Today’s post is written by Bruce Burnside and Mitzi J. Budde. Burnside is a contributing writer to Hear My Voice and Budde served as contributing writer and co-editor.

Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them. (Hebrews 13:3)

It was a privilege to be one of the contributing writers for Hear My Voice: A Prison Prayer Book. As a person in prison, it has been a joyful satisfaction to see how valuable and much appreciated the book is among the incarcerated men I have come to know. Ronell reads from it every morning with a yellow marker, highlighting passages: “I especially like the part about waiting, it’s exactly right, I think I needed to hear that,” he told me. Jeffrey wrote, after receiving the book, “Thank you…I’ve read 50 pages already, it is beautiful and a perfect size, the cover is like leather which makes it feel important and the colored pictures are a nice touch. I’ll use it every day while I’m here.” Logan said: “In prison I feel like no one hears me. This book tells me that is not true and gives me a kind of hope. Thank you for getting it for me.” Aaron said, “I like the prayers for ordinary days. Last night I had a bad encounter with the sergeant. Afterwards I went to my cell and read the prayers for corrections officers.”  

Hear My Voice: A Prison Prayer Book can be a marvelous Christmas gift not only for persons in prison, but also for their families and loved ones and friends. “The book really understands what it is like for us,” Nick told me. “My wife has a copy too.”  Give it as a gift, yourself, and why not encourage your congregation to give copies too? Statistics reveal that half of all U.S. adults have an immediate family member currently or previously in prison. You know a person in prison or jail or a detention center. As we read in the book of Hebrews, “Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them.”

Bruce Burnside
Former ELCA bishop serving a prison sentence in Wisconsin 

In this COVID-time, our opportunities to volunteer and visit with those who are incarcerated in our local prisons and jails are at a standstill. But the prison ministries of our congregations do not need to stop. The ELCA has published a prayer book for God’s people in prison: Hear My Voice: A Prison Prayer Book. By sending copies to the prisons, jails, halfway houses, and detention centers in our communities, we can offer this expression of the love of Christ to God’s people who are living in these institutions at this very difficult time. Hear My Voice: A Prison Prayer Book would be an excellent gift in this COVID Christmas season. It’s available from Amazon and Augsburg Fortress.  

How do you get the book to incarcerated individuals and to groups in the prison system? If you know someone who is incarcerated, have it shipped directly to them as a gift. If you or your congregation would like to provide copies to your local jail or prison, contact the chaplain, librarian, volunteer coordinator or warden there and find out how you might send copies. For more information, see Suggestions for Distribution and Use of Hear My Voice from Augsburg Fortress. 

Do you know someone who is isolated and alone in this coronavirus season? Many seniors are finding themselves imprisoned in their homes in this extended time of isolation. Hear My Voice: A Prison Prayer Book could be a welcome Christmas gift for them as well, with its themes of waiting and hope and listening for God. The assurance of God’s presence in the midst of difficult situations is a universal message of grace that we all need to hear this Christmas. 

Mitzi J. Budde
Contributing writer and co-editor,
Hear My Voice: A Prison Prayer Book  

Image by Robyn Sand Anderson
Copyright Robyn Sand Anderson

Today’s post is written by Anita Smallin, Youth Family Ministry Director at Trinity Lutheran Church, North Bethesda, Maryland and Rev. Lisa Heffernan, Pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church, Chamberlain, South Dakota.

When we come before God in worship, we bring our whole selves. What does that actually mean? For many people in the ELCA it means coming to worship with the assistance of a mobility, audio, visual, or sensory device. Unfortunately, in many of our churches or places of worship, it is our siblings in Christ who have disabilities and need such devices who feel the least welcome at the table. Why? A lack of ramps, elevators, or braille or large print worship resources are not the only or first obstacle encountered. Many times it is the language used when talking about or concerning disability that is problematic or unwelcoming to many.  

Talking about disability can feel awkward sometimes. The language doesn’t feel right. We often don’t know what to say or how to speak publicly in our liturgy, sermons, and prayers. At times we will fall into the trap of affirming who a person is “despite” their disability, rather than simply honoring who they are: A beloved child of God. Whole, complete. Just as they are. What needs to change in our approach? Where do hospitality and authentic welcome to worship begin?

