DIVINE SERVICE: DELIVERING FORGIVENESS OF SINS



Pastor John T. Pless

University Lutheran Chapel

Minneapolis, MN



Presented at the South Dakota District Lay/Clergy Conferences

Rapid City, SD    May 6, l995

Sioux Falls, SD   May 7, l995 





"Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be

acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer."  Psalm

l9:14



I am grateful for the invitation of your president to speak on the

theme "The Way We Worship" from the perspective of a pastor. President

Hartwig has asked that each of those presenting do so in a way that

will assist pastors and congregations in making informed and

knowledgeable decisions in regard to liturgy. It is my prayer that I

can be of service to you in thinking through this matter on the basis

of the Holy Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions.



The debate over the use or non-use of traditional Lutheran liturgical

forms has emerged as a hot topic in the life of our Synod. For some,

no doubt, what I have to say today will create more heat. However, my

intention is no to enflame the debate but to shed light. I shall

attempt to speak as forthrightly as possible, not to offend, but to

set the issue before us with clarity. I do not believe that the

current controversy is matter of "style" vs. "substance." It is clear

from the apostolic church as well as from the Evangelical-Lutheran

Reformation that the substance of the Gospel shapes and defines the

style of that Gospel's delivery. Further, I believe it is spiritually

dangerous to equate liturgy with adiaphora. Liturgy will always

confess or deny the Gospel - the Gospel is never an adiaphoron. This

brings me to the major thesis of this brief paper: The crisis over the

liturgy is a result of confusion over the forgiveness of sins. As such

it is a doctrinal issue and therefore, ultimately church divisive.



Article VII of the Augsburg Confession defines the church

liturgically, to borrow a phrase from the Australian Lutheran

theologian, John Kleinig. Article VII confesses that "it is sufficient

for the true unity of the Christian church that the Gospel be preached

in conformity with a pure understanding of it and that the sacraments

be administered in accordance with the divine Word" ( AC VII: 2).

Notice that the Augustana does not define the church on the basis of

the mere presence of Word and Sacrament, but by the fact that the

Gospel is purely preached and the sacraments are rightly administered

in accordance with the divine Word. Preaching of the Word and

administration of the sacraments require liturgy. Word and Sacrament

are not static commodities but means through which the Lord Himself is

working to constitute and sustain His church. To be sure, Augustana

VII holds that the true unity of the church is not grounded in the

uniformity of ceremonies instituted by men. But these humanly devised

ceremonies are not the liturgy.



The liturgy is Gottesdienst,[1] divine service, the Lord's service to

us through the proclamation of His Word and the giving out of His body

and blood. In the theology of the Lutheran Confessions, God is the

subject not the object of liturgical action. The trajectory is from

the Lord to His Church and then from the Church to her Lord. In Luke

22, just after He had established the supper of His body and blood,

the Lord says, "I am among you as one who serves" (v.22). This verse

embodies the Lutheran understanding of the liturgy; it is the service

that Jesus renders to His church, given by grace and received by

faith. Rome had reversed the flow with the insistence that the Mass is

essentially a sacrifice that the church offers to God. Reformed

Protestants likewise define worship as human activity, i.e. the

church's obedient ascription of praise to the majesty of a sovereign

God.



For confessional Lutherans, liturgy is not about human activity but

about the real presence of the Lord who stoops down to put His words

into our ears and His body and blood into our mouths. Liturgy, as it

is divine service, delivers the forgiveness of sins. The liturgy does

not exist to provide edifying entertainment, motivation for sanctified

living, or therapy for psychological distresses, but the forgiveness

of sins. In his treatise "Against the Heavenly Prophets," Luther

writes "If I now seek the forgiveness of sins, I do not run to the

cross, for I will not find it given there. Nor must I hold to the

suffering of Christ as Dr. Karlstadt trifles, in knowledge or

remembrance, for I will not find it there either. But I will find in

the sacrament or the gospel the word which distributes, presents,

offers, and gives to me that forgiveness which was won on the cross"

(AE 40:214). In the liturgy, God Himself is present to forgive sins.



