Worship 101 The "Stuff" in Worship

Pastor Katie explores some of the items used throughout the worship service, explaining some of the origins of the items as well as how they help in St. John's current worship practices. 

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Scripture quotations from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. © Copyright 2011 COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Hello, and welcome to yet another episode of our Worship 101 series of Facets of Faith. Today is a bit of show and tell. If you've been to a Lutheran church like this one where we have a fairly liturgical, formal way of doing things, you might have noticed that there's a lot of stuff that gets involved in worship. However, the stuff, it's not the highlight of worship. The stuff is really just there to help elevate what worship is all about. So worship is all about the gathered assembly, the gathered community of people of faith coming together around water and word, bread and wine. And everything else is extra to kind of help bring our attention to those and help elevate those elements to something that is set apart, something that is holy, so that we can use those elements of everyday life to connect us with the divine. So I mentioned water. We talked about baptism a little bit a couple weeks ago. And baptism is the entrance rite, if you will, into the church. Baptism is when we celebrate the Holy Spirit and the Word of God meeting us in these waters, washing us clean, naming and claiming us as God's beloved children, and all of that stuff. And we do it with water. In the Lutheran church, this water is well, it's tap water. It comes out of the faucet. It is everyday ordinary water. But when it is connected to Jesus' command to baptize, when it is connected to God's word of promise, of life and love, this water becomes more than just water. This water becomes life. Not only physical life, but spiritual life as well. And so we have the baptismal font, and the baptismal font is basically to hold the water. This water is not something that we create. This water is not something that we have manufactured. This water is a gift from God. And we take this ordinary water and we lift it up, and we remember that in this ordinary water, God shows up. And so we have the baptismal font that this church has had for quite literally forever. We also have a big candle, as many people call it, also known as the Paschal candle. We light it during the Easter season, we light it for baptisms and funerals, and this candle helps us remember God's presence in this water. I also have a little thing of oil here, because when we baptize people, we anoint them. This is something you hear about in scriptures, this idea of anointing. And what anointing is, is pouring oil over someone. Now, rather than bathing somebody in oil for practicality speaking's sake, we take a little bit of oil and we mark a sign of the cross on their foreheads, and we say, You have been signed and sealed by the sign of the Holy Cross, and so you are named and claimed a child of God. And so that's kind of the basic elements of baptism. But when we have a baptism, there's more than just the oil, actually. We have a shell. Now, again, this shell, I think this particular one might have come from a store. The point is not where this shell comes from. The point is not that this is a particularly holy and special shell. The point is it's a shell. And this shell is used to pull the water up and to pour it over the person being baptized. And this connects us back to the idea that water is a natural element. It comes from rivers, it comes from oceans, it comes from lakes where you have creatures who live in shells. And so the shell brings us back to the natural element of the water. And we have, like I said, that really big candle when we baptize someone. As we baptize them, we light this little candle and we give them this little candle to take home. So that this light of Christ that we saw in worship they can take home with them and remember their baptism. And you can see there's symbols of the baptism here: the dove for the Holy Spirit, the shell, which we just talked about, the water all coming together in the baptismal font. And then as one last little piece of liturgical art, we have a napkin. Let's be honest, that's what this is. When we baptize someone, we're pouring water over their heads, so out of necess so out of necessity, we wipe them dry. And so we have a little napkin. But to help elevate what this is on it is again a symbol of the dove and the shell to remember that this napkin, even though it is just a piece of cloth, it is something that is special because it is part of a very special moment in the life of a Christian and the life of the church. So we don't have baptisms every single week. We have them as we have people to baptize. But what we do have every single week is communion. And communion is another time when we have lots of ordinary things that get elevated into something special, something holy by bringing God's word in connection with them. And so the elements we gather around in communion is bread and wine, which I don't have here, but you know what wine looks like. And once again, just like with the water, we have these elements that are coming from the earth that are gifts of God. If you think about bread, what is bread? Bread is wheat and rain and sunshine and dirt and soil all coming together to make