We're going to continue with church practices today as we've been doing the last few weeks. We've talked about some of the basis for that. We have a lot of traditions. We have a lot of things that are commanded in scripture, but then we have things that we do that are basically traditions. We should have the ones that are valuable to us. Even though they're maybe not mandated, they can certainly be very helpful to us and explain again why we do some of the things that we do. And then last Sunday, we talked about the church year, and we said that there are basically kind of two halves to the church here. The festive half, which follows the life of Christ, and then the ordinary or non-festive half, which is focusing more on the teachings of Jesus and the church. And then there are three kind of parts to that. and then the time of the church and then within that you have six seasons so we talked about all that last week and of course right about all of that and so that how that's helpful and useful to us and also a connection to the the church at large the body of Christ. Then we started talking about the lectionary a little bit we we at least started on that last week and we said basically uh somebody tell me what's the lectionary just kind of in layman's terms what is it? readings, right? The scripture readings that we follow throughout the year, right? So there's kind of a program of readings that we follow and there's four readings assigned for the Sundays of the church. We have the psalm, then we have a reading from the Old Testament. Sometimes it's also a reading from the New Testament, a first lesson, but generally from the Old Testament. Then we have a reading from the epistles And then when we say epistles, we're kind of broadly speaking, they're basically all the books that are the Gospels in the New Testament. Technically, you could say Acts and Revelation would be epistles, but kind of in that whole umbrella, the non-Gospel books. And then finally, the last reading is from one of the four Gospels. Okay, and we said that again, not commanded in scripture that we follow a pattern of readings, but it is helpful. We said one of the main things why it's good is why what we follow kind of a plan of scripture readings, what happens? Yeah. Yeah. And again, a lot of this crosses, I mean, there's some variance in the lectionaries amongst the churches, but there's a lot of commonality too. So it's a good chance. Yeah. You could go somewhere else. even outside of the Missouri Synod if you were visiting somewhere else and the readings may be the same or similar. But for us as Christians, the best thing is it keeps us kind of disciplined and that we don't fall into the rut of hearing the same thing all the time. And it helps the pastor and it helps the congregation where we hear the whole counsel of God. We're hearing a cross section of that because again as sinful human beings our tendency is to generally you don't want to read and hear the things that we like those parts that we like right and actually in the sermon next week i'm going to talk about that a little bit because the the the gospel text next sunday is one at least for me but i think for probably a lot of people that's kind of a difficult one to hear We don't really necessarily like to hear that all the time, but it's what we need to hear, what Jesus is teaching us. So we'll hear that next Sunday. So it gets us that whole counsel of God, and it crosses time and space and geography and all that kind of stuff. So we looked at the Lutheran service book at the different lectionaries and things like that. They have those listed for us, minus the Psalms. And we got to basically, I think what we left off is there are two choices for the lectionary, the series of readings. There's what? What are the two choices? Three year. Okay, so you have the three year, and then we have the one, well, one year, which is also known as the historic. because as we'll see, it's by far older than the three year. We said most of our churches in the Missouri Synod follow the three year today, but we still have a decent number that follow the historic, the one year too. So you would see some variance there. So even this Sunday, if you went into the Missouri Synod Church, they followed the one year, you'd be like, whoa, those aren't the same readings we had. And also we said, are these like legalistic in that we have, We say the pastor or a church must only use those readings. No, okay, there is some Christian freedom there to adjust those, as today is an example with the commemoration day we're observing today, two of those four readings that we're looking at today, the epistle and the gospel, I selected different readings than what you would see if you found, remember we showed how to find it in the hymnal, so if you find epiphany, what is it, it's six today? Epiphany 6 today, I believe. So you would see that if you found that in your hymnal, two of the readings would be different, because they're going to go more with the commemoration day, and we don't have assigned readings for those. All right, so let's talk about these two lectionaries a little bit more specifically. This is continuing in your study guide here. On mine, it's page 3. I think our pages should pretty much match up. Okay, so the three-year lectionary, let's start with that one, which is the most commonly used one in our church body, the Missouri Synod, and probably other, I'd imagine, across the board in other denominations that follow the lectionary as well. It's the most common, it's the newest one. So where did this come from and how old is it? Where did the three-year lectionary come out of? When did we start seeing that appear? What decade of the last century? Vatican II, 1960s, okay? I guess some of you remember that. That was kind of a big deal, Vatican II, right? With the Catholic Church, because it changed a lot of things in the Catholic Church, okay? The most obvious thing was they moved away from the Latin mass, okay, into the vernacular. I mean, that's a pretty big change. They also said that Catholics are allowed to read the Bible, which is a good thing, I think, as well. So, you know, so, I mean, there were some pretty major changes that happened with Vatican II. And some of that spilled over into Protestantism as well. And so the three-year lectionary idea actually comes from Vatican II. They moved, again, that was a big change. So they've had this, we're gonna look at the one year, how long it was around. a long time but they suddenly they had oh now we have a three-year cycle of readings to move through instead of the same ones every year so a lot of protestant churches adopted that as well that were liturgical and followed the church calendar again some protestant churches If they're not liturgical, they don't follow the church calendar, they don't do this anyway. Basically, the pastor will probably select a passage or passages before that Sunday based on what he's going to preach on. But those that follow the church calendar, this also wasn't adopted by many Protestant churches. Now, there's a, but did we