Palmarum / Palm Sunday and Holy Week 2015.

Who do you say that I am?"

What Is Holy Week?

Holy Week, or Great Week as it is also called, concludes the preparation for Easter. The church in her liturgy does in a particularly intense way this week what she does all year, which is, present the Gospel revealed in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The Gospel readings for this week follow the Biblical order of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, a tie between the events of the Gospel accounts and the liturgy that not even the three year Vatican II lectionary and its wannabes could break.

Palmarum or Palm Sunday offers the Passion account of Matthew. Monday in Holy Week does not have a Passion account, but rather the passage from John where Judas' unbelief, which like so many after him was disguised as a concern for the poor, is expressed six days before Passover, when Jesus was in Bethany, where Lazarus had died and and who was now at table with Jesus. Tuesday in Holy Week offers the Passion account of Mark. Wednesday offers that of Luke, and is sometimes called Spy Wednesday in reference to Judas' betrayal. Maundy Thursday (aka Green Thursday) and Good Friday (aka Lamentation Friday) both offer the Passion account of John, Thursday for the institution of the Eucharist and Friday for the Crucifixion.

In this way, the church reads through all four accounts of Jesus' suffering and death, in New Testament order, culminating in the account of St John, which is read over two days, and also commemorates the events in the order they happened. Holy Thursday has the part from St John about the Last Seder of the old covenant becoming the Divine Service of the new covenant, and the sacrament of Communion in his body and blood he instituted that night, but not yet the part about the crucifixion nor any veneration of the cross. Good Friday has the part about the crucifixion and death in which he gave his body and blood for us historically, and the veneration of the cross, but not Communion which he gave for us sacramentally the night before he suffered as the pledge of the redemption gained in his historical act the night he suffered.

Thus we have Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, the sacramental event of his body and blood, and the historical event of his body in blood, in both the readings and the services in their order.

Palmarum, or Palm Sunday.

The events we the church remember this Palmarum day ask us who do we say Jesus is, because they present one answer to this question. We already know the end of the week's story -- the man welcomed with wild cheering by the crowds this day in a few days will be executed as a criminal among criminals.

But this day, such an end is not in sight -- except to Jesus. Covering a person's path is a sign of great esteem, widely practiced in the ancient near East and still a part of our mentality, as in "roll out the red carpet" from the custom of royalty. Joshua was given the same triumphal accord. Joshua -- who led the people into the Promised Land as the Lawgiver Moses could not. Joshua -- a name that is with the name Jesus a variant of the same name, who would lead the people into the eternal Promised Land as the Lawgiver Moses could not. Here, perhaps, was the Messiah! Here, perhaps, was the triumphal entry into Jerusalem of the Messiah predicted by Zechariah, to whom our Gospel account, Matthew, refers!

So how does the wild joy of seeing what is or at least may well be the Messiah come turn to a criminal's execution? It is not because Jesus turns out not to be Messiah, but because Messiah turns out not to be the Messiah we want.

Does not Zechariah speak of the removal of chariots and war horses from Jerusalem, breaking battle bows, with a reign of peace from the Jordan throughout the Earth? Yes he does, but let us not congratulate ourselves by saying that thinking of the Messiah in the political and social terms of removing the Roman occupation from the land was the failing of the Jews of Jesus' place and time, something that no Jew or Gentile in more enlightened times, oh, say us in our time, would ever do.

It wasn't a reaction to the Romans. The mainstream of the entire Prophetic tradition, from the Prophets themselves to the atmosphere in which the Apostles were raised to our own time, is that Messiah is a man, not God, not a God-Man, who will usher in a lasting era of universal peace here in this world, not a world to come, in which the light of the true God first given to a nation called out from the nations will be extended to all nations -- nothing about sin, forgiveness, justification!

Is that not the Messiah we all want -- Jew and Gentile alike, then as now? A Messiah in earthly terms, one who will straighten out the mess of things here on earth, with no reference to the mess being of our making, one who allows us to live long and prosper right here, one who asks not repentance and conversion but simply to do good works like he did, one who is about giving us a purpose driven life rather than giving us the sacrifice that takes away our sin, one who is about about giving us our best life now rather than eternal life, one whose religion is not about what he has done but what we will do to follow him? And do we not, Jew and Gentile alike, then as now, turn away from him when he turns out to be not the Messiah we wanted?

Jews typically do not believe Jesus is Messiah not because they fail to see how Jesus fulfills the Messianic prophecy, but because they do not see the Messianic prophecy as pointing to anything like Jesus. This was a persistent problem even for the Apostles. Gentiles typically do not believe Jesus is the Messiah not because they fail to see how Jesus fulfills the Messianic prophecy, in fact many of them say he does, but because they too find the Messianic prophecy to be a matter of a good man showing us the way to live as good people, to become better people, and find in Jesus such a man. That is why Scripture describes the Gospel as a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.

In the Hellenistic, which is to say Greek based, culture that surrounded Jesus' time and place, many religions existed featuring gods who had miraculous births, worked miracles, acted on behalf of man, entered the city, died and rose again, and whose followers partook of rites of bathing and eating and sacrifices, called mysteries, which the Romans termed sacraments. The Greek Dionysus, whom the Romans appropriated as Bacchus, the Persian Mithra and the Egyptian Osiris are the best examples but there are many others.

Is this Jesus too? Is he simply another failed Jewish Messiah, whose followers, when what will happen after Messiah comes didn't happen after he came, simply recast Messiah in the Hellenistic terms to fit Jesus so they could continue to say he was Messiah after all, thereby obscuring his true value as a moral teacher? Or, is he simply another Hellenistic mystery cult figure, perpetuated by those who derived power from presiding over the mysteries, obscuring the real Jesus and his true value as a moral teacher?

Who Do Men Say That I Am?