The real presence of Christ the forgiver of sins in His words and with

His body and blood has shaped the cultus, the liturgical forms of

confessional Lutheranism. At the present time, Lutherans are being

invited to trade off a liturgical form shaped by real presence of

Christ the forgiver for another form. The form that we are invited to

make our own has its roots in American Evangelicalism. The forgiveness

of sins has no real presence within the theology of Evangelicalism. At

best, troubled sinners are pointed back to Calvary. The problem is as

Luther has reminded us - that forgiveness was acquired at Calvary but

not delivered there. Calvary is back there in time almost two thousand

years ago. At its worst, Evangelicalism turns the troubled sinner

inward to his own conscience. This is a gross mishandling of law and

Gospel as Dr. Walther reminds us in Thesis IX: "...the Word of God is

not rightly divided when sinners who have been struck down and

terrified by the Law are directed, not to the Word and the Sacraments,

but to their own prayers and wrestlings with God in order that they

may win their way into a state of grace; in other words, when they are

told to keep on praying and struggling until they feel that God has

received them into grace." [2] This subjectivism is embodied in the

hymnody and liturgical practices of Evangelicalism. The cultus of

Evangelicalism exchanges the absolution for assurances of grace, the

Gospel as the efficacious Word of salvation for a gospel that invites

and requires a human decision, and the supper of the Lord's body and

blood for a symbolic recollection of the upper room. Where is the

forgiveness of sins?



As I stated earlier, the crisis over the liturgy stems from confusion

regarding the forgiveness of sins. Evidence for this assertion can be

seen in a new book by Timothy Wright, one of the pastors at the ELCA's

Community Church of Joy in Phoenix. In his book, A Community of Joy:

How to Create Contemporary Worship, [3] Wright attempts to answer the

question, "How can we use worship to attract and hold irreligious

people?" (p.24). Wright finds the structures of Lutheran liturgy to be

a road block in the evangelistic task. At the very least, Wright urges

Lutherans to "warm up the liturgy" with a visitor-friendly campus,

name tags, careful directions, and a corps of well-trained greeters

and ushers. But more is needed. The confession of sins will have to

go. Wright says "Some congregations begin the worship service with a

time of confession and forgiveness. Long time church goers may

appreciate opening with this important liturgical rite, but starting

the service with confession and forgiveness says to the guests: 'You

are sinners!' For years some people have stayed away from church,

fearing such condemnation. Finally, having the courage to come, they

hear from the start how bad they are - that they cannot worship until

they confess their failures and shortcomings" (p.42). We are told to

"Watch out for religious phrases in hymns" (p.46). All this talk about

"cherubim and seraphim bowing down before Him" and "a bulwark never

failing" will only confuse visitors. Preachers are instructed to

remember "in preparing a message, the question is not, 'What shall I

preach about?' but 'To whom shall I preach?" (p.86). Therefore

preachers get this advice from Wright: "The how-to section of a

bookstore provides a great resource for relevant sermon ideas. The

psychological and self-help sections prove especially helpful. Written

to meet the needs of people (and to make money), the authors focus on

sure-fire concerns" (p.l02). When it comes to the Sacrament of the

Altar, Wright has this to say on closed communion: "This policy will

not work in a visitor-oriented service. 'Excluding' guests will turn

them off. It destroys the welcoming environment that the church tried

to create" (p.122). Again, my question: "Where is the forgiveness of

sins?"



Wright would have us abandon Lutheran liturgy for the sake of

"cross-culturalism." He is, in effect, inviting us to abandon the

means-of-grace-centered culture of Lutheranism for the increasingly

pragmatic culture of American Evangelicalism. [4] This is an

invitation which we must decline for the sake of the Gospel.