just take it like wholeheartedly say, okay, thank you Vatican too. Let's take that and we'll use that exactly as you've put it there. Thanks for doing all the work for us. Did we do that? No, because obviously why, why would we maybe need to make some modifications to it? There's one obvious thing. But we don't do Latin. Yeah, they're moving away from Latin. But what about the Catholic Bible, so to speak? What does it include that ours does not? The Apocrypha. Right. And some even Bibles that Protestants use will include the Apocrypha, but it'll say, like, there'll be a note in there and say, well, these are books that we don't accept as canonical scripture, but they're useful for us to learn history and other things. Behind our thing, our altar Bible, that giant altar Bible, it has the Apocrypha in it. Okay, it does. It makes it even bigger, right? Maybe heavier, right, David? But it has the Apocrypha in it. But, you know, it's like, well, this isn't part of the Inspired Scripture, but, you know, it has long-standing use in church, in the church, okay? So, obviously, we'd want to remove those Apocrypha readings as I mean, not very often. Again, I'm not an expert on the Apocrypha by any means, but there have been a couple of sermons where I've thrown something in, you know, referencing the Apocrypha, you know, and I'll say that, but I would never, like, pick one of our readings as, you know, the Apocrypha, because after our readings, we say, well, this is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. We wouldn't say that. So while they're important writings, we understand that they're not on the level of the inspired scripture, okay? Because again, that's a very high bar to say this is without error, that this is directly from God. And when you, again, not going down that hole, we might've talked about this before, some reason why don't we use the Apocrypha, there are some deficiencies there where we would say, well, this doesn't quite meet that level, okay? So obviously we want to change the apocrypha. There may be a few other things maybe they're focusing a little more heavily on than we would say, well, maybe you're leaning too far in this direction. So we need to balance it out with putting some other things in there. But it's pretty similar. I mean, the basic, the foundation of it. was established by the roman church and then the protestant churches that have modified it but even within protestant churches you'll see a little variance so if you went to say like a presbyterian church or something that they were following the lectionary um they uh or an episcopal church they may have a little variance where say most of them are the same but they might have change a little bit even within Lutheran churches there may be a little bit of difference too and of course then you have some options we looked at too some it'll say use this or this or here's some extra verses you can throw in there too to give you some more context you know so uh so there is some variance but there's you know kind of the the foundation of it is is pretty similar in the pattern that it that it follows uh we looked at the lectionaries in the in the hymnal uh last week and one of the things that they did that that makes sense is Okay, as far as they set them up and sometimes like late, not today because I changed the epistle reading, but the during epiphany, we've seen they've all been out of first Corinthians, right? So we've been kind of working but you're going to get pretty good chunks of it for a season of time in that epistle reading. Okay, and you'll see that throughout all the years. There's generally some type of theme that ties them together too. Okay, so like let's pick three completely different topics and put them in there. And that's also helpful for the pastor, but also for the congregation is there's kind of a theme Again, jumping ahead a little bit, looking to next Sunday's sermon, there was definitely that in these readings, okay? Jesus is talking about loving your enemies. Well, the Old Testament reading's about Joseph, okay? Well, what happened to Joseph? He had a pretty good reason to be angry, okay? But he wasn't when he had his brothers, right? So, there's kind of a tie-in, usually, with these lessons to tie them together. The Gospels, okay, there's four Gospels. They could have done a four-year cycle, I guess, but they did a three. But if you notice, A, B, and C of the lectionary, a heavy number of the readings are gonna come from one Gospel or another. Again, I see some of you got this out already, but we looked at this last week. You can find it there if you'd like. So say, series A, for example, looking in the column with the Gospel readings, what are a lot of them from? Matthew. Okay, so that makes sense. What's the first gospel in the Bible? Matthew, right? Okay, so the readings are very heavy for Matthew in A. And then if you go to series B, flip the page, what do you see there a lot? Mark, all right, probably even have to flip the page. What are you gonna see in series C? Luke. Okay, what are we in this year? C. So we've already heard a good many from Luke, but we're going to hear a lot more too. So we're in series C, then you jump back. What about John? What about the gospel of John? A lot of people love the gospel of John. Well, again, if you look through those readings, what have they done with John? He's mixed into all three. So you'll see there are certain Sundays or a certain series of Sundays sometimes within A, B, or C where you're getting John. So that's how they decided to set it up. It's a three-year cycle rather than a four. You've got heavy focus on Matthew, then Mark, then Luke, and John is mixed into all three of those. Okay, all right, so over the course again of three years, you're hearing from all four of the gospel writers, you're hearing out a variety of the teachings. And of course, again, smart people, you know, put this together. And again, it's like, okay, to me, it's better the lectionary if it's formed by a group of scholars and people, you know, that have greater understanding of scripture, because rather than one person. Okay, again, if the pastor's just picking everything, okay, I have limited knowledge and I'm gonna forget stuff. So for example, in a Bible class, I might say, well, you know, the Bible talks about whatever topic, but I'm trying to remember what verse it is. Or I might give an example, somebody else in the class might remember and bring that up. So again, you can see like a committee sitting around here, they're gonna be putting all their heads together and say this and that. And also some of the things in the Bible There are some things of Jesus' ministry that appear in all four Gospels. There's some that appear in two or three. There's some that only appear in one Gospel. This certain parable is only in this one, like the prodigal son. That's only in Luke, that's it. It's not in the other Gospels. But then I think the parable of the sower is in three of the four and all this. So when they're putting this together, the selections you're choosing Okay, do you probably want