Tag Archives: liturgy

Singing With All the Saints

During the Divine Service you probably hear your pastor say or chant these words: “Therefore with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven we laud and magnify Your glorious name, evermore praising you and saying . . . “  Have the import of those words sunk in?  What follows, the Sanctus, is not just a hymn sung by your congregation, whether large or small.  It is not limited to the churches spread across the globe.  No, it is far more than that.

In They Will See His Face, Richard Eyer discusses the Sanctus as something far more than what we see.

At this point in the Divine Service the curtain separating this life from the next is drawn back and we sing with those who have gone before us the glory of Christ’s victory over sin and death. Here, in the Divine Service, as nowhere else on earth, we are together as one, saints above and saints on earth. Here, more than anywhere else in this life, we are near to those who have died in Christ. No memories or private devotions can rival the reality that all the community of heaven worships with us when we worship together in the Divine Service on a Sunday morning. What better place to find healing and reunion with loved ones than in the gathering of God’s people before the altar? (Eyer quoted in Wieting, The Blessings of Weekly Communion, page 202)

One of the great joys I have as an organist is leading this earthly and heavenly host in song. This is the time in the service when all the stops on our 7-rank pipe organ get pulled out and I would use the zimblestern (if I had one).  Today, on All Saints Day, I hauled out the handbells and had several ringers be the zimblestern.  It is both a humbling and exhilarating experience to lead this host.

The next time your pastor says the Proper Preface and you sing the Sanctus, remember you are being joined by all the heavenly hosts.  I don’t think you’ll ever look at it the same way again.

Elements of Liturgical Style

Most of us have probably heard of The Elements of Style by Strunk and White — those terse commands like “Omit needless words.” Recently I came across Elements of Rite: A Handbook of Liturgical Style by Aidan Kavanagh that had the same directness toward rite and liturgical style as Strunk and White had to writing.

And he is direct. Rule #11 of Elementary Rules of Liturgical Usage – “Churches are not carpeted.”

Dr. Arthur Just presented a paper at the 2008 Good Shepherd Institute – Confident Liturgy: Presiding with Hospitality and Grace that referenced Kavanagh’s “An Approach to Liturgical Style”. While Kavanagh comes from the Roman Catholic tradition and is looking at the role of the presider in the liturgy, I think portions of his list can serve equally well for church musicians.

  1. Place yourself in the background.
  2. Do things naturally.
  3. Know the assembly’s liturgical tradition thoroughly.
  4. Do the liturgy with directness and vigor.
  5. Beware of particularizing the liturgy.
  6. Beware of liturgical fundamentalism.
  7. Do not over-ceremonialize.
  8. Do not affect a loose informality.
  9. Do not explain too much.
  10. Strive for simplicity.
  11. Do not get too relevant.
  12. Learn to live with symbol.
  13. Adapt culture to the liturgy rather than liturgy to culture.

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Heaven on Earth

After Divine Service today, a friend stopped me in the narthex and mentioned that the service was like “heaven on earth”. And so it was—literally. Not because of some “feeling”, but because of what Christ was actually doing. Where Christ is, there is heaven.  Christ coming to us and giving us forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation through the read and preached Word and His body and blood in the Lord’s Supper.

What a blessing it is to be in the Divine Service when heaven meets earth. Literally.

The Liturgical Fruit Basket

“The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of with the least surprises . . . Today it is a liturgical fruit basket upset.” — David Scaer from the Advantage of Liturgical Ruts (Logia 6:2 pg 53-54)

At one time a typical American Lutheran church would be using the Lutheran Hymnal or Service Book and Hymnal depending on which acronym of Lutheranism it was affiliated with.  The worship service each week was familiar (which to some meant repetitious).  The young children learned the liturgy and hymns next to their siblings, from their parents and grandparents.  New members to the church or the Lutheran faith learned from being immersed each week in the Divine Service and catechesis.

Now you have to contend with the likes of traditional, contemporary, blended, emergent, progressive, multi-generational and try to determine what it all means. Liturgical innovation is the name of the game.  As a liturgical Forest Gump might have said, “Worship is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’ll get.”

I find a calmness in the predictability of the Divine Services in Lutheran Service Book.  They all follow the same outline, granted with different musical settings and different texts, and offer opportunities for variety  — elaboration and simplification during the rhythm of the church year.  Some might lament five settings of the Divine Service in LSB, but I tend to like an intentional and planned use of the settings throughout the year.  At first, learning a new service setting or hymn might be challenging, but soon the challenge fades away.  It becomes like breathing — it just happens and is natural.

Ultimately, I think careful and deliberate worship planning comes down to a respect and reverence for the worship patterns that we have as Lutherans.  Not that we “idolize” these forms, but we ask ourselves why we may want to deviate from them.

Just as Dr. Scaer provided the introduction to this blog post, I will also let him end it.

“We don’t notice a good shoe, which is often an old one.” (Logia 6:2 pg 53-54)