I was reading the Bible late last evening in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 7.
Jesus had just entered Capernaum. A Roman centurion had a very sick servant, a servant he highly valued. He asked the Jewish elders of the city to go to Jesus and ask him to come and heal his servant. Jesus agreed to go to the centurion's house. As Jesus was making his way to the house, the centurion sent some of his friends to Jesus with this message:
“Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. Therefore I did not presume to come to you. But say the word, and let my servant be healed."
This verse sounded very familiar. Where have I heard it before?
“Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.”
It is the ancient catholic liturgy that I and millions of catholic/orthodox Christians repeat every Sunday before partaking of the Lord's Supper!
How beautiful and rich with meaning is our liturgy!
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Here's a few more gems from the Liturgy:
ReplyDelete"Glory to God in the highest, and peace to His people on earth"
"You alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the Glory of God the Father, Amen."
"Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!Hosanna in the highest!"
"Alleluia, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Alleluia, alleluia!"
Right now, we're using Setting One during our Service of the Sacrament, but I surely do miss the use of it during the Service of the Word as quoted above. I've told my pastor I'd love to hear "This is the Feast" again.
It was good to see Setting One in our LCMS hymnal, and I'm glad they didn't butcher "All Creature of our God and King" as the ELCA has.
I couldn't even THINK about worship that didn't begin with "In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit"! I think my Evangelical mom cringes when I open the table blessing with those words and cross myself. Still, she is enamored that we've left ELCA for LCMS. Matter of fact, her pastor has lunch with my pastor, and our two churches work together in a local charity resale shop.
In all essence, we confessional Lutherans share the exact same Gospel as the Evangelicals. The way that Gospel is appropriated and the understanding of the Sacraments are the principal differences. But my mom's church is EFCA, which has Lutheran roots, and they don't do decisional "altar calls". Rather, they offer free courses about the basics of the Christian faith to those visitors who might be interested, as does our LCMS congregation. And there is a growing segment of EFCA theologians who have become amillennial as we Lutherans are.
Do you know how to tell the difference between an Evangelical and a Fundamentalist? An Evangelical pastor will quote Luther; a fundamentalist would say Luther was just another damned Catholic heretic burning in hell. Now I don't think my pastor is going to baptize my mom's pastor by immersion for ten minutes for being credobaptismal!
Still, in all, I treasure liturgical worship, and ofter find myself singing it in the car!