Think he didn't see that coming? That's why he asked the question "Who do you say that I am?" But note, that was not Jesus' first question. The first question was "Who do men say that I am?" And indeed, who DO we say that he is -- one of the great prophets of Hebrew Scripture come back, one of the great moral teachers in human history over whom, as with other great teachers, has been laid religious fables by those who claim to follow him but in fact falsify the historical person for a figure of faith, and in any case, a teacher, a model, an example.

Would we not cover the path of such a figure with palms, since that is the saviour we want? And would we not be just as mistaken as those who covered his path thinking here was deliverance from the Roman oppression and the start of the era of peace? And, on finding out that is not who he is, would we not shout as well, Away with him!

Who Do You Say That I Am?

That is still who men say he is. So then he asks, Who do you say that I am? Simon answered, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus told him flesh and blood had not revealed this to him, but his Father who is in heaven. Flesh and blood, that is, human wisdom, never reveals this unto us because it is beyond all human wisdom and contradicts all human wisdom. Therefore it cannot be arrived at by human wisdom nor chosen by human decision, but is the gift of the God and only the gift of God.

Human abilities even with Law and Prophecy and Writings from God could not grasp it; human wisdom apart from revelation constructs bits and pieces of it around mere fable characters who cannot deliver. Either way the natural knowledge of God written in every human heart strives for something it senses is there but cannot discern, and which can only be given by the gift of God.

The Sanhedrin had it exactly right. Jesus was not executed because he said he was the Messiah. One can claim that, and simply be wrong or right. The Messiah is a great man, but a man. He was executed because he said he was God. One cannot claim that without blaspheming God -- unless it is true. We'll take a Messiah who is a great man and leader and teacher, we'll lay palms to cover his path, we'll rejoice that what we want is at hand, but when it turns out instead he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed to be raised again on the third day, well, it shall not be like that with the Messiah we want, and thus we become an offence to him, Satan, savouring the things of Man rather than God.

Who do men say Jesus is? All kinds of things, as we have seen. Things for which we will joyfully lay palms to cover his path, or at least accord him a place in the gallery of the great teachers and moral figures to be so honoured.

And then he asks each of us, Who do YOU say that I am?

Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God!

Problem Pregnancy? The Annunciation, 25 March 2015.

It's the feast of the Annunciation. OK, so what was announced? The story is related in the Gospel according to St Luke, 1:26-38. The angel Gabriel (which means "God is my hero" in  Hebrew) announced to a Jewish girl named Miriam (better known in English as Mary) that God wanted to cause her to become pregnant with the promised Messiah, and that she should name him Joshua (which means in Hebrew "God rescues", which is better known in English as Jesus, from the Latin for the Greek for the Hebrew).

Of course, if God is causing the pregnancy, God is not the parent but the father. The complication is, Mary is engaged to a man named Joseph who presumably will be taking care of causing her pregnancies, and in their culture, engagement pretty much was marriage, just the time between the promise of marriage and holding the wedding ceremony.  So, if she said yes but Joseph did not believe "It's OK God did it", which is not something a guy is inclined to believe, he would be within his rights under the Law of Moses to have her put to death. Mary knew that. How's that for a problem pregnancy?

While it's fine to get all into the miracle of a pregnancy cause by divine intervention rather than human intercourse, it might be well to spend a little more time on this -- Mary faced a real hard decision on this pregnancy, like the risk of death, it was not at all convenient for her, but, she trusted God and said yes.

Luke also records that Yes, in the famous Magnificat, Luke 1:46-55, which has become a central part of the Divine Office about which this blog recently posted, associated with Vespers or evening prayer in the Western church and Matins (which if you mistake the Catholic Church for the catholic church no longer exists) in the Eastern church.

Well now, how about that, the Messiah comes from a troubled pregnancy!  Maybe we can put that in the context of troubled pregnancies as well as of the Messiah; there is only one Messiah, but we have a lot of troubled pregnancies. Far from being something shunned or ignored, Christianity and the Christian Church started with one!

And how about this, notice that the date on which the Annunciation, which would then be the date of Jesus' conception, is celebrated exactly nine months, the period of human gestation, before 25 December, the celebration of Jesus' birth. OK, nine months, I got it -- but, there's more to it than that.

Our current way of numbering years comes from a guy named Dionysus Exiguus, which means Dennis the Short.  He introduced his calendar reform in 525 A.D.  His main goal wasn't to work out calendar details, but to fix a date for the observance of Easter, since when to celebrate it was disputed.  In the course of that, he assigned the beginning of the new year to the feast of the Annunciation, 25 March.  Why?  Because years would be dated from the time of grace, which began when Jesus' life began, In the Year of Our Lord, or anno domini (A.D.) in Latin, and since life begins with conception rather than birth, years would be counted as before or after his conception, not after his birth.

Pretty big what is now called "pro-life" statement there.  This pro-life statement is not an accident but quite intentional.  From ancient Rome the practice had been to number years from 1 January, the day the new consules took office.  So this was a change.  It became prevalent with Charlemagne, who used it as the system throughout his empire, the basis of post-Roman Europe.  The beginning of Jesus' earthly life on this date of his conception was such a big deal that it was New Years' Day, the beginning of the new year, until relatively recently, in Mother England as late as 1752.

In the calendar used now throughout the world, years are still numbered with reference to Jesus' life, but the world has erased much of the reference.  First was the move of New Years Day back to 1 January, which happened when the Gregorian (so called from Pope Gregory the Great who authorized it) calendar replaced the Julian (as in Julius Caesar) calendar used in Dennis' time. You can read more about that in this blog's New Years post, but of interest here is that this is the origin too of "April Fools".  As the Gregorian calendar took hold across Europe, starting in 1582, not only did the start date for the year change but the "drift" of the Julian calendar was fixed, so that those who held on to 25 March as New Years Day also found 25 March in the old Julian calendar now fell in April in the new Gregorian calendar, thus making them "April Fools", with pranks being played on them.