Using person-first language is a great place to start. This language is meant to acknowledge that a person is not their diagnosis or disability in a negative way. It reminds us that someone is a person first and foremost, whose identity is rooted in being a child of God. Also, in person-first language, we avoid language that talks about suffering, or that victimizes or infantilizes the person. For example: a wheelchair bound person vs. a person who uses a wheelchair.  

Disability Ministries has prepared a document that can help us think about how to use person-first language in worship, and in the whole of our lives together. The document helps us understand what person-first language is and provides examples for how it can be used in worship. It also serves as a reminder to us that language around disability is constantly evolving and is often contextual.  

Disability vs. varied ability vs. differently abled
“For myself (Lisa Heffernan), terms like varied ability and differently abled wrap up disability into too nice of a little bow. This language feels condescending to me.  I have a disability. I own it. I’m okay with it. This is how I was made. Yes, we all have varied and different abilities. I am a paraplegic. I use a wheelchair. Saying I have a disability does not take away my identity or sense of self and who God made me to be. “Varied” and “Differently abled” don’t own that part of who I am enough for me. I am not “disabled”; my wheelchair and spina bifida do not hinder my life. They, largely, make it the gift it is. I have a disability, and that’s ok. The self I bring to worship has a disability, but is not broken or ‘less than’ because of it.”  

We hope this document is a starting point or a conversation starter as we work toward making our worship and the language we use in it more inclusive and barrier–free. Our language isn’t perfect, but we serve a God who guides us as we come together as the whole body of Christ where all are truly welcome.

Images: from The tAble 2018; ELCA Churchwide Assembly 2019 

Today’s post is written by Chad Fothergill. Chad serves as cantor to the Lutheran Summer Music community, is editor of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians journal CrossAccent, and is author of Sing with All the People of God: A Handbook for Church Musicians.

How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is giv’n!
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heav’n.
No ear may hear his coming; but, in this world of sin,
where meek souls will receive him, still the dear Christ enters in.
(ELW 279, st. 3)

Throughout the past several weeks, posts about Advent and Christmas planning have begun to appear on social media forums for worship leaders. Like conversations about Holy Week and Easter during the pandemic’s onset, these prompts and discussions ask important questions: What will these seasons look or sound like this year? How will liturgical practices and local customs adapt to essential measures—masking, distancing, abstention from singing, and more—that slow the spread of a deadly respiratory virus, the long-term effects of which still remain unknown?

As a cantor, I’ve read such conversations with a mixture of interest and exasperation. There is much creativity in our midst, and many are faithfully planning with appropriate responsibility and care.

And yet, some appear reluctant to abstain from practices that, for the sake of our neighbors’ wellbeing, need to be shelved for a season. As my spouse, a physician, recently wrote, it is imperative that we distinguish between “wants” and “needs” during these uncertain times. A wise colleague keenly observed that many persist in attempting “to continue producing the same products at the same rate on the same scale, despite their drastically changed contexts and circumstances.” Although treasured rituals may provide solace and comfort, perhaps especially at Christmas, attempts to preserve or project “normalcy” are, at this time, fraught with peril—not only physical dangers from the virus, but distractions from the church’s mission to serve a world in need. For many communities, such “normalcy” continues to perpetuate poverty, unequal access to health care, and unjust treatment before the law. Wringing our hands over aesthetic choices risks ignoring those deprived of basic choices.

As we have learned these past months, the pandemic compels us to rethink patterns and assumptions, the abundance and amenities that we take for granted. We have heard stories of care and empathy alongside episodes of selfishness and greed. Though tragic, the pandemic invites us to think more carefully and intentionally about Christmas, to peel away crusty accumulations of nostalgia so that we might find deeper meaning in the temporary absence of brassy spectacle or candlelit ritual.

The first Christmas was a small gathering and probably not so quaint, especially when one imagines the realities of birthing an infant in a lowly stable (ELW 269). An angel choir announced the news not to wealthy elites, but to poor shepherds in their fields. The birth of Jesus was politically significant for people awaiting fulfillment of God’s promise after centuries of imperial abuse. As two noted scholars have summarized, most of those empires “behaved as empires do, with their attendant oppression, injustice, and violence.” According to Matthew’s gospel, news of Jesus’s birth ultimately sent the despotic Herod into a murderous fit of rage; his fragile, paranoid ego and naked thirst for power led to widespread death and destruction.