the parable to sower in all three years? Probably not, right? So you see what I'm saying? So there's a method to the madness, if you will, when they're selecting these, because by doing this, we can get a lot more of the events of Jesus' ministry, okay? Than if we just had one year of readings, you could get a much smaller sample, okay? Or if you're just saying, well, why don't they just start at the beginning of each one and go through chronologically, first half of the church year. If you notice in the time of the church, it does go more chronologically. If you look at those recent readings, they progress through, but in the first half of the church year, they might be jumping around a little bit because we're following the life of Jesus. Okay. So obviously, uh, during Easter, you know, we're hearing readings about the resurrection and things like that. kind of some repeat narratives. Now there are a few different details in some of those which I will note sometimes. Let's say if I'm preaching on something from Matthew and say well this is also in Luke and Luke tells us this too you know that's helpful but we probably don't need every year you know the same thing because then we're not getting as big a variety if you're going to use the three-year lectionary okay. All right, so the main advantage there, I have this in italics of the three-year lectionary. I mean, the biggest argument for it, why I think most churches have gone to it other than like, hey, everybody else is doing it, let's do it too, you know, is that the congregation hears a much larger portion of the Bible as compared to the one-year lectionary, right? Obviously, if you have three sets of readings, you know, you're getting a lot more than if you have one set, right? So you're hearing a lot more from the Bible. We follow the, obviously we follow the three-year lectionary here at Christ the King. All right. Any other questions on the three-year lectionary? let's move to the one year or the historic lectionary then obviously this is going to be older than the other one because the other one doesn't show up till the 1960s and also just with the name historic you got to think it's old right okay all right again do we find it in the bible is there like an appendix tacked on after revelation here is the lectionary you should use no okay But they have been used for a long time. These readings have been used in the church for many, many centuries. Many of them were used prior to this, but when was it codified, does it say? the sixth century under Gregory the Great, St. Gregory the Great, who did a lot of things in the church. I think Luther described him as the last good pope, is what he said. That's how he described St. Gregory the Great, who does have a commemoration day on our calendar, the Lutheran Church calendar. So a pope has a commemoration day on the Lutheran Church calendar, go figure, right? But Luther thought he didn't do, everything he did wasn't good, obviously, With no one, that's the case, right? But he certainly did a lot of things for the church. And one of the things he did was codify the lectionary. So the one-year lectionary was, again, he didn't sit down in the dark room and put it together himself, but this was one of his initiatives that this was put down. And of course, with Catholic churches more mandated, so basically everybody was followed. for a long time. So again, you know, a lot of Catholics didn't like some of the things that came down from Vatican two. I mean, there's still some of them that are holding on to the Latin mass, right? You know that still a few Catholic church like we're still gonna do the Latin mass because that's the way it's always been done, right? It's like, uh, uh, so, uh, but you're six centuries. So you're talking about five hundreds here, the late five hundred. So it's over. Um, what is that then about? It's like 1400 years almost. this is used. So you see why some people are still using this, right? I mean, when someone something has roots for over 14 centuries, okay, it's gonna gonna hold on to that. And again, in the Catholic Church, if they had given people a choice, you know, and said, Oh, you can just do this, if you want to do it, that probably a lot less than would change. But the way we're like, the Latin mass is now gone, you know, the lecture So the historical actually is very old. I mean, this is like, it's about, you know, 1400 years or give or take. It's been around for a long time. Okay, so I think there is, of course, value in that, that this has served the church very well for a long period of time. So if you're reading Luther, and he's referencing the readings for the day, and you're reading Luther's sermons and things, what is he talking about? not going to match up with ours is it it's going to match up with this this is what he was using cfw walder founded brazilian great preacher in his own right what is all his stuff referencing this right here okay so it's uh so so these this is the church fathers i mean this is in the lower lutheran church father used, okay? So that's one example. Why would anyone want to do the historic littered electionary other than just it's been around for a long time, we don't want to change anything, which is certainly an argument that uses the Lutherans, right? Yeah, why change? It's working, they broke, don't fix it, right? Okay. And again, if you use the old hymnal to TLH 1941, well, that's previous. So it's all geared to the one year electionary too. So 1941, Lutheran Hymnal, which is still in print. We still print it because Carnations still use it. It would kind of make sense to go with this because it's, you know, tied to that. is that when you're studying, not all the time, but sometimes I'll look at old historic sermons. I actually have a seven-volume book collection. I got one time of Luther's sermons. It's like seven volumes of his sermons. Fortunately, it has an index, so I can transpose it to our electionary. In there, it'll say, like, second Sunday after Trinity, here's the sermon. Of course, that reading may appear. Most of the readings in this appear somewhere in here. There's a very few that didn't make it into this in some form or fashion, but they may be at a completely different time of the year, right? Okay, sometimes not, like the Christmas, it's gonna be the same, okay, but a lot of the other Sundays are different. So when you're studying church history and resources that have been produced in the past, it's definitely easier. So anything that I'm gonna use as a resource for sermon prep, for the three-year lectionary, it's got to be pretty recent, or I'm going to have to transpose it. Where if I'm using the historic lectionary, which, again, one of the churches I assisted at before did use this lectionary, it was a lot easier. Oh, what did Luther preach about in the 1500s on this same Sunday, on this same text? Oh, here it is. It's right here. OK? Or Walther, or any of the guys like that. So there is that connection there. And when you're studying and reading, it transposes so easily because it's the same thing. It's the same thing. I'm