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It is my pleasure this morning to welcome Professor Gordon Lathrop to our Midwinter Lecture Series. Professor Lathrop brings a wealth of experience and learning to us. He earned his doctorate in the Netherlands in New Testament with a renowned scholar, Dr. Edward Schielevichs.

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He served churches in Florida, Wisconsin, and Washington. He was the Professor of Liturgy at Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, and since 1984, has been Professor of Liturgy at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, where he is now the Charles A. Sheeran Professor of Practical Theology. Dr.

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Lathrop has served on numerous editorial boards. He's been a special lecturer in England, in Iceland, in Australia, in Slovakia, in Sweden, in Switzerland, in Puerto Rico, in Cameroon, and now, to his great relief, Texas. He has written numerous books, the most recent of which, Holy Ground: A Liturgical Cosmology, is the third in a series, the first two of which were Holy Things: A Liturgical Theology, and Holy People: A Liturgical Ecclesiology.

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We are truly blessed to have him here with us for midwinter lectures, and we are eager to welcome and hear your presentations for us. Thank you. Dear friends, Texas at last. These lectures are overall entitled, Only One is Holy.

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The subtitle of that overall title is Critical Questions to the Worship Life of Contemporary Christian Congregations. Today, what I want to do is talk about a lecture I'm entitling Holy Things, the subtitle of which is on the central matters of Christian liturgy. And tomorrow, it's Holy People on the Inversion of Holiness in Christian Liturgical Practice. So today, holy things on the central matters of Christian liturgy.

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But before I do that, I want to thank you for your warm hospitality, and thank especially President Wardlaw for his invitation and his shaping this event. And I want to express my deep wishes and my prayers for the rapid recovery of Stan Hall. And to say that I hope he hears these lectures, if he does hear them, I hope he hears these lectures as a gesture standing beside him in a career of distinguished teaching of the church's worship in this place. And I want you, especially if you were engaged in the pastoral care of congregations, to hear these two lectures as a profound, deep bow to you.

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for your work that we can't live without. What I mean by that, I hope, will become clearer in the course of the two lectures. And finally, I'd really like you to, especially those of you who are Presbyterians, and I take it that's the overwhelming majority of the folks in the room, I would like you to hear this as a little concrete visibility of our agreement of full communion.

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And, here's the dangerous part, our agreement to engage in mutual affirmation and admonition. So holy things on the central matters of Christian liturgy. As many of you know, in the Eastern churches of many different rites, The time of communion is marked by a widely shared ritual moment where the presider, the priest, usually sometimes a bishop, stands at the holy doors in front of the sanctuary that is frequently marked off, especially in Byzantine Rite churches with an iconostasis, holding the bread and wine of Holy Communion in his hands, and calls out

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Holy things for the holy people. We've sometimes translated what has been heard by our ears as an invitation. We've sometimes translated that invitation into contemporary Western liturgies into something like the things of God for the people of God as a further invitation for people to come. And in fact,

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You will have heard by the titles of these books that I've used I've sometimes used that, in fact, rather considerably used that. liturgical moment as an image that might stand for all of Christian worship itself. Holy things for the holy people, or even, translated in a more friendly way, the things of God for the people of God. as an invitation to come, not just to the bread and wine of Holy Communion, but to whatever it might be at the heart of the Christian assembly, that is, in fact, the holy things of God set out for the people of God.

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The problem is that we've probably gotten it wrong. That is to say, holy things for the holy people, in its original intention, was probably not an invitation. It was probably rather a warning. Holy things are for the holy people.

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And if you are not holy, go away. Or repent. In any case, the evidence seems to be that that early text, appearing already in manuscript material in the fourth century, seems to carry the old tradition of Christian worship reflection, already present in the perhaps second century, perhaps even first century, teaching of the Twelve Apostles, the Didache.

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Do not give what is holy to dogs. Holy things for the holy people was a warning, and is still. an invitation to the examination of the assembly about whether or not they are holy, and an assertion of the presence of the very things of God, together with the judgment those things of God bring. The fascinating thing, however, is that that invitation is not a single line, only in the mouth of the priest.

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When we've translated it as a friendly invitation in Western liturgies, the things of God for the people of God, says the Book of Common Prayer, for example, in the American Episcopal Church. When we've translated it as a friendly invitation, we've missed the fact that there was a dialogue involved. The most fascinating thing is that dialogue used to be enacted by words spoken by the priest, words of warning, answered by words in the mouths of the people, which in many ways were a set piece of disagreement.

