Alleluias in Lenten Funerals?

In a Facebook group for pastors using the Historic Lectionary, Fr. Jordan McKinley asked:

"The LSB removes the Alleluias during funerals in Lent. What is the motivation behind this? Should they remain? I checked TLA and Lang, but neither really say anything about it (that I saw)."

Off list (not all the Gotteseditors are on Facebook), prompted by Fr. Jason Braaten, the Gottes-editors have been throwing around their uninformed opinions on whether Alleluias are appropriate for funerals in Lent. In standard Gottesidenst fashion, we don't quite agree and found a few extreme positions.

My gut reaction is that TLH did something wrong to us in this regard. In the Roman rite there are fully propers for funerals and weddings. I think that as long as the church has been using colors they have been thought of as part of the propers. So the The Lutheran Liturgy rubric demands that the paraments not be changed for weddings is stupid. Yet some LCMS pastors act as though it is the mark of orthodoxy. Imagine that! But I think that if the paraments aren't changed then the readings and hymns shouldn't be either. At Redeemer, we change the paraments. Weddings are white. So are funerals.

Our pall is white. The paraments match. The hymns are Easter hymns and so are the readings. So we sing Alleluias - even if it is in the midst of Lent. We don't follow the Roman rite. There the color is black. I wasn't advocating following the Roman rite merely pointing out that there is a strong precedent for weddings and funerals having their own propers. I think black for funerals is worse than unnecessary. I think it is slightly off. But guess who disagrees? Fr. Curtis.

Curtis wants old-fashioned requiems with black on the altar and no Alleluias no matter what the season. Not that he is doing that in Worden, of course, it is just that he is saying we've lost something in this Easter emphasis. What? Sadness. Funerals are sad. Black and no Alleluias acknowledge that. Thus they give voice to the real and sanctified pain that the mourners are enduring. This isn't in any way a denial of the resurrection and the joy we have in Christ.

But is an Easter emphasis an implied denial of sanctified mourning? He might be on to something. Are we forcing our piety on the mourning by insisting they sing robust Easter hymns when they just don't feel like it? Again, I don't think so. I think we are leading them to confess against themselves and showing them where to find comfort. But I agree that it could be oppressive and we should be sensitive to their pain.

Fr. Beane came in also. I think he was advocating a position that gibes with our practice here at Redeemer. And Fr. Stuckwisch came in. He said a bunch of very smart things, qualified precisely, but refrained from saying anything negative about LSB or taking a dogmatic position. He, of course, is the smart one and also serves as the anti-Curtis. We're glad to have him around for that. We hope he gives us some credibility.

I hope they will chime in the comments because I am too lazy to try and repeat everything that was said and they are also known to change their minds. Thanks to Fr. McKinley for bringing this up. Please feel free to jump in on the comments and pool your ignorance with ours, or, if you actually know something, to post that as well.

Save the date for Gottesdienst: Chicago

Mark your calendars for our Second Annual Gottesdienst: Chicago conference on Tuesday, May 1, at St. Paul's in Brookfield.  A full schedule and registration information should be forthcoming soon. Last year was a wonderful conference with a great turnout and we are looking forward to more of the same for 2012, Dv. 


+HRC

This is a great mystery but I am talking about Christ and His Church

It hit me the other day that what St. Paul speaks about in Ephesians 5 with regard to the relationship between husbands and wives and that of Christ and the Church is apt also for the relationship between pastor and the people he serves. Bear with me here.

Husbands are to love their wives. Wives are to respect their husbands. Without love, wives react without respect. And without respect, husbands react without love. But the husband is to give his life, lay it down, regardless of whether he receives respect.

Now lets change the terms. Pastors are to love their congregations. Congregations are to respect their pastors. Without love, congregations react without respect. And without respect, pastors react without love. But the pastor is to give his life, lay it down, regardless of whether he receives respect.

Now before you think that I'm just repeated the sermon given at the last eleventy million call services. Wait. This is in fact what happened in the garden with Adam and Eve. Eve speaks when she shouldn’t and Adam doesn’t speak when he should. Eve wasn’t there, she wasn’t yet created when the Lord gave the command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That command was given only to Adam. It was his duty in love for Eve, his wife, to tell and teach her that holy command. And so when Adam fails to speak, the consequences are monumental. He is responsible.

In terms of Ephesians 5, Eve does not respect her husband, Adam does not love his wife. For there they stood together, side-by-side, in the Garden in conversation with the serpent. Did God really say? it asks. He attacks the weaker vessel, the most vulnerable. Because she's a woman? No, she's weaker, she's more vulnerable because she was not there for the command. Only Adam was. Eve should have pointed to him for the certain answer. But she didn’t. She didn’t respect him and the authority he had been given by God.

