PRAYER
All: God of Love, God of Peace
Pastor: Come to us this morning, in word & spirit, in silence & prayer, in community and love.
All: God of Love, God of Peace
Pastor: Come to is this morning to soften our hearts and open our minds to reflect & contemplate.
All: God of Love, God of Peace. Create within us a compassionate heart, a desire for change & commitment and a faith in Your divine presence. Amen!
Reflection & Conversation:
Church & Community
Welcome to church and welcome into this beautiful church of history & heritance, commitment & compassion, faith & fellowship, tradition & renewal.
Today the Service will be a little bit different than usual as I will actually encourage you to talk in the pews. But not just small talk, but guided conversations about why we are here and how we are being church together.
Usually, our services are quite orderly and liturgical strict. We follow the Danish Liturgy of structure with hymns, readings, prayers, communion and sermon. We tend to like this structure as it makes us feel comfortable and home. We know the flow of the service… and that is actually one part of being a church and a congregation. We know the liturgy, we know the hymns, we know this beautiful room, we know the pastor for better and worse, we feel at home.
If you are a regular, you always sit in your same pew. You sit next to, behind or in front of someone who always sits there. If you are a first-time visitor or a more seasonal worshipper you might feel most comfortable in the back pews – but be aware they are often spoken for! Lutheran and especially Danish Lutheran tend to fill the church from the back…..
PAUSE.
Creeds and Confessions:
What do we believe in? How do we confess our faith? At every Service we confess our faith together. As a Church and as a Congregation.
We belong to a certain denomination – and through history the different denominations have formulated and used different creeds.
The Danish Lutheran Church along with all Lutherans have 3 creeds: the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed — They originate from the earliest centuries of the Christian church’s history, a time when theological and philosophical questions about the identity of Jesus were widely debated among Christians.
These three creeds are called ecumenical because they are all accepted and used by the overwhelming majority of the world’s Christians.
The Apostle Creed is the oldest and the one we use on a regular basis. The Apostle creed is from 200 after Christ.
There are no creeds formulated in the New Testament. But creeds were formulated to clearly state what we believe.
We begin with stating what we don’t believe in. Just to make it clear: we renounce, we say no, we reject the devil and all that is his: all evil, everything that contradicts or corrupts what God is. To be Christian is not just to close our eyes and live as if evil does not exist, on the contrary we do not close our eyes, but we face the evil and calls it by name and confess that we will fight it.
It is in fact a Danish tradition to begin with the Renouncing… and as many things it has to do with Grundtvig. The creed itself does not include the renouncing, but since the early church to renounce the devil was a part of baptism. Most other Lutheran churches do not start with saying no, but Grundtvig truly argued that it had to be part of the confession also to reject what is evil.
A fun story: I once officiated at a Baptism for a Swedish couple and their sweet little girl.
Everything went fine until the moment where the family was standing at the baptismal font, and I asked… Do you renounce the devil and all his works and ways…? And the mother looked totally perplexed and said: No No No that is not how we do it in Sweden!”
The Apostle Creed is stating that we believe in God as Creator, Savior and Spirit. Not in three Gods, but in a multifaceted God that reveals himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We know the Apostles Creed by heart. I teach it to the Confirmands, and they have to recite it on the Confirmand Sunday. We find comfort in words. But that doesn’t mean that all is said and done with the Creed. And it doesn’t mean that we cannot reformulate the words of creed and confession. The Creed is not a Sacrament. It is not written in the Bible. It is not instituted by Christ like the Baptism and the Communion. It is a human desire to formulate and confess our faith.
Gospel Luke 13.34-35 The Message
How often I’ve longed to gather your children, gather your children like a hen, her brood safe under her wings— but you refused and turned away!
And now it’s too late: You won’t see me again until the day you say,
‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of God.’”
Reflection & Conversation:
“Believing, Behaving and Belonging.”
