HERMANN SASSE AND THE LITURGICAL MOVEMENT



Hermann Sasse was a theologian of the Sacrament and as such he was a

theologian of the liturgy. "A church without the Sacrament must die,"1

Sasse wrote in 1939. Later Sasse argued: "To restore this Sacrament,

which under the influence of Reformed Protestantism and the modern

world has also declined in Lutheranism, and give it its proper place

in the divine service dare not be an interest only of a liturgical

reform movement. It is a matter of life and death for the Lutheran

Church"2.  It was from the perspective of the centrality of the

Sacrament of the Altar that Sasse took issue with the Liturgical

Movement.



Like Wilhelm Loehe before him, Sasse was not swept away by a

liturgical romanticism that defended the liturgy on the basis of

venerable tradition or aesthetic preferences. Sasse was fond of

quoting from Wilhem Loehe's Three Books on the Church: "The church

remains what she is even without the liturgy. She remains a queen even

when she is dressed as a beggar."3 But this is not to suggest that the

liturgy was a matter of theological indifference, set at the periphery

of the church's life. In one of his few works directed specifically at

the Liturgical Movement, Sasse opined, "There is no more damning an

indictment of a theologian than to say that he knows nothing about the

liturgy."4



Sasse knew the liturgy. Although he was not a liturgical scholar in

the narrow sense of the term, he was thoroughly acquainted with the

historical development of the liturgy as can be seen his 1957 article

"Concerning the Origin of the Improperia."5 While Sasse wrote only a

few articles that dealt exclusively with liturgical themes, Sasse's

major book This is My Body and many of his articles and letters are

replete with references to the history of the liturgy, the doctrinal

content of liturgical forms, and the significance of liturgical

practices.



Sasse's interest in the liturgy was more than academic. His "letters

to Lutheran pastors"6 and short articles in the Lutheran Herald7 give

evidence of the imprint that the church's liturgy made on Sasse's

piety. Professor John Kleinig, a former student of Sasse, comments on

this aspect of Sasse:



   When he as a lecturer spoke on the theology of worship, or on its

practice, or even on liturgical piety, his whole manner would

change. The stern passion for the truth and the polemical edge to his

teaching would give way to a sense of joy and sparkling wonder at the

mystery of it all. As he spoke with unutterable and exalted joy on

these topics, he won me over to his vision of heavenly worship and his

conception of liturgical theology, unfashionable though it was.8



Sasse's piety, like his theology was not detached from the liturgical

life of the congregation assembled around the preached Word and the

Holy Supper. If, at times, Sasse is rather vehement in his criticisms

of the Liturgical Movement it is because he knows that even as the

liturgy is the vehicle which carries the truth of the Gospel, the

liturgy can be subverted and made into a vehicle for error. "It is

true that every dogma has its roots in the liturgy, but this is

unfortunately true even of the greatest errors of Christendom, as the

history of Mariolatry and Mariology shows"9



Most of Sasse's references to the Liturgical Movement occur in his

writings between 1948-1960. Recognizing that the Liturgical Movement

is an ecumenical movement in the sense that its influence crosses

confessional boundaries, Sasse spots the source of the Liturgical

Movement in the Lutheran churches of Germany and North America in

persons and events within the Roman Church.10 In many respects, Sasse

is quite sympathetic to the Liturgical Movement within the Roman

Church. Writing in 1952, Sasse offers the following assessment:



     If one today in the middle of the century looks back to the

results of the great movement, then one would have to say that only

one church has dealt with it, has set aside its revolutionary

excesses, and has put it in service. That is the Roman Church, which

in many countries, especially in Germany and Austria, derived real

inner renewal from this movement. This has happened. The fruits will

only become completely clear when languages such as German and English

have been raised to the level of liturgical languages and when the

Catholic 'German Mass' (Deutsche Messe) will remind Lutheranism that

it was once a 'German Mass' that led the Lutheran Reformation to

victory.11



In Sasse's mind, the Liturgical Movement within the Roman Church was

seen as something positive; in the Protestant churches it was

problematic. While Sasse acknowledges that the Liturgical Movement in

the Roman Catholicism was given birth by reforms in church music

initiated by Pius X and the liturgical research of the Benedictines of

Maria Laach12, he sees that at a deeper level, the Liturgical Movement

is "seeking and questing for the church".13 Sasse commends the Roman

Liturgical Movement for providing an answer to the question "what is

the church?" in "exceedingly impressive and practical terms"14 as "the

church is where the congregation of Christian believers gather as

ecclesia orans (the praying church) about the altar; where the Body of

the Word is received with the mouth in the Holy Communion, there is

the church as the Body of Christ."15



Sasse then goes on to note the renewal which was generated in the

Roman Church from this understanding of ecclesiology:



    She possesses her present vitality in spite of all these things

and in spite of everything un-Christian and anti-Christian that

happens in her midst. The real source of her vitality in this remnant

of her primitive heritage in spite of all these things and which she

still retains and which she knows hoe to renew again and again: The

profound truth of the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the

Altar. It is one of the most noteworthy signs of the times that the

Roman Catholic church seeks to make the center of her spiritual life

precisely that primitive and Scriptural tenet which Blessed Martin

Luther so doughtily defended against Zwingli and the sixteenth century

Enthusiasts .16



Thus Sasse could be grateful for signs of genuine renewal in

Rome. Sasse praises Pius XII for insisting that the lex orandi lex

credendi (the law of what is to be prayed is the law of what is to be

believed) must be turned around so as to make dogma the norm of the

liturgy.17 Sasse notes approvingly the inclusion of Luther's hymns in

modern Roman hymnals and the judgment of the Oratorian priest, Felix

Messerschmid that Nicolai's great hymns are "unsurpassed examples of

what church hymns should be."18 Sasse observed that the Liturgical

Movement was causing Rome to confront the questions raised by Luther:

"Wherever the pure Gospel comes, there the great liturgy of the true

church revives. And wherever men seek genuine liturgy they cannot

avoid facing the question, 'What is the Gospel?' Here is the

fundamental reason why the liturgical movement in the Roman church has

confronted that denomination with the whole issue of the

Reformation."19 With the coming of Vatican II, Sasse's optimism for a

genuine evangelical renewal of the Roman Church through the Liturgical

Movement ceases.



In 1952, Sasse is still optimistic regarding the Liturgical Movement

in the Roman Church. Sasse, however, was not impressed with the place

of the Liturgical Movement within the Protestant communions. He

lamented the failure to renew the liturgical life of the evangelical

churches. The Liturgical Movement did not exert the same influence in

the Protestant churches as it had in the Roman Catholic Church. Sasse

notes two differences between the Liturgical Movement in the Roman

Church and the Protestant churches:



    Where does the difference lie? What is evident immediately is that

the liturgical movement in the Roman Church affected all the people

from the Catholic scholars to the unsophisticateded country

congregations. All efforts on the Protestant side remain limited to

pastors, some church-minded lay people, and very small, sometimes

sect-like associations. The second immediately obvious difference is

that the liturgical movement in the Roman Church has remained on the

foundations of Roman dogma in spite of some difficult conflicts with

dogma and church order.20



It is the second difference that occupies Sasse's attention. Sasse

observes that the Liturgical Movement in the Roman Church was

consistent with Roman doctrine. This is especially evident at three

crucial points: the sacrifice of the Mass, the compatibility of

Augustine's sacramental theology with the sacramentalism of the

Religionsgeschichte school, and the relationship of Christianity to

paganism.



At the heart of Rome's theology of the Sacrament is the assertion that

the Mass is a sacrifice offered to God. In his 1948 essay "Liturgy and

Lutheranism" Sasse observes that under the influence of the Liturgical

Movement "...the idea of sacrifice in connection with the mass has not

been abandoned, but it has been so drastically reinterpreted that it

comes very close to the evangelical solus Christus, sola gratia".21

Rome was beginning to speak of the sacrifice of the mass as a

representation (repraesentatio) rather than as a repetition.



Sasse appears to back away from his 1948 remarks, noting in his 1952

article "The Lutheran Understanding of the Consecration" the synergism

of the modern Roman notion of Christ and church as head and body doing

the sacrificing together as coming dangerously close to a deification

of man.22 Whether it be priest or church doing the sacrifice, the

liturgical action is anthropocentrically driven. Likewise in his 1957

essay "Consecration and Real Presence" Sasse comments that many

contemporary Protestants



    ...do not see that the ambiguous 'repraesentatio' does not exclude

that in each mass the priest offers a propitiatory sacrifice for the

living and the dead, even if the identity of this sacrifice with that

of Calvary is pretended.23



In the same essay, Sasse had observed that the deepest difference

between the Roman and Lutheran understanding of the consecration did

not lie in the question of transubstantiation but in the fact that

"the Roman understanding of consecration is at the same time the

'immolatio,' the offering of the sacrifice."24 The Liturgical Movement

did not represent a substantial shift away from the traditional Roman

teaching concerning the sacrifice of the mass. In that sense, it

remained consistent with Roman doctrine.