grain. And then someone takes the grain and mills it into flour, and then you throw this mysterious substance called yeast in there, and next thing you know, you add some heat and you have this delicious piece of bread. And this loaf of bread then brings all of that, all the mystery of plants going from the ground, the mystery of the yeast, and brings it together into what is often a communal piece of food. Because a loaf of bread typically is not eaten by a single person. A loaf of bread is typically shared across the table. And so here at St. John, we use a real loaf of bread that we then break into pieces and share with the whole community. Wine is similar. If you think about it, what is wine? Wine is grapes. And these grapes have grown from the earth with sun and rain and dirt and soil. They have grown into these plants. We have plucked the grapes off of them and mashed them and fermented them, and then we get this beverage that is used for festal celebrations, this drink that is used in party situations and things like that. And that reminds us that at communion, not only is this a communal meal, but this is a celebration. This is a festal meal. And in respect of the times, not everybody feels comfortable drinking wine for various reasons. And so at St. John, we use grape juice too. Because grape juice, it has the same things. It is still grapes that have grown from the earth. It is still a drink that is used to help bring us back to the earth, bring us back to these earthy normal elements that God then uses to connect with God's word and to making something special and divine. So the stuff of communion, right? We have a beautiful fancy plate. That's what it is. It's a plate. But we use a special plate. We use a nice plate. This one is silver. We have one that's brass. We use these special plates because they help remind us that while this loaf of bread, this was bought a giant eagle, this loaf of bread is just normal bread in communion. This is something different. This is Jesus' presence truly among us, truly in this bread. And so we use a special plate to highlight that divine mystery of Jesus' body in this bread. We have a very special pretty chalice. And it's the same thing. It is a cup. But it is like when you have a special holiday meal at your home and you bring out the fine china. This is the special cup that we use to remind ourselves that this wine, this juice, this drink that we gather around, it's not just wine. It's not just grape juice. This is God's presence among us. This is Jesus' blood poured out for us. And so having this special cup with grapes around the edges and all that fancy stuff, this cup helps us remember that it's not just wine. It's not just grape juice. Here at St. John, we don't tend to use the chalice. We use a tray, and this tray has lots of individual cups. To be honest, it's a logistical thing. We use it because it is easy, we don't have to worry about spilling the wine. People can just take a cup of grape juice or wine as their preference holds. But again, it's in a very pretty container because it helps us remember that this is a community meal, but it's a community meal that is holy and set apart for God's purpose. Now you might have noticed that I've got kind of linens everywhere. This is specifically called a purificator. Long story short, it's a napkin. Again, it's given special symbols, it is decorated in a way that makes it special. But that way, if we were a church that used a chalice, we could wipe the chalice off if someone drinks from it, we can catch drips if we pour from it. It has a practical purpose. But again, it's special. It's different. And then before we bring all this to the table, it is covered in what is called a veil, because it veils everything, it covers everything. And so it gets just draped over because that reminds us that as we are gathering and preparing for worship, this stuff is set apart. This stuff is different. And then when we prepare to receive it, we uncover it, we bless the elements, we invoke the presence of the Holy Spirit, and we call God into these elements and we invite God, we remember God's presence in these elements. And then when we're done, we put the dishes away and we cover them with the veil again. If I'm being honest, there's a practical purpose to this too. Back in the day, there would be flies in church because they would have all the windows open. And so they cover things that the flies wouldn't land on things. But just because something has a practical purpose to begin with, just because it has a logistical point to it, doesn't mean that it can't also be special and holy and elevate us into remembering that this meal is God's presence among us. This meal is Jesus' body and blood given for us for the forgiveness of sin. This meal is for us as God's holy people, set apart for the purpose of God. So this stuff. It's not about the stuff. I could serve communion with a plastic cup and a bounty paper towel, and it would still be holy and special, and God's presence would still be among us. But as we stand in this space, this stuff, this special stuff, helps us remember what's happening in this meal. Now, as you know, there's other things in worship that come with us, right? So this is the offering plate. And it people make fun of churches passing offering plates, you know, collecting money and whatever. But this offering plate is special, it's it's made fancy to remind us that we are bringing our whole