Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Amen! Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:
“Since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church (1 Corinthians 14:12b).
For everyone who attended the adult Bible Study on 1 Corinthians, you know that the Corinthian Church was a deeply troubled congregation. They had a lot of problems. And one of those problems was a sense of superiority on the part of some of the flock of this church. Some thought of themselves as better than others. And in particular, today St. Paul is talking about speaking in tongues.
Evidently, those who spoke in tongues were convinced that they were better than those who could not speak in tongues. The tongue speakers were convinced that they had an increased value over the non-tongue speakers. This was causing conflict within the church as they were not building up the body of Christ.
And even today, there are some Christian churches that teach that if you do not have the spiritual gift of speaking in tongues then you haven’t truly been baptized. But the thing is, St. Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote previously that there are many spiritual gifts, and none is greater than the other. He wrote: “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone” (1 Corinthians 12:4-6).
Paul tells of spiritual gifts of wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, distinguishing between spirits, speaking in tongues, and interpretation of tongues. Paul goes on teaching that just as the body is one and has many members, all the members are one body with Christ.
But for some reason, many in the Church in Corinth were hung up on speaking in tongues. In fact, many of the tongue-speakers may have been “showing off” their spiritual gift as many others in the congregation could make no sense of what was being said.
As wonderful of a spiritual gift as tongues may be, speaking in tongues does not edify, or build up the church since tongues are not intelligible to others without an interpreter. A tongue speaker prays, sings, blesses and gives thanks to God well enough, but if there is no one to interpret, those utterances are merely “a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1). So, if there is no interpretation, then the tongue speaking is worthless. It’s just filling the church with noise. It isn’t edifying the church. It isn’t building up the body of Christ.
“Nevertheless,” Paul writes, “in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue” (1 Corinthians 14:19). So, a short time of instruction is much better than a longer time of confusion with tongues.
Now, speaking in tongues is clearly not a pressing issue at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church. I haven’t heard of any utterances here that need to be interpreted, but we should follow St. Paul’s advice in always striving in building up the body of Christ, the church. So, how do we do that? How do we build up the church?
Unfortunately, our attempts in building up the church often leads to confusion and disunity. As some focus on this and some focus on that and before long, we become like Corinth in this situation with so much conflict. So, how do we build up the church? Well, we can’t. You see, Christ alone builds up the church and we receive His instruction. He builds us up. He instructs us. So, where does Christ build up the church? Well, He does it in many ways. But let’s focus on the primary way He builds up the church!
The primary way Jesus builds up the church is through worship. In Corinth, worshipers speaking in tongues failed to build up the others present. They thought they had to do something. They wanted to impress each other by their worship. Now, what they forgot and what Paul was leading them toward is that true worship isn’t about impressing each other.
You see, Jesus is more interested in serving you than what you can do for Him. And this is why church services are arranged as they are. The goal of the church service is not to serve God, to thank Him and praise Him. Now, all those things do happen, but that is not the real reason God gathers His people. The goal is for Him to serve us.
Paul’s goal for Corinth and for us is for everyone to understand the Lord’s truth spoken to them. This is why we have our services in the vernacular, so that we are able to understand the words in our worship service.
In speaking of the worship service, we call it “Divine Service,” which comes from the German word “Gottesdienst.” That word “Gottesdienst” confesses what is actually going on as the Church gathers together week after week. Week after week, Jesus gathers His people to serve them. He gathers us around His Means of Grace. Our whole service is for instructing and forming us into the Word of God.
We begin with Confession and Absolution. We confess our sins to God our Father and with repentant hearts, we receive the forgiveness Jesus won for us upon the cross. Being absolved of our sins of thought, word, and deed against God and our neighbor, we then praise Him as we say the Introit, which is a selected psalm. The word “Introit” comes from Latin meaning “enter,” since this is when the pastor would traditionally enter the chancel.
The service then moves from praise to a request for mercy from God in the Kyrie. “Kyrie eleison” comes from the Greek phrase meaning “Lord have mercy.” This prayer for divine mercy is not only a corporate confession, but an individual confession as we stand before God.
And when God’s people ask for His mercy, His response should not be doubted as He always answers the cries of His people. In recognition of His mercy, we again offer thanks and praise as we sing the hymn of praise known as the Gloria in Excelsis which means “Glory be to God on high.” Another hymn of praise is “This is the Feast.”
From there, we hear God’s Word in the Scripture readings and later proclaimed in the sermon as you are hearing right now. Preaching is central to Christian worship. Sin is revealed through God’s Law (Romans 3:20), and deliverance is revealed in the Gospel (Romans 1:16-17). And not every sermon will follow the first, Law and then Gospel structure, but both are always present and distinguished in sermons. Along with the proclamation of judgment and deliverance, the sermon is to also instruct the hearer, you, in Christian living (Titus 2:1-13). The forgiveness of sins that is delivered in the Gospel equips God’s people for good works for their neighbor. Also, the sermon is the place for catechesis. So, I am called by Christ to teach and equip you in Christian doctrine. So, along with promoting true doctrine, I am also to rebuke false doctrine, especially in a day when false teaching is so prominent in this fallen world.
Upon hearing God’s Word preached, the comfortable are afflicted and the afflicted are comforted, and so with King David we ask for clean hearts in the offertory. The thing is, we cannot clean our own hearts. So, again, God serves us by restoring our hearts.
But prior to the offertory, we give thanks to God for His gracious provision by confessing our trust in Him by providing an offering to the church. By offering up the money He has given us, we confess that we are giving thanks to the One who has provided the offering to us and trust that He will continue to provide. Those offerings allow the church to pay for expenses, missionary efforts and other worthwhile aspects of the church, including preparing for a new furnace.
Following the Offertory, we bring our prayer petitions before God. We pray for the whole Church of God in Christ Jesus and for all people according to their needs. We pray for the congregation and the broader community. We pray for the sick. We pray for all those in authority. We pray that God’s will would be done.
And then God continues to serve us through the Service of the Sacrament where we change our focus from the lectern and pulpit to the altar. We now prepare ourselves for the reception of Christ’s true body and blood under bread and wine. We now focus on the altar, where Christ’s gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation are given. In the Service of the Sacrament, we give thanksgiving to God along with the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. Heaven and earth are joined at this table.
Following the reception of Christ’s true body and blood given to us for our salvation, we join Simeon as we sing the Nunc Dimittis. We can now depart in peace with our sins forgiven by grace through faith in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
In this Divine Service, we have peaks and valleys. God instructs us as we receive His grace at each peak, and we come to repentant hearts at each valley. But we always end each Divine Service receiving His grace. So, the real role of the Christian is to be served by Him with His gifts of forgiveness and mercy, which He delivers through His Church in the Divine Service, so that the Christian is free to serve their neighbor.
Here, God serves us His Word of forgiveness, earned when Jesus served us by dying for us. God serves us, giving us new birth in Holy Baptism. God serves us, feeding our faith with His own body and blood under bread and wine. God serves us and He loves us. God serves us, setting us free to love Him, setting us free to serve the ones He has given to us, our neighbor. Here, God serves us by strengthening your faith as He builds up the church. Amen.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,
keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.
+ SOLI DEO GLORIA +
No comments:
Post a Comment