Isn't that hilarious?  Hey, wanna know what hilarious is, where it even comes from?  Like everything else worth anything it's from or through the Romans, this time the Hilaria, from the adjective hilaris meaning "cheerful", a big feast of public games and merriment in honour of Cybele, the mother of the gods, especially masquerades where you could poke fun at anything, to celebrate, guess what, the arrival of better weather and more daylight and the departure of Winter, on guess when, the eighth day before the Kalends of April, which is the first day after the vernal equinox, which makes it, guess what -- 25 March!  

The second erasure has been in recent decades, since the Gregorian calendar is in use now throughout the world in lands with a Christian history or not, calling the A.D. years the Common Era or C.E., and the B.C. years (Before Christ) Before the Common Era or B.C.E. Well, what's "common" about it, there was people around before and after Christ, but it removes the mention of him even though it's still dated from him.

Although the Western church calendar does contain provisions for moving the Annunciation should it fall in Easter, which is possible, the Eastern church moves it under no circumstances whatever, so important is the celebration of the beginning of Jesus' life, and it would be celebrated as well as, for example, Good Friday. How's that for a statement that life begins at conception?

In Mother England the Feast of the Annunciation is also known as Lady Day, the lady being Mary.  This has some echoes even in the secular world. It is the first of the four quarter days, marking the quarters of the year, when rent was due and servants were hired, and Lady Day as the first Quarter Day is also when landowners' contracts with farm workers began. 25 March in the old Julian calendar became 6 April in the new Gregorian calendar, and 6 April to this day begins the tax year in the UK.

To be complete, the Quarter Days align roughly with the solstices and equinoxes, and they are Lady Day, 25 March, Midsummer Day, 24 June, Michaelmas, 29 September, and Christmas, 25 December.

So Happy Lady Day!  But back to problem pregnancies, especially to those ladies in troubled pregnancies with tough times ahead if you go through with it. God gets it, he chose to come into the world that way. His mother gets it too. So does his church. We're all with you, and welcome you to be with us.

What's A Divine Office, And Why Bother? 2015.

Festschrift for the Feast of St Benedict, 21 March 2015.

What's a Divine Office -- where God goes to work?

The divine office and the divine service are the public worship of the church. Oh man, hey, just give me Jesus, we're free aren't we, why bother with all this set prayer stuff? One hears that a lot about liturgy these days. Well, here's why and how all this set prayer stuff is part of giving you Jesus, or rather, part of Jesus giving himself to you.

How the Divine Office came to be.

Pre Messiah, there were no particular set times for prayer for hundreds of years. Not that prayer wasn't prayed at set times in various places, but there was nothing normative about it. That came at the end of the Babylonian Captivity (the one that happened to the Jews, not the Church!) with the return of the Jews to the Holy Land and the reconstruction of the Temple, ie the Second Temple. As part of that restoration, Ezra and the 120 Men established set times for prayer in essentially the form they are still used in the synagogue, which was adapted and continued by the church.

Established, not originated. These were not new, but were codified into three times of prayer during the day. These times were set to correspond to the three times of sacrifice in the Temple: morning (shaharit), afternoon (minha) and evening (arvit or maariv). On top of that, in Jewish tradition they trace themselves to the times of prayer Scripture records for each of the three great Patriarchs: Abraham in the morning (Gen19:27), Isaac at dusk (Gen24:63) and Jacob in the evening (Gen28:10).

How the Church Adapted These Prayers.

This pattern was adapted by the Church in light of the Christ having come, and is the basis of the three major times of prayer in the Divine Office we know as Matins, Vespers and Compline. Just as in the Divine Service, or mass, we have essentially a Christian synagogue service followed by a Christian seder, a service of the word followed by the sacrament of the altar, so in the Divine Office we have a series of daily Christian synagogue services whose main ones are:

1. Matins, a Christian shaharit going back through the history of the New Israel the church to the pre-Messianic morning synagogue service which Jesus and the Apostles knew, and aligned with morning sacrifice in the Temple and on back to the morning prayer time of Abraham;

2. Vespers, a Christian minha going back through the church to the afternoon synagogue service known to Jesus and the Apostles, and aligned with the afternoon sacrifice in the Temple and on back to the afternoon prayer time of Isaac;

3. Compline, a Christian arvit or maariv going back through the church to the evening synagogue service Jesus and the Apostles knew, and aligned with the evening sacrifice in the Temple and on back to the evening prayer time of Jacob.

What's a Canticle and How Do Canticles Fit Into This?

Canticle, the word, comes from the Latin word canticulum, the diminutive of cantus, meaning song, so it means "little song". All but one directly quotes a song text from Scripture, and they are attached to the hours of prayer in the Divine Office.

The Te Deum is the only canticle that is not directly from Scripture. Traditionally it is said to have been spontaneously composed as St Ambrose baptised St Augustine in 387. It proclaims the Creed in the context of a heavenly liturgy and concludes with verses from the Psalms. You want some praise music -- this is it, even if the story about its composition is pious fantasy! The Te Deum is associated with Matins on days when the Gloria is said (according to Vatican II Matins no longer exists, but its replacement The Office of Readings still uses it).

The Magnificat quotes Mary's words to Elizabeth at the Visitation, Luke 1:46-55, which in turn reflects and fulfills the Song of Hannah, 1 Samuel 2:1-10, considered in Judaism the example of how to pray and as such the haftorah for Rosh Hoshannah or New Years, not to mention Mary's mother's name was Ana, or Anne, a variant of, guess what, Hannah! The Magnificat is associated with Vespers; the Eastern Church sings it at Sunday Matins. Want some more praise music -- this is it!

The Nunc dimittis quotes Simeon's words to Mary when Jesus was presented in the Temple to fulfill the Law, Luke 2:29-32. Our Common Service -- would that it were our common service -- uses it as a thanksgiving after Communion. Its main use is at Compline; the Eastern Church uses it at Vespers. Want still more praise music -- this it it!

