The Eucharistic Prayer is controversial among Lutherans. The suspicion goes back Luther and his liturgical reforms. Whether Luther was right or wrong I cannot say. But there are some things I can assert on the basis of 2,000 years of liturgical history and practice. First that the Eucharistic Prayer has been in use from the beginning. The four gospels give only the simple...

In Lutheran liturgy the "Greeting" (The Lord be with you / and also with you) is chanted 3 times: before the Collect, at the Preface, before the dismissal. But what does it mean? What is the logic behind it? Several explanations have been offered, and there is room for interpretation, but I think we would do well to consider the "greeting" specifically Eucharistic in natu...

And he said to me, "Go and say to this people: 'Listen and Hear! But do not understand! Look and Observe! But do not see! Make the heart of this people impenetrable and their ears to droop! Blind their eyes lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and open their hearts; and relent, and be healed." And I said, "How long O Lord?" And he said, "Until th...

In last week's gospel we read: "And reports about him went out into every place in the surrounding region." (Luke 4:37) How interesting. What we might think of as a throwaway line may be more than that. Of what exactly did said reports consist, and how were they made? The content seems obvious, and they were no doubt transmitted by word of mouth. But does Luke mean somet...

Since the post I wrote earlier this week entitled: A Day Which Will Live On In Infamythe news has gotten even worse. On January 22, 2019, the 46th anniversary of legally sanctioned abortion in the United States, the state of New York passed a law allowing abortion up to the day of birth. The new legislation defines a person as, "a human being who has been born and is aliv...