Lessons in the Liturgy: Part 2--It helps keep the main thing the main thing ~ Bread for Beggars

God compels no one to use the liturgical calendar of days and seasons discussed in part one of this series. Consider Colossians 2, Romans 14, and Galatians 4. Paul reminded the Colossians: “No one can judge you by the festivals you keep or don’t.” He told the Romans that one man finds one day special, another doesn’t: “Don’t judge each other.” Paul criticizes the Galatians because they relapsed into pagan ways, “You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you” (4:10-11).

It sure sounds like, if anything, we should avoid liturgical years and ceremonial rituals. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free!” Paul cried out in Galatians 5.

So, why do some Christian churches, despite this Christ-won freedom, use liturgical calendars and the liturgical rites and ceremonies that accompany it? It’s not because they have to. The Spirit says so. The Lutheran Church agrees. In the Augsburg Confession (1530), for example, the Lutheran Church confesses:

The Church is the congregation of saints in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments are correctly administered. For the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree about the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments. It is not necessary that human traditions, that is, rites or ceremonies instituted by men, should be the same everywhere. As Paul says, “One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4:5–6).

(Note carefully the assumption that some rites and ceremonies “instituted by men” would be in use in Lutheran churches. It is impossible to worship God without some kind of ritual and gesture. Unless you are a Quaker sitting in silence waiting for the Spirit.)

A year later, Philip Melanchthon wrote in the defense of the Augsburg Confession, “We believe that the true unity of the Church is not injured by dissimilar ceremonies instituted by humans,” because “such observances do not justify us before God” and so “it is not sinful if we omit such things, without causing offense” (note that last phrase).

Fifty years later, second generation Lutherans articulated this again in the Formula of Concord:

We believe, teach, and confess also that no church should condemn another because one has less or more outward ceremonies than the other, for those are not commanded by God. This is true as long as they have unity with one another in the doctrine and all its articles and in the right use of the holy Sacraments. This practice follows the well-known saying “Disagreement in fasting does not destroy agreement in faith.”

So, if worship at your church does not look or sound exactly like mine, that’s okay, as long as we both preach the Gospel rightly and properly administer God’s sacraments. Yet those same Lutheran fathers, when accused by their Roman Catholic opponents of throwing away all ritual and liturgy in their churches, also said the following (I paraphrase):

Lutherans have not stopped having church and offering the Sacrament (because it was commonly called “the Mass”, even by Lutherans, they called it that in the Augsburg Confession and Apology).
In fact, Lutheran churches are more faithful, for they have these services every Lord’s Day (that is, Sunday) and on church festivals, defend them, and teach that they are properly God giving gifts to his people, not people meriting things from God.
Lutheran churches still retain most of the rituals and ceremonies as before, so long as it does not teach or communicate false doctrine (for example, Lutherans forbade teaching that the Mass, the Lord’s Supper, is a sacrifice, and got rid of a prayer called “the Canon of the Mass” because it taught that people offer the Lord’s Supper to God as a work on behalf of the living and the dead).
Lutherans maintain ritual, ceremony, and liturgy when, and because, it teaches people about Jesus. Melanchthon in the Apology: “Ceremonies should be celebrated to teach people Scripture, that those admonished by the Word may conceive faith and godly fear, and may also pray.”

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Ceremonies and rituals for worship, calendars and liturgies to organize our time, exist to teach. They teach not just discipline and order, but Christ, that is, they teach sin and grace, law and gospel, hell and heaven. Lauren Winner wrote in the introduction to a book entitled Living the Christian Year: “Jesus drew my attention to himself, and the church calendar has kept it fixed there – on him.”

Our sinful nature manages to make a mish-mash of worship. We exalt ourselves. We ride hobby horses. Our ears beg to be itched. If we had it our way, we would not do what needs to be done: killing sinners through God’s Law preached; raising them to life through God’s Gospel heard, poured out, and eaten.

Sixty years ago, a college professor named Ralph Gehrke summed it up well:

It seems to me that we can do much more purposeful work if we look upon our Divine Service, our Liturgy, as a path of worship that leads us to God’s wondrous gifts of Word and Sacrament. The Word and Sacrament are the focal points toward which we move in our Divine Service, and we should understand the various individual parts of the liturgy are only paths of prayer in which we travel toward these high points, at which God speaks to us through His Word and comes to us through His Sacrament. God’s gifts, not our sacrificial offerings of prayer and praise, are the heart of our worship. (“The Liturgy” in Viva Vox 1:1, 1955)

How do the liturgical calendar and liturgical worship do this? Study the calendar of the Church year. It forces you to consider Christ and only Christ, who he is, what he does.