What is to be done? First, let us recognize that the ecclesial

(religious culture) of North America is Evangelicalism. This culture

has its roots first in Puritanism, which is basically Calvinistic, and

secondarily in the great revival movements of the late l8th and early

l9th centuries. The ethos of American Evangelicalism is at home in

North America. As Nathan Hatch has pointed out in his book The

Democratization of American Christianity, [5] the Jeffersonian ideas

of individual freedom and equality are congenial to Evangelicalism's

emphasis on conversion as a personal decision and the church as a

spiritual democracy. Evangelicalism's stress of the autonomy of the

believer and the immediacy of spiritual experience apart from

sacramental means has shaped a religious culture that accents

individual faith over churchly life and tends to characterize Baptism,

Absolution, and the Lord's Supper as externals on the periphery of the

Christian life, at best. Subjectivity coupled with a suspicion of the

intellect has produced a religious culture that elevates heart over

head, emotion over intellect. Lutherans can no more compromise with

this culture than Luther could strike an agreement with Zwingli, than

the confessional Lutherans of the last century could join the Prussian

Union. Evangelicalism is of a different spirit.



In a culture that has been so deeply influenced by Evangelicalism it

is imperative that we emphasize our Lutheran distinctives. Article X

of the Formula of Concord-Solid Declaration confesses: "We believe ,

teach, and confess that in a time of confession, as when the enemies

of the Word of God desire to suppress the pure doctrine of the holy

Gospel, the entire community of God, yes, every individual Christian,

and especially the ministers of the Word as leaders of the community

of God, are obligated to confess openly, not only by words but also

through deeds and actions, the true doctrine and all that pertains to

it, according to the Word of God. In such a case we should not yield

to adversaries even in matters of indifference, nor should we tolerate

the imposition of such ceremonies on us by adversaries in order to

undermine the genuine worship of God and to introduce and confirm

their idolatry by force or chicanery" (FC-SD X:l0). At the time of the

Formula, the challenge was an attempt to impose Roman ceremonies on

Lutherans in order to give the impression of unity. Today, the

challenge is from the other side of the fence as some Lutherans give

the impression that there are no substantial differences between

themselves and American Evangelicals.



Actually this is not a new challenge to the Missouri Synod. The

so-called American Lutheranism championed by Samuel Schmucker in the

last century caused C.F.W.Walther to write:



We refuse to be guided by those who are offended by our church

customs. We adhere to them all the more firmly when someone wants to

cause us to have a guilty conscience on account of them... It is truly

distressing that many of our fellow Christians find the differences

between Lutheranism and Papism in outward things. It is a pity and

dreadful cowardice when one sacrifices the good ancient church customs

to please the deluded American sects, lest they accuse us of being

papistic! Indeed! Am I to be afraid of a Methodist, who perverts the

saving Word, or be ashamed in the matter of my good cause, and not

rather rejoice that the sects can tell by our ceremonies that I do not

belong to them?.... We are not insisting that there be uniformity of

perception or feeling or of taste among all believing Christians--

neither dare anyone that all be minded as he. Nevertheless it remains

true that the Lutheran liturgy distinguishes Lutheran worship from the

worship of other churches to such an extent that the houses of worship

of the latter look like lecture halls in which hearers are merely

addressed or instructed, while our churches are in truth houses of

prayer in which Christians serve the great God publicly before the

world. [6]



It is for good reason that the Constitution of the Lutheran

Church-Missouri Synod follows Walther in making it a condition for

membership in the Synod the "Exclusive use of doctrinally pure agenda,

hymnbooks, and catechisms in church and school." [7]



There are several implications for congregational life and pastoral

practice. Rejection of the "alternative worship movement" is not an

affirmation that all is well in congregations that stick to the

hymnal.  Kenneth Korby has commented that there are three kinds of

churches: (l) churches with the liturgy; (2) churches without the

liturgy; and (3) liturgical churches. There are congregations that

never depart from p.5 or 15 in TLH or p.l58 in LW; they have the

liturgy, although they really don't know why. Then there are

congregations that have abandoned the liturgy altogether. Genuinely

liturgical churches are at home in the liturgy; it is the source and

center of their life. I have no doubt that one of the reasons

"alternative worship forms" have been so eagerly embraced by many in

the Missouri Synod is that the liturgy was never taught and the

richness of our hymnbooks was left largely untapped. It is not the

liturgy that is the problem but the way it has been misused. In his

chapter on "Liturgical Renewal in the Parish" in Lutheran Worship:

History and Practice, Arthur Just writes, "A chapter on liturgical

renewal suggests that the liturgy is in need of renewal... Perhaps

what is wrong is not the liturgy but those who use the liturgy. The

targets of liturgical renewal are the clergy and the congregation."