Also worth mentioning is the Benedictus, which quotes the words of Zacharias, a Temple priest and husband of Elizabeth and father of St John the Baptist, said in praise of the coming Messiah, Luke 1:68-79. The Benedictus, the Magnificat and the Nunc dimittis are the three evangelical, because they come from Luke, canticles said every day. The Benedictus is associated with the office Lauds, meaning praise, but that fits here because originally Lauds was Matins, but as the night vigil came to be said right before Lauds, the name Matins passed to the Vigil (hence the oddity of a morning name for a night service) and the original Matins became Lauds. In the Eastern Church Lauds is still at the end of Matins, which they call Orthros.

Summary.   A complete history of this development is beyond our scope here. What is important here is its three main points:

1) community gathering for prayer, preaching and Scripture reading throughout the day continued in the church from the synagogue from Apostolic times, for example Acts chapter 20;

2) amid the great variation in details over time and place a consistent pattern is clear, a morning prayer from Abraham to Shaharit to Matins, an afternoon prayer from Isaac to Minhah to Vespers, and an evening prayer from Jacob to Maariv to Compline;

3) the three major times of prayer came to feature canticles, hymns setting parts of Scripture, usually known from their first words in Latin, the Te Deum for Matins, the Magnificat for Vespers, and the Nunc dimittis for Compline.

How Do I Find This Praise Music?

Where can you find this stuff? There's been all kinds of versions over time in both the Eastern and Western church.

More praise. Looks like we don't have to go hunting for praise stuff, the church has had it all along in the Divine Office! And you hardly have to undertake some sort of monastic regimen. All this stuff started with parishes, not monasteries! Any of the hymnals in use by our beloved synod contains material for use, sometimes combining Vespers and Compline into one. Some of our parishes hold such services, but unfortunately many don't.

Since the Divine Office, like the Divine Service, is public communal prayer, one no more really participates in the Divine Office by praying it at home than one really participates in the Divine Service by staying home and praying an order of service. But for centuries parish pastors were supposed to do just that, pray the Office apart from the community, and pious laity sometimes did too, and to this day there are books to do that.

So what is one to do, on the one hand there being this magnificent prayer of praise and on the other most of us not being monks or nuns or in parishes where it is prayed? Not to mention that, as Luther notes in the Large Catechism, we are relieved of the private "burdensome babbling of the canonical hours"? Well, one can study the Divine Office in our hymnals -- service book being a better term, since there is so much more to them than hymns -- to appreciate and gain from them, but at home or individually, one can just follow what is set out for personal or home use for just this purpose as Morning and Evening Prayer in the Little Catechism!

You can view and print these prayers right from "A Beggar's Daily Portion" on the sidebar/  From current resources, may I suggest the "whatever your devotion may suggest" part be the daily reading in Portals of Prayer and from Walther in God Grant It, both from Concordia Publishing House. One's devotion may also suggest the Canticle associated with each time of prayer, or a section from the Explanation to the Small Catechism. There's links for all that stuff too on that sidebar element.  Keep it simple, no burdensome babbling!

Absolutely, not commanded by Scripture. But we Lutherans aren't an "If it ain't in Scripture we ain't doing it" crowd. Our Confessions are explicit -- though unfortunately sometimes our parishes aren't -- that we happily accept the observances and ceremonies that those who came before us in faith brought about and hand on to us, rejecting not what isn't in Scripture but only what contradicts it that crept in here and there over time.

Why Is This Posted on 21 March?

In 2010, this discussion of the Divine Office joined my "Blogoral Calendar", a series of posts aligned with the Church Year. My original post on the Office was part of something for the O Antiphons of Advent, then posted separately, and later more fully treated re the Office itself. Revised and expanded for 2011, it now will be published on the traditional feast day of the man who more than anyone else allowed this continuous song of praise of the church to survive the fall of the Roman Empire and its wake of destruction and pass to us. That is the holy father in faith St Benedict of Nursia (now Norcia, Italy), whose feast is celebrated, as is the custom with feasts, on the date of his death, or rather birth unto eternity, which is 21 March.

Benedict was from a Roman noble family, but disgusted at the degenerate lifestyle around him, left town in search of a way to not live like that. He came to establish a celibate community, rather than just being a hermit, and based his routine for the community's daily prayer on the practice of the parishes in Rome. It was because of his conviction that prayer is not to be a retreat from work or separated from active life that the community prayer was called the office, the English word from the Latin officium, which means work or task or duty or business, and itself derives from the Latin words opus (work) and facere (to do).

St Benedict said "Orare est laborare laborare est orare", which is "To pray is to work (and) to work is to pray". In fact the motto of the whole damn Order of St Benedict is ora et labora, pray and work.

But, just as with St Gregory who was key wrt to the Divine Service, whose feast day was moved to 3 September, because St Benedict's feast too will fall in Lent, it was moved to 11 July, the day his remains were moved, or translated, as they say, to Fleury Abbey, aka Floriacum, in France, since known as Fleury-Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire, by the ecclesiastical vandals in their 1960s Sack of Rome called Vatican II that left its own wake of destruction.  3 September btw is the day Gregory was installed as bishop of Rome, aka pope.  Not sure how papal installation and transfer of relics became a Lutheran thing!

Vatican II abolished Matins too btw, for an "Office of Readings" that can be said whenever! For them. And unfortunately for some of us too, as many non Roman churches have been taken in by the liturgical vandalism of Vatican II and modified their observances accordingly. But it is hardly our path, as our Confessions state, maintaining the ceremonies previously in use, rejecting only the accretions that contradict Scripture.

Luckily, the catholic church ain't the Catholic Church.

Conclusion.

What a great gift has been handed to us! Whether simplified for home or in full in our parishes, in the Divine Office, as in the Divine Service we not only have a magnificent gift from those who came before us, but we take our place with them in the forward motion toward the final fulfillment of the promises of God, and do so in a vehicle that is itself an expression and product of the unfolding through all its points so far of the coming of salvation and leading on to that great and final Coming of the Omega drawing all Creation to its convergence in God in Jesus his Christ!!

What's A Divine Service, And Why Bother? 2015.

Festschrift for the Feast of St Gregory the Great, 12 March 2015.