selves to God. We are celebrating the gifts that God has given us, and we are using those gifts, we are stewarding and managing those gifts in a way to continue the mission and ministry of Christ in this world. So sometimes those gifts are money, but sometimes it's ourselves too, our times and our talents. And so for that purpose, we collect people's names in here. When you come to church, you write your name on a piece of paper and you put it in this plate so that we can remember that we put our whole selves, we return our whole selves to God, what God has first given us ourselves, our time, and our possessions. Signs of God's gracious love. We also have a few things that just have uh a periphery part of worship. We see them, but we don't really do a lot with them. For instance, we have candles. Um, and people always want to know what's with the candles. Remember, the church is an ancient, ancient institution. The church predates electricity. And so the candles on the altar space, they were because the the priest or the pastor had to read. And reading in a dimly lit space is hard, especially if you're getting older. So they have candles right here to brighten the space up so you can read better. That's the practical purpose. Now, as we've said with everything else, there's a practical purpose, and then there's a reason that this elevates our worship above and beyond. These candles help us remember the light of Christ, which is a phrase that gets used frequently in scripture. But the light that God brings into this world, this these candles remind us of that light, that Christ's presence is here among us. And so because of that, some churches ritualize lighting and extinguishing them. Some churches light them, and then when they go to extinguish them, they relight something and carry the light out with them, things like that. Fine and good. These are all things that help us remember that Christ's presence is with us, among us, and carries us out into the world. If your church doesn't do that, that's fine and good too. The point of these symbols and these things is not to get in the way of the way that we celebrate the love of Christ. These symbols are to help us and to enrich our connection with the divine during worship. Similarly, you might have seen flowers or plants or something like that in worship. We have these lovely things. Uh these are flower pots. They're brass because that matches everything else and it highlights it, it lists it as special, it reminds us that these are not just flowers, but these are reminders of God's good creation and the beautiful brilliance of flowers and nature that God has made, and we bring all of that into our worship space with us so that we don't worship separate from creation, but in the midst of creation. So flowers, again, just like everything else. If you have them, they can be a beautiful, wonderful addition, a beautiful, wonderful reminder of what is happening here. But if you don't, that's okay too. One last location that happens during worship. Um this is I'm gonna throw a lot of words at you for a second here. This is technically an ambo, although many people might call it a pulpit. Long story short, in years past there has been a lectern and a pulpit, and the pulpit would be where you would read the gospel and where the pastor or priest would preach from or deliver their sermon, and the lectern was used for other readings. For various reasons, some theological, some practical. A lot of churches have gone to having just one place where the word is proclaimed from, and ambo it gets used for that because ambo is related to the word for both. And so this is where we proclaim God's word from. And to help us with that, we have a a book. It is actually just called the lectionary, because all it has in it are the readings for each of the Sundays of the year. And if you remember from last week, there are three lectionary years, A, B, and C. This is the lectionary for year A, and we just flip the pages through. Now you might see some folks reading from a binder or a packet or something like that, and that's because there are different translations of the Bible. This is one translation, we often use a different translation, and so rather than going through the expense of buying a whole bunch of brand new books, we interchange them as we can. You can see it's covered with the pyramid from last week, the green from the ordinary time, and we have a microphone because it's important that people hear the word of God, and people are reading from this. It is lay people, it is people from the congregation who are proclaiming the word. We read the prayers of the people from up here, but that's largely from logistics. At St. John, this is the only microphone we have that's not on my head, and so therefore, for anyone to hear things well, we need a microphone. And so, for that purpose, anything that is read for the good of the community by someone other than me is read from here. There's a lot of stuff that goes into worship, a lot of things to keep track of, a lot of symbols, a lot of special items that get treated with high regard and high respect. But at the end of the day, every single thing, every single item is here to celebrate and lift up the way that we are gathered around water and word, bread and wine. The way that we, as the gathered assembly of the community of faith, are gathered in the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the three in one.