In Christ, Pastor David Klak, STS A Message
from the Pastor:
August 2011
Sometimes we do things and we don’t know why we do them.
This is what makes the “joke” of cooking a ham so funny.
In the story, a young woman asks her mom why they have to cut the ends
off the ham before baking it. Mom
replies, “I don’t know. That’s how
grandma did it. Let’s ask grandma.”
They approach grandma, ask her, and she replies, “I don’t know.
That’s how my mother did it.”
So they went to great-grandma and asked her.
“Oh,” she said, “You see, that’s how my mom did.
Her pan was always smaller than the ham, and so we had to cut the ends
off in order for it to fit in the pan.”
We are no different in the church.
We often do things a certain way because that’s the way mom, dad,
grandma, etc. did it. What we often
don’t realize is that many of these practices came about as situational needs,
not permanent solutions. Then, lost
in the transmission and passage of time, is the reason we did it and what the
real intention is. The frequency of
receiving communion is such a situation.
Up until the mid-1800’s, communion was
celebrated every Sunday and festival days in the Lutheran churches.
This was even a practice that began in the first century.
As noted in the book of Acts, the believers “devoted themselves to the
apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and the
prayers.” (Acts 2:42) Also,
early in the first century, Justin Martyr wrote the following description of the
universal practice of the Christian churches :
“And on the day called Sunday,
all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the
memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as
time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally
instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise
together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and
wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and
thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and
there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks
have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons.”
You may notice a couple of things: 1) they gather each Sunday and hear scriptures, a sermon, prayer and celebrate communion (“participation”). 2) Assisting ministers (deacons) take communion each week to those who could not be present. This was in place within 100 years of the birth of the Church as recorded in the book of Acts, and continued, with
modification of
details only in the structure of the liturgy,
through the Reformation and to modern times.
As a matter of fact, in Article XXIV of
The Apology to the
Augsburg Confession
(The explanation of the Augsburg
Confession and second part of the Book of Concord, that is, the foundation
documents of the Lutheran Church), the Reformers wrote: “To begin with,
we must repeat the prefatory statement that we do not abolish the Mass but
religiously keep and defend it.
In our churches Mass is celebrated every Sunday and on
other festivals, when the sacrament is offered to those who wish for it after
they have been examined and absolved.
We keep traditional liturgical forms, such as the order
of lessons, prayers, vestments, etc.”
The Mass, by the way, was the preferred term of the Lutheran churches
until, again, roughly 1800. It
simply refers to a liturgy
with holy communion.
Furthermore, in his
Large Catechism, again a deeper explanation of his
small catechism intended to teach adults, in his section entitled “The Lord’s
Supper,” Martin Luther wrote:
“Therefore,
it is appropriately called the food of the soul since it nourishes and
strengthens the new man.
While it is true that through
Baptism we are first born anew, our human flesh and blood have not lost their
old skin.
There are so many hindrances and
temptations of the devil and the world that we often grow weary and faint, at
times even stumble.
The Lord’s Supper is given as a
daily food and sustenance so that our faith may refresh and strengthen itself
and not weaken in the struggle but grow continually stronger.
For the new life should be one that
continually develops and progresses.”
Now, clearly it is the intention of the
Reformers, and as articulated in our Confessions, that communion is intended to
be
offered at least weekly at the Sunday liturgy.
However, something changed in the American Lutheran scene in the early to
mid-1800’s. Simply put: fewer
pastors were available than the number of congregations sprouting up.
Therefore, pastors needed to cover several congregations.
Now, while not all experienced this, it became the common experience,
especially as new congregations were started from migration
within the U.S.
Thus, the temporary, situational need for less frequent communion, given
the less frequent presence of pastors, passed through a generation and became
“the way we’ve always done it.” In
fact, if one was to look at a non-communion liturgy, the formula of confession,
scripture, sermon, and prayer is exactly the same as a Jewish synagogue service.
The only distinguishing Christian act and characteristic of Christian
worship is the celebration of the Eucharist, and we often leave that out.
Unfortunately, though this was known and
a slow movement has been underway throughout the Lutheran churches to restore
this hallowed and foundational practice of worship, Lutheran denominations as a
whole have been slow in implementing it.
Rev. Ed Peterman, retired ELCA (NALC) pastor
and long-time pastor of Christ the King Lutheran Church and First
Lutheran (both in Houston), wrote concerning this in 2002 (denomination pertains
to ELCA; the NALC percentages are
higher):
“Despite the centuries-long practice of
having communion as the chief service of worship every Sunday and despite the
fact that the Lutheran Confessions assume weekly communion, four out of five
churches in our denomination either play around with scheduling it, or else they
skip it completely on some Sundays.
By so doing, they excommunicate their entire congregation on those Sundays when
communion is not available. Every
now and then I hear of a congregation voting on how often to have communion.
No Lutheran church ever has the right to vote on that any more than it
has the right to vote on whether Jesus was raised from the dead.
If you’re a Lutheran church, then by definition you have communion as
your chief service every Sunday.”
Recently, our practice of communion at
Welcome has been 1st, 3rd, 5th, and festival
services. That left only 10
non-communion services scheduled for the year in 2011.
Given the foundational aspect of weekly communion, and the precious gift
it offers to us whenever we need it, we will move to weekly celebration of
communion beginning in August. There
will be special events and occasions for non-communion liturgies, but the
centrality of our worship as being “centered around word and sacrament” will be
the regular gift of our Lord in
both word and sacrament.
We do not have to receive it every week, but it will be available for us
when we feel the need of this “food of the soul.”
In Christ, Pastor David Klak, STS