You see the Christ who will return to judge the living and the dead; who came in the manger; who comes to us in Word, Water, and Meal (Advent).
You see God’s Son, the Word made flesh, cradled in Mary’s arms, “Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary and was made man,” as we confess in the Nicene Creed (Christmas).
This God made man reveals and displays his divine nature in what he says and does, ultimately pulling back the curtain to show us his divine nature on the Mount of Transfiguration (Epiphany).
Our Substitute conquers Satan in the desert, then conquers sin, sickness, and death, raising Lazarus, as he foretells his own death and resurrection; we see the glorious battle won in the history of his suffering and death (Lent).
Then we stand at the pinnacle of the year. God organized all history to accomplish this: when Christ showed the full extent of his love, gave us his body to eat and drink for forgiveness, before handing that body over to “suffer under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and buried,” as we say in the Apostles’ Creed (Holy Week).
Then, resurrection! The grave has no more victory; death no more sting. Christ is risen, he is risen indeed, alleluia! We celebrate not just for one day, but fifty (Easter).
When Christ ascends, he promises to send the Holy Spirit to remind us of all things, to teach us all things, to give birth to the New Testament Church through the washing with water through the Word, first for 3,000 on Pentecost, then for countless billions since (Pentecost).
In the days following Pentecost, we do what the early church did (Acts 2:42-47): devote ourselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship of believers, to the breaking of bread (Holy Communion), to prayer: the true life of the Church (the Pentecost season).

Take a look at, for example, the “Common Service,” an English liturgy put together by nineteenth century American Lutherans. In my denomination, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS), we think of the “Common Service” from our current hymnal, Christian Worship (pages 15-25), or perhaps some have in mind “The Order of the Holy Communion” from The Lutheran Hymnal (pages 15-31).

It starts with Baptism (“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”) and then rehearses our need for Baptism (“I confess that I am by nature sinful”), followed, most importantly, by God’s word of forgiveness. God rehearses his own plan of salvation in the Gloria in excelsis. We sing about peace on earth brought by the Lamb of God who takes away the world’s sins. We hear the Word of God (Old Testament, Epistle, Gospel), which leads Christians to confess the faith they share with the saints going back to Adam and Eve in the ancient creeds, Apostles’ or Nicene. The sermon based on those Scripture lessons proclaims Christ for us and then we beg our Father to “Create in me a clean heart, o God, and renew a right spirit within me. | Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.” Though the Spirit has poured the gospel upon our wounds in lessons and sermon and hymns and Creed, still we, like David who wrote those words (Psalm 51) and that tax collector, beat our breasts and say, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner!” And God does.

In the prayer our Savior taught us we, like dear children, plead with our dear Father for forgiveness, and the pastor says, “Lift up your hearts!” “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God!” because our holy, holy, holy Lord God fills heaven and earth with glory and says, “Eat, this is my body; drink, this is my blood, for you, for the forgiveness of your sins!” Hardly daring to believe we sing, “O Christ, Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world; have mercy on us.” And God does. He puts that mercy in our mouths in the Sacrament that we need.

Now we can sing with Simeon, “Lord, now you let your servant depart in peace according to your word.| For my eyes have seen your salvation.” The pastor sends us forth in peace: “The Lord look on you with favor and give you peace.”

Could some other form of worship and marking time keep Christ so central and make sure worship, the Divine Service, Gottesdienst, the Mass, church, the gathering, or whatever you call it (and whenever you do it), focuses on delivering God’s law and gospel and placing publicly before our eyes Christ and not ourselves? Yes, it could. We must acknowledge also that liturgical worship and calendars have not been fool-proof protections against error and heresy. Yet, it is hard to deny that following a Christ-centered calendar and the liturgical pattern of worship outlined above does at least make sure that no matter what preferences one might have, at least some time will be focused on Christ for you, even despite you.

So again, God gives us incredible freedom, but we must keep the main thing the main thing: God’s arrow-down action to us, Christ for us. The Lord’s Day (Sunday, Wednesday, whenever it may be) is not our day to look good or be entertained and coddled. Nor is it our day to impress God. The Lord’s Day is God’s day to impress us by coming down in His Word, declaring us guilty of sin, and declaring us righteous through faith in Christ. It is God’s day to serve us: to wash us clean in Baptism; to nourish us the body of Christ given for you, the blood of Christ shed for you; to talk to us, to convict, to comfort, to encourage, via the preached, read, heard, and sung Word of God!

If you haven’t done so already check out

Lessons in the Liturgy Part 1

Bowling without knowing the rules–What’s up with liturgical worship?