What is this?
Anglican worship ends with this surging rush of Gospel mission. Having come up to the Lord’s Table and feasted with Him, we are sent-out with his benediction into the world, filled with the Spirit, set-ablaze with his love, shod with his peace, armed with his Word, “Therefore let us go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the spirit” says the deacon. “Thanks be to God!” we cry aloud. This is not a safe thing, a quiet departure, a slow shuffling out the door, it is not a liturgical way of saying “you-don’t-have-to-go-home-but-you-can’t-stay-here.” It is the marching song of martyrs –a word means “witness”—it is the anthem of those who have witnessed the goodness of God and who depart exultant, leaving to go bear witness to Jesus’ love in the world.
At All Saints we have begun offering a time of immediately after the service for those who wish to receive the ministry of prayer. A team, at least a pair, of folks equipped and released to serve in prayer will be waiting in the back of the sanctuary and are very excited to pray with and minister to you as you have need. How does this offering make sense within the liturgical imagery of the Lord’s Service?
For some, and in certain seasons, the very way we charge out into the world in by running to our brother or sister to receive the gift of their ministry. That is not opposite from the direction of the drama of the liturgy, it is very much in line with it. The word has convicted and moved me, the Spirit has, maybe, opened something in my heart, the ministry of the Table has fanned the flame of love. I am not quite ready to go downstairs, I want to respond to all this before my body leaves the foreclosures of the sanctuary doors.
So what we want to do for folks in this place at the end of the service is create a space for that fire to continue its work. Run out “into the world” and rejoice to find the power of the Spirit at work and offered to you in the body of your fellow believer. This is not a “staying-in” it is a “going out” precisely as it illumines the way in which God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). It, moreover, highlights what’s true of everyone who leaves under the banner of the Cross on Sundays from our sanctuary: our primary way of “going out into the world” is by making our lives sites of God’s redeeming work. The primary thing I go out into the world to do is to glorify Christ in me who is the hope of glory (Col. 1:27). And so in receiving prayer I am accomplishing the missional work of the kingdom. The kingdom has come near you (Matt. 10:7) and to those who know you precisely because the King od the Kingdom is at work within you (cf. Lk. 17:20-21) and has made your life a sign of the kingdom which is coming into the world (Matt. 24.14).