[8]



Congregations should expect the seminaries of the Synod to provide

pastors who are fully at home with the liturgy. At the present time,

our seminaries require only one course in liturgy. This is hardly

sufficient in preparing pastors who will be equipped to understand the

theology of divine service and plan and lead liturgy accordingly. A

basic course in the theology of the liturgy should be foundational for

at least two other required courses in the mechanics of the Divine

Service (the rubrics, the actual conduct of the service) and liturgy

as it relates to pastoral care (the occasional services). A

strengthened curriculum in liturgical theology needs to be set in the

context of a vibrant liturgical life on campus. In other words, the

dean of the chapel should be the most competent liturgist on

campus. The chapel should model the absolute best in our heritage.



If we get the forgiveness of sins right, we will get the liturgy

right. Luther writes in the Large Catechism, "We believe that in this

Christian church we have the forgiveness of sins, which is granted

through the holy sacraments and, in short, the entire Gospel and all

the duties of Christianity....Therefore everything in the Christian

church is so ordered that we may daily obtain full forgiveness of sins

through the Word and through signs appointed to comfort and revive our

consciences as long as we live" (LC II:55). For Luther and the

Confessions, the church is constituted in the liturgy, that is, she

receives her life from Christ in His words and gifts which deliver the

forgiveness of sins. No wonder, then, that our Confessions place

sermon and sacrament at the center, insisting that our churches have

not abolished the Mass but celebrate it every Sunday and on other

festivals (Ap XXIV).



Our concern for the liturgy is not fueled by a traditionalism that is

intent on merely preserving the past. It is a concern that the

forgiveness won by our Lord in His suffering and death be proclaimed

and distributed in their truth and purity for the salvation of

sinners. Liturgical texts and practices are to be evaluated from this

perspective. Pastor Joel Brondos, one of my colleagues in the

editorial group of Logia, has developed the following instrument to

assist with such an evaluation:



(cf.: chart on p.66 in Logia: A Journal of Lutheran Theology, volume

3, number 1, Epiphany/January 1994)



Our historic Lutheran liturgical orders are Christ-centered as opposed

to man-centered, they reflect the theology of the cross rather than

the theology of glory, they center in special revelation not natural

revelation, they tie us to the means of grace, they appeal to faith

instead of emotions, and they anchor us not in myth but in the

incarnation. This instrument along with the Introduction to the hymnal

Lutheran Worship are to be commended to pastors for tools as they

instruct their congregations in the doctrine of the liturgy.



Two comments on the importance of teaching are in order. Let the

pastor begin by teaching the board of elders or church council. Why

not build in forty-five minutes to an hour of study time to each

meeting of the board of elders? Over the period of a year, the pastor

could work through the basics of our doctrine and practice of liturgy

on the basis of the Scriptures and the Confessions. [9] Any liturgical

changes which are to be made in the worship life of the congregation

must be undergirded with substantial teaching.



The teaching of the liturgy is a key component in the catechesis of

new members. I have argued elsewhere that the catechesis is the lively

link between evangelism and liturgy. [10] The liturgy is not readily

understandable or accessible to the unbeliever. Through catechesis the

unbeliever is being transported from the culture of this world to the

culture of God's colony on earth, the holy church. [11] The culture of

God's colony has its own language, the language of faith. The language

of faith is the language of the liturgy. Catechesis teaches the

convert this language. Three books are essential to this catechesis:

the Holy Scriptures, the Small Catechism, and the hymnal. The doctrine

that is drawn from the Scriptures is confessed in the Catechism and

expressed doxologically in the liturgy and hymns.