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For classically, the people were invited to respond, Only one is holy. Only one, the Lord, Jesus Christ, to the glory of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or to the glory of God the Father. According to Cyril of Jerusalem, the earliest source of this text in our liturgical materials, when he, in fact, was recounting the ancient dialogue and in his lecturers to the newly baptized.

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He says, Then you heard the cantor begin to sing, 'Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.' Now, there was an invitation. But the invitation followed this classic, fascinating clash in which the people answered the assertion of the priest, holy things for the holy people by, in fact, disagreeing, or at least claiming a grounds on which they could be present. Only one is holy.

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And if only one is holy, and that is Jesus Christ, then holiness itself has a redefinition. And in fact, if only one is holy, and that is Jesus Christ, then priest, We are invited. He who ate with sinners welcomes us, and that is His holiness.

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Or, if you will, only one is holy, and we are only holy people insofar as we claim and are in Him. And these are holy things, only insofar as they hold forth and show forth who Jesus Christ is. At least something like that is alive in that ancient dialogue.

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I love it, that it stands Sunday after Sunday in the liturgy. Holy things for the holy people calls out the priest, asserting the nearness of the awful holiness of God, the presence of God's judgment. Indeed, the holiness of the ritual acting. And yet, only one is holy calls out the people.

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Only one is holy, and that one is Jesus Christ, redefining holiness, welcoming us, redefining the things themselves at the heart of the meeting, and calls out the cantor in that wonderful mixing of the sentences, of the senses, taste and see that the Lord is good. Well, I found that dialogue fascinating. And I want to raise the question from that dialogue, making use of it again, even in churches where that dialogue has never been used. Make use of that dialogue to stand again for Christian liturgy.

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To ask whether or not there are indeed in our assemblies such central matters located, enacted as central, that in encountering them, we encounter something of that dialogue. On the one hand, the awful holiness of God, the sense of our inability to continue there, the question about the nature of holiness itself, and on the other hand, the assertion of the presence and meaning of Jesus Christ. And because of Jesus Christ,

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the presence of grace, of welcome to the beggars and the outsiders and the most marginalized, and because of Jesus Christ, the assertion of the truth and glory of the triune God, of God who is at once the awful distance and the embracing presence, empowering a community in the spirit. With that dialogue in in my mind, and I'm hoping now in yours, I want to invite you to think about whether or not there really are central matters in Christian worship. Central matters that Christians across denominational boundaries share with each other, central matters that essentially mark what Christian assemblies for worship are.

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I want to invite you to ask whether or not In your assemblies, there are such central matters that in fact hold out both the holiness of God and the redefinition of holiness in Jesus Christ. Whether or not there are such central matters that in fact speak Jesus Christ in the midst of an assembly claiming Christ as the only grounds to be before the Holy God, therefore speak grace and speak the Holy Trinity in the midst of a needy world. Now, if you're smart, you will see a Lutheran proposal lurking behind all this.

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You will see a Lutheran mind at work, and I have to say, that's what you got, of course. That's what you invited. Namely, you will know that, in fact, the Lutheran churches confess in their Augsburg Confession that the church is none other than that assembly of believers where the gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments administered according to the gospel.

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Namely, it is an assembly of people around word and sacrament, to use the language, dear to the Lutheran Reformation and not unknown among Reformed churches. And in fact, that definition of melanchthon, for he was the writer of the Augsburg Confession, that old friend of Martin Luther's, was simply a, what, a more philosophically appropriate articulation of a thing that Luther said with much more bluster when he, in fact, asked, where, where Can a poor Christian find the Christian holy people? And responded with what came to be called the marks of the church.

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The Christian holy people can be seen there where the scriptures are read and preached, baptism is celebrated, the supper held, prayers made, and in one remarkable list of the marks of the church, the church is marked by suffering. But my favorite list of the Lutheran proposals to the ecumenical discussion about what should mark church sums up this whole idea about central matters in a more dynamic way. In a church, a little Danish church in North Wisconsin, there used to hang a bell. on the rim of which was engraved an old bell inscription in the classic manner of bell inscriptions.

