January 22 - Rejoicin'

January 22 – Rejoicin’

Worship among Christians had a few common themes, some of which have come down through the centuries, some changed during the Reformation for us Protestants. In all cases, it’s fun to see why these traditions developed.

In Acts, we saw that the early church gathered each week to break bread. Doing this on the first day of the week celebrated the resurrection of Jesus. They didn’t celebrate Easter once a year, they celebrated it every single week. The service wasn’t a call to repentance or to teach about their sins, but a celebration of the resurrection and its promises. Communion was enjoyed each week, but again – not as a focus on sin, but to celebrate the fact that we could participate in the resurrection of Christ. Communion has always been the highest act of worship. Only in very recent times has the focus become preaching rather than communion.

Early worship services were held in homes and occurred around a meal. The tone was always one of joy and gratitude. After the meal, where everyone brought what they could, communion was served. During the second century, there were accusations of orgies at these love feasts, so the meal began to be set aside.

There were two main parts of the service at this point. First, reading of Scripture with comments and then prayer and singing hymns. Very, very few Christians actually owned a copy of Scriptures so the only way for them to know the Bible was during this time. And this part of the service might last for hours.

The communion service was only open to those who had been baptized. Converts who had not yet been baptized might be allowed to the early part of the service, but were sent away during communion.

Services might be held in homes, but sometimes in catacombs and cemeteries, because early Christians wanted to be near the heroes of their faith, ancestors, martyrs. They believed that communion joined all the saints of the church, both living and dead as one with Jesus. This is what gave rise to celebration of saints’ days.

As Christianity grew, homes became too small and the idea of losing the unity of the church because of having many congregations was important enough to begin converting buildings to churches. The oldest Christian church dates back to 256 AD.

Every Sunday was an Easter celebration – every Friday was a day of penance. Later, the celebration of the actual resurrection became important and there were many arguments about the day on which it should land.

New converts were all baptized on Easter and converts renewed their baptism vows. Lent was introduced as people fasted and did penance in preparation for their baptism.