This Is the Feast

Lately, each Sunday we start our liturgy with the song "This is the feast of victory for our God". Whenever I hear those words, I think to myself, yes, this physical gathering of the congregation, right here, right now, this is the feast! We are choosing to sit together to honor God, surrounded by fellow human beings, instead of sitting at home alone working on yet another online crossword puzzle.

But then two Sundays ago, I had to stay home and isolate due to exposure to Covid. And while I was watching the worship service streaming live on YouTube, I asked myself, am I still part of that feast? I mean, with the exception of maybe Christina running the cameras, nobody even knew I was there. Like they say, on the Internet, nobody knows you're a Lutheran.

A confession: I didn't actually take communion at home that Sunday. But as the song's composer wrote in 2003 , the song was intended as a Song of Praise, just as we use it at CGS, and not as a song about the eucharist. And while some of its lyrics come from the Book of Revelation, the word "feast" doesn't appear in that book at all. So what kinds of feast did I miss out on?

Personally, I missed the feast of the senses that is seeing and hearing and greeting people in the pews. I missed the abundance of familiar faces. And after the sixteen-plus months of remote-only worship services in 2020 and 2021, I missed the enjoyment that comes from the still somewhat "unusual" experience of worshiping in-person.

I'm grateful that CGS still offers live streaming of worship services each Sunday. And I'm even more grateful when I can attend in-person.

Gregg Zigler, council member