Hey, Christian Freedom, Adiaphora! No NT Rules About How To Worship!

The New Testament lays down no order of service for Christian worship, and neither does Christ nor anyone else in the New Testament. Therefore we are free in these matters, there being no command from God about it. And therefore, a service is good as long as it preaches Jesus, and to take it any farther than that stomps on our Christian freedom, shows an attachment to a simply human tradition, and therefore is a barrier to preaching Jesus to all people of any tradition.  Right?

Well I'll be dipped if our Lutheran Confessions, though, aren't quite proud of the way our services preserve what Christian worship had been, and say they only seek to omit any accretions along the way which contradict the Gospel.  And not only that, they present the fact that our services pretty much are the same as the ceremonies previously in use as evidence that our reforms are true and not some new take on things!

Now how's that?

Here's how's that. The fact is, the idea that liturgy etc are "indifferent things", sometimes called by the Greek word for that, adiaphora, things not found in Scripture and neither commanded nor forbidden in Scripture, and that therefore worship is something we are free to do as we see fit in light of what seems to work best for us, is an idea that itself is not found in Scripture but comes from human philosophy, and, Scripture commands against it!

The Original Adiaphora.

For starters, "adiaphora" is not Greek for "doesn't matter" or "who cares". It actually isn't even a Christian concept. It comes from the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece. "Stoic" itself has come to mean "indifferent" in popular usage, but that isn't what either "stoic" or "indifferent" is at all to the Stoics. The Stoics' main concern was how to live so that your inner life is not dictated by what happens to you in your outer life in the external world. They saw the world as a matter of reason, physics and ethics. These were the main things in life. They saw the study of them as the way to avoid the errors in reason which lead to disruptive and destructive emotions that make you miserable over what happens in life when in fact it may only be what you think is happening in life.

This is not anti-emotion; rather, it was to free one from destructive emotions based on incorrect judgements so one could enjoy emotions associated with well-being and peace of mind, having corrected one's judgements by reason and brought them into alignment with reality, the totality of which is God.

Even the word for peace of mind has gotten all twisted around on this "indifferent" thing! The word for peace of mind was apatheia, yup, the ancestor of our word "apathy" and didn't mean apathy in our sense at all, but rather being free of both pathos (plural pathe), the destructive emotions resulting from incorrect perceptions, and also of propathos or pure instinctual reactions, to enjoy the eupathos (plural eupatheia) emotions that come from perceptions that align with reality. A-pathetic is not indifference but being free of destructive emotions whose opposite is eu-pathetic or constructive emotions.

So what was adiaphora? Those things that are not part of reason, physics and ethics and are not in and of themselves destructive or constructive, but could go either way, depending on how you're doing with what is part of reason, physics and ethics in getting free of pathos and enjoying eupathos. Like getting rich for example, neither good nor bad in itself, but can go bad in a person who is, well, pathetic, literally, or go for good in a person who is a-pathetic in the literal sense above.

How The Idea Of Christian Adiaphora Started.

It's easy to see how all this could be used by Christians. The term "logos" itself is the biggest thing, which started with Heraclitus (whom Nietzsche, the only philosopher worth reading, btw regarded as the only philosopher worth reading) who used it to denote the fundamental order of the universe, then became the root of our word logic as the idea of rational speaking in the Sophists and Aristotle, and then with the Stoics became the divine that is immanent, present throughout the whole universe, which Philo then took into Jewish thought, and finally then became theos, God, himself, and Jesus as the Word (logos) of God in St John and early Christian apologists.

Both Stoicism and Christianity too emphasised a progress from the passions of the world to something not clouded by those passions.  But, God as creator and an afterlife are not Stoic ideas, so it's not that Christianity is just Stoicism with Jesus.  For that matter the logos thing does not mean that either.  Arius got carried away with the idea that it did, and the church had to define how it didn't at Nicaea.

Christian concern about adiaphora is often held to begin with St Paul's answer in First Corinthians chapter 8 to the question of whether one can or cannot eat meat that had been sacrificed to pagan idols. That passage states that one is no better or worse for eating or not eating such meat per se.  But the matter doesn't stop there; he is far from saying "doesn't matter" or "who cares" so end of story do whatever.  St Paul also states that those who eat it should not use their freedom to do so in a way that becomes a problem for others who do not eat it. It does matter, we are to care, and the criterion is not that eating or not eating is forbidden or commanded, but what we Lutherans typically call good order in the church.

So, we see right from the beginning of the Christian adaptation of the Stoic concept adiaphora, recorded by St Paul in Scripture, that while in some matters we are neither commanded nor forbidden by Scripture, we are commanded by Scripture not to use this freedom in disregard of good order in the church.

How Adiaphora Became A Big Deal In The Reformation.

This whole adiaphora thing really got rolling with the Reformation. Poor old Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, to whom the Confessio Augustana, or Augsburg Confession, was presented on 25 June 1530, tried to keep a lid on things.  This was partly out of concern for good order in the church, but largely because just the year before (1529) the Islamic conquest of Europe, underway for about a century already, had been stopped with the Siege of Vienna under Suleiman the Magnificent, Caliph of Islam and Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, so Charles didn't want to spend a lot of time on religious squabbles.  And the re-conquest of what was lost would last until 1699, well past the lifetime of anyone alive in 1530.

The first attempt to keep the same lid on Lutheran and Catholic alike was the Augsburg Interim.  The "interim" was to be until a church council could be called to settle the matters.  It allowed for priests to marry and Communion to be given in both kinds (meaning both bread AND the fruit of the vine, not just bread) but otherwise restoring Roman practice. Since that compromises the justification by faith alone thing, although Melancthon was willing to go along with it, pretty much everybody else was not willing to compromise an essential, THE essential, teaching for a therefore false unity.

