Sermon August 30, 1998 Of The Morning based on Jonah 2:7

Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Jonah 2:7 "As my soul was fainting away, Yahweh I remembered and my prayer came to You in your holy temple."

There are many other religions in the world in addition to Christianity. In Taiwan the Taoist religion is popular. For Taoists, the seventh lunar month is "ghost month," when, they believe, spirits of the dead walk the earth and adherents flock to Taoist temples on the first day to pray for blessings and offer gifts of fruit. Priests beg the spirits not to make mischief among the living. People avoid any major life changes during the month. In fact, pregnant women may induce labor to give birth before the month begins.

It is too bad these Taoists don't know the true God, whose name is Yahweh, as the Old Testament tells us. If they knew Yahweh, they would know who was really in charge and they wouldn't spent time praying to their idols of spirits.

In our text, Jonah was in a position where he remembered God. Perhaps he had forgotten Yahweh, but then he remembers Him. We can sort of understand Jonah having memory trouble. After all, he had been swallowed and was in the belly of a great fish. As you can well imagine, he was kind of depressed. He was perhaps feeling like he was without hope. Just as it seemed his soul would faint away, he remembered the Lord. He remembered how God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. In faith, he prayed and God heard his prayer. That is, his prayer came to God, in His holy temple.

One can only truly pray from a position of faith. Prayer is not for gamblers who are not sure if they will be heard, but those who trust in God to hear their prayers and deliver what they request according to His will. Prayer if for those who remember the Lord. Prayer is an action of humility. It is a statement of dependance upon God.

Those who pray in faith are those who know their sinful fallen state. They know their failure to keep God's commandments. They know their utter weakness. Knowing this, they turn to the one who is strong. They remember the one who saves them. They remember the God who came into the world as a human being in Jesus Christ and died for everyone's sins. They remember that same Jesus rose again to give them the promise of eternal resurrected lives in heaven. Yes, they remember God's mercy and grace and forgiveness. They pray in this faith. They pray because God commands us to pray. They pray because God invites us to pray.

This morning we are praying with our Divine Liturgy in the form of Matins. The prayer forms of Matins are not only a means to pray to God, but they also instruct us in God's Word. I want to speak to you this morning in a little different way, as we discover some of the delights of God's Word that are provided for us in Matins.

First, the history of Matins can help us see how we are connected with those Christians of long ago who also prayed in the same way. The Old Testament gave the practice of fixed times for prayers. Psalm 119:164 says, "Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous laws." In the first few hundred years AD, Christians had also developed seven periods of prayer: upon rising, at dawn, 9am, noon, 3pm, in evening, and at bedtime. This became common practice in the churches. Each day of the week had seven so called "hours" of prayer. One of these hours of prayer was Matins.

By the time of the Reformation, in the 1500s, these daily prayers were mostly left to the pastors. Martin Luther simplified them and returned them to something for the whole congregation. He called for people to attend these services, "not for the sake of reward...but alone to the glory of God and for the neighbor's good." Luther also wanted to restore God's Word, both read and preached, to a central location in these daily prayers. Luther especially kept two of these services, Matins and Vespers in his work during the 1500s. By the early 1600s, however, they were no longer used very often. Later, Matins and Vespers were reintroduced to American Lutherans in the Common Service book of 1888.

The name Matins means "of the morning," which was the name given to the ancient service attached to the break of day. As we Christians pray Matins, we receive the gift of a new day from God with thanksgiving, praise and intercession. By this service, the opening of the day is "consecrated with the word of God and prayer" as 1 Tim 4:5 says. As the prayer of the morning, in Matins we ask for God's blessing, protection and guidance as we prepare for the duties of the day.

Now I would like to take you on a tour through Matins. If you will, please open your hymnal to page 208. The service begins after the opening hymn with two versicles, which are short portions of Scripture. These particular versicles have been part of Matins since the 500s. The first one, "O Lord open my lips; and my mouth will declare your praise," comes from Psalm 51:15. With these words, we are calling upon God to open up our lips so that we are able to praise Him. Only when He opens our lips, only when the Holy Spirit works through us, are we able to praise God.

The second versicle, "Make haste, O God, to deliver me; make haste to help me, O Lord." comes from Psalm 70:1. God is called upon to quickly deliver us to safety from our enemies.

Following this versicle is the "Glory be to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" which is often called the "Gloria Patri" which is Latin for the phrase "Glory to the Father." We speak of God here in His triune nature, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So, as we acknowledge who He is, we also ask for glory to be given to Him. Great praise is what we intend to bring to God, and we also voice our request that others would bring this praise to God too.

