The Divine Service – Hymnary, p. 60:1-3
The Service of Preparation commences with a Hymn, as the church has done for millennia whenever God comes to us with His gifts.
Then comes, equally in first place, the Invocation, which is a statement that all we do is done in the name of the God who is truly there, and has revealed Himself to us in His Holy Word. This is the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Jesus even began His teaching in words with similar meaning, Luke 4:18-19.
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
In these words we have the reference to the Holy Spirit by which Jesus was anointed at His baptism, the Anointed One Himself (“Christ” means “anointed one”) and the One (the Father) Whose favor rests upon the people to whom the Christ is sent.
As was mentioned in Part 2, the main part of the preparation consists of the confession of sins. There are several forms of public confession and absolution, each consisting of an acknowledgment of our sin, and each including God’s own words of forgiveness. All of them remind us that because … “your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear" (Isaiah 59:2), we cannot come to God as we are. But also all of them bring God’s very own forgiveness to us in the words of the gospel.