That lead to the Leipzig Interim, which Melancthon also pursued, wherein Lutheran churches could hold their beliefs but would hold the Roman line in worship, which ticked everybody Catholic and Lutheran alike right off.  Catholics saw the measure as usurping the church's authority and Lutherans were split between those who supported it (the Phillipists, after Melancthon's first name) and the "real Lutherans" (Gnesio-Lutherans) who didn't. The whole thing resulted in armed conflict, which  concluded on 25 September 1555 with the Peace of Augsburg.  Its principle is, cuius regio eius religio, whose the rule his the religion, meaning the local ruler decided what was to be followed.

This btw is not "Catholic" and "Protestant" as the terms are generally used now.  It was between the Roman Church and Lutheran princes only.  People were allowed to move to a place where the ruler practiced whichever one wanted to follow.  But no place was given to later developments then emerging, such as the Calvinistic "Reformed", a theology still seen in many "Protestant" churches, as the term is used now, or the Anabaptists.

Lutherans resolved their differences with the "second Martin", Chemnitz, in the Formula of Concord of 1577, wherein the adiaphora were identified as things like church ritual, which is neither commanded not forbidden in Scripture, but again not in a "doesn't matter" or "who cares" sense but as distinguished from the doctrine of justification by faith alone which we believe IS laid down by Scripture.

So, if we think this adiaphora worship wars stuff is bad now, well, it is, but it's been a hell of a lot worse.

Hey, Isn't This A Post About The Divine Service?

The only reason I bring all this old stuff up is the only reason I ever bring up old stuff -- not for its own sake but for the contribution it makes to understanding what we are even talking about now, where we are and how we got there, toward understanding where we ought to go. To me, the old stuff has no other "sake" than that, which is a huge one.

Be it the example of getting rich with the Stoics, eating meat sacrificed to idols with St Paul, or church rites in the Reformation, the common thing is that these are things that can go either way, for good or bad, not essentials in themselves but completely dependent as to whether they go good or bad on the essentials, and if they go bad are a source of great harm to those essentials, therefore, though they are not essential, they are hardly a who cares or doesn't matter kind of thing. In the sense of who cares or doesn't matter, there are no "indifferent" things.

Our Lutheran principle is not "if it ain't in Scripture we ain't doing it", but rather, if it contradicts Scripture we ain't doing it. Being commanded or forbidden in Scripture is not the only source of a good idea, it is rather the only source of a good idea that is divine. The care and concern that we take about ideas that are not divine is entirely based on their effect of being for good or bad on the ideas that are divine. And this care and concern, as we said before, we typically call good order in the church.

This whole business about rites and ceremonies in the church is all about good order in the church. God commanded in the Law rites and ceremonies in the Temple. He hasn't commanded bupkis about rites and ceremonies since. But he does command care and concern for our fellows, he does speak against doing things that may be OK in and of themselves but are not helpful to the common good, good order in the church, the touchstone always being what he has commanded or forbidden.

So in and of itself, there is no rite, lectionary or calendar that is essential and any number of them that are legitimately possible. The thing is, that does not mean any rite, lectionary or calendar is fine, nor that any possible one is a good idea or even OK. For about 1500 years, three fourths of its elapsed history to date, the Western church has used a lectionary and calendar that goes back to the influence of St Jerome, a rite for the Divine Service that goes back to the influence of St Gregory, and an order for the Divine Office that goes back to St Benedict, not once delivered unchangeable for all time, but in a continuous and organic development over many places and times with many variations. The Eastern church has a similar story.

And that development did not just fall out of the sky or start about 1500 years ago, but itself was a continuous and organic development from what came before it in the Jewish synagogue, something Jesus and the Apostles knew very well.

What Did Jesus And The Apostles Do?

The thing is, Jesus and the Apostles and the people around them were Jews. The NT does speak of them as participating in regular normal Jewish worship. About which it supplies no details. And why would it, everybody knew. Kind of like a birthday party invitation isn't going to include music and lyrics to "Happy Birthday", you know that stuff already. Except when it comes to what they knew already, we don't. The point of this post is to lay them out so you do.

And that's important because that is what they did, and if we don't know what they did we'll read the NT like people coming across a birthday invitation with no idea that singing "Happy Birthday" will be part of it. And that, in turn, is important because that is what the Christian communities in the NT and on from there did -- they worshipped within the forms they knew yet adapted them to what they also knew, the Gospel.

Where The Idea Of A Divine Service Comes From.

OK, there's three times of prayer traditionally in Judaism, first Ma'ariv which happens right after sundown, the start of the day in Judaism, then Shacharit which is in the morning, and then Minchah which is in the afternoon. Now, this is also where the Divine Office, the community Christian prayer of other than our Sunday services, comes from, but we'll get into that in the next post. Right now our focus is on what happens for the Sabbath service, the ancestor of our Sunday service.

Sabbath is not on Sunday. It's Saturday, which if you're lucky enough to speak Spanish you can see in the word for Saturday, sábado, and, remembering when the day starts in Judaism, actually starts in what to us is the night before, Friday after sundown. Ma'ariv, the evening prayer, like our liturgy has a lot of variation over times and places, but also like our liturgy has a basic format underneath all that variation which is always there. Shacharit, the morning prayer, has the same basic format.

Here is that basic format. There's four parts. First are some introductory prayers, then a call to worship and the Shema and the Blessings, then a prayer called the Amidah (aka Shemona Esrei), and on Sabbath readings from Jewish Bible with some explanation, and then concluding prayers.

You know what, this is the way the first part of the Divine Service is laid out too! And that's because right from the start Jesus, the Apostles and the early Christians worshipped this way too, with Christian prayers over time replacing the Jewish ones but in the same format.

The Synagogue Sabbath Service Morphs Into The Service Of The Word.

Let's look at specifics.

First and Second Parts. First are some introductory prayers, then a call to worship and the Shema and the Blessings. What's the Shema?  It's DT6:4-9, the central blessing in Judaism, which Jesus affirmed as the greatest commandment (MK12:29-31), and St Paul re-expressed in Christian terms in ICOR8:6.  In Christian usage this pattern remains, with an opening hymn, a welcome and dedication in the name of each person of the Trinity, in many places the antiphon "I will go unto the altar of God", sometimes the recitation of Psalm 43 (or 42 as numbered in the Greek Septuagint) then in the West instead of the Shema and its Blessings a confession of sin and an announcement of the blessing of forgiveness, followed by an Entrance Prayer of praise, called the Introit, and then a prayer of petition, which in the West somewhere along the line lost the petitions but kept the response, Lord have mercy (Kyrie eleison).