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That is to say, an inscription that articulated what, in fact, people should think the bell was saying when they heard its dong, dong. And that bell inscription in Luck, Wisconsin, ran like this: To the bath and the table, to the prayer and the word, I call every seeking soul. The inscription probably roots to the work of Nikolai Grundfig, the mid-19th century Danish bishop and theologian, who recovered Luther's discussion of the marks of the church by calling them the Christian signs of life. And you will rightly hear from me an inquiry about whether or not you, too,

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can, with me, when you hear that dialogue, holy things for the holy people, and that response, only one is holy, only one the Lord, Jesus Christ, to the glory of God the Father, you too can join with me in imagining that the answer to the question, are there central things for Christian worship practice that show forth their centrality and in their centrality invite us to stand before the Holy God and at the same time know the truth about Jesus Christ. You will then join me perhaps in answering in the manner of this Lutheran proposal, yes, bath, table, prayer, word. But you know, of course, it's not just the Lutheran idea.

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And it isn't just a Lutheran proposal from the 16th century on to the ecumenical Christian church. I think, in fact, the argument could be made, it's a biblical idea. Already there in Acts 2, verse 42, and they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayers. The church was sketched in an assembly around something like at least a similar list of these central matters.

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And I join those who read the 24th chapter of the gospel according to Luke, not as some song, I mean as some text meant to make us sing that old gospel song, oh how I wish I could have been with them then, you know that one? But rather a text in Luke 24, especially the account of the disciples on the way to Aunt Atemaeus, a text intended to give characterization to the nature of our Sunday meetings, ongoing, from that Sunday on. as meetings gathered around the interpretation of the scripture, beginning at Moses and all the prophets, to speak the things of Jesus Christ, and as a gathering in order to know that same risen Lord in the breaking of bread, and be sent in mission back to the city of death, or to any city of death, in order to bring the word of his resurrection. I think, in fact,

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The scriptures themselves, especially the New Testament, can be read as setting out to us certain central matters. Jesus is baptized. And according to the Gospel of Matthew, he bids the church baptize, saying, I am with you. Jesus is known as holding meals with sinners.

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And according to the synoptic gospels and also to Paul, he bids the church hold that meal, saying, this is my body. This is my blood. And Jesus himself is a preacher. And the church arises preaching and telling stories, narratives, surprising narratives, narratives that in fact turn narrative expectation on their head.

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Jesus himself is a preacher and finally becomes the preached one. These things are given to us in the New Testament texts. And while the word Jesus Christ, the phrase Jesus Christ in North America can mean a lot of things, in fact frequently means certain projections of myself or of my own political opinions or moral imagination, the truth of the matter is when those projections are set next to these words, this is my body given for you. Or, and I am with you always.

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Or, and I am among you as one who serves. Or, and I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly. Then at least the projections are invited to a reorientation and a reconfiguring. No, I say that according to the New Testament and not just the Lutheran conspiracy, there are certain central things.

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They may be done radically differently throughout the churches. They may be surrounded with a radical different style and song, but there are certain central things, holy things for the holy people. In fact, sometimes in reading the New Testament, I've wondered if the gospel shape itself was not invented in a church already knowing something of this shape.

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Beginning with baptism, the readers, the assembly reading this text, is introduced to Jesus telling narratives, or to narratives about Jesus, both, sometimes located in houses, like the church was anciently located. Until at last the narrative runs out with its down payment several times in meals, both in houses and in the open wilderness. Until at last the narrative runs out in the passion story, but the passion story in the 1st place prefigured by and given its significance at a meal.

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And then the stories end with ascending. in Luke's and John's case, and with ascending, after one final image of the church assembled on the first day of the week, and on the following first day of the week, and one presumes the following first day of the week as well. Baptism, narrative, table, sending, That's at least the great shape of the gospel books.

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And I want to argue that it has some resonance for people who recognize that those central things themselves have given us in the Christian community a shape. Dear friends, it is not just Luther or these musings about what is in the scripture that answers the question, Are there holy things? positively with a simple list. One of my favorite texts in this regard is in fact found in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, in the work of John Calvin.

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In book 4, chapter 17, Calvin is discussing the question about frequent communion. You know his argument. It's an argument in favor of at least weekly setting out the Holy Supper in the midst of the church. And after, in fact, discussing the material in Acts chapter 2, Calvin then has this sentence.

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I love it. Thus it became generally the agenda, that's literally the Latin word, agendum. Thus it became generally the agenda, that is to say, the pattern or the order of service, that no meeting of the church would take place without word prayer, participation in the supper, and almsgiving.

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That's Calvin. No meeting of the church would take place without word, prayer, participation in the supper, and almsgiving. I want to say, when I hear those words, holy things for the holy people, I imagine this simple list.

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Well, you might say, who would disagree? I mean, can't all Christians agree about that list? Isn't that what church is about? Dear friends, who would disagree?

