ENTERING INTO HEAVENLY WORSHIP-8

Summer Series “Come In The Unity of Thanks—Holy Eucharist”

A House of Prayer

Rev. Kevin L. Baker

 

The other day, I was looking through some old our Daily Bread’s and found this story about being thankful that I found fitting for those of us who live in western New York:

Scottish minister Alexander Whyte was known for his uplifting prayers in the pulpit. He always found something for which to be grateful. One Sunday morning the weather was so gloomy that one church member thought to himself, "Certainly the preacher won't think of anything for which to thank the Lord on a wretched day like this." Much to his surprise, however, Whyte began by praying, "We thank Thee, O God, that it is not always like this."

Introduction

 

·         Today, we are winding down on our study about entering into heavenly worship.  We have basically been answering the question, “Why do we worship the way we do in comparison to other churches?

·         What we have been discovering is the way we worship goes all the way back to Jesus and the Apostles; who built their worship on  the same framework as the saints of the old covenant who built their worship on the heavenly pattern revealed by God to Moses.

·         The Eucharist falls into two main sections - The Liturgy of the Word and Liturgy of the Sacrament. The dividing line is the Peace—which is where we left off last week. So, we continue with what comes next..

 

 

THE OFFERTORY

 

 18 Then Melchizedek king of Salem [d] brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, 19 and he blessed Abram, saying,  "Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator [e] of heaven and earth. 20 And blessed be [f] God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand."  Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.   –Genesis 14

 

·         The next part of our journey to the Kingdom, the Table of the Lord, is our offering. From days of old beginning with Adam, Eve, Seth, Cain, and Abel, and then especially seen in Abraham and Melchizedek, the pattern has been set that offerings are to be made to the Lord that give him our lives, and in return he gives us his life in the communion.

·         The offering is our highest giving of thanks to God in symbols of things that represent our lives—a tenth of our money, food, drink—to say to God I surrender my life to you. I give you thanks for creating and saving me. I am eternally grateful and am your bond slave for life. 

·         Everything is yours Lord and I lay it at your feet. We bring you our tithes and offerings, our special thanksgivings, the bread and wine--the priest then lifts them up on our behalf and hands them to God who blesses them and gives them back to us renamed and changed.

·         As we grow as a church, we will add a formal procession of the gifts.  Right up till recently, the people brought the bread and wine for worship and presented it to God.  Today, churches buy it—but still an offering we give to God. 

·         Like Jesus taking the loaves and fish at the miracle of the feeding of the 5000, the gifts we bring to God are lifted up to him as we hear once again about the night Jesus was betrayed, as we hear about his passion on the cross and give God thanks (eucharist) and worship.

·         As we re-enact and retell the Passion, God takes the gifts of bread, wine, and money and blesses them, renames them—bread is body, wine is blood, and money is set apart for holy uses.

·         What we give to Him, He changes as it is given to him—what was common is now holy, and they come back to us as blessed means of God renewing in us the grace of the New Covenant. 

·         Prior to or while the offerings being gathered, the Deacon sets the Table for the Feast. The Celebrant puts on a chasuble, a garment that symbolizes the new robe of the Resurrected Christ and we begin entering the highest and most holy part of our worship.                                                                                  

THE DOXOLOGY

 

·         While the offering is being taken up, I am giving God thanks for the gifts, blessing his name for giving us the bread, the wine, and lifting up the offerings of your life as represented in your money to God—read from book.

·         An old preacher I know always said the real testimony of a Christian is the test of money. 

·         As we give our offering, God loves a cheerful giver!  As we sing praises that glorify God, this doxology is a recognition of our dependence upon the Almighty. It is an expression of thanksgiving in song to God who provides abundantly for His own - all things are from God.

·         Again, censing may be done by the Celebrant as the Altar, the gifts and the givers are blessed with the incense, a symbol of purifying and cleansing.

·         The Celebrant washes his hands, symbolic of the final steps of cleansing before handling the sacrament, a recognition and the awareness of our need of Jesus and His purification.             

 

THE GREAT THANKSGIVING

         

1After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, "Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this." 2At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it. 3And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne. 4Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on them were twenty-four elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads. 5From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder. Before the throne, seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits[a] of God. 6Also before the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal.  In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back. 7The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle. 8Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings. Day and night they never stop saying: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come." 9Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever, 10the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say:  11"You are worthy, our Lord and God,  to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created  and have their being." Revelation 4

 

·         That passage in Revelation is where we now go in the Spirit on the Lord’s day. 

·         Now, we hear those Words of blessing each other again—the Lord be with you—and the sursum corda—lift up your hearts, and as you say “we lift them up to the Lord,” we are giving God our greatest thanks, lifting up to him the praises due his name.

·         The Celebrant makes the final invitation—let us give thanks to the Lord--and the people prepare themselves with excitement as they are called into the Throne Room of the Almighty to meet with God.

·         So, reminding you that the Lord is with you, the Celebrant invites you to “lift up your hearts.” Realizing what Jesus is about to give us, we give thanks and praise as we approach His table for His Feeding us with eternal life and all the blessings of the new covenant. 

·         We are nearing the highest point of our journey, the Eucharist - the Great Thanksgiving.

·         We sing “Holy, Holy, Holy” joining our voices with the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.  Earth and heaven unite in praise to the Lamb.

·         This song sung in heaven all the time around the throne—holy, holy, holy--The Sanctus is a recognition of where we are and who is with us.

·         We glorify the Lamb, for it has been His sacrifice given in our place that has freed us from our sin, and has broken the hold of darkness over us.