The other advantage is, you could say, because it does repeat, because there is a value in repetition. Again, if we didn't believe that, we probably wouldn't be Lutherans, right? No, no, that's cancer. But we're here, right? If we didn't like to repeat things, you probably wouldn't enjoy being here very much, right? And we'll talk about that a little bit with worship. But there is a value in repetition, right? So, I mean, if you hear the same readings every year on the same Sunday, man, you're gonna know those front and back. so you may not know as big of a breadth of things which you should be studying on your own right not just listening to a sermon once a week right but i mean as a pastor or as a person if you i mean you know this stuff good because you're hearing it all the time. So there is something to be said for a depth of knowledge in a smaller pool as well. And also, especially in modern American context, our people are less just, there's less general knowledge about the Bible out there. I think we can probably all agree with that. Like even in the old days, someone who wasn't really a dedicated church goer, they probably had like kind of a working knowledge of you know, who are the main people in the body, you know, if you said Noah's Ark, they'd be like, oh yeah, yeah, okay, or King David, yeah, okay, I've heard of him before. Today, that's not the world we're living in, right? I mean, it's shocking, you talk to me, but you like throw something like Noah's Ark or King David out there, you'll get people to like, they'll look at you like, was it in the Christmas story movie, be like, he said, like I had lobsters coming out of my ears, you know, and they asked for the BB gun, you know, who are these people? What's this Noah guy? What's this art thing? King David? Is that like a restaurant downtown or something? I think I saw that somewhere. People have no clue. So with the one-year lectionary, if you are in a setting where you say you have a lot of, we'd say, maybe unchurched people coming in, there could be a value in that because it may take them a few years of hearing the same thing over and over again to start grasping some of this stuff. that kind of context, I could see, you know, kind of an argument for that a mission context or something, especially, you could argue that and say, well, we need people to hear the same thing all the time, because they know nothing, you know, they're coming in here is like, with very low biblical knowledge. So let's narrow the focus here to a sniper rather than a shotgun. Okay, approach. Um, so there are arguments for it. But I think, obviously, what do we use here? I think the arguments for this this you know again is traditional and everything like that but I I just think that the value context of scripture because you're hearing more things but I mean they're on the same topics as this okay but you're just hearing more scripture I think this to me the advantage is that again maybe sometime we'll do this one just to do it sometime but I don't see like my opinion is not like because I mean there's value in it but I wouldn't I wouldn't see at this point of emphasis like switching to that just doing it all the time because again I think there'll be But again, it's an idea offer, right? It's not a matter of orthodoxy. If you want to use one of your lectionary, knock yourself out. Again, I was in a church that used it and worked very well for them and they seemed to like it and they were hearing God's word, so go for it, okay? Anything else here? Again, some do still use this in the LCMS, but it's a... a smaller number, but it's a significant enough number that when we publish calendars and resources and things, they include both of these in there still. I mean, there's enough, I mean, if there were just like five people still doing it, I mean, why put it on the calendar? But I mean, there's enough, like when you look at a, if you go back in the sacristy and look at the liturgical calendar, it'll have, it has two columns. I know the Connors have seen this, because y'all said, I mean, there's two columns there. One is the three year, one's the one year, because there's enough congregations you know using it where they're setting up for communion what is it today like on the one year lectionary you would not be in epiphany anymore did you know that you see the one you're actually uh you you know this is that there's a there's like a it's long latin names that i will not attempt to pronounce But there are three Sundays, they call it pre-Lent. So before you get to Lent, you have transfiguration earlier, and you can see that on the calendar back there. And then you have three Sundays of pre-Lent. So we didn't have enough Lent in the old days. We gotta have three Sundays just to get prepared. We're transitioning into Lent. three year it's cold turkey you know you're right from mardi gras dash wednesday that's it it's over you know it's over you know solemn time you know but uh but in the old lecture you have kind of a three year uh three week transition into land uh that you would have so again uh our friends uh my friends at living faith they celebrated transfiguration last sunday now they're in pre-land we want to have transfiguration until of this month. And again, you can see that in your hymnal if you want to look at that further. All right. Anything else on the lectionaries? Questions or comments? Go ahead, Dick. Well, it surprises me that there was such a desire, particularly on Lutheran Park, to get people familiar with the Bible, you know, and they did the Bible and all that. And it took them 1,400 years to realize that maybe we should do it in a three-year cycle because we're leaving a lot of stuff out. I thought the one-year cycle would be maybe better, because you might get the 20-20 rule. You know, you get a 20 before the reading, and then 20 scriptures after, and it might make more sense, but now none of it makes sense. This is a good example with the lecture though again of how Lutheran Lutherans approach the Reformation because you have some again even you have this in Christian today some of what they would call the radical Reformation. They wanted to discard everything. that had vestiges of Catholicism. They were smashing statues and destroying paintings, and they would say, well, there's no lectionary committed in the Bible, so it's got to go. It's got to go. But Luther said, well, the problem is not the lectionary, that there's like kind of a planned system. What was the problem? That when the scripture is being read, People couldn't understand it in their own language. He said, you know, so the problem is not that we need to discard the lectionary. The idea of that, he said, is good, you know, because we're hearing a variety of texts. hearing but he said the problem is people can't understand it so let's put that let's put that the scripture in German and read it let's keep the lectionary when people are hearing all these Bible readings but let's let's put in German okay where people can understand okay so again that's how the Lutheran reformers approach things they