Finding the Gospel in Our Liturgy

I am often encouraged by news of the Gospel spreading around other parts of the world as the Holy Spirit draws more and more people into Communion with God every day. However, when I am honest with myself, I know that I sometimes struggle with knowing how to spread the good news of Jesus Christ in my own neighborhood. I often do not even know what to say, so when the time may be right to talk about Jesus, I stay silent. This raises an important issue for us as Christians who are called to bear witness to the love of Jesus Christ for us in a world that is increasingly hostile to that message: what is the content of the Gospel that we are called to share with our neighbor?

I was wrestling with this question myself one Sunday as we knelt together for the Prayer of Consecration. Something struck me about the prayer that Sunday that I had never quite realized before: the Prayer of Consecration is a really nice summary of the Gospel! Allow me to show you what I mean. The Celebrant begins this prayer by declaring that “In” God’s “infinite love” He “made us for himself.” God did not create the world and human beings in order to fill some need in His own life, but as an expression of his love that literally knows no limits because it is infinite. The liturgy continues, “And when we had sinned against” God, He “sent” His “only Son into the world.” These two aspects of the Gospel message are vital to understand if we are to effectively share it. As Christians we believe that human beings are responsible for subjecting themselves to “evil” and “death” through our own willful resistance to God’s intentions for us. Another way to say this is that human beings are sinful. However, we declare also that God has an even greater response to that sin, which is His own self-giving love of Himself in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. These elements of the Gospel are what the Prayer of Consecration addresses next. It tells us that God, in Jesus Christ, “stretched out his arms upon the cross and offered himself,” as a sacrifice to bear the sin of the whole world. Yet, we know that Jesus’ death is not the final word, as it is “through his resurrection” that Jesus “broke the bonds of death,” and through Jesus’ ascension to God’s “right hand in glory” that we are given the gift of coming “with confidence before the throne of grace.”

Here, in our own liturgy, is the Gospel message! That God in His love created us, responds to our sin in love on the cross, and opens the way to life with God for human beings who turn to Him through His resurrection and ascension. May this message always be both the foundation of our worship, and also be the content of our message to our neighbors who so desperately need to hear it.

Deacon
Matt Rucker