 

         

THE GOSPEL IS RETOLD AND WE DECLARE MYSTERY OF FAITH

 

·         As we stand in God’s presence in the throne room of heaven, we hear the Gospel.  We hear how God made us for himself, how sin made us subject to evil and death, and then how in God’s great mercy he sent Jesus to become one of us, a new Adam to begin a new creation and a new world.

·         Jesus came to rescue us from sin and death, and reconcile us with God because our relationship with God is always broken by sin, but always restored by what Jesus did on the cross; our faith in it, and our repentance from sin.

·         We hear about the last supper, when Jesus instituted this very meal we are eat—how he took bread, gave thanks (eucharist), and gave it to his disciple sand told us to eat his body broken for us in remembrance.  Jesus hands us the wine and says drink this blood of the new covenant for the forgiveness of sins in remembrance of me.

·         Remembrance is on old Jewish  practice of the feats of the old covenant.  It is not to remember as a memory, but to remember by re-enacting, by doing it again.  As the Passover meal was re-enacted, as the people of God lived in booths outside celebrating the Feats of Tabernacles—they entered into the story of their people and experienced the same presence of God that their forefathers had experienced the first time these things were done. 

·         As we re-enact the Gospel in remembrance, the Holy Spirit brings us into contact with the once and for all sacrifice of Jesus Christ that is living and always present to us in the eucharist; in this meal of communion with God and heaven.

·         We raise our voices to rejoice in the complete plan of God. We remember that through His death our sins are atoned for, and by His resurrection we are assured of a new body when He comes again.

·         We set our eyes toward the day when the Church will be spotless, having put on the garments provided by Jesus Christ who comes for His Bride.                                      

·         And again we sing!  The mystery of faith—amazing love, how can it?  How could God love us so much to do this? How can we hold it in?  We have to proclaim the Gospel together--Christ has died!  Christ is risen!  Christ will come again!

 

HOLY COMMUNION

 

·         Now, this bread and wine, set apart, made holy by God transformed by Jesus to be an outward physical symbol of an inner spiritual grace that you cannot see with your eyes is ready to be partaken of by those who are Jesus’ own.

·         Before we eat, we pray for the Church, and for the whole world to know the peace, love, joy, and thanksgiving we have in our hearts.  We pray for those like Judas who have no peace and cannot commune with God; and who reject the eucharist; who are filled with hate and cannot give thanks.

·         The breaking of bread signifies the act of true love: self-giving. Jesus freely gave His life for us and now gives His life to us by the presence of the Holy Spirit as we come in faith to eat and drink this supper of the Lamb.

·         The whole existence and reason for the church and our salvation is tied to this fact of communion - our communion with God and with our brothers in the faith.

·         We go forward to receive the bread and wine as our response to the Lord’s invitation to come to His table.

·         We see not ordinary bread and wine, but bread and wine offered to God that now become for us the true bread that has come down from heaven, and the true drink that is poured out for us - the Body and the Blood of Jesus.

 

WORSHIP AT THE EUCHARIST 

 

·         As we commune, we sing!  We pray!  We meditate and give thanks. 

·         It is not a solemn time, a funeral—it is the celbration of heaven around the throne of the risen Lord!

·         Expect manifestations of the Spirit to you; expect God to speak, and love being is his presence because it is where we will live forever.

·         Let us pray.

 

 

 

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The Collect

Proper 18
Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen
Preface of the Lord's Day

 

 

  

 

Old Testament Reading

Isaiah 35:3-7
3Strengthen the weak hands, And make firm the feeble knees. 4Say to those who are fearful-hearted, " Be strong, do not fear! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, With the recompense of God; He will come and save you." 5Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, And the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. 6Then the lame shall leap like a deer, And the tongue of the dumb sing. For waters shall burst forth in the wilderness, And streams in the desert. 7The parched ground shall become a pool, And the thirsty land springs of water; In the habitation of jackals, where each lay, There shall be grass with reeds and rushes. –

THE WORD OF THE LORD

 

 

 

 

Psalm

Psalm 146
1Praise the LORD!
Praise the LORD, O my soul!

2While I live I will praise the LORD;
I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.

3Do not put your trust in princes,
Nor in a son of man, in whom there is no help.

4His spirit departs, he returns to his earth;
In that very day his plans perish.

5Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help,
Whose hope is in the LORD his God,

6Who made heaven and earth,
The sea, and all that is in them;
Who keeps truth forever,

7Who executes justice for the oppressed,
Who gives food to the hungry.
The LORD gives freedom to the prisoners.

8The LORD opens the eyes of the blind;
The LORD raises those who are bowed down;
The LORD loves the righteous.

9The LORD watches over the strangers;
He relieves the fatherless and widow;
But the way of the wicked He turns upside down.

10The LORD shall reign forever-
Your God, O Zion, to all generations.
Praise the LORD!

 

New Testament Reading

James 1:17-27
17Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. 18Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures. 19So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; 20for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. 21Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. 22But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; 24for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. 25But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. 26If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one's religion is useless. 27Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

THE WORD OF THE LORD

 

Gospel Reading

Mark 7:31-37

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Preface

Preface of the Lord's Day
To be used on Sundays as appointed, but not on the succeeding weekdays
1. Of God the Father
For you are the source of light and life, you made is in your image, and called us to new life in Jesus Christ our Lord.
- or this -
2. Of God the Son
Through Jesus Christ our Lord; who on the first day of the week overcame death and the grave, and by his glorious resurrection opened to us the way of everlasting life.
- or this -
3. For by water and the Holy Spirit you have made us a new people in Jesus Christ our Lord, to show forth your glory in all the world.