said okay you don't have to use the lectionary because there's not a Bible verse saying you have to but we think this is very helpful the issue. Again, it took the Catholic Church 1,400 years to come around. Oh yeah, maybe people do need to because so few people understood Latin. Again, you kind of learn things. You were there every Sunday. You knew how it planned. You might have learned a little bit of Latin, but to actually understand a reading from the scripture in Latin, you have to know pretty good there. The Missouri Senate, you know, we held on to German for a long time, but we eventually moved to English. Okay. And same reason we're like, well, you know, now that people have been here for 30, 40, 50 years or more, they're, you know, the old people might, they still know German, but a lot of younger folks don't. And we want them to understand the scripture and the sermon and everything. So let, you know, we eventually transitioned to, uh, to English. Okay. Which makes sense, you know, to me, I mean, it's like, you know, plus I would have had to learn fluent German and if I could be a pastor and that would have been a whole nother thing. Right. Okay. or you couldn't, how am I gonna conduct a German service here, you know? So that'd be a little bit more difficult, right? Okay, I know a few words in German, but I certainly can't preach sermon in German, okay? That's a whole, again, a whole other ballgame, different level there. So yeah, good comment. Anything else with the lectionary? Okay. But again, hopefully we're gaining a little bit of understanding where this stuff comes from, why we do it, the rhyme and reason to it, and why you do see some variance between the two. Okay. All right, liturgical colors. Let's talk about the next thing here. I should have all my different colored pens here for this, right? Let's talk about colors next. Okay, so when you come into a Lutheran church or other churches that follow the liturgical calendar, you'll notice there's kind of a color, a theme to the season. And again, you see this across different denominations. Less so in some, more so in others. Like I said, for most Baptist churches, probably not because most of them don't follow the church here. Some do. Actually first Baptist down the road here. They follow the church here. Okay, they do They follow the seasons of the church here and have the different liturgical colors and stuff, but that's that's kind of unusual Okay, most Baptist Church is not not going to do that. Okay so you come in and there's colors there so color and it's bright message can easily take it for granted or mistaken in It's purpose. Okay. We'll talk about that a little bit too. People might mistake the purpose. Oh, that's, that's, that's a really nice color. Y'all have up there. I like, I like what you've done with the place, you know, kind of thing. Okay. So we'll talk about that a little bit too, but all right. So the pyramids, which are, again, we have fancy liturgical names for all this stuff, you know, and the communion manual, I mean, the glossary in the back is he's pastor saying, put the, So the pyramids are these cloths that are over the altar, which is mostly behind the board here, and the different, what someone's gonna say podiums, we say pulpit and lectern, as the liturgical names. Altar cloths, the vestments that the pastor wears, they're traditionally employed each Sunday, and these should be seen as more than an attempt to decorate or give accent to the chancel. Okay. You know, you see what all these shows on TV where they give a person or a home a makeover, right? You know, so they have somebody like me who doesn't have like much fashion sense and walk in and they'd be like, Oh no, what are you wearing? Okay. We've, we've got to get you outfitted for the 20th century. How long have you had this shirt? Uh, 1998. Oh no, no. We got it. We got to change that, but it still works. No, no, this is out of style. So they give you a makeover and say, this is how you, you, this, you look better this way. Or they do this with old homes. They'll come in. Oh my goodness, what is this? This wallpaper is horrible. Nobody even has wallpaper anymore. We got to tear this down. We got to get you this color in here. We got to put this furniture in here that accents the layout of the room and all this kind of stuff. Okay, well, aesthetics are considered when we design a church, right? We want it to be pleasing. But is that like the main factor when we decide, okay, what do we want the seating to be like? What colors do we want in the sanctuary? All these kind of things. Is that the main thing we should be looking at? No, if we do that, it's wrong, right? I think if we do all of those things in a God-pleasing manner, it ends up looking pretty good. I mean, there are beautiful churches in the world. And Chris, I know, went to the Anglican Church before she came here. And I'll tell you, Anglicans or Episcopals, those people can build a church. Okay, if nothing else, you could say they can build a church. Okay. I mean, you go into like an Anglican or Episcopal church and it's like, wow, this, I mean, they, they have some seriously, you know, beautiful churches out of Protestants. I think they get the, they get the blue ribbon for church designing. you know Lutherans were kind of some we have some good examples and I think we're putting more into that now but I think it will be aesthetically pleasing but that's that's not the that's not the goal to say you know this is the you know and it gets you can go to an extreme you know I remember going into the at Pisa or you know everybody knows about the Leaning Tower of Pisa but a lot of people don't know it's the bell tower for the church there and they have like a whole complex which is is incredible they have a Giant stone baptistry, best acoustics you ever hear in there. But then this giant cathedral and on the ceiling of the cathedral, all the ceiling artwork, it's like outlayed in gold. It's incredible that at some point you're like, maybe this is a little much. This is a little much here. How far do we take this? But I mean, it's incredible. I mean, the Leaning Tower is cool, and we got a certain time, and you have like 20 minutes, you're almost like running up the stairs, it's a workout, and then they shuffle the next group in, but you wanna take in the whole complex stairs, it's incredible, the cathedral and the baptistry and everything, but anyway. But we do consider aesthetics, but that's not the end goal, okay? But a lot of people say, for just non-Christian reasons, they would come into a church and, you know they would say oh this looks good or that you know I like what you've done with the place but um but anyway so um you have to you have to do that so um So there's a meaning to all of this, okay, interior design. Okay, so the greater service is demanded of our liturgical colors than merely making something in their surroundings pretty. Okay, there's gotta be more to it than that, okay? So there's a meaning to the colors, there's a meaning to the artwork, all of these things that we'll see. We'll talk