After the Gloria Patri, we ascribe praise to God, which means to attribute or attach praise to Him. Three different forms are provided. One special form for the season of Advent focuses on the coming of Jesus Christ, and another special form for Lent focuses on Christ as our lamb whose sacrifice is our source of salvation. During the rest of the year, the two part praise we sing is "Praise to you O Christ, Alleluia" We praise the person of Christ, who died and rose for us. Then, in the word "alleluia" we are speaking a Hebrew word meaning "Praise to God," that is praise to Yahweh, in the shortened form of "Yah" which you say at the end of "alleluia"

The Common Invitatory introduces and concludes the singing of the Venite. The Invitatory invites us to worship God. We sing this together and invite each other to join in as we worship the one who is blessed. To say "blessed be God" may be confusing to you. If you think about it, God doesn't need anything from us. We were reminded of this last week, as we spoke Psalm 50, where verse 12 says, "If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it." God doesn't need something from us, and he certainly doesn't need our blessing. So, what do we mean when we say, "Blessed be God?" We are really saying, may God be blessed by praises, that is, may there be an abundance of those people praising Him and bringing Him honor.

The Venite is from Psalm 95:1-7 and has been part of Matins since around 500 AD. It is called the Venite, because venite is the first word of Psalm 95 in Latin, meaning "O Come."

Following the readings from God's Word, we respond with the responsory. This is our basic posture or position in our Divine Services. Primarily, we receive from God, and then we respond by praising and calling upon Him. We receive from God through His Word, and we respond to that gift. Several responsories are given. In the common responsory we used this morning, the leader sings a Scripture verse and then the congregation responds with a refrain. This repeats two more times. The first verse, "Forever, O Lord, your Word is firmly set in the heavens," is from Psalm 119:89 and acknowledges how God's Word is eternal and powerful. The refrain, "Lord, I love the habitation of your house and the place where your glory dwells" comes from Psalm 26:8. With these words we proclaim how we enjoy coming to the Lord's house and we are glad to hear Him speak. The next verse comes from Luke 11:28, "Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it." This tells us what we ought to do with the Word of God which we just heard. The third pair of verse and refrain has the Gloria Patri again for the verse.

After the offering on page 214, a canticle is sung. A canticle is a song which has a loose rhythm and has words taken from Scripture. Two canticles are given in our Matins service, Te Deum and Benedictus. Te Deum is a canticle dating back to the year of 500 AD. This morning we will sing the other canticle, Benedictus on page 217. This is taken from Luke 1:68-79, and is the song sung by Zechariah at the birth of his son, John the Baptist. It brings praise to God for fulfilling His promise to save His people, a promise He kept through Jesus Christ. An additional ending is added during Advent, which highlights the coming of the Christ. The Gloria Patri concludes this canticle.

Next in Matins comes the heart of our prayers. We pray the most basic prayer, Lord have mercy. This goes by the name Kyrie, for the Greek word for Lord. "Kyrie eleison" means Lord have mercy. David prays this same prayer at the opening of Psalm 51, "Have mercy upon me, O God." Mercy is what we need most from our Lord, for we deserve to be eternally punished according to our sins. Mercy is what our Lord gives us an abundance of, through Jesus Christ. We request this mercy from our Lord, knowing that He is the source of mercy and has promised us this same mercy. Also at the heart of our prayers is the Lord's prayer. It is the prayer from which all other Christian prayers find their source.

The saluation of the leader, "The Lord be with you" expresses the desire of the congregation that the Lord Jesus would now pray together with it and make its prayer His own. Christ is the head of the body, and we as faithful believers are the members of the same body of Christ. The head then prays with the body. The congregation responds with their desires, saying, "And with your spirit." They are expressing that they wish that the Lord might pray with the minister who leads the prayer.

The Collect of the day is next spoken. Today's collect can be found at the bottom of page 75. Other prayers are spoken next. Three concluding collects are given on page 220-221. The first is based on the third commandment. The next is a prayer of thanksgiving for God's mercies. The final is a request for God's grace. We will use all three of these closing collects today.

The benedicamus, on page 222, is a call for the congregation to give thanks to God for what they have received in the service. It is so named for the beginning words "Let us bless" which is benedicamus in Latin. The words find their roots in the conclusion to Psalms 41, 72, 89, and 106 where there is the request to bless the Lord, that is to praise Him. The response comes from 1 Cor. 15:57 where the apostle Paul gives thanks for the grace received, and we join in also thanking God.

The blessing concludes the service. These words, from 2 Cor. 13:14 are spoken by the pastor, but come from God. The Pastor serves as God's instrument in delivering this blessing to you. Therefore, God sends you out with grace and His presence as you go into the world.

In Matins our prayers go to Yahweh's holy temple. We remember our Lord and His mercy shown to us. We remember how much He loves us. He serves us in Matins and we, in prayer, respond to our gracious God. Let us continue our prayer to the one who saved us through Jesus Christ. Amen.

Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.