Third Part. Then comes the Amidah, which means "standing" because it is said standing, and is also called the Shemoneh Esrei, which means "eighteen" because it is a prayer of eighteen short prayers written by the 120 men of the Great Assembly, as in Ezra in the Bible, after the return from the Babylonian Captivity and the resumption of religious life at home. A later 19th blessing was added but the name remains. The full Amidah, said on weekdays, has a section of three blessings of praise, thirteen of petitions, and three of thanks.

But on the Sabbath one enjoys a foretaste of eternity and the fullness of God in which no petition is needed, so the Amidah for Sabbath and the great festivals goes like this:  the first three of praise, one special one for the day replacing the thirteen petitions, and the last three of thanks; all praise and thanks for Sabbath. The church evolved an exact image of this, which starts with the words of the angels at the birth of Christ in Luke 2:14, Glory to God in the highest. It began in Greek, was translated into Latin (said to be by St Hilary of Poitiers about 360), and guess what, has seven sections, a middle reference to his being the one who gave his body and blood to take away our sins, framed by three on either side of praise and thanks.  Just like the Sabbath Amidah because it is a transformation of it.

This is the prayer commonly still called from its first word in Latin, the Gloria, unmistakeably Christian and unmistakeably a Sabbath Amidah, and yeah, said standing! Accept no substitute, insist on the real thing! After the Gloria, there is a prayer called the Collect. What does the Collect collect? The theme of the particular Sunday, whose readings we are about to hear.

Then comes the readings from Scripture and explanations of them. These too follow a clear pattern, which is, to read through the entire Law (aka the Torah, the Books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible) by sections in a year, and with each Sabbath's portion, also read a related section called haftorah from the Prophets or the Other Writings of the Bible. (The Hebrew Bible has three distinct sections, just as Jesus called them, the Law, the Prophets, and the Other Writings; Christian Bibles use the Hebrew Bible as the "Old Testament" but mix the Prophets and Other Writings to-gether.)

Jesus of course fulfilled the Law, and gave us the Gospel. So, in place of reading through the entire Law in a year, Christians began to read through the entire Gospel in a year. But wait a minute, there's four Gospel accounts in the Bible, so how do you do that? Well, the New Testament has exactly the same structure as the Old Testament in its Hebrew order: the Gospel accounts first as the Law is first in the OT, next the letters, often called by the older word for letters, epistles, of St Paul where the Prophets are next in the OT, and last some Other Writings from other Apostles as the Writings are next in the OT.  Within the Gospels, Matthew's was put first, because while of the Greek texts we have Mark was the earliest, the Greek Matthew is a translation of the earliest Gospel, in Aramaic, the Jewish dialect Jesus spoke, which is now lost in that version. So Matthew became the primary Gospel account used in going through the Gospel, with the others here and there, with passages related to the reading for the day from primarily the epistles of St Paul, but also with the writings of the other Apostles and sometimes the OT here and there, an exact image of the synagogue pattern of torah/haftorah because it is a transformation of it.

The list of readings varies over time and place, but the pattern in the Western church was established by St Jerome about 400 or so, in what is called the Comes (Pronounced KO-mays) which in Latin means "to go with" literally, a companion, here a companion list of readings to go with the service.

This remains to this day the basic pattern of the readings for divine service, except where modern revisionists at or following the lead of Vatican II have cast it aside after about a millennium and a half and come up with a three-year cycle drawing from all the Gospel accounts and epistles generally, adding OT readings and Psalms.

They also cast aside the fact that this supposed improvement was tried centuries ago in the synagogue, where those outside Palestine came up with a three year cycle too, but as it corresponds to no human cycle of anything and flies in the face of the annual rhythm of things, vanished in favour of the one that was there into the dustbin of history, as our current misguided alternative to the historic lectionary will one day do too, and not a minute too soon so it deprives as few as possible of being connected to the centuries, even millenia, long unfolding of the worship of God.

It also casts aside the idea that a lectionary, any lectionary, Jewish or Christian, is not a Bible study to expose people to as much Scripture as possible, but a selection from Scripture to expose people to the events celebrated in worship throughout the year, the Law in the synagogue, the life of Christ in the church.

And they also cast aside the whole guiding principle of Lutheran liturgical reformation, which is, that ceremonies be retained as they have developed except where it expresses something that contradicts Scripture, instead going for a Romantic, 19th century idea of some sort of lost noble past age to be recaptured in its greater purity, which at the hands of the "liturgical movement" became the idea of making the "early church" or the patristic era the ideal to be recaptured in its supposed purity by scholarship and new rites supposedly closer to theirs.  This is quite different than the Lutheran idea of retention of the organic forward development of the church but tested against the norm of not some "early church" or "the Fathers" but of whether it contradicts Scripture or not assisted by the earlier witness of the early church and the Fathers to this same ideal in their own day. The purity sought is not a Romantic fiction of some idealised lost age, but of concordance with Scripture.

Then comes an explanation of what was just read, called the D'var Torah, which is, can you see it coming, the Sermon! Among Germanic Jews, the Ashkenazi, this is also called the Drasha. So your sermon is your drash on the readings. And as in the synagogue, prayers for the sick and other needs or announcements of various kinds may be made after this.

Fourth Part. Finally the concluding prayers, which is the synagogue include the aleinu, the kaddish and a hymn. The aleinu prays for a time when the vain pursuits of Man are replaced by the universal recognition of the true God; the word aleinu means "ours", what it is ours to profess. The kaddish, while best known in the form for mourners, is not essentially about mourning at all. The word comes from the Aramaic, a Hebrew dialect, for "holy" and expresses the belief in what the aleinu prays for, the holy future for living and dead alike and to-gether. All of which is stated in its Christian version in the Creed, which is said, yup, right here, same pattern as before, along with a hymn of the day.