Advent and Christmas invite us, like Mary and Elizabeth, to ponder mystery (ELW 258), to embrace the plain and understated, and expect God to turn the world around (ELW 723). Christmas is not contingent on our lighting candles while beloved carols are hummed or sung by a soloist. Christmas is not contingent on seasonal cantatas or choral music, even small-scale works for a few voices. Perhaps it will suffice to let the angels in Luke’s gospel serve as your choir this year? Christmas is not contingent on the sentiment or nostalgia evoked by the sights, sounds, and trappings that seek to package, market, and commercialize it.

We don’t always need to reenact Jesus’s birth with a pageant, but we often need to refresh our understanding of incarnation, covenant, gift, hospitality, humility, and other keywords of the Christmas story. How does your community attend to those who have no room at the inn? Assist those for whom silent nights are impossible because of unemployment, food insecurity, or domestic violence? Care for neglected children? Comfort those whose nights are too silent during times of grief and loss?

And yes, we need assembly encouragement for these things—to hear powerful Advent prophecies proclaimed in our midst, to sing the Magnificat, to pray. I, too, yearn for the return of physically gathered assemblies that breathe and sing together. And I realize the importance of Christmas liturgies (or any liturgy) for those enduring separation, isolation, or grief. Technology has facilitated powerful preaching and proclamation, praying, and music making during these months—neither are those to be discounted!

But, in this time and place, I think there are more pressing concerns than how to light candles while physically distanced or schedule services like a liturgical version of Ticketmaster. Could funds for battery-operated candles be instead diverted to a local shelter or food bank? Instead of worrying about streaming licenses for the King’s College version of that favorite carol, could we devote time to teaching its stanzas and melody so that families can sing at home, even play just the melody on an instrument? Can you help provide access to hymnals—even if borrowed from the church—to facilitate singing at home?

Like the paschal cycle—Lent, Holy Week, and the fifty days of Eastertide—there are many ways to bring rituals of the incarnation cycle—Advent, Nativity, time after Epiphany—into the home: Advent wreaths and evergreen adornments, Advent calendars with a word or song for each day, trimming and blessing a tree for the twelve days of Christmastide, baking together, and blessing the home on Epiphany with a marking over the main door (20 C+ M+ B+ 21). Many of these and more are described in resources such as Sundays and Seasons, as well as in Gertrud Mueller Nelson’s wonderful book To Dance with God: Family Ritual and Community Celebration. Many congregations are exploring how to deliver items to their worshiping community for use in the home; such gift boxes serve as tangible reminders that we are still connected as the body of Christ. Consider sending an Advent devotional or family activity cards. The Taking Faith Home resource from Milestone Ministries offers additional ways families can connect the Sunday lectionary texts to our life together. If households do not have access to a hymnal, these could be loaned or purchased. Candles or materials for simple craft activities could also be included.

During these months, silent and empty sanctuaries have reminded us that the church is not confined to buildings. Before us is an invitation to do more teaching, to set aside the what and how of liturgical logistics and focus instead on the why of it all. While worship planning requires careful attention to a variety of contexts, may we also direct our thinking toward these larger concerns and to our neighbors, and be open to the blessings, challenges, and lessons that follow.

Come, Lord Jesus!

Artwork by Laura James. Nativity, 1996 (c) Laura James. Used with permission. laurajamesart.com

Scripture invites us, creatures of God, to join the whole creation in singing. Psalm 96 calls us to “Sing a new song… all the earth.” Our songs join the trees of the wood, the thundering seas, and the joyful fields.

As we approach the October 4th commemoration of St. Francis of Assisi, worshipping communities may be considering how best to focus on creation care in worship and in daily life. Although we often highlight ecological concerns on specific days and seasons, raising our voices with and behalf of creation is best an on-going practice.

Several hymns and songs in All Creation Sings call forth our praise for the wonders of the natural world. Yet creation also cries out in lament (Romans 8:22-23). Hymn writer Jeannette Lindholm has written the hymn “Before the Waters Nourished Earth.” Included in the Lament section of ACS, its creation imagery abounds.

Before the waters nourished earth or night imagined morning,
a Love conceived the universe and reveled in its forming.

This Love remained as time revealed the loss of Eden’s glory
and, grieving, holds in memory each tragic human story.