A second area of consistency between the Liturgical Movement and Roman

doctrine is the reliance on Augustinian sacramental doctrine. Locating

one of the weaknesses of Augustine's sacramental theology in his

attempt to establish sacramentum as a universal idea or category that

applies to all religions, Sasse notes that Augustine was unable to

sufficiently break through from his pagan past to recognize that is

something unique "because it was instituted by Jesus Christ and so is

inextricably bound up with the incarnation of the eternal Son of

God."25 In this sense Odo Casel is thoroughly Augustinian as he finds

Hellenistic cultic mysteries to be shadows of Baptism and the Lord's

Supper.26



The Religionsgeschichte approach to the sacraments fails as it

attempts to move from universal categories to specific manifestations,

unable to distinguish between myth and history. While Casel's theory

cannot be reconciled with Lutheranism's incarnational understanding of

the sacraments27 , Sasse points out that Casel's mysteriumtheologie

"can be accommodated in the Roman Church because, for one thing, it

has a different relationship with heathen religion than we do."28



The Liturgical Movement as it had developed in Roman Catholicism

represented a challenge to Lutheranism. Sasse was most critical of

Lutheran theologians and church who were enchanted by the attractions

of this powerful movement, unable to discern its alien theology. For

Sasse, liturgy could not be thought of apart from dogma. It is from

the perspective of dogma that Sasse addresses the Liturgical Movement

within the Lutheran churches of Germany and North America.



On the German scene, Sasse focuses primarily on Friederich Heiler and

Wilhelm Staehlin. Lamenting the inability of the Liturgical Movement

to grasp the Lutheran doctrine of justification, Sasse sees Heiler as

"the real tragedy of the High Church movement in Germany."29 Of Heiler

Sasse writes:



    Heiler was a Reform-Catholic from the school of Schnitzer in

Munich. His theology remained what it was from the beginning: liberal

Catholicism. His 'conversion' to the Lutheran Church in Sweden by

reception of communion from Soederblom was a misunderstanding. The

calling of this very promising young scholar to the theological

faculty at Marburg was a terrible mistake. That he then created an

ill-approved secret organization, along the lines of such an

organization in the Church of England, to secretly 'consecrate

bishops' - which assured 'validity'in the technical sense-and that he

then secretly reordained Lutheran pastors in 'apostolic succession' so

that they could make the 'change' in the supper, was a terrible

sin. We will not investigate just how terrible and fateful that sin

here. It is this High Churchism which has so discredited all the

efforts to re-institute the old catholic heritage of our church in the

best sense.30



At the center of Sasse's critique of Heiler was the latter's dismissal

of the Reformation's sola gratia as a distortion of the message of the

New Testament.31 "For Heiler," says Sasse, "the authentic doctrine of

justification has always been that of Trent."32



Like Heiler, Wilhelm Staehlin33 stumbles over the doctrine of

justification. Sasse sees Staehlin as a "latter-day disciple of

Osiander"34 as he makes of justification a process of internal renewal

rather than a forensic verdict. Thus for Staehlin the liturgy is

understood in the categories of mysticism rather than from the

evangelical center of the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae.35

From his encounters with Heiler and Staehlin and the Berneuchener

Movement with which they were associated, Sasse concluded that the

Liturgical Movement was hopelessly captive to a romantic syncretism

that could not be reconciled with confessional Lutheranism.



This led Sasse to cast a critical eye at developments in the United

States. Arthur Carl Piepkorn represents the party in American

Lutheranism which in many aspects parallels the Berneuchener Movement

in Germany. In 1959 Sasse identifies Piepkorn's seminary chapel homily

"as a particularly troubling sign of how Lutherans can succumb to the

dangers of High Churchism."36 Sasse detects in Piepkorn a theological

methodology that threatens the Reformation's sola scriptura as

Piepkorn attempts to give room to "pious opinion" where the Scriptures

are silent. Thus Sasse concludes "The tragedy of Piepkorn is rooted

deep within that of modern High Churchism, which to its detriment,

separates it from Rome. It finally has no theology. And thus Piepkorn

represents a movement, but not a church. He belongs to a class of

American Lutherans who learned the old dogmatic heritage, but it has

never taken hold in the depths of their being." 37



Sasse's most direct analysis of the influence of the Liturgical

Movement on American Lutheranism is in an extended letter to Pastor

Glenn Stone, then editor of Una Sancta, "The Liturgical Movement:

Reformation or Revolution?" In this article Sasse attempts to gain a

sympathetic hearing from American Lutherans associated with Berthold

von Schenk and Arthur Carl Piepkorn. After agreeing with the

proponents of the Liturgical Movement that the Lutheran Church is in

need of a rediscovery and restoration of its sacramental life, Sasse

goes on to state that "The great tragedy of the Liturgical Movement in

the Lutheran Churches is its inability to face the doctrinal issues"38



After rehearsing the errors of Heiler, Staehlin, and the Berneuchener

Movement,39 Sasse raises the possibility that these false teachings

are finding their way into American Lutheranism. Fearful that the

Liturgical Movement was loosing its doctrinal moorings, Sasse worried

that the movement was in danger of becoming a revolution. As evidence

of this, Sasse cites the failure of von Schenk to distinguish between

the right administration of the means of grace and the ceremonies

connected with them40 , the interaction of the Eucharistic Prayer in

the Service Book and Hymnal published two years earlier, 41 and

Piepkorn's Mariological article.42



Far from being anti-liturgical, Sasse argues for a full-bodied

liturgical life that rests on the solid foundation of Lutheran

doctrine: "Only if we do not forget the great concern for the pure

doctrine of the Gospel can our liturgical endeavors remain sound. If

the dogmatic compass no longer functions, the ship of the church is

going to be wrecked."43 Here Sasse repeats a theme which runs

consistently through his writings on liturgical issues: "Nothing can

be liturgically correct which is not dogmatically correct"44



If severed from the dogmatic foundation of the real presence of the

body and blood of Christ in the Lord's Supper, Sasse contended that

all liturgical renewal would not rise above an empty ritualism. The

Sacrament would be replaced by "High Church Ceremony"45 Thus Sasse was

critical of all "naturalistic" attempts to explain the sacraments 46

as well as liturgical theologies based on the work of Old Testament

theologians who maintained the "realization" of salvation in the

cultus. 47 Of these Sasse remarks, "Their doctrine of the Real

Presence is Calvinistic, and that of the sacrifice is Roman

Catholic."48



In the years since Sasse first called the Lutheran churches to a

genuine liturgical renewal anchored in Reformation doctrine,

Lutheranism has endured much liturgical experimentation, and now large

parts of English-speaking Lutheranism is inflicted with an alien

understanding of worship imported from American Evangelism via the

Church Growth Movement.49 Sasse's critique of the Liturgical Movement

provides contemporary Lutherans with a theological understanding of

the liturgy that is well-suited to address the present challenges as

it invites doctrinal discernment. The concluding paragraph of Sasse's

"Liturgy and Confession: A Brotherly Warning Against the 'High Church'

Danger" is equally applicable to those who would remove the liturgy

from the church, dressing the queen in beggar's garb:



    It belongs to the greatness of Luther, that he had the gift of

discernment. He was brought up in the liturgy and lived in it. He

desired to maintain of it, what ever could be retained. And he never

gave up any of it frivolously, and often long hesitated before he

finally made a decision. Luther had the gift of discernment. He had

this great gift of the Holy Spirit, without which the church cannot

exist, because he had the Word and Sacrament, to which the Spirit of

God has bound Himself in the church. He could judge liturgy because he

possessed the measure on which it alone can be judged: The holy

gospel, the saving message of the justification of the sinner by faith

alone, the article from which nothing can be granted even if heaven

and earth should fall, and nothing remain. On this article depends not

only our salvation, but also the church and the liturgy of the true

church.50



John T. Pless

University Lutheran Chapel

Minneapolis, Minnesota USA



ENDNOTES



1 Hermann Sasse, "The Lord's Supper in the Life of the Church" in

Scripture and Church: Selected Essays of Hermann Sasse edited by

Jeffrey J. Kloha and Ronald Feuerhahn (St. Louis: Concordia Seminary

Monograph Series, 1995), p.14.



2 Hermann Sasse, "The Lutheran Understanding of the Consecration" in

We Confess the Sacraments translated by Norman Nagel (St. Louis:

Concordia Publishing House, 1985), p.120; also see "The Lord's Supper

in the Lutheran Church" in We Confess the Sacraments, pp.98-112.



3 Ibid., p.117.



4 Hermann Sasse, "Liturgy and Lutheranism" in Kloha/Feuerhahn, p.41.



5 Hermann Sasse, "Concerning the Origins of the Improperia," The

Reformed Theological Review, XVI (October, 1957), 65-75.