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In fact, there's a lot of American Christianity that disagrees. And in fact, one might say that much of our practice actually disagrees, if one would look at what we really do. But the great articulator of a disagreement with this assertion is probably the principal articulator of the Second Great Awakening and of its resultant evangelical movement in North America, namely the 19th century theologian and writer Charles Grandison Finney.

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If you haven't spent some time with Finney's lectures on the revivals of religion, it might be worth your effort, partly because Finney is still so important. so present in church life, and actually present in much contemporary Christian disagreement. Here's one passage from Finney's book, a passage where, in fact, he himself is discussing how he believes that God has established no particular system of worship. Here's what he says.

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When Jesus Christ was on earth, laboring among his disciples, he had nothing to do with forms or measures. And when the apostles preached afterwards, their commission was go and preach the gospel and disciple the nations. It did not prescribe any forms. It did not admit any.

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No person can pretend to get any set of forms or particular directions as to measures out of this commission. Do it the best way you can. Seek, ask wisdom from God, use the faculties he has given you, seek the direction of the Holy Ghost, just go forward and do it.

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Pinney, of course, is the classic American pragmatist. This was their commission, and their object was to make known the gospel in the most effectual way, to make the truth stand out strikingly, so as to obtain the attention and to secure the obedience of the greatest number possible. No person can find any form of doing this laid down in the Bible. Well, dear friends, I don't want to give any disrespect to Charles Finney, but I must say that I think, in this assertion, he is simply wrong.

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The truth of the matter is Jesus was engaged in forms, the form of a supper. And tradition, faith has said that he passed on that form to the church. Preaching itself is a form, and so is the announcement of the forgiveness of sins, and certainly, fascinatingly, baptism. Did you notice how Finney quotes Matthew 28, but conveniently edits out of his version of Matthew 28 any reference to baptism at all?

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No, I must say that Finney, I think, is wrong, at least insofar as the reference is to the Jesus of what John Dominic Crossan calls the sarcophilic gospels, the canonical gospels, the Jesus involved with the stuff of baptism, supper, narratives and preaching. And disagreeing with Finney, I want to say it matters for us. Finney and the Second Great Awakening have had a powerful influence on all of us, even in Presbyterian churches, with their resistance originally to revivalist measures.

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The truth of the matter is what works has become the central matter without sufficiently asking what works for what, to do what, to bring what across, or build what. The formula of agreement between the Reformed churches and the Lutheran church in North America has invited us to the exercise of mutual affirmation and admonition. Hear me this morning to affirm among you the kinds of things imaged by this room with a table and a reminder of the font and a place of the word set out so clearly in the heart of what is intended to be a participating assembly.

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and with the images of the Spirit making use of water and of word, prayer, and table, painted, as it were, on the walls. But the question remains, regardless of how we shape our rooms, how are we making use of them? Hear me as I affirm among you when, in fact, you are engaged in assemblies gathered clearly and centrally around these central things.

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And hear me, as however gently and with whatever deep respect, I make use also of the call to admonition, to invite you to let these central things, indeed, be central. In 1994, the Faith and Order Commission convened a little gathering at Ditchingham in England to work on the question of the quest for Christian unity in its relationship to Christian worship. The Ditchingham gathering in 1994 published a statement that I think has been too little read called Towards Koinonia in Worship.

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After recounting its own way in that statement towards something like this short list, and notice it's extremely short, this short list of the central matters in Christian worshiping assemblies. And after rejoicing in the fact that short list of central matters in Christian assemblies is a source of diverse theological reflection, and certainly of diverse ceremonial enactment, the Ditchingham document says this. Churches may rightly call each other toward a maturation in the use of this pattern, this short list, this agendum of Calvin, or to a renewed clarification of its central characteristics. Or even, churches may

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may rightly even call each other toward a conversion to its use. I think that Ditchingham was right. And that, in fact, these simple matters are in need of being set out with great clarity in our heart, in the heart of our meetings. Word, prayer, table, alms.

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That's Calvin. with the characteristic Reformed additions to the list. Do you notice? That prayer for Calvin is a response to the Word, in which the Word is situated truly in this world.