about symbols and stuff a little bit later, okay? Oh, okay, I'm sorry, I hope she feels better. Okay, all right. Well, thanks for telling me. Let's make sure everything's okay. I'll tell her we hope she feels better. So, okay, so we're looking at The design has a meaning. I have an italics there. You highlight that or mark that. There is a meaning to the colors, and all forms of artwork and decoration should point us to the message and redeeming work of the Trident God. That's really the bottom line of this. If you're going to do something in the church, whatever's in there, however it's designed, all those things should point us to the message and the redeeming work of the Trident God. If it doesn't, it really doesn't need to be there. Okay, honestly, okay for example a Say I got a hold of I don't know. What's the famous painter like a Monet or painting or something? Okay. Oh, that's great Should I just like hang it up on the wall in the sanctuary? No, because it's not pointing us to the the messaging and of God the glory of God Okay, so so that that needs to be considered now, of course, there are things in there. There's functionary I mean like this camera that were But is it being used to the glory of God? I hope so. There are kind of tools we use, but how it's designed should all point us to that. Does this point us to the message, the work of the Trident God? If it's not, then it probably doesn't need to be in the sanctuary. All right, so we see things that are colorful and these change throughout the year. Again, we're talking about things, you know, the word that word, idiophora, the pyramids and the changing of the colors is that commanded inscription. No, it is not. So do we have to do it? No. Is a church heretical if they don't know not not because of that. Okay could be heretical for another reason but not because they don't have pyramids out. Okay. All right. So but again, what's our rule here? Is this useful and helpful to us? Yes. Okay. And again when we consider all these things, I mean, But thinking of church design today, like a lot of the churches that are built today, I think the main thing is, is functionality. A lot of times, you know, they're, they're, they're just like, kind of like big auditoriums. Okay. Now, if you don't have ability to meet an auditorium, that's fine. Okay. However, you know, if I was building, a church, I definitely wouldn't make it look like an auditorium because, you know, that's kind of more going to the functionality of it. Okay. Or we're going to design this or, you know, we don't, we don't want some big wooden or stone pulpit. That's kind of bulky. Let's just get like a little podium stand for the pastor to have. And it's like, well, the pulpit communicates things. Okay. So, so I think there's definitely a value in that of this because Right? We, we, the word of God is read and spoken. So hearing faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Yes. So, I mean, that's above all. Again, that's the, if you're in an auditorium, if you're in a park, we had church in a park one time, because I don't know, I think this is before all you guys are the pastor at the church of Buford passed away. I mean, uh, very suddenly had a stroke and died. He was my age. You know, he just suddenly had a stroke and died. It's a very small congregation, smaller than ours even. And they met at a, like a, in a multi-purpose room in a local park. And so we said, well, what can we do? We're going to go help them out. You know, we're going to try to support them. So one Sunday we got the church bus and we drove down there and had the service with them. Well, we got there and guess what? It was the person who unlocked the building at the, The rec center didn't show up that morning, like the employee. So we couldn't get in the building. So there's a handful of people. So there's like a playground with a pavilion down there. And it's like, well, nobody's down there. Let's just go down there. So I talked to the elder of the church there and we just said, so we just brought our speaker and everything. And so we had our service out there under this pavilion. People were sitting on picnic tables, which is actually kind of neat. And he's like, well, maybe we should do this again sometime. Because by the end of the service, guess who's showing up? people to the park and kids on the playground and we had a few parents like standard what are these what's this weird guy in the room doing out here at the park you know and so the gospel was was going forth you know so god maybe used that in his own way but the point is the word was going forth and we were hearing the word the spirit was working it doesn't matter the context now that being said we have five senses Okay, and again, we'll talk about this in worship a little bit more. So maybe getting ahead of myself. As humans, are we visual? Yeah, some people learn more visually than they do audibly. They're like, let me see it rather than just hear it. And even if you're more of an audio learner, when you add the visual element, it impacts it. Why did politicians start making TV commercials? Because they figured out it works, right? If we just have audio, but if we attach images to this, wow, this is gonna work, okay? Nixon-Kennedy debate, right? The 1960s is an example of that. Nixon said, well, I better figure out how to use this TV thing to my advantage, because it didn't go well from the first debate. So the point is visual is important. We don't want to discount the visual. Okay, so just because it's not required for salvation doesn't mean it has no importance. Okay, so when we come in and what we see up here and how this is laid out impacts us. And again, we also don't want to discount that, you know, the other senses as well, you know, the taste and the smell and the touch, all those things should be incorporated in as well. We'll get into that a little bit more in worship. Okay, God gave us five senses for a reason. Okay, go ahead. I was just thinking that a lot of the stuff in the Bible, particularly parables, really describes a visual form. So there's a good example of why visuals help a lot. You hear it, but when you imagine it in your mind, it sticks to your head. Yeah, I think so. It helps you remember things and all that. Take it in again. I always think, you know, these beautiful stained glass windows a lot of times, especially in the older churches. Those are a good thing, especially in the Latin days, because people weren't really understanding a lot of what was being said from God's word in their native tongue. But at least they could look up and see. biblical account parables only portrayed in the stained glass okay so I think all those things they have value we're going to talk about this in more detail later kind of the different approaches to the Reformation and why we still have artwork and things like that and others don't but anyway so we'll talk about that more later but I didn't want to introduce that a little bit here this morning so so one of the things that changes here I mean you're always going to have kind of the furniture the