And Adam isn't any better. For he is there with her while the serpent speaks. And he says nothing. He fails to act He fails to use his God-given authority to support and protect his wife from harm. He fails to love her, to give his life for hers. To put his neck on the line, instead of letting her dangle in the wind when he knew better.

When we, pastors, fail to use the authority God gave us to teach what God has spoken, the way a husband would teach and help his own wife, we fail to love our congregations. When we fail to love our people, they react without respect for the authority God has given. And without respect, we continue to act without love. But the pastor is to lead here. And we lead by loving them regardless of what they do, as we would our own wives, teaching them as we would our own wives, rebuking them as we would our own wives. Subordinating our need for respect to their need for love.

Perhaps this is why St. Paul says he's speaking about Christ and the Church. For the only missing element in the Ephesians version of the Table of Duties is the section on what pastors owe their hearers and what hearers owe their pastors. Perhaps they're combined with that of the husband and wife, Christ and his Church, pastor and his congregation. And maybe all those call service sermons were on to something and we dismissed them too quickly.

Thoughts on the Sower Parable

I've always been befuddled by our Lord's quotation of Isaiah 6:9 in the Parable of Sower. "So that seeing they may not see and hearing they may not understand." Oh, okay, . . . great. What does that mean?

I've also been confused by the emphasis placed on the different types of soils over against the seed, and how most sermons I've heard and preach emphasize the seed, when it seems that Jesus is emphasizing the soil.

But I think that Isaiah 6:9 really holds the key. It's from Isaiah's call narrative. In it God sends Isaiah to preach God's Word and pronounce His judgment over the His people because of their unrepentant sin.

“Go, and say to this people: “ ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’ Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.” (Is 6:9-10)

And then Isaiah responds to his charge with this: "How long O Lord?" And the Lord replies:

“Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate

waste, and the Lord removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of

the land. And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak, whose

stump remains when it is felled.” The holy seed is its stump. (Is 6:11-13)

So the Israelites would be removed, exiled from the land by the Babylonians. The word that Isaiah was to proclaim was to harden the Israelites' hearts. To ensure that they didn't repent, and his judgment of exile be forestalled, so that God's holy seed could be the stump that remained in the land to provide abundant fruit for future generations.

The connection then is between seed and land. The seed that falls on the rocky, thorny, well-trodden soils is revealed by the seed to be what it is. The seed still works. It does what it was sent by God to do. To show its utter fruitlessness. The soil was surely this before the seed fell on it. But the seed confirms this judgment. It pronounces it. It does what it was supposed to do--so that seeing it doesn't see and hearing it doesn't understand. It shows that we are all still exiled from the good land. And thus we will not bear fruit.

But the good soil, too, is revealed by the seed. This soil is the good land in which the stump remains. This soil is the soil that has the holy seed planted in it. This is the promised seed of Eve, the one promised to Abraham, the one foreseen in Isaiah 55, that would come down and not return to the Father empty. This can be none other than Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, who came down to water the earth with his blood, was planted into the earth, and returned to the Father with our recompense.

It seems that the Isaiah 6:9 quotation is there point us to the rest of Isaiah 6. To show us that we are all exiled from the good and fruitful land. That we are all unfruitful soil. And that we all have hope in the the stump that remains, the holy seed (offspring) of God.

Just some thoughts. What say you?

Lent Midweek Services

As in many other parishes, we hold an additional prayer office each week in Lent. Compline has settled into being the office we use most years, though Vespers and Evening Prayer have had their turns. But what of the readings?

There are several good options - the readings from The Treasury of Daily Prayer probably make the most sense. If you are encouraging your people to be about the Daily Office, then this is the place to start. Or reading through the catechism - as Lent is the time of catechesis in the liturgical year. Or preaching on the previous Sunday's Epistle, or through the Easter Vigil readings one per week. All of these ideas are great and are, in my opinion, vastly superior to the canned and often down right corny themed series available from a host of Christian publishers: Crosses of Lent, Valleys of Lent, Disciples of Lent. And please, please, Pastor: no play acting from the pulpit. Please do not dress up and pretend you are St Peter or Barabbas or Pontius Pilate. Please.

Lent is for catechesis, not only for the congregation, but for the preacher. As such, this year I want to reread Luther's Galatians commentary and our readings for Compline will simply be a continuous reading of that book.

+HRC