The Work of the People, For the People, Within the People — 7 September 2025

The Work of the People, For the People, Within the People

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Isaiah 40:6-11

A voice says, “Cry out!”
	And I said, “What shall I cry?”
All people are grass,
	their constancy is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
	when the breath of the LORD blows upon it;
	surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades;
	but the word of our God will stand forever.
Get you up to a high mountain,
	O Zion, herald of good tidings;
	lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,
	lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
	“Here is your God!”
You, Lord GOD, come with might,
	and your arm rules for you;
Your reward is with you,
	and your recompense before you.
You feed your flock like a shepherd;
	You will gather the lambs in your arms,
and carry them in your bosom,
	and gently lead the mother sheep.

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If you’ve been hanging out with Lutherans for a while, you’ve probably noticed there’s a pretty predictable structure to worship. Not just the sitting and standing, but the way we begin with confession and forgiveness,the way the kyrie and hymn of praise speak nearly with one breath about the sorrow and joys we experience,the way the sermon follows the readings, and we reflect on all of them with singing, the way the meal unfolds in conversation and blessing until it seems that we are seated around heaven’s wide table. We call this the liturgy. In Greek, the word means public service, referring to the ways, in the ancient world, wealthy citizens would offer worship services or festivals for the public’s use and enjoyment. By Luther’s time the word “liturgy” meant the strict structure of the service, the Mass, and his liturgical reforms often sought to reduce or remove hierarchy, and make the worship into something everyone could participate in, at least in part because they understood what was being said. In the 20th century, worship reformers noted that the word liturgy means “the work of the people,” reforms meant to include non-clergy up front and increase the people’s participation in the service. There is some fairly strong blow back in that translation, including by some prominent Lutheran theologians, because, as you can read in the introduction to our red hymnal, Evangelical Lutheran Worship,“Worship is fundamentally God’s gift.” Beautifully, in my opinion, liturgy can be translated “the work of the people,” but also “the work for the people.” And because I’m a Lutheran…why not both? The liturgy is a dance,where God’s word is proclaimed, and God hosts us at table, and God draws up alongside our very real lives.And the liturgy is where we proclaim all this to one another, reminding one another that God is here, in our midst, and we are called by God’s name. We remind one another that God has carried us through the past,gathers us in week after week, day after day, moment by moment, and leads us into the future, to God’s eternal kin-dom. Liturgy connects us across divides— across geography, across difference, across time— in order to transform us, here and now, into who we already are in Christ.

As it turns out, biblical scholars think the origins of this passage from Isaiah is a liturgy. In fact, they think that liturgy was one of the ways the exiled community in Babylon and the remaining community in Jerusalemcommunicated with one another. They exchanged prayers and litanies, expressing what was happening where they were, and their hopes for both communities. Scholars think, for example, the book of Lamentations is a liturgy written by the people left behind in Jerusalem, and this section of Isaiah, what they call “Second Isaiah,”is the exile’s response– a word of comfort. In his book Reality, Grief, Hope, Walt Brueggemann writes, that “the two communities were not hermetically sealed off from each other, but were in close contact. The elites were not immune to the near-despair of the Jerusalem survivors. What transpired in the liturgies of the survivors in Jerusalem would have been known and in some instances appropriated for use in the deported community.”

I read somewhere this summer that the exiles took great pains to be sure that the faith developed in exilebecame the faith that survives the exile. And, it really does, exile marks the transition between the Israelite religion before, and the post-exile faith which is a foundation for the Judaism to come. The faith that develops out of exile becomes the faith that Jesus inherits and grows in and is fed by and loves. But, I have to admit, I got a little salty about it— the people who got Israel into this mess are so proud to think that they get to define the faith going forward?! But then, maybe this is a little redemptive, this idea that the pain was shared, that the two communities used one another’s liturgies, that worship connected them across an incredible chasm, not just of geography and exile, but of the differences that came before. That means that these liturgies transformed those who were not listened to, into people who are heard. And those who did not hear into those who listen. The liturgies overcame division by giving the people common words to unite these very different worshiping communities, and those common words in many ways transformed their religion into a faith that spoke truth to power, and strengthened the marginalized.

It is remarkable that, in this liturgy, the exiles put the words of good news in the mouths of those who had to face the complete destruction, the stinking death, the horrifying aftermath. Those who remain asked, in Lamentations, for comfort. And the exiles, the ones so sure they knew God, put the words of confidence in the mouths of the poor, the widowed, the orphaned, the jobless, the estranged, the odd: Here is your God! The exiles put on the mountains of Jerusalem, not the din of Babylon, the loud proclamation that God comes, with might, with dominion, ready to work, intent on transformation, present to care and guide like a shepherd,gentle with the lambs and ewes. It is a liturgy that crosses geographical divides, but also difference, speaking a word about a future that comes out of God’s saving work of the past. This is what liturgy does to us and for us and among us: transforming us, if only for a eternal moment, or a momentary eternity, into the kin-dom, come among us.

You don’t need me to tell you, Beloved, that we live in divided times. That we’re constantly being asked to pick a side, to choose: men or women, gay or straight, cis or trans, citizen or immigrant, conservative or progressive. Choose, choose, choose—and sometimes the right thing to do is to choose, because silence always benefits power, always benefits the oppressor, as holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel reminds us. Yet, we come to this place world-weary. We don’t want to choose, we want unity. Our hearts are heavy, and we seek a place where divisions might cease. But the liturgy doesn’t ask us—doesn’t want us— to pretend that what divides us is somehow checked at the door. The liturgy doesn’t overcome division with some kind of “you’re ok/I’m ok/everything’s alright” platitude. The liturgy doesn’t let us sit here with every intention of continuing to hurt one another when our hour’s up, with every intention of ignoring one another come Monday morning when we punch our time clock.

The liturgy overcomes division by transforming us—sometimes momentarily—but regularly, consistently…transforming us more and more into who we already are in Christ. When we were the church with the tents,worshiping on the parking circle, during the pandemic, there is one Sunday worship that I remember so clearly.Not only were we outside for worship, but the Sunday morning religious ed at Beth Shalom was too. And as we opened our worship with confession, they started to sing, turning to face the east to greet the morning. And as they finished, our worship turned to the hymn of praise, and there we were, facing them, and it was as if we were singing to one another across the chasm of faith and the state of the world then. Then, as now, we were divided, but in liturgy we were transformed. This is what the kin-dom could look like.

At the center of our liturgy, the meal, God comes alongside side us. God comes to us, appearing in, with, and under bread and wine, present in, with, and under the people gathered. We are gathered as a people, we remember God’s saving work, we enjoy a taste of the feast to come. And, in this moment we, ourselves… we, too become a foretaste of the feast to come. In his book, The Life We’re Looking For, Andy Crouch quotes one of his friends who says, “Most of us want to be a force, but Jesus calls us to be a taste.” That is what the kin-dom could look like. God transforms us, Beloved, into a taste, into a holy communion which God offers to the worldto cross chasms of our own making, and bridging every divide. Amen.