liturgical furniture you'd say we have the cross There are things that change well the banners we're really not getting that but those those can be changed and tied in I mean again some banners kind of that Jesus one works all the time, you know, it's like whatever But then some of them may be geared more towards, you know, Easter or Christmas or things like that But the colors the pyramids these these claws these pieces of change and again unless they're following the one-year election here if you went into another church so you went to a Anglican or Episcopal Church you went into a Methodist Church probably most of them guess what you'd see up there today you'd see green too okay you'd see green too Catholic Church see green okay so what's the deal with that okay so we simply want to talk about these colors a little bit and they go with the church year as well okay we got about 10 minutes so we can keep going all right so The first color we've got, oh look, I've got a blue pen, you can put that up. I don't have all the colors, I should have planned that. Blue, when do we see blue? Really only one season. Advent. So we start the church year in blue. Okay, so when the last Sunday of the church year, you flip over to calendar, you start the new church year in Advent at the end of November, you come in, you see the blue pyramids. That's the only season of church year for the blue parents, okay? Do you have to have blue? Well, do you have to have anything? No, but there's another option for Advent. Purple, same as Lent. And that's the, again, the traditional color. So you can certainly use purple as well because traditionally, again, it's not so much today, but Advent was a time of also penitential reflection and preparing for the Savior. Again, that's kind of been downplayed for the celebratory aspect, but that should be part of it as well. You notice that you don't sing the Gloria in the liturgy during Advent as well for that same reason. So again, purple is fine, but again, one of these changes with the three-year lectionary about that time, they said, well, we're gonna start using blue to distinguish Advent from Lent. But purple is certainly appropriate then as well. You have the option, again, the option of one or the other. Okay, why would we have blue during Advent? Elvis Blue Christmas, right? No, that's not it. That's not it. Some might think that. Yeah, I like that song. Yeah, that's good. Why do we have blue? What does blue communicate? The color of the sky, right? Why would that be appropriate to Advent? What are we talking about in Advent? Jesus, God coming to us in the flesh, both his first coming at Christmas and his second coming on the last day. You know, his ascension, he ascends into the sky. So the blue, blue is seen as kind of like a color of hope, and it's the same color as the sky as well. So it points us to that message. Also, especially in the Catholic church, blue is the color associated with, guess who? Mary. Okay. You see, obviously Mary, like we're in the blue, you know, the nativity scenes and stuff. Well, during Advent, we have a lot of focus on Mary, don't we? Because she's obviously kind of a big part of this, right? At that time of year. Okay. Again, some Protestant churches, you will never hear Mary's name mentioned all year because that's too Catholic, except at Christmas time. You know, Even in the most virulently anti-Catholic church, the Protestant church, you're probably gonna hear Mary around Christmas time. It's pretty much unavoidable. It's pretty much unavoidable, okay? So again, that's the reason we choose it, but it is a color associated with Mary as well, which is a big part of the Advent season, okay? So it helps convey the powerful message that our Christian faith rests on the hope that Christ, who came into history assuming our flesh, will also return on the last day from the same blue sky that he ascended long ago. Okay, so thus we have blue for Advent. Okay, next color. Well, I guess if I had a white marker, that wouldn't make sense either, because we wouldn't see it, right? Pretend it's up here. Yeah, blackboard would work. We have chalk, old school, right? Okay, so we've got white as our next color. What about white? White is the color of what? Purity. And what else? Okay, completeness or holiness is white. Um, so it represents the holiness of God. God is complete. God is holy. God is pure. All these things. Okay. Um, what does, what does white remind us as far as our, of our sins? covered by washed by the blood of Jesus are made whiter than snow Isaiah says right so so we are we are made complete we are made holy and pure in Christ okay so it certainly reminds us of that we've been cleansed by the blood of Christ we are declared and in eternity we will be made righteous without any sin at all because we have been forgiven of our sins okay so Why do brides wear white in weddings traditionally? I guess they don't always nowadays, but even nowadays, most brides wear white. Purity, the same reason. So you see that bride come down the aisle in this bright white gown. Whoa, kind of gets your attention, right? say wow okay so so in that way when we see something draped in white that is white it kind of you know has that same pop or catches our attention as well it's like oh something something's going on here you know white it's clean white you know i don't like wearing white that much because it's hard it's impossible to keep clean right white is is very difficult to keep clean okay um So do we see a lot of white during the church years? Like most of the year white? No, no. When do you see white for the longest time in the church year? Easter for the seven weeks of Easter. Unless you got like a feast or festival thrown in there because they have their own colors too. You see white for a while at Christmas. We see white, don't we? So kind of the high points, you would say of the church here that focuses in on the work of Jesus. Specifically, you see white at the end of the month. The 27th is transfiguration. What color is that going to be white? Why? Because what do we remember in Transfiguration? Jesus gave them a glimpse of his glory. He was transfigured before them and it said it was a white that they'd never seen before. The Bible says it was basically his garment, he was like cleaner than any launderer could wash them, you know, depending on your translation. Basically, the best dry-cleaner in the world could have made Jesus, you know, that white there. I mean, this was the act of God. So we do see it pop up at these events. Some of the feasts and festivals will be white as well. So you may see it appear for a Sunday sometime in the church year, like John, but that's during Christmas anyway, but some of those are white as well. So white is used at the high points of the church year. You don't see it all the time, but it's focusing in on that purity and completeness of God and the work that he has done in Christ to forgive us of our sins. Okay, next one. We have at least time for one more, I think. What we've got today, green. Okay, we've got green. All right, what is green