Let My Prayer Rise Before You As Incense...

I love our Advent and Lenten services of Evening Prayer...  There is something deeply profound about the nature of this service with its sung responses and quiet moments.  At the beginning of the service, the people turn to the back for the Service of Light.  Standing next to the baptismal font with the light held beside me by the acolyte, this culminates in the Phos Hilaron and the Thanksgiving for Light.  By this time we have made our way from the font by the entrance into the Sanctuary to the chancel where the altar lies in shadows and torches sit on either side of the lectern.  And then in silence the congregation sits while I spoon the incense upon the hot coals and soon the lines of sweet smoke begin to fill the chancel and the organ intones the refrain from Psalm 141.  (After so many years I have figured out how to keep the smoke going through the entire Psalm without choking the nervous Lutherans who on one hand like and on the other are put off by incense.)

A second Psalm is intoned antiphonally with a cantor and it, too, is followed by a Psalm prayer (had to adapt it from ELW since LSB decided not to do them).  The Office Hymn this week was To Jordan Came the Christ Our Lord (we are looking at Luther's catechetical hymns during this Lenten season).  A cantor helps the congregation by singing the first stanza solo.  (I love the melody, a Renaissance style melody that almost begs to be played on lute, recorder, regal, dulzian, sackbut, and herdy gerdy.)

Lesson (Matthew 3 on which Luther was preaching while he wrote this, and probably his last, hymn), catechetical address, Magnificat (with female cantor on the verses), quick offering, and then to the prayers -- those wonderful prayers that teach as well as pray.  And then, our tradition at the end, the antiphon to the Nunc Dimittis from Compline and the last hymn is always LSB 937, Lord Bid Your Servant Go in Peace, followed the the antiphon and then silence and the lowering of the lights as we leave in silence... to go and rest in peace...

We end up with between 40 and 60% of the Sunday congregation at this Evening Prayer tradition.  (A Thursday morning Eucharist and Monday evening Compline give the non-smokers their chance to worship throughout the week (and they do)...

Wow.... no wonder I am sad when Advent and Lent come to a close.... Maybe we will figure out a way to keep it going all year around... like the Thursday and Monday services...