Confessing Evangelical

Revd Alex Klages pointed out in the comments to my previous post that the Lord's Supper is not "the" climax of the Divine Service, but one of two climaxes, the sermon being the other: "Twin towers, as it were, in which God comes to us through His Word". (For the record, I'm quite sure my pastor would agree with this entirely. Equally, I understand why he expressed himself the way he did in his letter about weekly communion.)

These twin peaks of the Liturgy are illustrated very well in the diagram above, taken from a very useful little book called About Our Liturgy by David A. Kind, and published by University Lutheran Chapel at the University of Minnesota.

As Kind writes:

The Divine Service is centered on our Lord’s activity among us through the means of grace. The means of Word and Sacrament form the pivotal structures around which all of our worship is centered. The Divine Service, therefore, can be described as consisting of two main parts, the service of the Word and the Service of the Sacrament; each of which nds its center and acme in the presence of Christ and the giving of His grace.

These means of grace are not simply found in the raw, as it were, but are surrounded by what we call liturgy: the words and music that give expression to our need and to our faith and point us to these means of grace as the answer to both.

That said, I think it is entirely appropriate for the second peak to be shown as higher than the first. To stop after the first cycle of preparation, presence and response is anticlimactic: the preaching of the Gospel will, ideally, point forward to the Sacrament; and indeed this should help ensure the sermon itself is properly focussed on the Gospel. Conversely, the Sacrament is founded upon the preaching of the Gospel, and is a powerful means of appropriating for ourselves the promises of the Gospel that have been declared to us in the sermon.

To have one without the other is unsatisfactory, whether it is "Divine Service Without Holy Communion", or celebrating the Sacrament of the Altar without a sermon. Interestingly, even the Roman Catholic Church has come round to the idea that the Lord's Supper should always be preceded by a homily - to find a sermonless Supper, one's best bet now is probably a midweek Communion service in an Anglican Church.