6 See Friedrich Wilhelm Hopf, ed., In Statu Confessionis: Gesammelte

Aufsaetze von Hermann Sasse (Berlin and Hamburg: Lutherisches

Verlagshaus, 1966)



7 Hermann Sasse, "Fifty Days of Joy from Easter to Pentecost,"

Lutheran Herald (8 April 1961) 100-101; "Lent and the Christian Life,"

Lutheran Herald (11 March 1961) 68-69.



8 Lecture by Professor John Kleinig on "Sasse in the Practical

Department: Worship as Church Life" presented at "An International

Theological Symposium Marking the Centennial of the Birth of

Dr. Hermann Sasse" at St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, 30 October

1995.



9 Hermann Sasse, "Consecration and Real Presence" in Kloha/Feuerhahn,

p.279.



10 For additional material on the Liturgical Movement in the Roman

Church see Ernest B. Koenker, The Liturgical Renaissance in the Roman

Catholic Church (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1966); Bryan

Spinks and John Fenwick, Worship in Transition: The Liturgical

Movement in the Twentieth Century (New York: Continuum Publishing

Company, 1995); and James White, Roman Catholic Worship: Trent to

Today ( Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1995).



11 "The Lutheran Understanding of the Consecration" p. 114



12 "Liturgy and Lutheranism" p.34. Also see J.D. Critchton, Lights in

the Darkness: Fore-runners of the Liturgical Movement (Collegeville,

Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1996), pp.151-160.



13 Ibid., p. 34.



14 Ibid., p.34.



15 Ibid., pp.34-35.



16 Ibid., p.35.



17 "The Lutheran Understanding of the Consecration" p.117. Sasse's

view runs counter to many contemporary advocates of liturgical

theology. See, for example, David Fagerberg, What is Liturgical

Theology: A Study in Methodology (Collegeville, Minnesota: The

Liturgical Press, 1992); Aidan Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology

(Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1984); and Don

Sailers, Worship as Theology: Foretaste of Glory Divine (Nashville:

Abingdon Press, 1994). For an insightful treatment of the Liturgical

Movement's misuse of the lex orandi -lex credendi , see Thomas Winger,

"Lex Orandi Revisited" in Logia IV (Epiphany 1995), pp. 65-66.



18 "Liturgy and Lutheranism" p.36.



19 Ibid., p.37; also Sasse, "Ecclesia Orans" in Logia II (Eastertide

1993), pp.28-33.



20 "The Lutheran Understanding of the Consecration" p.114.



21 "Liturgy and Lutheranism" p.36. 



22 "The Lutheran Understanding of the Consecration" p.127.



23 "Consecration and Real Presence" p.299.



24  Ibid., p.306.



25 Hermann Sasse, "Word and Sacrament: Preaching and the Lord's

Supper" in We Confess the Sacraments translated by Norman Nagel

(St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1985), p.13.



26 Ibid ., p.26. Also see Offried Koch, Gegenwart oder

Vergegenwuertigung (Munich: Claudius Verlag, 1965); Gerald Krispin,

"Odo Casel and the Kultmysterium" The Confessional Research Society

Newsletter (Easter 1991), pp.1-4; and Oliver Olson, "Contemporary

Trends in Liturgy Viewed from the Perspective of Classical Lutheran

Theology" The Lutheran Quarterly XXVI (May 1974), pp.110-157.



27 Peter Brunner attempts this synthesis unsuccessfully. See Peter

Brunner, Worship in the Name of Jesus translated by Martin Bertram

(St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1968. Also see Koch and Olson.



28 "Word and Sacrament: Preaching and the Lord's Supper" p.28. See

J.A. Di Noia, "Christian Universalism" in Either/Or: The Gospel or

Neopaganism , ed. by Carl Braaten and Robert Jenson (Grand Rapids:

Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995), pp.37-48 for a classical Roman

Catholic view of the relationship between Christianity and

non-Christian religions.



29 "Liturgy and Confession: A Brotherly Warning Against the 'High

Church' Danger" unpublished translation by Matthew Harrison,

p.4. Friedrich Heiler (1892-1967) was a Roman Catholic convert to

Lutheranism and was representative of the religionsgeschichte approach

to the development of doctrine.



30 Ibid., p.4.



31 Ibid., p.4.



32 "The Lutheran Understanding of the Consecration" p.115.



33 Wilhelm Staehlin was the Lutheran bishop of Oldenburg and leader of

the Berneuchener Movement. See his The Mystery of the Word translated

by Henry Horn (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1964).



