Week #12 Holy Cross Lutheran Church

Once I explained to Brian why a church founded by a “1950’s civil rights leader” would mostly be attended by tall blondes with German last names, we were ready for week #12 Holy Cross Lutheran Church.  Now coming from the Midwest, I was no stranger to Lutherans, but this was still my first time attending a Lutheran service.  Brian, however, had been to “tons of them.”  His experience combined with the five straight years I made nearly everyone I met watch the film Drop Dead Gorgeous was all the research we needed.  What does that Oscar worthy film have to do with this religion? Skip the Netflix and just buy the DVD to find out.  If you are a Caucasian female between 25 and 35 who grew up in a small Midwestern town, you’ll marvel at how humorously and precisely it captures your high school experience.  If you are part of literally any other demographic, you’ll just wonder how to get that hour and a half of your life back and how Kirsten Dunst ever had a successful acting career.

Lutheran Sisterhood Gun Club aside, most of us know some of the history of the Lutheran faith, the Protestant Reformation, the 95 Theses…If you haven’t heard of these events, exit this window and read a history book or Wikipedia for goodness sake.  For the purpose of this all you need to know is that in the 1500’s some folks broke away from the Roman Catholic Church and a new blog topic was born.  Being that Lutheranism is only once removed from Catholicism, the service remains fairly traditional.  There were altar servers, an elaborate organ, pastors in white robes, standard church hymns and even a silent auction in the community room featuring a German potato salad that reportedly went for over $700 last year.  It was pretty standard.  The service began with a procession down the aisle and a formal greeting to the congregation with a scripted response.  They said the lord’s prayer, sang, sat, stood. 

 They offered the Eucharist with two interesting twists. #1: The weekly program outlined who could take communion.  This is important coming from a Catholic background.  You see Catholics are picky about this.  Only Catholics can take it and only after they take two years of religion classes, go through the sacrament of First Holy Communion (which Brian swears involved a test, that apparently he cheated to pass, which is sad because I’m pretty sure it only required memorizing 10 commandments and a prayer that is said every week at church).  And that is not all, after all that vetting only the Catholic who have not sinned can take it. (That last piece may not be true, but I can remember my grandmother saying that you couldn’t take it if you didn’t go to church the week before because apparently that is a sin).  Point is there are lots of rules.  Not here, the program said that anyone could take it who wanted to welcome Christ into their lives.  #2: They dunked the wafer in the wine.  Awesome idea, much better than everyone drinks from the same cup!  The guy with sniffles just swigged from the communal Blood of Christ cup along with half of the congregation, how is that sanitary!?  But what are your choices, group cup or just having the dry wafer, not if you’re Lutheran, the dunk is ingenious.   

One other notable difference, and I’m sure this came a while after Martin Luther, the service was given by Pastor Stephanie, yup a woman.  She was good too, energetic, welcoming… She led a children’s gospel lesson, always our favorite part of any service.  They did an interactive “bearing witness” lesson where the pastor left and the kids shared what they did on Saturday and then she returned and the “witness” told what they had heard.  It was less evangelicals in training and more illustrating what the apostles did following the resurrection.  Which makes sense because this was a few weeks after Easter and it aligned with the reading for this week. This also illustrates another key distinction between the more traditional religions and the ones that have sprung up over the last few years.  Lutherans, Catholics and the like, have a schedule of gospel readings.  It is the same reading the 2^nd Sunday after Easter every year for the last 500 years or whatever.  There is normally a gospel reading followed by a sermon reflection upon said reading. These new fangled faiths seem to have less cohesion, the preaching is more driven by topic or theme and select bible quotes are throw in to affirm the point.  

I am focusing on this distinction because I think it is at the cusp of how American Christianity is morphing.  Not the good kind of morphing like when sewer turtles encounter green ooze, more the Kafta kind where you go to bed a salesman, wake up a bug, eventually die and then the whole family is better off now that you’re dead.  I’m pretty sure that is exactly what is happening to Christianity in America, it’s morphing from this traditional structure (bible reading then sermon about the reading) that you’ll see in a Lutheran service with 100 parishioners to the sermon about a theme the pastor thought up with a sprinkling of Bible quotes throughout, implying that the bible supports the pastor’s beliefs and is broadcast on national television to millions of viewers.  I’ll elaborate…

There is a fundamental difference between reading an entire passage and then speaking to how it can be applied to everyday life (as is done in a Lutheran/Catholic, we’ll say “traditional” church) and giving a persuasive sermon with some quotes from the same passage thrown in (as is done in some of the non-denominational churches).  This distinction is both interesting and scary, allow me to illustrate with a  piece of secular text:

Traditional religion- reading followed by applicable sermon. 

 

Reader: “A reading from the book of the Lorax

‘I am the Lorax! I speak for the trees,
Which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please;
But I also speak for the brown Barbaloots,
Who frolicked and played in their Barbaloot suits,
Happily eating Truffula fruits.
Now, since you've chopped the trees to the ground
There's not enough Truffula fruit to go 'round!
And my poor Barbaloots are all feeling the crummies
Because they have gas, and no food, in their tummies’.”

Congregation: “Thanks be to Dr. Seuss”

Priest: “If we don’t look after our planet, we will have nothing left. Treat resources with respect, protect them and they will still be here in the future.  You - yes, you - have the power to impact change.” Obviously the sermon would be longer and have some anecdotes thrown in, but I’m not writing sermons, I’m illustrating a point.  

Non-Traditional religion-sermon with some quotes 

Pastor: “This week’s topic is ‘Getting into Heaven,’ The only path to eternal life is through our religion.  All followers of other religious traditions that are not ours may be happy now, but when the end times come (should be the Tuesday after next) they will not get into heaven.  As Seuss wrote in Lorax 3:16 ‘There's not enough Truffula fruit to go 'round!’ Only the followers of Seuss will have the Truffula and eternal life with Seuss…

See the difference? We’re moving there, one televangelist at a time.  So I’m glad that Pastor Stephanie and her Lutheran crew were holding tradition.  We also lucked out this week because it happened to be a baptism in addition to the regular service.  It was like a oneCHURCHaWEEK bonus.  Like other traditional Christian religions, the baptism was for a baby.  No grown adults were fully emerged in a lake or anything like that.  I’m on Larry David’s side with those baptisms, I think I’d mistake it for a drowning and jump into help too.  Luckily I’m not a Jew, so my lifeguarding skills would be better received.  Regardless there was no need for accidental CPR today, because the Lutherans just had the parents denounce the devil and promise to raise the baby in the church and then dripped some water on his forehead.   The baptism took place at the back of the church where they had a little table set up with some oil, a baptism candle, a baptismal reading, a water basin and oddly a plastic water bottle.  At first I thought that maybe someone was thirsty and had accidently left their beverage on the baptism station, or maybe all the challises were in the dishwasher.  Turns out I was incorrect, the bottle was there on purpose.  It was actually full of water from the river Jordan and it was used for the ceremony. I think it is the river Jesus was baptized in or something, I don’t remember the details.  I understand why it would come in a plastic bottle with “Aquafina” written in Arabic on the label, but I’m still not sure why they never poured it into a different container.  Oh well, they figured out how to not have the body of Christ stick to the top of your mouth so I’m sure they’ll eventually figure out how to repackage the holy water.