What Did You Get Last Sunday?

Shane R · Apr 2, 2026

The secretary asked me: do you actually want to do 2 different readings for Easter?

Yes. Though the sermons are not totally different they do have distinctive features. And I know there will be 20+ more people at the second service than at Sunrise.

Deegie · Apr 2, 2026

Shane R said:
The secretary asked me: do you actually want to do 2 different readings for Easter?

Yes. Though the sermons are not totally different they do have distinctive features. And I know there will be 20+ more people at the second service than at Sunrise.

Hmm...your post made me just realize that by taking the "alternate" reading of Matthew for Easter Morning this year, I'm repeating that reading from the Vigil. So I'll spend the next few days trying to write two completely different sermons for the same text since I have some people who come to both.

Shane R · Apr 2, 2026

Deegie said:
Hmm...your post made me just realize that by taking the "alternate" reading of Matthew for Easter Morning this year, I'm repeating that reading from the Vigil. So I'll spend the next few days trying to write two completely different sermons for the same text since I have some people who come to both.

Sorry to make more work for you!

Shane R · Apr 2, 2026

I plug in the Exhortation before communion a couple of times through the whole run as well because people pop out of the woodwork who don't regularly come to church. It's good for them to hear that.

Deegie · Apr 2, 2026

Shane R said:
Sorry to make more work for you!

To be fair, you only made me realize I had more work to do. LOL. That's what I get for procrastinating in my sermon writing anyway. I always find this a hard time of year because I'm personally mired in Holy Week but need to think about the joy of Easter. Does that make sense?

Paidiske · Apr 2, 2026

Definitely. There's this weird thing where we always have to be working ahead of where the calendar is, and it can be a bit cognitively dissonant.

The Liturgist · Apr 3, 2026

Deegie said:
Hmm...your post made me just realize that by taking the "alternate" reading of Matthew for Easter Morning this year, I'm repeating that reading from the Vigil. So I'll spend the next few days trying to write two completely different sermons for the same text since I have some people who come to both.

Aside from the well known Paschal Homily of St. Chrysostom there are a number of other relatively short homilies that are quite beautiful written by saints of the early church who are commemorated in the Episcopal Church. I seem to recall a good short one from St. Gregory Nazianzus. There’s also a lovely homily by St. Ephraim the Syrian (which if I’m well enough to concelebrate this year at any point in the Pentecost I will use):

Death trampled our Lord underfoot, but he in his turn treated death as a highroad for his own feet. He submitted to it, enduring it willingly, because by this means he would be able to destroy death in spite of itself.
Death had its own way when our Lord went out from Jerusalem carrying his cross; but when by a loud cry from that cross he summoned the dead from the underworld, death was powerless to prevent it.

Death slew him by means of the body which he had assumed, but that same body proved to be the weapon with which he conquered death. Concealed beneath the cloak of his manhood, his godhead engaged death in combat; but in slaying our Lord, death itself was slain. It was able to kill natural human life, but was itself killed by the life that is above the nature of man.
Death could not devour our Lord unless he possessed a body, neither could hell swallow him up unless he bore our flesh; and so he came in search of a chariot in which to ride to the underworld. This chariot was the body which he received from the Virgin; in it he invaded death’s fortress, broke open its strong-room and scattered all its treasure.

At length he came upon Eve, the mother of all the living. She was that vineyard whose enclosure her own hands had enabled death to violate, so that she could taste its fruit; thus the mother of all the living became the source of death for every living creature.

But in her stead Mary grew up, a new vine in place of the old. Christ, the new life, dwelt within her. When death, with its customary impudence, came foraging for her mortal fruit, it encountered its own destruction in the hidden life that fruit contained. All unsuspecting, it swallowed him up, and in so doing released life itself and set free a multitude of men.

He who was also the carpenter’s glorious son set up his cross above death’s all-consuming jaws, and led the human race into the dwelling place of life. Since a tree had brought about the downfall of mankind, it was upon a tree that mankind crossed over to the realm of life. Bitter was the branch that had once been grafted upon that ancient tree, but sweet the young shoot that has now been grafted in, the shoot in which we are meant to recognize the Lord whom no creature can resist.

We give glory to you, Lord, who raised up your cross to span the jaws of death like a bridge by which souls might pass from the region of the dead to the land of the living. We give glory to you who put on the body of a single mortal man and made it the source of life for every other mortal man. You are incontestably alive. Your murderers sowed your living body in the earth as farmers sow grain, but it sprang up and yielded an abundant harvest of men raised from the dead.

Come then, my brothers and sisters, let us offer our Lord the great and all-embracing sacrifice of our love, pouring out our treasury of hymns and prayers before him who offered his cross in sacrifice to God for the enrichment of us all.

Shane R · Apr 4, 2026

I'm reworking my second Easter sermon a bit. Turns out, there's been a baptism scheduled for that service. A 19 year old woman.

The church secretary just started in the last month and is a bit stressed by her first Easter and having a lot of extra prep; particularly with some of the services not being exactly the same as a standard Sunday liturgy. And I hadn't packed the things I would normally want for the baptism but we scrounged up what is necessary.

I'm sitting here reviewing the Rite in their hymnal while I wait for my daughters to awaken. I tend to take a minimalist approach to such things and if the rubric says, "the Celebrant may..." I will probably not.

Paidiske · Apr 4, 2026

If you didn't know about a baptism until the day before, a fairly minimal approach seems fair!