34 "The Lutheran Understanding of the Consecration" p.115.



35 Ibid., p.115.



36 "Liturgy and Confession" p.6. Piepkorn's homily, "Blessed Art Thou

Among Women" is included in the recent volume, The Church: Selected

Writings of Arthur Carl Piepkorn (Delhi, New York: American Lutheran

Publicity Bureau Books, 1993), pp.287, ff.



37 Ibid., p.14. In the same essay, Sasse notes "In many cases the

Liturgical Movement has become a replacement for what had been

doctrine in old Missouri" p. 15. Also see Sasse's evaluation of the

state of confessional theology in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

in the middle part of this century in "Confession (Confessionalism)

and Theology in the Missouri Synod" in Kloha/Feuerhahn, pp.189-220.



38 Hermann Sasse, "The Liturgical Movement: Reformation or

Revolution?" Una Sancta XVII (St. Luke the Evangelist 1960), p.18. See

Charles Evanson, "New Directions" Logia IV (Epiphany 1995), pp. 3-9

and John T. PLess, "Implications of Recent Exegetical Studies for the

Doctrine of the Lord's Supper" Concordia Theological Quarterly 48

(April-July 1984), pp.203-220.



39 Piepkorn offers the following assessment of the leaders of the

Liturgical Movement in German Lutheranism, quite different from Sasse:

"Under the leadership of Friedrich Heiler, ably seconded by Adolf

Glinz, Oscar Mehl, Karl Ramge, Paul Schorlemmer and others, an

articulate and scholarly liturgical movement challenged the prevailing

apathy with its fourfold emphasis on evangelical justification by

faith, the gospel of sola gratia, Pauline freedom from the Law, and

the alleged primitive primacy of the prophetic-pneumatic charisma over

the official-hierarchical element in the Church" in Arthur Carl

Piepkorn, "The Protestant Worship Revival" in The Liturgical Renewal

of the Church ed. by Massey H. Shepherd Jr. (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1960), p.84.



40 "The Liturgical Movement: Reformation or Revolution?" p. 22.



41 Ibid., pp.22-23; also see "Liturgy and Confession" p.16. In the

same article, Sasse warned "Wherever Anglicanism with its High church

ideas has affected Lutheranism, there the heritage of the Reformation

has sooner or later vanished" (p.4). Sasse, like Luther, knew that the

words of institution are "the sum total of the Gospel"(p.296) and that

it was "a deformation of the Sacrament" to make the verba part of a

eucharistic prayer. See "Consecration and Real Presence" (pp.296-301).



42 "The Liturgical Movement: Reformation or Revolution?" p.22.



43 Ibid., p.22.



44  Ibid., p. 21; also see "Liturgy and Lutheranism" pp.40-42.



45 Hermann Sasse, This is My Body: Luther's Contention for the Real

Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar (Adelaide: Lutheran Publishing

House, 1977), pp.332-333.



46 "Word and Sacrament: Preaching and the Lord's Supper" p.19.



47 Ibid., p.29. Against such a "cultification" of the Sacrament, Sasse

asserts that "...the essence of the Lord's Supper, as the church of

the new Testament understood it, lies not in remembrance and not in

hope. The Lord of the Lord's Supper...is the one who is present now

."See "The Lord's Supper in the Life of the Church" Kloha/Feuerhahn,

p.8.



48 Ibid., p.30. In his article, "A Lutheran Contribution to the

Present Discussion of the Lord's Supper" Concordia Theological Monthly

(January 1959), Sasse maintains that the Liturgical Movement and the

Ecumenical Movement are "two great branches of one movement"

(p.18). How closely these branches cleave to one another can be seen

in the World Council of Churches' Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry

volume (Geneva, 1982), sometimes called "the Lima Document." See John

T. Pless, "The Lord's Supper Today: The Lima Document and the Lord's

Supper of the Lutheran Confessions" Confessional Lutheran Research

Society Newsletter (Lent 1987), pp.3-10 and Ernst Volk, "Evangelical

Accents in the Understanding of the Lord's Supper" Lutheran Quarterly

I (Summer 1987),pp.185-204.



49 See Alan Klaas, In Search of the Unchurched (New York: Alban

Institute, 1996) and David Luecke, The Other Story of Lutherans at

Worship: Reclaiming Our Heritage of Diversity (Tempe: Fellowship

Ministries, 1995) for examples of how deep the infection is in

American Lutheranism.



50 "Liturgy and Confession" p.17.