Here is what a Sunday at 9:45 can look like.

On the last Sunday before Christmas, the Bible class reads Isaiah 12, the song the prophet wrote for the day of the Lord’s coming. The class has spent the Sundays of Advent reading Isaiah 6 through 12 in order, the chapters from which the church takes her Christmas prophecies. At Christmas the congregation hears those words from Isaiah again in the Divine Service. When the virgin’s son and the Child whom Isaiah calls Wonderful Counselor and Mighty God are announced, the members of the class know where those promises were first spoken, to whom, and why.

One story

On the road to Emmaus, the risen Lord walked with two disciples, and “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Every study at Our Saviour starts from that afternoon. The Scriptures are the words of Jesus, and they are about Jesus. From Genesis to the Revelation, the Bible tells one story.

We read it that way. When Mary sings in Luke 1, the class opens 1 Samuel and reads Hannah’s song beside hers, line by line. When Paul argues in Galatians that the promise came before the Law, the class reads Genesis with him. With the early church and the Lutheran fathers, we find the Son of God in the Old Testament before His birth at Bethlehem. He is the Angel of the Lord who finds Hagar at a spring in the wilderness, and He is the voice in the burning bush that gives Moses the name I AM. Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I am,” and the class reads the accounts that show what He meant.

Many texts, one Lord

The church year and the lectionary choose our texts, and the series change from year to year. One Lenten series follows Jesus from Gethsemane to the cross, while another reads the Servant of Isaiah 40 through 53, but every one of them arrives at the same cross. One Easter series watches the risen Lord restore Peter on the shore of Galilee, while another reads the letter Peter wrote years later to baptized exiles, but both proclaim the same Lord who forgives and restores. One Advent series reads the Minor Prophets, while another reads Isaiah, and each prepares the class for the same birth.

This includes passages that congregations seldom hear. In Ezekiel 24, the Lord takes the prophet’s wife on the day the siege of Jerusalem begins and forbids him to mourn. We read a hard passage like that to its end, where the Gospel is found, and follow it into the New Testament, in this case to Luke 19, where Jesus comes near to Jerusalem and weeps over it.

Study that leads to the altar

The words we study on Sunday morning are the words Christ speaks to His people in the Divine Service an hour later. A Christmas series studies the four songs that Luke records around the birth of Christ, songs the church still sings at Matins, at Vespers, and in the Divine Service, and the class learns the Old Testament source of nearly every line. Another series compares the four accounts of the Lord’s Supper phrase by phrase, so that the words the congregation hears at every celebration of the Sacrament are words it has studied. Many sessions fall on or shortly before the Sunday when the same text is read from the lectern.

Taught as Lutherans confess it

Each study is read with the Lutheran Confessions: the Small Catechism, the Augsburg Confession, the Formula of Concord, and Luther’s own writings. Where faithful commentators disagree, we say so. Where Scripture is silent, we are silent as well. A study of Daniel reads his numbers for what the angel says they accomplish, and it does not build a calendar of the end from them.

The Book of Concord study

The Book of Concord study meets at 9:00 AM, right after Matins, and it begins with what the congregation has just prayed. Each Sunday the class takes up that morning’s Psalm and Old Testament reading and reads them with a passage from the Lutheran Confessions.

On one Sunday, the congregation prays Psalm 23 at Matins and hears Isaiah 40: “Comfort, comfort my people… her iniquity is pardoned.” Half an hour later, the class reads what Luther wrote in the Large Catechism about confession and absolution, where a pastor speaks those same words of comfort to one troubled conscience by name. On another Sunday, Psalm 6 and Hezekiah’s prayer from his sickbed are read with Luther’s teaching on repentance in the Smalcald Articles.

No article of the Confessions is used twice in the year. Over 52 Sundays, the class reads its way from the Creeds to the Formula of Concord, and always with the Scripture that article confesses. That is the claim the Confessions make for themselves: they say back what the Bible says.

For the history of the Book of Concord and why Our Saviour subscribes to it without reservation, see What we mean by confessional Lutheranism.

Start any Sunday

Each session stands on its own. When an earlier study bears on the text, the session summarizes it, so a first-time visitor can follow the whole hour. Those who come every week will see how the studies fit together across the years. During the week, the congregation also holds special studies on other topics, which the Parish Calendar lists as they are scheduled.

Questions

We are glad to answer any questions about our studies, about the Lutheran faith, or about joining the congregation. If you or your child would like instruction toward confirmation or the Lord’s Supper, please call the church office at (410) 235-9553 or email oursaviourbaltimore@gmail.com.

The Bible class meets on Sundays at 9:45 AM, after the Book of Concord study at 9:00. Our studies are published at theconfessionallutheran.org.