Shane R · Apr 4, 2026

I know there are some who would prefer to have proper Lutheran pastors for the major holy days but there are others who've realized I'm a lot easier to work with because I'm adaptable. Most of the retired pastors that they use from time to time would have a fit about being informed before the Good Friday service that there's a baptism for Easter.

The Liturgist · Apr 4, 2026

Shane R said:
I know there are some who would prefer to have proper Lutheran pastors for the major holy days but there are others who've realized I'm a lot easier to work with because I'm adaptable. Most of the retired pastors that they use from time to time would have a fit about being informed before the Good Friday service that there's a baptism for Easter.

Just out of curiosity how many different variant Lutheran liturgies do you know, in addition to the 1928 BCP?

Have you worked with the 1941 Lutheran hymnal? It and the other historic Lutheran liturgies were very close to the BCP since they were derived from the “Common Service” which was an English language Lutheran text adapted from it albeit with a Mass closer to the Roman Rite albeit with the anaphora being stripped down to the bare minimum (for this reason I tend to prefer the BCP, particularly the 1928 American and 1929 Scottish versions. I also like the 1979 BCP (in the form of the Anglican Service Book, which provides a traditional language adaptation of it (and is explicitly permitted by the 1979 BCP’s rubrics).

Paidiske · Apr 4, 2026

Shane R said:
I know there are some who would prefer to have proper Lutheran pastors for the major holy days but there are others who've realized I'm a lot easier to work with because I'm adaptable. Most of the retired pastors that they use from time to time would have a fit about being informed before the Good Friday service that there's a baptism for Easter.

To be fair, if they'd known for ages but just not thought to tell me, I'd be grumpy, too. But if that's when it came about, then so be it. I mean, having a baptism is a good thing!

Shane R · Apr 6, 2026

Shane R · Apr 6, 2026

The Liturgist said:
Just out of curiosity how many different variant Lutheran liturgies do you know, in addition to the 1928 BCP?

If you mean settings, probably about 8. I know most of the settings for LBW and LSB + Merbecke for the Common Service. I could say the services in the ELS book but the Norwegian musical settings throw me off. I don't sight read well enough. I can but not at full speed.

The Liturgist said:
Have you worked with the 1941 Lutheran hymnal?

No. And that's interesting since I was originally confirmed in LCMS in 2011. In my 5ish years off and on with the LCMS, I never attended a parish that still used TLH. I've been offered boxes of them to pass on to ELDoNA, but I've never been in a service where it was being celebrated.

I have celebrated the Service Book & Hymnal (1958) a couple of times; which still has more followers than I expected. I know of a couple of Lutheran Ministeriums with a strong preference for the book. TLH has more LCMS followers now than LW (1982). I think TLH was also licit for WELS for many years but I could be wrong.

Shane R · Apr 14, 2026

Last Sunday I was not booked anywhere so I went to St. John's and got attacked by a wasp. I beat it to death with the bulletin, rolled up. I also got booked for the first Sunday in May because Pr. Al wants to go to Indiana that Sunday to visit a parish he served many years ago for an anniversary they are having.

Paidiske · Apr 14, 2026

The first Sunday in May I'll be on leave (for the first time since October). I'm rather looking forward to that.

The Liturgist · Apr 14, 2026

Paidiske said:
The first Sunday in May I'll be on leave (for the first time since October). I'm rather looking forward to that.

That sounds lovely - I’ve never seen a good photograph of fall foliage in Australia, are there any Australian places like New England or parts of Europe that offer an antipodean autumn at this time of year? Perhaps the forests of Tasmania?

Paidiske · Apr 14, 2026

Australian natives are almost all evergreen, and we don't get the autumn colour change that you see pictures of elsewhere, except in places where they've planted a lot of imported trees. So there are places that are well known for a pretty autumn - regional towns like Bright where they've lined the streets with European trees - but generally autumn colours are a bit of an exotic thing.

(Disclaimer: Google tells me there is one exception, a native deciduous beech that grows densely in one pocket of a national park in Tasmania, where you get that classic autumn colour change. But that's really all we get in terms of native autumn colours).

The Liturgist · Apr 14, 2026

Paidiske said:
Australian natives are almost all evergreen, and we don't get the autumn colour change that you see pictures of elsewhere, except in places where they've planted a lot of imported trees. So there are places that are well known for a pretty autumn - regional towns like Bright where they've lined the streets with European trees - but generally autumn colours are a bit of an exotic thing.

(Disclaimer: Google tells me there is one exception, a native deciduous beech that grows densely in one pocket of a national park in Tasmania, where you get that classic autumn colour change. But that's really all we get in terms of native autumn colours).

In Southern California (and several other places along the Pacific Coast of the Americas, for example, Ecuador), Eucalyptus trees are extremely common and I’ve always loved the aroma; they were imported to the Americas to control soil erosion (which is quite a big problem in southern California, especially in years where there is intense rain following a wildfire; I remember how the rains following the 2003 wildfires cut groves into the tops of the hills. Thus these eucalyptus trees would probably make some aspects of the scenery vaguely familiar.

I have to confess my interest in traveling to Iceland collapsed when I found out that the forests mentioned in the Icelandic sagas such as the Njalsaga had been almost entirely cut down, although apparently there is now a reforestation effort.

Paidiske · Apr 14, 2026

Slightly more in the vein of what we got last Sunday, what's a much more noticeable shift here is that daylight savings ended on Easter day. So suddenly we are plunged into a season where it's dark early in the evening, and evening worship has noticeably shifted mood as a result. Just in time for Eastertide!

What Did You Get Last Sunday?

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Traditional Liturgical Christian

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Traditional Liturgical Christian

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Traditional Liturgical Christian

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