Sunday, May 1, 2011

Putting in a Substitute

A new experience awaited me this morning at the neighborhood Lutheran church I often attend.

Today was the Second Sunday of Easter, and, said the pastor, it would be appropriate to exercise the option in the Evangelical Lutheran Worship to substitute “Thanksgiving for Baptism” for “Confession and Forgiveness.” He told me after the service that he intended to continue the switch through the Season of Easter.

It has long been customary in the Lutheran tradition to begin worship with a straightforward prayer of confession and the affirmation of God’s forgiveness. Luther was one who wanted the confessional to go public, so that we admit what is haywire in our lives not only in relative privacy to God, but also publically in front of one another.

In the Lutheran liturgy such a confessional exercise is at the top of the order, the very first thing that transpires, led either from the entrance to the church or from the baptismal font. This is unlike the usual placement of confession of sin and forgiveness in Presbyterian orders, either after all are gathered and a hymn is sung at the beginning, or following the intercessions immediately before the Eucharist.

In place of the confession of sin, the pastor, standing at the baptismal font, invoked the Trinity making the sign of the cross, and continued with the “Thanksgiving for Baptism”:

Joined to Christ in the waters of baptism,
we are clothed with God’s mercy and forgiveness.
Let us give thanks for the gift of baptism.
Water may be poured into the font as the presiding minister gives thanks.
We give you thanks, O God,
for in the beginning your Spirit moved over the waters
and by your Word you created the world,
calling forth life in which you took delight.
Through the waters of the flood
you delivered Noah and his family.
Through the sea you led your people Israel
from slavery into freedom.
At the river your Son was baptized by John
and anointed with the Holy Spirit.
By water and your Word
you claim us as daughters and sons,
making us heirs of your promise
and servants of all.
We praise you for the gift of water that sustains life,
and above all we praise you for
the gift of new life in Jesus Christ.
Shower us with your Spirit,
and renew our lives with your forgiveness, grace, and love.
To you be given honor and praise
through Jesus Christ our Lord
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, now and forever.
Amen.

Remembering our baptisms at the beginning of the worship service is certainly an appropriate liturgical action. In this instance, the pastor indicated that it fit the Easter Season especially, since in baptism we die in Christ and are raised with him to new life.

Furthermore, starting with celebrating one’s baptism is certainly a more positive and affirmative opening to worship than the negative aura of confessing one’s sins openly. Following upon Lent, a season heavy with repentance and discipline, it is certainly more up-beat to acknowledge in the season of resurrection the positive claim God has on our lives by virtue of our baptism.

Baptism is also the “basic ordination” of the Christian, by which we are set to the business of being the Body of Christ, the Church, in the world. Starting worship from the font with that focus on whose we are and who we are to be is a strong opening for our praise of God.

At least, I suspect that is something of the rationale for this substitution, and it all makes sense. Replacing the confession of sin with thanksgiving for baptism, however, left me with a different impression.

Without some of the humility that comes with confession, launching the service with thanks for being baptized and all the blessings that baptism involves does sound a bit self-congratulatory. It also has the ring of exclusiveness, suggesting that perhaps this worship service is for baptized people only. Furthermore, the whole tone of the thanksgiving for baptism here is that the people are merely passive recipients of God’s grace, and there is no responsibility that goes with it except to say thanks to God.

Rather than a mere thanks to God for our baptisms, better to have a renewal of baptismal vows—a variety of such liturgies are available in the Book of Common Worship (1993). Then baptism is not celebrated passively, but commitments are renewed and activated again.

Both the confession of sin and the reaffirmation of baptismal vows provide a combined emphasis on renewal of our lives. We are sinners, forgiven by the grace of God, and claimed by baptism to live out the new life we have received by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, in the power of the Spirit.

Do you have a prayer of confession at the beginning of your Sunday worship? Does the presider or leader lead the prayer of confession from the baptismal font? Does your congregation make use of the liturgies for reaffirming baptismal vows? If so, when?

2 comments:

  1. Don,



    Thanks again for this subject. There is a quote from Karl Barth that says; “It should be obligatory for the Holy Communion to be celebrated at every service, which is, as is well known, what Calvin strove for. To be complete an evangelical service should have to begin with Baptism, follow that up with the sermon and conclude with the Holy Communion.” There he is referring to opening the service from the font, with the use of water, in a reaffirmation of the Baptismal Covenant (BCW language, which dumped the wording of “renewing our baptism”.) This quote is from Credo (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962, being a translation of a 1935 German text and Foreword by Robert McAfee Brown, p. 200) in the Appendix where he is answering questions that have been posed to him, and note that the word every is italicized in the original text. Have you relished and reveled in the Invitation to Christ that our denomination put out about six years ago? That stresses precisely what you are talking about here. I am on a real campaign to getting that known and used here in New Brunswick Presbytery where hardly any pastors are even aware of it. I want them to know about what is in that basic document, and what resources are available from the Office of Worship that provide for the implementing of that program. Presiding from the font at the prayer of confession and the

    Assurance is recommended in that document.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Don,



    Thanks again for this subject. There is a quote from Karl Barth that says; “It should be obligatory for the Holy Communion to be celebrated at every service, which is, as is well known, what Calvin strove for. To be complete an evangelical service should have to begin with Baptism, follow that up with the sermon and conclude with the Holy Communion.” There he is referring to opening the service from the font, with the use of water, in a reaffirmation of the Baptismal Covenant (BCW language, which dumped the wording of “renewing our baptism”.) This quote is from Credo (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962, being a translation of a 1935 German text and Foreword by Robert McAfee Brown, p. 200) in the Appendix where he is answering questions that have been posed to him, and note that the word every is italicized in the original text. Have you relished and reveled in the Invitation to Christ that our denomination put out about six years ago? That stresses precisely what you are talking about here. I am on a real campaign to getting that known and used here in New Brunswick Presbytery where hardly any pastors are even aware of it. I want them to know about what is in that basic document, and what resources are available from the Office of Worship that provide for the implementing of that program. Presiding from the font at the prayer of confession and the Assurance is recommended in that document.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for joining in the conversation!