Intro: The Seven Central Things—Reflections for Lent

 

              Welcome to Lent. A time for Alms, Fasting, and Prayer. A 40-day journey through the wilderness toward Easter. A time to ground ourselves to the core of our faith, so that we do not miss the precious gifts we’ve been given.

              One of those gifts, I believe, is the gift of the Christian liturgy. Looking all the way back to the earliest descriptions of Christian worship, in Luke’s Gospel, in the Didache (an early Christian Catechism), to Justin Martyr’s testimony to the Emperor, and looking all the way forward to the Book of Common Prayer, the reforms of Vatican 2, the Lutheran Book of Worship, and Evangelical Lutheran Worship, there are some consistent things we do—signs of God’s love we embody together. There are things we practice in worship that spill out into our daily lives. Different folk name and number them differently, my shorthand is the Seven Central Things of Worship, they are: Gathering, Baptism, Confession & Forgiveness, Word, Thanksgiving, Meal, and Sending.

              On one hand, the Seven Central Things honor God. In a wide variety of ways they: celebrate the steadfast story of God’s relationship with God’s people, follow Christ’s commands, invoke the Holy Spirit, and form us to be the Body of Christ. On the other hand, they are ways to practice a good life; they shape who we are outside of worship; the 52 Sundays a year are 52 opportunities to practice who we are at our 9 to 5, in our off hours, and the whole 365 days a year, 24/7.

              There will be some deviations to the pattern at the start and at the end, but the meat of this devotional will be batches of six days’ worth of reflections on one of the seven central things. First we’ll dive into a piece of scripture, then I’ll offer a personal story, followed by a bit of a “book report” on a book that deals with the central thing, we’ll wrestle with how the Central thing exists in the world as it is, we’ll consolidate the previous four reflections into some negative and positive maxims in a way that lightly echo Luther’s teaching about the 10 commandments in the Small Catechism, and then I’ll offer a prayer.

              I’m looking forward to walking with you these forty days. I pray they will be meaningful and faithful.

Peace,

 

Pastor Chris Halverson