topic or chapter of Scripture for ages.  We hear the appointed Scripture and we briefly return thanks to God.  Then the pastor will preach a sermon.

In Lutheran circles the sermon is built on a framework of Law and Gospel.  The Law, of course, is that which God has said we need to do.  The Gospel is that which God has done for us.  We find both Law and Gospel in both the Old Testament and the New Testament.  If we think about it briefly we see that we are unable to keep the Law.  We can do some of the things of the Law in part, but we cannot do them with our whole heart all the time.  So God convicts us of sin through the Law and then he shows us that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and has proclaimed us free from the Law by faith in Christ.  This is the Gospel.  A sermon needs both Law and Gospel.  If we confuse the two, if we present the Law as our friend that makes us able to live an abundant life, or if we present the Gospel as something we should do, we will lay an impossible burden on all our hearers.  We want to keep the two distinct and present them each clearly in all their power.  This, not the eloquence of the preacher, is where we see powerful preaching.

As the service of the Word comes to a close, the congregation normally proclaims one of the historic creeds of the Church - most congregations proclaim the Apostles' Creed on most Sundays but the longer Nicene Creed one Sunday a month.  We are speaking back to God the confession of our faith which affirms we believe what the Lord has just told us through the sermon.  We then bring our prayers before the Lord, trusting in the power of the Gospel.

So what have we seen in the shape of our service?  The service started with God's promises of forgiveness, our confession, and God's decree of forgiveness.  We respond with our proclamation of God's glory, then we receive communication from God to man through Scripture and a sermon.  We respond by confessing the Creed and praying the Lord will meet our needs.  The service started with God speaking and has continued with us responding and God speaking some more, back and forth.

In my next installment I'll take us through the final part of the divine service, the Sacrament of Communion.  We'll continue looking at this divine call and human response to the call.

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Dave Spotts
blogging at http://capnsaltyslongvoyage.blogspot.com and http://alex-kirk.blogspot.com