The most recent Lutheran Witness includes a number of helpful articles addressing, in various ways, the topic of uniformity and diversity in liturgical practice. This has been a perennial topic of discussion, debate, and disagreement among the pastors and congregations of the Synod for the past forty or fifty years, at least. It’s been of particular interest to me for almost that long, especially since my student days at the Seminary, when I really started thinking carefully about the meaning and significance of the Church’s weekly worship. Thankfully, what I was learning in my classes and in my own reading and studies was also echoed and exemplified in my field work experience and then on my vicarage. Learning the history and theology of the Liturgy from the early church through the Reformation to the present day instilled in me a deep appreciation for the way the Lord has preserved the preaching and administration of the Gospel among us.
As the Lutheran Witness articles point out, a desire for consistency and continuity in liturgical practice has persisted among Lutherans from the start, coupled with a recognition that there are many and various details which the Lord has left free to His Church on earth. We understand and stress that we are not justified or saved by the observance (or non-observance) of ceremonies that God has not commanded or required (forbidden or prohibited). Yet, from Dr. Luther himself to the historic Lutheran church orders, to our own LCMS Constitution, Lutherans have recognized the value and benefit of customary ceremonies and common practices between churches. Among other advantages, I have pointed to the clarity and consistency of our catechesis and confession of Christ and His Word, when we exercise a recognizable similarity in the way we worship.
When Pr. Wilhelm Löhe was sending Lutheran laymen to the United States in the nineteenth century, he advised them to consider two things when visiting churches and seeking to discern whether they were orthodox or not: They should measure the pastor’s preaching and teaching on the basis of the Small Catechism, and they should measure the worship practice – especially the administration of the Lord’s Supper – on the basis of the Lutheran Liturgy. Those were objective standards that Lutherans could know and recognize, which the LCMS sought to recover in places where they had been lost, and to retain among our congregations for the sake of our biblical and evangelical theology. Not that every jot and tittle of worship would be identical in every place. That is not what was meant or envisioned by “uniformity” in practice. But the intention was that an identifiably Lutheran order and form of the Liturgy would allow the Word of God to have free course in its truth and purity, and the Lord’s Supper to shine forth as the treasure it is, according to the Word of Christ Jesus, in harmony with the proclamation of His Cross and Resurrection.
I’ve been thinking of these things even more than usual lately, in part because of overtures that were assigned to my floor committee for this summer’s Synod Convention, in part because of my responsibilities as the COP representative on the Concordia University System Board, and in part because I’ll be spending the next couple of weeks teaching the Liturgy to Lutherans in Taiwan. As I revisit the foundational bedrock of the Liturgy in the preaching and practice of Jesus in the Holy Gospels, I am reminded again and again that the heart of the matter is deeply theological. And as I consider that St. Justin Martyr’s description of the Liturgy in the middle of the second century could very nearly describe and summarize the Lutheran Liturgy from the Reformation to the Lutheran Service Book, I cannot help but marvel at the providential care of our merciful Lord who has caused His Word to be preached and His very Body and Blood to be administered to His disciples around the world and across the centuries. President Harrison has consistently extolled “the Ordo” of the Liturgy, by which he points us to those fundamental basics and building blocks of the Divine Service, not as generic abstractions, but as the Church’s sacred tradition of the faith in practice. It is beneficial and salutary to have those specifics in common, just as it is beneficial to have the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Our Father, as well as other prayers, hymns, and confessions in common, to assist us in retaining and handing over what we have received.