Lindholm wrote this text for a memorial service of a friend who had died by suicide. At this friend’s funeral, Psalm 23 was read. Lindholm chose the tune ST.COLUMBA to pair with her new hymn with the hope it would call to mind “The King of Love, My Shepherd Is.” Perhaps singing that tune suggests the verdant pastures and still waters of Psalm 23. Indeed, the universe formed is one of beauty even amid tragic loss. This is the universe that holy Love conceived and in which Wisdom delights. (Proverbs 8:22-31)

Yet as this hymn’s origin and its words convey, we grieve. Waters dry up. Pastures flood. Fires decimate forests. Our delight turns to horror as we witness the catastrophic effects of climate change, especially in places around the world too easily forgotten or neglected. And as creatures, we grieve for ourselves and those we love, especially when death comes too soon. Holy Love, though, holds every story, even the ones we skim over or want or omit entirely.

Despair, so deep it bears no name, or sorrows paralyzing
cannot revoke Love’s faithful claim to dwell within our dying.

When hearing the groans of creation, we too readily tune out. Sorrows can keep us stuck in patterns of injustice; climbing death tolls from a pandemic become numbers on a page or screen. It is all too much. And yet: there is nowhere we can go where God does not dwell. (Psalm 139)

The final stanza of this hymn expresses hope amid another grief: our inability to join creation’s song as a full body of singers, gathered in community, delighting in one another’s presence.

The Love that called creation good all goodness still is bringing.
This Love turns death again to life and silence into singing.

The hopeful, soaring quality of ST. COLUMBA renews our faith that silence will not be the end. The friend of the hymn writer who inspired this hymn’s creation was a choral director and singer and Lindholm had her beautiful singing voice in mind as she wrote this final stanza.

As promised in Revelation, at the end all creatures will gather in song. Our songs of lament tell the truth of the despair and destruction within and without. We need to voice such lament to God in prayer and song. Yet we pray that as God promised, Holy Love dwelling within and among us will do a new thing. That new songs will spring forth. May it be so.

Before the Waters Nourished Earth
Text: Jeannette M. Lindholm, b. 1961
Music: Irish Melody
Text © 1996 Jeannette M. Lindholm,  admin. Augsburg Fortress.
Permission required for further use by contacting Augsburg Fortress or One License 

Storm and Stillness, Breath and Dove,
Thunder, Tempest, Whirlwind, Fire,
Comfort, Couns’lor, Presence, Love,
Energies that never tire:

May the church at prayer recall that no single holy name
but the truth behind them all is the God whom we proclaim[1]

Our scriptures —and the liturgies, prayers, and songs informed by the scriptures—offer us abundant images for God. This abundance matters, especially as the church seeks to broaden its use of expansive and inclusive language. How do the ways we speak and sing about God reflect the abundant life God intends for God’s children and for all creation?

One year ago, this month, the fifteenth ELCA Churchwide Assembly adopted the social statement, Faith, Sexism, and Justice: A Call to Action. In calling for new commitments and actions as a church, the statement notes in article 27:

This church is committed to the deepest Christian understanding of the Trinity revealed through Jesus Christ and to the importance of imagining and speaking about God in faithful ways that expand rather than limit the expression of God’s self-revelation and mystery…Employing inclusive and expansive language for and images of God helps human beings approach and encounter the God of beauty and love who reveals God’s self to humanity in rich and mysterious ways.

To assist the church in accessing an expansive treasury of imagery, All Creation Sings, the forthcoming liturgy and song supplement to Evangelical Lutheran Worship, will include the informational appendix, “Scriptural Images for God.” The book’s introduction to this list of images describes its contents:

This selection of one hundred images from the New Revised Standard Version Bible testifies to the plethora of biblical images available for addressing the triune God. Thanks to this wealth of biblical imagery, we can complement those beloved images that we know well with the wide range of other images found in sacred scripture, thus enriching the language of our prayer and praise.

This list of images begins with the heading, “In the scriptures, God is imaged…” The list of one hundred images follows, each one paired with a biblical source. The word “image” refers not to a picture, but to the word “pictures” that are possible through metaphor, symbolic language that points beyond itself to a greater truth or reality. For example, “vine: I am the true vine (John 15:1).” Complementing the “Scripture and Worship” entry in Evangelical Lutheran Worship (pp. 1154–1159), this appendix in will be a helpful resource for preachers, prayer writers, and all who are looking for the biblical sources for worship language.