So there you have it, a Christian synagogue service for the Christian Sabbath, point for point, nothing more, and nothing less, there from the start, and present throughout the history of the Christian church, except in the last few centuries with those who ignore all this and worship like going to a birthday party with no clue about "Happy Birthday".

This first part of Christian Sabbath worship has had a number of names over time, and the one that really captures best what it is all about is Service of the Word. Why, because in it, God serves us his Word in Scripture and in explanation of it. It's not really something we do, it's something he does; it's not called service because we serve him but because he serves us.

The Passover Seder Morphs Into The Service Of The Sacrament.

But wait, if that's all of the original Sabbath service, why is it the first part of the Christian service? What is the second part, where did it come from, and why is it there? Here's the answer. The calendar of Jewish worship had weekly things, the Sabbath services, and big things that happened once a year which in fact God did set out in some detail, the biggest of which are three major festivals and the biggest of those are the things relating to Passover.

The night before Jesus was to become our Passover in his Crucifixion, he gathered with his Apostles to celebrate what would be the last Passover meal, called a seder. At the Last Seder, sometimes called the Last Supper but it wasn't just any supper it was the Passover seder, Jesus, in what must have blown the Apostles clean away, changed the age-old blessings over the bread and the fruit of the vine, saying "Take and eat, this is my body" over the bread and "Take and drink, this is my blood" over the fruit of the vine. Unmistakeable if you came for a seder; he was making himself the Passover and serving it to them.

This then is nothing less than him serving us the Good News itself, his body and blood given for the sins of the world, the passing-over from bondage to sin and death to life with God here and for eternity! And, as he was about to die, and once risen shortly return to the Father, he told them to do this as his memorial. That does not mean we are just remembering Jesus real good. He did not say here is my memorial, he said do THIS, do what he had just done, offer his body and blood, a memorial unlike any the world can offer just as he offers what the world cannot.

This second part of Christian Sabbath worship has had a number of names over time, and the one that really captures best what it is all about is Service of the Sacrament. Wait a minute, what's a sacrament?  That too is a borrowed term that originally had nothing to do with Christianity.  Sacramentum, a Latin word, meant in general the pledge of a covenant between two parties, and in particular the covenant of a soldier's oath of allegiance.  If "Communion" were not exactly what our Lutheran Confessions say it is, there would have been no reason for the early Christians to appropriate this word.  Service of the Sacrament expresses this best, because in it, God serves us his body and blood as the pledge for our salvation. It's not really something we do, it's something he does; it's not called service because we serve him but because he serves us.

Which is totally connected to his resurrection from the dead. If that happened, it's a massive suspension of the ordinary operation of matter, then, though while only lately we understand that matter and energy are related across the speed of light, such a suspension in the ordinary operation of matter also must involve a temporal one too, and the "mass" has understood that all along, saying the Risen Christ's Body and Blood were truly present here and now, in, with, and under the appearance of bread and the fruit of the vine, the very same energy, literally and not figuratively given by him the testator to us as the heirs of his testament in the mass. We do and bring nothing, he does and gives everything.

Luther spoke of it this way, in Babylonian Captivity: Who would not shed tears of gladness, indeed, almost faint for joy in Christ, if he believed with unshaken faith that this inestimable promise of Christ belonged to him? How could he help loving so great a benefactor, who of his own accord offers, promises, and grants such great riches and this eternal inheritance to one who is unworthy and deserving of something far different.

Conclusion -- What's A Divine Service And Why Bother?

"Divine Service" is the service of the divine, God, to us of first his Word and then his Sacrament of his Body and Blood. A Christian Sabbath service followed by a Christian Seder, that's it. "Seeker sensitive" doesn't even get right who is the seeker. We ain't the seekers.  We think we are, but we are not.  Apart from him who seeks us, we are lost and no more able to come to faith in him that a dead man can wake himself from the dead, as Walther put it. So as to being "seeker sensitive", it is he who is seeking us, and it is in our liturgy that we are sensitive to that.

Even the word liturgy shows that. What kind of a word is that, another churchy thing from the musty past that gets in the way of preaching Jesus? The word "liturgy" is the English form of an ancient Greek word that had nothing to do with church, it described the obligation that a wealthy Athenian had toward the people of Athens to do something big for their benefit at his own expense. If Christian worship were not exactly what our Lutheran Confessions say it is, there would have been no reason for the early Greek speaking Christians to appropriate this word -- here, the "wealthy Athenian", God, undertakes something for the people at his own expense, the sacrifice of the body and blood of God Made Man Jesus for our salvation from sin and its wages death!!

And that is exactly what a Divine Service is, and why we bother.

PS. Why post this for 12 March? Because it's the feast of St Gregory the Great, that's why, who for centuries was regarded as the "Father of Christian Worship". While maybe not that, his liturgical reforms were hugely influential in Western Christian worship being as it is. Gregory was bishop of Rome from 3 September 590 to 12 March 604, the day he died. It is the custom of the Christian church to commemorate its saints on the day they died, in this life, and were born as it were to eternal life. He was considered a saint immediately by popular acclaim -- the way it used to be done, and even John Calvin, who took the Reformation well beyond what the Lutheran Reformation was all about, thought Gregory was the last good pope and speaks well of him in his Institutes  -- and his memorial feast was celebrated on his day of death. Until Vatican II tinkered with that too, and thinking since the day will always fall in Lent, moved it for the Roman church to the day he was installed as bishop of Rome, 3 September (in 590).

The Eastern Church sees no problem at all with his feast being during Lent and continues to celebrate his feast on his feast day, and the Western Church didn't either until the 1960s in Rome, and neither do Western Christians not under the influence of the toxic waste that is the revisionist nonsense of Vatican II and stick to the historic calendar, and the historic everything else for that matter.