This post is full of Lutheran humor, if you aren’t able to handle Lutheran humor – or if you’re not really Lutheran (ELCANS, I’m talking to you!) then please stop by again tomorrow. The title, Hymn of the Lutherans references a hymn written for Emily's forth-coming book, Life Among the Lutherans.
On Sunday, I went to church. My parents weren’t up when I left and must have gone to a different service (they skipped church) and the people I would usually sit by were also absent from church. I spied my friend Linda sitting with her family so I went over to talk to her before church knowing that she’d invite me to sit with her. Linda is sweet and good so you’d never expect that sitting by her in church would be eventful. It was. It opened my eyes to the whole church experience. I have been sitting in the wrong part of the church for far too long.
The first thing that I notice was when Pastor said, “good morning!” He is always cheerful and we all say, “good morning,” in response the same cheery way. Linda uttered it in the manner of someone caught before her coffee. It reminded me of the one time our Pastor has ever lost his cool and that was when someone told a visitor they were in her seat. Pastor came unglued the next Sunday. It was fantastic; he will always be my favorite Pastor. Lutherans are creatures of habit and we may have started the Reformation of Christendom but after that we’ve looked at change this way: we just want to have Christ and the right to be dumb.
Linda’s “good morning” opened my eyes: there is a lot of crazy going on at church.
I noticed our Elder who greets people. I have never spoken to him personally and I am sure he’s a nice old man. He looks like a bouncer. Pastor tells us, “if anyone is visiting for the first time,” and we should be able to tell visitors by who is sitting in unassigned seats, “to please give Jim a hand signal and he’ll give them a welcome packet.” Yes, I am tempted to give that hand signal but he knows I am not a visitor. This Sunday it occurred to me that he’s probably on the look out for any lost ELCA who occasionally wander into our sanctuary. We had to restrain Melissa when she came to visit because even though she’s become LCMS we weren’t confident that anyone had taught her the secret handshake. We let all kinds of people in: Methodists, Democrats, the homeless, but not those ELCA ruffians. I am about all the riffraff my church can handle, after me we’d pass the saturation point.
Sometimes I have to miss church for work and this might have been the Sunday to miss. It was the fifth Sunday and we do a, “Hymn Sing” where people shout out hymns and then we sign the first verse and move on. There has to be a better method but to do things differently would be, ‘change’ and we don’t change. However, Pastor reminded us that it was Lent and we omit the alleluias from our worship. This prompted two ideas in our heads. First, I sang the refrain from Emily’s Hymn of the Lutherans for Linda – and all the octogenarians in Belltone Hearing Range – It’s Lent and we’re Lutheran, we won’t sing, “Alleluia!” We sing thee, “Hosanna!” It means the same thing. Linda and I considered looking for all the hymns that had an alleluia in the first verse and shouting out that hymn number but reconsidered when we remembered the watchful eye of Jim and the possibility of being stoned to death by hymnals. The hymnals are new which would make it a great deal worse than being pelted by the antediluvian Red Hymnals.
Our fellow parishioners have a bad habit of picking their favorite hymns. The problem is that Pastor always calls on the old and they always pick songs that have been poorly translated from German and are impossible to sing in English. It makes me miserable. I was pleasantly surprised by their choices – they picked mainly Methodist hymns (meaning: written first in English) when they weren’t picking absurd hymns. The first hymn they picked was Great is Thy Faithfulness which Leah Monster will play on her accordion and sing at my funeral, either that or Our God Our Hope in Ages Past. The next hymn sung was, Hark the Voice of Jesus Calling, which has the second line of, who will go and work today? This is noteworthy because Linda introduced me to her sister as the person who doesn’t do anything around here to help. This may or may not be true, but I still have a hangover from being a Lutheran teacher. Hark the Voice of Jesus Calling is also the hymn I like to change the words to the most of any hymn in the Lutheran arsenal. Poor Nathan can’t sing that hymn without thinking of my miserable heresies. After this we sang the Navy Hymn.
The next hymn would have given away any ELCA in our midst: Onward Christian Soldiers because far from being some GOP jam-fest this song gets my ELCA Grandmother out of her seat and marching in place while she sings. It’s comical for everyone not related to or sitting with her. We rounded this out with, What a Friend We Have in Jesus. A hymn I never mock.
After this we had Special Music, which was so special the man in front of us ripped out his hearing aids. The choir sang four verses of a hymn and then we were supposed to sing the fifth with them. For this verse we were conducted by the choir director – which was absurd because I don’t know what he’s doing with his hands and I was a band nerd. If I don’t know I’m guessing he was just confusing everyone else as well – if they were paying attention. I ignored the conducting because it’s enough for me to just sit, stand, and kneel when told to by the Pastor or the field worker.
To ask me to sing in some sort of order is too much. I will admit that I liked to randomly stand up during hymns when I was younger because LCMS people are like trained dogs – they’ll all stand up if someone is standing as well. Linda did this when there was a part of a prayer that the Pastor (or the field worker) reads and we follow along with. Linda was reading along so everyone around her started and it spread through the church. Sure, it was an accident on the field worker’s part to tell us to but it was neat how we’re so afraid of not following along that we can gum up the service.
This was followed, more or less, by the reading of the Scriptures. This part is always good because I don’t have to disagree with anyone’s interpretation and I can read along and not do a “running record” of reading errors. Not so today. Today someone read the scripture dramatically. It was like watching a college speech tournament – yes, Renea, it was that bad. Linda said, “you can always tell the newly Lutheran because we don’t get excited about anything, ever.” I'm sure the prophet was all "fire and brimstone" when he went at it with the Hebrews, we are not Hebrews. We are Lutheran. Don't get excited and NO SUDDEN MOVEMENTS.
Thankfully, this was the point at which Pastor took control of the service from the field worker and gave his children’s sermon (I tuned in for that, they played follow-the-leader, and talked about following Jesus when you hit a ‘fork in the road’), I was switching channels through the adult sermon (it’s a longer version of the children’s sermon), we prayed (without incident), confirmed some new members and had our benediction. There was a social hour after church, which I know didn’t happen without incident but I had to deliver a hatchback and missed the social.
I learned an important lesson though: sitting in the balcony means you’re missing a great deal and missing church at all is missing
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