Coming to Receive!
Why don’t you come over to our home and have dinner with us? Those are the sorts of invitations we all enjoy receiving and participating in. Jesus used similar words in the parable of the wedding feast: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king, who gave a wedding feast for his son. And he sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast, and they were unwilling to come. Again he sent out other slaves saying, “Tell those who have been invited, “Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened livestock are all butchered and everything is ready; come to the wedding feast.”’ Matthew 22:2-4.
This is what the “Divine Service” offers. Jesus invites us to come to His feast, to receive that which we need, namely the forgiveness of our sins. The Divine Service is leading us to the altar from which Christ Jesus gives us His body and blood, in, with, and under the bread and wine for the “forgiveness of our sins.” Therefore, the Divine Service is primarily about what God is doing for us and not about what we are doing for God.
The Divine Service has a definite rhythm to it. We read in the introduction of Lutheran Worship:
“Our Lord speaks and we listen. His Word bestows what it says. Faith that is born from what is heard acknowledges the gifts received with eager thankfulness and praise. Music is drawn into this thankfulness and praise, enlarging and elevating the adoration of our gracious giver God.
Saying back to him what he has said to us, we repeat what is most true and sure. Most true and sure is his name, which he put upon us with the water of our Baptism. We are his. This we acknowledge at the beginning of the Divine Service. Where his name is, there is he. Before him we acknowledge that we are sinners, and we plead for forgiveness. His forgiveness is given us, and we, freed and forgiven, acclaim him as our great and gracious God as we apply to ourselves the words he has used to make himself known to us.
The rhythm of our worship is from him to us, and then from us back to him. He gives his gifts, and together we receive and extol them. We build one another up as we speak to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Our Lord gives us his body to eat and his blood to drink. Finally his blessing moves us out into our calling, where his gifts have their fruition. How best to do this we may learn from his Word and from the way his Word has prompted his worship through the centuries. We are heirs of an astonishingly rich tradition.” p. 6.
The language of the Divine Service is the language of the Church and it transcends both time and culture. The Divine Service is centered in Christ Jesus and it focuses upon bringing Christ Jesus to us through His Word and the Sacraments. As we are sent back out into the world, God places us in contact with people who have not yet heard about Jesus. It is our joy and privilege to tell them what Jesus has done for them and to invite and bring them to the Divine Service with us. As Jesus said in the parable: “Everything is ready, come to the wedding feast.”