about? I think, Christy, you said this last week. You knew the answer to this earlier. Growth. It's also a symbol of life, right? Because again, if you're gonna have, you want to have growth, right? Again, we never want to stop growing as Christians. Again, we don't say, okay, confirmed, that's it, check the box, I don't have to learn anything else. I think I've talked about this several times, some people look at school like that too, oh, got my sheet of paper, don't have to read anything else the rest of my life. That's sad to me, it's sad. And as Christians, same here, we want to keep growing, we want to keep learning. Because the minute you stop doing that's when you start going the other direction. You know, if you're going forward, you're not going backwards. But when you say, I'm just going to stand here and I go in, you're going to end up saying about falling backwards. We got to stay in the word, stay connected to the sacrament, stay connected to our church family, and ultimately stay connected to God. So we grow. And so green is a symbol of life and growth. So. What's the most common color of the year? If you just randomly pulled out from a hat a liturgical date, what's the most common color you're gonna find? Green, okay? And the thing is, because half the church year is basically green. You know, all that ordinary time or the time of the church is green. Also, of course, obviously, Epiphany is green, too. Okay, most of the, now, Epiphany Day and Transfiguration, which bookend the season, are both white. but the in-between is green. So we see long periods of green during the church year because we are supposed to be growing. So Epiphany, of course, focuses on Jesus revealing who he really is, God in the flesh for the salvation of the world, and then the longest season, the Sundays after Pentecost at the time of the church. This focuses on the teachings of Jesus and the apostle, and we grow in knowledge of them, and our faith is strengthened. Okay, so growth is very important. Okay, growth is obviously very important. All right, well, since we've talked about white, let's go ahead and do black as well, and then we'll wrap it up for today. Okay, black, what does black represent? Death, and why do we have death? Absence of life, but what brings about death? What is death a consequence of? Sin, yeah, okay. I mean, again, like someone, again, without a church background, if they walked into a venue, whether it's a church, whatever, and you see all kinds of white everywhere, and it's bright, that's gonna communicate something to them, right? In the same manner, if you walked in somewhere and it was dark, and they had black draped everywhere, that's gonna communicate something as well. Most people, traditionally, what color do they wear to a funeral? Black. okay because it's it's kind of a very somber and stark color it's associated with death even people don't you know normally go to church you're like we're going to funeral what i wear black okay black okay um so uh the uh so so black it reminds us of sin and death and it's it as there is a somber color associated with death Okay, it is okay even in our vernacular the way we speak we tell you what the black death in history, you know, it's like well What was that a bunch of people are dying, you know from the plague, right? Okay We say it's a dark time. Well things aren't going too well, you know, okay, so people understand that so we reminded of the death of of Jesus that he endured to atone for our sins. There's really only two times you will see black on the pyramids, because it definitely grabs your attention. Church people think, oh, it's a happy place, but you come in, oh, it's black, something's going on here. When do we see it? We're going to see it soon. Less than a month, on what day? Ash Wednesday, which begins the more somber season of Lent. So I mean, it definitely, so you got that three weeks of pre-Lent, but I mean, you come in in the three years, you know, it's like, it was white last Sunday, now I come in Wednesday, it's black. It's much more stark. I mean, it's like, it sets the tone of, you know, something's different here, okay? And then there's ashes and everything else. So the other time you're gonna see it is about, you know, several weeks later. Good Friday. Yeah. Good Friday. You'll see black. And of course that's, we're remembering Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Right? So, so that's certainly, you know, a more somber and the penitential thing as well. Again, you know, not that we want to probably do that all the time, you know, but it's important that we reflect on, the somber nature and the seriousness of what Jesus went through for us, right? Okay, again, we should reflect that regularly. What I'm saying, when we come in the church, I mean, I wouldn't want it black all year, okay? You know, it's kind of like anything, if you do it all the time, then it kind of, you know, if everything's dark and somber, then nothing is, you know what I'm saying, you know? But I mean, I think it's good to have those, they grab our attention and it's like, okay, it's different. Usually on those services, I won't even really do a welcome or anything. We're just gonna jump right into it. You know, we're going to jump right into this and it's more of a somber thing. So, on Good Friday, the Bible tells us what happened to the sky in the last three hours. Jesus on the cross turned dark, turned black. So, again, there's a direct tie-in there that scripture that the sky turned black amongst a bunch of other interesting things that happened as well when Jesus was dying on the cross, okay? You might see it one other time, but probably not. Black is also the liturgical color for Holy Saturday. So that is a service that you could hold during the day on Saturday after Good Friday. So when Jesus was, you know, after Jesus was put in the tomb that time before his resurrection, Very, very, very, very few churches have a holy Saturday service. We've never had one here. Maybe we will one day. Okay, but we haven't. Even if you do one Saturday evening though, then it's not black anymore. Because once the sun goes down, you're biblically into the next day. Easter Vigil, which I do definitely want to do one of those one time. It's a neat service. It's kind of become a little more common in the Missouri Senate, but the Easter Vigil service, which really is a huge thing in the Eastern church, the Easter Vigil, but some of our churches have adopted it a little bit. I've never been to one, but I think it'd be neat. But it starts the night before Easter Sunday, so that's why. So even if you have a service in the evening, it's gonna be white, like Easter, but earlier in the day, if you had a service, it would be black. for Holy Saturday, but again, very few churches have Holy Saturday service. All right, so, all right, it's time, so we'll stop there. We've got a couple more colors to go. We'll finish those up next week, then we'll start talking a little bit about the saints. What do we do with those as Lutherans? What do we do with these saints? How do we approach that?