Current Newsletter article, June 2011

CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. (Gal 4:4-5)

A priest, a rabbi and a minister walk into a bar…I’m sure you’ve heard that one before. But in reality, there is no one joke that begins that way; there’s about a million. What follows determines everything, including whether or not the thing can be repeated in polite company. What follows is the necessary context.

Context is everything. Without it, we’re left on our own to make things up as we go. When right-wing Christian fanatics go astray, it is almost always because they take an unwaveringly literalistic approach to the ancient text of the Bible without a proper context. The lack of a context allows for self-interpretation and self-determination of the meaning of a given text or action. In short, it becomes possible to show that the Bible “says” whatever they want it to say. Context is everything.

With that in mind, I’d like to draw your attention to the chief action of the Church in worship, the celebration of the Eucharist, or Holy Communion, as it’s also known. We in the Lutheran Church inherited the way we worship from the big pale of liturgical forms known as the Western Rite, with Rome being the obvious gatekeeper of that rite. In other words, when first-timers attend a Lutheran service and remark, “it looks so catholic,” there’s a reason for that. The proper response is: “yes, of course it does, Lutherans are Western Rite catholics in their worship.” This is not to say that our liturgies are identical, but they are from the same family tree.

One of the areas where this has become more evident in recent years is in the area of the Eucharistic Prayer. It’s a long story, but Luther’s original reform of the Mass completely eradicated the Eucharistic Prayer from the liturgy, opting instead for a form that starkly emphasized the words of institution (Our Lord Jesus Christ on the night in which he was betrayed, etc). In other words, Luther’s original reform emphasized the Gospel beauty of the words of institution, but deleted the context of those words. In truth, he felt he had good reason for this. The particular Eucharistic Prayer he had inherited was, he felt, completely laden with the medieval theology of the priest and sacrifice. This was, however, as later Lutherans would lament, a case of throwing the liturgical baby out with the bathwater.

Thankfully the ongoing reform of the liturgy has brought back the fullness of the Eucharistic Prayer in a fully evangelical framework. We now no longer speak those Gospel words apart from their Gospel context. Liturgically speaking, every time we celebrate the Eucharist we are collectively reminiscing about the whole Gospel STORY that produced those words. That’s why the prayer usually talks about salvation history. It says things like “Long ago you called the Patriarch Abraham…you worked among your chosen people Israel…you sent your prophets…etc. etc., but in the fullness of time you sent your Son to be the Savior of the world…etc.” The point is that the words “take eat this is my body; drink of it all of you, this is my blood” were not spoken in a vacuum. They ARE, and are to be UNDERSTOOD as words that belong to God’s story of salvation. It is within the CONTEXT of that story of salvation that those words have meaning.

And here’s the most important part: It is in HEARING…again and again…that objective story of salvation, that we are able to subjectively connect it to our own stories. Yes, long ago God called Abraham. So what? We’ve never met him. Yet, [not so] long ago God also called **us….personally. God came to **us in the waters of holy baptism and the words of the Gospel; God separated **us from the life of unbelief; God claimed **us as part of his own particular people; God rescued **us from sin and death. In the fullness of time, God sent his only son to redeem **us…you, and me, personally. In other words, the POINT of the Eucharistic prayer is not to have a weekly liturgical ‘history lesson.’ It’s to give us and show us THE CONTEXT of where our own salvation history plugs into the big picture of ALL of God’s mighty acts of salvation. That God called the patriarchs, and Israel, and sent prophets and sages, and eventually his own Son is wonderful news. But it becomes wonderful news to you personally when you understand that this story of salvation that you hear retold and reminisced about in the Eucharistic Prayer, INCLUDES YOU! You hear the context, and you understand and believe that you are included in the context. Context is everything.

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.