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And that almsgiving is a response to the table, that this place of the generosity of God leads us to see how we were baked together in the same cake with a hungry world. and how God who feeds us here invites us to be ourselves, bread for our neighbor. The simple pattern of word, prayer, table, alms, or with the bell in luck, bath and table, prayer and word, that simple pattern is worth our attention once again. By the way, when I think about that

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inscription on the bell in luck. I think about an exchange that I had with a church musician with whom I work that I think was an important exchange. One time I was talking with him and saying, his name is Mark, and saying, Mark, look, according to that bell, which you and I agree is a wonderful summary of Christian liturgy, according to that bell, What's central to Christian worship is the bath, baptism, the table, the prayer, and the word.

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There's nothing there about music. Silence. Mark says, Gordon, it's a bell. Oh, I said.

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But, said Mark, do you see? Music is not another thing on the list. Music's a way you do this. Invite the community to a participating assembly in which bath and table, prayer and word are sung.

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and understand the musical gifts in the assembly to be gifts to, in fact, support the assembly doing these central matters. Central matters. But then, why again? Why are these the central matters?

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Well, Reformed and Lutheran Christians have said they are the central matters because they have Christ's promise. Or we might say it more ecumenically and generally with the Christian world today, to say these are the matters which continue the work of Jesus Christ in the midst of contemporary assemblies. If you will, these are the ways, this supper that says the body of Christ given for you, the blood of Christ shed for you, This word, this bath in which Jesus says, I am with you always.

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These are the ways in which the historic biblical Christ is set out in the midst of a needy world so that in fact the triune God is spoken in grace. And furthermore, these things, they are astonishing. They are ordinary, fleshly things. connecting with meals, especially festive meals, wherever they are held throughout the world, with the pattern of ritual bathing for new beginnings, and with narratives of significant meaning in cultures throughout the world.

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These things are accessible throughout the world. They're not inaccessible, wholly distant things. And furthermore, these things engage us in standing on this world and speaking of Jesus Christ and of the grace of God for this world. And side by side, these things have a remarkable effect on each other.

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So that the word we speak or preach in the midst of Christian assemblies is not just a list of things you've got to do. but finally becomes like Ezekiel, a word to eat or to drink. In fact, sometimes I want to say to people who are preparing to preach, is your sermon going to say in words in accordance with the intentions of the text you are preaching on, is it going to say the same thing the Holy Supper says?

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Or is it going to wash over the people with the same effect that the Holy Baptism washes over the people? Set next to supper and to baptism, preaching is called to such a vocation. And similarly, if the supper and baptism is constantly set next to the Word, then it can, at least with only greater difficulty, could it become simply a sign of our own religious intention, or a vow of our own wonderful committedness, or a sacrifice we are offering to God.

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instead of an insertion by water into the narrative of the people saved through the water, and the narrative of Christ standing at the Jordan, and at last baptized in his own blood. Or a meal inserted into the narrative of the people fed by God in the wilderness and led to life. and constantly fed again and again in the face of death, and at last fed with the body and blood of Christ that they might participate in the witness of his resurrection and be that body and blood for the world. No, word and table, word and bath, side by side, time and time again, will save our words from irrelevance or legalism.

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and save our religious acts for insertion into the saving biblical narrative. No, there are central things. And this word will, in fact, lead us anew into the truth of Jesus Christ, spoken in the midst of the world and for the sake of the life of the world, with prayers for the world. and a new awareness that we are not the righteous almsgivers giving away to the otherwise poor, but that we are indeed, in that quotation from D.T.

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Niles, beggars telling other beggars where there's bread. Dear friends, this is the bottom line I mean to say today, a little celebration of full communion. and a tiny affirmation and admonition. I invite you, even if that text never appears in your liturgy, to set out in the front, in the midst of your participating assemblies, every week, as John Calvin says, every week, the word, the prayer, the participation in the supper, and the almsgiving.

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the bath and table, prayer and word for every seeking soul. To set that out saying holy things for the holy people, and to hear again with your life how your assembly will say, even if they don't have the text, only one is holy, only one the Lord, and someone will sing, taste, and see that the Lord is good. If you are participating in assemblies where this is taking place for the sake of the faith of your community, the mission of the church, and the life of the world, then here is my profound bow.

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And if you are not, it's a simple challenge. It's a Calvinist challenge, not a Lutheran one. And I invite you to it. But holy things for the holy people.

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Only one is holy, Jesus Christ. There is hidden in that assertion a change in the idea of holiness. And that change I want to explore tomorrow. Thank you very much.

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Thank you. I invite you now to come join us for some refreshments in the McCord Atrium, and we will reconvene here at 11:15. Is that incorrect? Go ahead, Ted.

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Oh, you changed. Okay. What Ted said. So we'll do that.