The Gospel from Luke this morning is a tough talk that Jesus had with the Pharisees who were not accepting his ministry and call. And Jesus turned to the stubborn pharisees who were stuck in their own ways, in the old days, in the conformity of religious priviledge and power – and did not listen to Jesus and see his healings powers as a testament of God. They were renouncing Jesus as everything they certainly did not believe in. They were close-minded, narrow minded and unmovable.
So, Jesus had to talk tough. Come to Jesus talk!
How often I’ve longed to gather your children, gather you like a mother hen, her brood and chicks safe under her wings, -
It is such a great image of comfort and home. This mother hen gathering and protecting her chicks under her wings. An image that might evoke memories of a loving Mother Hen of ours or evoke longing for a loving protector.
I particularly love that image as I am a Chicken farmer’s daughter and a proud Mother Hen.
I do recognize that longing for a safe haven, a comfort, a place, a home, a church, a family.
WE may turn away from the mother hen, we may turn away from church and faith as more and more of the younger generation do. And as a church we need to consider how to be a church that still calls for the younger generation to commit: and how we might be the ones like the pharisees who cross our arms and say: but we have always done like this! This is how it should be. This is our tradition. Or even claim that this is how the Bible tells us to be or even this is how Christ calls us to be church. Well. Maybe we do not listen to the renewed and constant call of Christ to gather. Maybe not like we have always done, but most importantly how he intended us to belong ,believe and behave.
We cannot be again the church we were or thought we were, but we might be able to become the church that we are called to become.
Recently, I listened to a podcast with church historian and sociologist of religion Diana Butler bass, who described the three Bs of the church. The 3 b’s that are often used in any Religion 101 course to categorize religion and religious people. Just like us.
That we are:
believing, behaving and belonging.
Believing in the Christian Gospel and the Christian Tradition.
Behaving as the commandments and rules told us.
Belonging to the instituiontal organized church, our denominations, our tribe our tradition.
That believing and behaving makes you belong to a certain church.
Think about believing, behaving and belonging.
Diana Butler Bass said that recently many have become aware of another way to look at church.
Where do we belong determines how we believe and behave… and where we belong is more likely friends, work, social media, peers or family. Not church.
What do we believe ?
Formed by our tradition, our raltioships, our memories and our siatuion in life.
Believe, behave and belong.
Diana Butler Bass said: Instead of listing believing, behaving and belonging ,we need to reverse the order to belonging, behaving and believing. Jesus ddi not begin with questions of belief. Asking us to recite creeds and know scripture. Jesus public ministry started when he formed a community. A community of care and fellowship.
S0, we start with belonging.
Which is why we often talk about the many entry’s to church. Through the main door, through baptism, through curiosity, through language classes, through food and events, through AA or Hyggefest.
WE belong… and from there we built on what we believe and how to behave.
So as we greet one another today: talk about the 3 b’s: believing, behaving and belonging. Tal about the big B Baptism. Talk about how your commitment in this church began: through believing, behaving or belonging. Talk about what it means to belong to a community and church……
Reflection & Contemplation:
Communion is one of our two sacraments. Baptism and Communion. They are sacred moments of truth, faith, hope and confession.
WE share bread and wine, but we share so much more. We share it as a community. Shoulder to shoulder. On our knees. Unitied in all of our diversity as humans. and asking for forgiveness.
We share the tokens of a shared meal. That gives us comfort and forgiveness. That gives us new strength to live this life of ours. That gives us hope for humanity. And faith in our common need for sharing, caring, forgiveness, love and community.
At the Communion we are truly told we belong and we believe and how to behave as beloved,
blessed and forgiven humans in the world.
So, remember as you come to the communion table today: to be courteous and respectful. For many this is the most sacred and personal time of the service, you get up from you safe pew and enter a common space and table…. United in faith and as humans.
This is my body and my blood; Jesus said the last evening he shared with his beloved disciples. This is my body and my blood, Jesus says everything time we gather for communion. We do believe that Jesus is present with us in his words, in his blessing, in his entire being body, blood and spirit, as close to us as a breath.