The hymn stanza quoted above is one of many hymns and songs in All Creation Sings that draws upon metaphors listed in “Scriptural Images for God.” Even with such a treasury of language, words will never be enough; they will fail to express the mystery of the divine power we call Trinity. Our shouts for joy or our sighs too deep for words must suffice at times. Yet our words form our faith and shape who we believe God to be in relationship with the world God so loves. The songs and prayers we teach our children will remain with them for a lifetime. As Principles for Worship reminds us,

Language used in worship has power to form and shape believers, sending us from the assembly to live as merciful and just people who serve the mission of God in this world. (Principles for Worship, Application L-4C)

In providing this new appendix as well as a diversity of images in song and prayer, it is our hope that treasured language —both old and new—will enrich and shape our worshipping communities in praise of God and in love of neighbor.

[1] “Source and Sovereign, Rock and Cloud.” (Stanza 3) Text: Thomas Troeger © 1986 Oxford University Press.

When we gather for worship, we gather to be sent. Our baptism into Christ sends us into the world. During the pandemic this sending has taken on a different character. In a time when we are advised to stay home for the sake of our neighbor, what does being sent look like? How can we best go forth in peace and serve the Lord, share the good news, and remember the poor?

One need that surfaced as part of the development process of All Creation Sings was a desire for more hymns and songs connected to the Sending. One way that All Creation Sings responds to this need is by including nine Sending hymns of different genres (this does not include several other hymns and songs placed under other topic headings that would serve well as sending hymns).

Often the titles of hymns associated with our being sent from worship feature words like “go” or “send.” One hymn that will appear under the Sending topic heading in All Creation sings is “Let Us Enter In” by Ray Makeever. Despite what a first glance at its title might suggest, this is not an editor’s mistake. This song was composed by Makeever as part of a liturgy, With All Your Heart, that he wrote for Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church in Minneapolis in 1984. In that liturgy, this piece functioned as the post-communion canticle. Here’s the first stanza:

Let us enter in to the song of thanksgiving and freedom.
Let us enter in to the long line of people in need.
Let us enter in to the strong mind that God is still living.
Healing, forgiving–Let us enter in.

Notice that our entering in does not describe an entrance into a building for worship but to our callings in other places. Makeever noted in his introduction to this setting that its contents reflect his concern for personal and social justice as well as in the congregation “where we struggle with the hardships of life, we seek the encouragement of one another, we hold fast to the hope of God in Christ Jesus, and we celebrate the breakthroughs as they happen” (Introduction to With All Your Heart, p. 5). The rhythmic and melodic accents of this piece lead to the word “in” and the repetition of the opening phrase at the end of each stanza solidifies that we are indeed to enter boldly into the world. You can listen to a recording of Bread for the Journey singing this song at the end of this post.

We may not be able to enter our church buildings right now. We may not be able to carry out our sending-oriented ministries in the same way. Yet as Bishop Eaton has reminded us on many occasions, the church has never closed. We as God’s people are still entering into the lives of those in need: in prayer, in serving those most affected by this pandemic, in protests for racial justice, in providing food and other necessities. We are entering into difficult conversations, entering into the grief and loss of our neighbors. Yet God goes before us and the Spirit leads us.

Let us enter in to the place where our God has preceded.
Let us enter in to the face of the fear and the pain.
Let us enter in to the grace of the love when it’s needed.
Death is defeated! Let us enter in.

Let us enter in to the heart of a world that is broken.
Let us enter in to the start of a hope we can share.
Let us enter in to the part where we call one another
sister and brother. Let us enter in.

We look forward to that time when our singing together in person forms and shapes us for our mission in the world. In the meantime, may the words of our songs, both familiar and new, bless us for our comings and goings, our gatherings and sendings.

A list of the contents of All Creation Sings as well as a digital preview can be found at https://www.augsburgfortress.org/promos/all-creation-sings/.

Let Us Enter In Recording by Bread for the Journey

Let Us Enter In
Text: Ray Makeever, b. 1943
Music: Ray Makeever
Text and music © 1983 Ray Makeever, admin. Augsburg Fortress.
Permission required for further use by contacting Augsburg Fortress or One License