Thursday, April 15, 2021

Transparency - The Lutheran Hymnal


The TLH lectionary has some quirks, such as providing the Introit for each Sunday but not the Gradual.

Fortunately, the Lutheran Librarian, aka the Lutheran Library Publishing Ministry, provided a Word document with the variable elements for the entire church year. 

Copying the Introit, Collect, and Gradual is easy for each Sunday, and that adds to the Scriptural content for each Sunday. 

The historic liturgy was not invented by Luther but developed directly from Old Testament worship. "Always the same" is not true of the liturgy. Most of the worship service changes from week to week, and the standards can be replaced by hymns for that portion - such as the Gloria in Excelsis, Creed, Offertory.



I like having the entire service, including the sermon, reproduced on the blog, almost completely - or at least linked. The blog edition (emailed as a Word document) is a portable hymnal. The video is posted for each service, on the Ustream website, on the blog, and on Facebook.

In contrast, when I have been at non-Lutheran services, there is a lot of banal repetition. One choir sang the same word over and over. I saw one women standing up, writhing around, making terrible faces. I thought she was sick, then realized she was dramatizing the repetition of a single word. At what point does that become entertainment or a search for talent?