For folks who are used to worshipping in rural congregations, with no more than a hundred others on a good Sunday, it can be pretty overwhelming to gather with close to a thousand like-minded Lutherans to sing and worship together. Even in a convention center ballroom, people from our synod were moved by the experience, saying it was the most high-church, most extraordinary worship they had ever witnessed. With the Christ Candle lit next to a baptismal font all week, these daily moments of song, prayer, and sacrament kept our focus on the God who created us, loves us, and makes us holy.
The Assembly’s worship staff did break a few rules to give our worship meaning. Instead of using green as the color for the paraments and vestments every day, we had days of blue in the middle of the week, and red at the last service. I had a chance to ask Deacon John Weit, the ELCA’s Executive for Worship, about the blue paraments, usually reserved for Advent. He told me that this Assembly, especially, with its important elections and focus on themes of justice and peace, was filled with that same pre-Christmas longing. This was an Assembly of hopeful anticipation, expectant for new life to come for our church and our world. Though we met at the end of July in Phoenix, Arizona, it was surely a time of Advent.
Beyond the symbolism of color, our services leaned into hope and longing with the inclusion of rites which many Lutherans rarely experience. Rev. Albert Starr of Los Angeles opened our worship with the Pouring of Libations, a practice included in This Far By Faith, the ELCA’s African American resource for worship. During Wednesday’s communion service, we paused for a prayer of lament, adapted from our newest hymnal, All Creation Sings. On Friday, we joined in a Confession and Repentance for the Sins of Patriarchy and Sexism, in response to the social statement approved by the 2016 Churchwide Assembly. All these and more led us through a week of reflection on this assembly’s theme, “For the Life of the World.”
Worship also showed up outside of these formal moments in the West Ballroom of the Phoenix Convention Center. On Tuesday, we were fortunate to be part of a Pow Wow hosted by the ELCA’s Indigenous ministries. On Wednesday evening, folks from the ELCA’s AMMPARO Migrant Ministry gathered us at Peace Park, along with an inter-religious and ecumenical group of leaders, to pray by candlelight for justice for migrant families in North America and throughout the world. Many folks from our synod gathered at the daily morning prayer moments led by leaders from Reconciling Works. And during the plenaries themselves, we centered ourselves through prayer and song before every major vote, including all ten votes held to elect our Presiding Bishop and Secretary.
It was wonderful to see folks from our synod participate in worship throughout the week. At our opening service on Monday, Brandon Graves carried the cross, leading the whole assembly into worship. At that same service, our own Bishop Fidlar joined the other 64 bishops of the ELCA to distribute communion to everyone gathered. At other services, Mel Ehrler, Vice President Minnette Willard, and I had the opportunity to serve as communion assistants as well. Deacon Laura Gorton was part of the team offering individual blessings as we departed from our first service. It was wonderful to join the myriad of torch-bearers, dancers, kite-fliers, ministers, readers, musicians, and prayer writers in leading just a small portion of this Assembly’s worship together.
Lastly, there aren’t enough words to convey the life-giving sermons we heard throughout the week. I encourage you to go to the ELCA’s YouTube page to watch them yourself. It was a blessing to hear such Spirit-filled words from Imam Haddad, the bishop-elect of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, as well as the ELCA’s own Rev. Nelson Garcia and Rev. Wyvetta Bullock. They challenged us, inspired us, and gave us the direction we needed for our prayer-filled work in the eleven plenary sessions throughout the week, and into our regular lives once the week was ended. As Bp. Vashti McKenzie, General Secretary and President of the National Council of Churches, put it in her captivating sermon, “Prayer is not what we whisper when we lay down at night, but what we risk when we rise in the morning.”
Rev. Chad McKenna
Pastor, St. Mark Lutheran Church
Rockford, IL