CONCLUSION



Remember the story of the golden calf in Exodus 32. The children of

Israel, fresh out of Egypt, are encamped in the Sinai wilderness. They

do not know what has become of Moses. The people go to Aaron with the

request for new gods. Aaron is responsive to their "felt needs" and

fashions for them a golden calf, a "worship form" that was culturally

relevant to their Canaanite context. This was entertainment evangelism

at its best as we read that "the people sat down to eat and drink and

rose up to play" (Ex.32:6). Even though Aaron called it "a feast to

the Lord" (Ex.32:5), God called it idolatry. The Apostle writes "Now

all these things happened to them as examples, and were written for

our admonition, on whom the ends of the ages have come....Therefore,

my beloved, flee from idolatry" (I Corinthians l0:ll, l4).



The opposite of idolatry is faith in Jesus Christ. Indeed faith is the

highest worship of God as the Confessions so often remind us. No

forgiveness of sins, no faith. The liturgy delivers us from

self-chosen forms of worship, drawing us out of idolatry to repentance

and faith. The Introduction to Lutheran Worship gets it right:



Saying back to him what he has said to us, we repeat what is most true

and sure. Most true and sure is his name, which he put upon us with

the water of Baptism. We are his. This we acknowledge at the beginning

of the Divine Service. Where his name is, there is he. Before him we

acknowledge that we are sinners, and we plead for forgiveness. His

forgiveness is given us, and we, freed and forgiven, acclaim him as

our great and gracious God as we apply to ourselves the words he has

used to make himself known to us. [12]





-	The Rev. John T. Pless

	University Lutheran Chapel

	IV.24.l995







                                  

1 - For a fine exposition of Gottesdienst see Norman Nagel, "Whose

Liturgy Is It?'  Logia (Eastertide, l993), 4-8. Also see Fred Precht,

Lutheran Worship: History and Practice (St. Louis: Concordia

Publishing House, l993), 44-57.



2 - C.F.W. Walther, The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel,

trans. W.H.T.Dau (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, l928),

2. Also see Robert Schaibley, "A Lutheran Strategy for Urban Ministry:

Evangelism and the Means of Grace" Logia (Holy Trinity, l994), 6-13.



3 - Timothy Wright, A Community of Joy: How to Create Contemporary

Worship (Nashville: Abingdon Press, l994). All page references to this

book are noted in the body of the paper.



4 - See the following critiques written from within Evangelicalism: Os

Guinness, Dining With the Devil: The Megachurch Movement Flirts With

Modernity (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, l993); Douglas Webster,

Selling Jesus: What's Wrong With Marketing the Church (Downers Grove,

Illinois: InterVarsity Press, l992); Michael Scott Horton, Made in

America: The Shaping of American Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Baker

Book House, l99l); David Wells, No Place for the Truth or Whatever

Happened to Evangelical Theology? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, l993); and

David Wells, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of

Fading Dreams (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, l994).



5 - Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New

Haven: Yale University Press, l989).



6 - C.F.W.Walther, Essays for the Church , Volume I (St. Louis:

Concordia Publishing House, l992), 194.



7 - Handbook of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (St. Louis:

Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, l992), ll.



8 - Precht, Lutheran Worship: History and Practice, 21.



9 - Additional resources for the teaching of the liturgy include

Lutheran Worship: History and Practice; Roger Pittelko, Touchpoint

Bible Study: Worship and Liturgy (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing

House, l995); Harold Senkbeil, Dying to Live: The Power of Forgiveness

(St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, l994); Harold Senkbeil,

Sanctification: Christ in Action- Evangelical Challenge and Lutheran

Response (Milwaukee: Northwestern Publishing House, l989); John

T. Pless, Real Life Worship Reader (Minneapolis: University Lutheran

Chapel, l994).



10 - See my GEM module entitled Catechesis: The Lively Link Between

Evangelism and Worship.



11 - The chart from the Trinity-Pentecost l995 issue of Concordia

Pulpit Resources may be helpful.



I would argue, along with David Wells, that much of Evangelical

worship is reflective of "the world's view." Lutheran worship is

reflective of "the Christian view." Also see Gene Veith, Postmodern

Times (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, l994); Philip J. Lee,

Against the Protestant Gnostics (New York: Oxford University Press,

l987).



12 - Lutheran Worship (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, l982), 6.