Roots of Change in Lutheran Worship

Gracia Grindal

How has it happened, people ask, that our leadership, whether ecumenical or liturgical, has tried to lead Lutherans away from their confessions without exactly saying so?  Is it really true that the ecumenical and liturgical leadership in the Lutheran churches wants to move beyond our Lutheran beliefs and practices?  Well, yes, it is true.  How did this happen?

 BYPASSING THE REFORMATION

Fighting for the truth of the Reformation has had to be constant, from Luther’s time.  Thus the slogan The Church Always Being Reforming (semper reformanda).  However, there are those who have felt that the Reformation, while necessary at the time because of the corruption of the church, was a break badly set.  The breaking up of Christendom caused by Luther’s work grieved them.  This notion became especially powerful in the 19^th century after the French Revolution and, for Lutherans, particularly, in the work of a German pastor named Wilhelm Löhe.  In an attempt to restore the Lutheran church and its liturgy to its former glory, (implying medieval) he argued for a sacramental notion of the ministry in which, for example, the word of forgiveness did not absolve if it was not spoken by an ordained pastor.  His liturgy, the Agende of 1844, elevated the communion service to a place above preaching, directly contradicting Luther’s notion that preaching was most important.  For Löhe, the service had two mountain peaks, the sermon and communion.  “The former of these heights, and the lower, is the Sermon; and the other, and the higher, is the Sacrament of the Altar, without the celebration of which no public worship is complete,” (see Endnote #1).

 Löhe’s LITURGICAL LEGACY

His work had lasting effect on American Lutherans and their worship.  As 19^th century American Lutherans began to produce hymnals and worship resources in English, they followed the work of Löhe and his liturgy.  In 1860, the Ministerium of Pennsylvania prepared a version of a new liturgy very like Löhe’s.  They published it in the 1868 version of a hymnal called Church Book.  In 1888, the widely used Common Service, which differed not at all from Löhe’s service, appeared in the Common Service Book and Hymnal (CSBH).  By 1918, and the publication of a revised version of the CSBH, the Common Service appeared in most Lutheran church hymnals in America except for The Lutheran Hymnary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELC), and the Concordia of the Lutheran Free Church and ELC.  The editors of the Service Book and Hymnal (SBH) regarded both Löhe and the liturgy of the Church Book highly.  According to them, this liturgy “restored forms and usages which had been obscured by Pietism and Rationalism as well as by the exigencies of frontier life in America,” (“The Preface to the Liturgy,” SBH [1958], p. vii).

THE EUCHARISTIC PRAYER                                                                            Top

Under the direction of Luther Reed, the editor of the SBH, who had also been on the editorial committee of the 1918 hymnal of the United Lutheran Church in America (ULCA), the liturgy of the SBH included a version of the Eucharistic prayer called the Prayer of Thanksgiving.  Defending its inclusion they wrote, “A vision clearer than was sometimes possible in the turmoil of the Reformation controversy has revealed the enduring value of some elements which were lost temporarily in the sixteenth century reconstruction of the liturgy, as, for instance, the proper use of the Prayer of Thanksgiving and the essential meaning of the term ‘catholic’ in the creeds.”  (SBH, “Preface to the Liturgy,” page vii).  In other words, they were working to return to the canon of the mass, or the Eucharistic Prayer, of the medieval church, something Luther had carefully removed from his liturgies.  He wanted to get rid of the notion that the mass was our sacrifice performed in order to gain spiritual merit for those needing indulgences.  The implication by the editors of the SBH that the Reformers were too busy and conflicted to intelligently revise the mass is not true.  As Oliver Olson noted in his paper at the November 2003 WordAlone conference at Zion Lutheran Church in Anoka, “The introduction of the Eucharistic prayer [into Lutheran services] was thwarted by Philip Melancthon,” (see Endnote #2).  One hears in the struggle of the SBH editors to return to the Eucharistic Prayer a weariness or shame for being provincial  (As immigrants who wanted to assimilate into mainstream American life, Lutherans have always feared being sectarian and provincial because it kept them out of the Yankee establishment).

 HYMNS TO GOD or MAN?

Likewise, the editors of the hymnal made a fateful decision concerning hymns.  Influenced by the Anglo-Catholic revival of hymnody in England, and its new emphasis on liturgical hymns from the early church, the editorial committee of the SBH decided that it would prefer hymns that were “devotional rather than didactic or homiletical, and their direction Godward, not manward,” (SBH,  “Introduction to the Common Hymnal, p. 286.)  In this pious language, they managed to gut the traditional Lutheran understanding that a hymn was to teach.  As the Augsburg Confession, “Concerning the Mass” (XXIV paragraphs 3-4) says, “Almost all the customary ceremonies are also retained, except that German hymns, added for the instruction [italics mine] of the people, are interspersed here and there among the Latin ones.  For ceremonies are especially needed in order to teach those who are ignorant.” 

 HYMNS TEACH & PREACH                                                                            Top

In other words, the Reformers believed that hymns were catechetical, and written explicitly to teach and preach the faith.  Those who sang the hymns were preaching the gospel to each other as members of the priesthood of believers comforting and consoling the fellowship of believers.  As they proclaimed the Gospel to one another, they learned how to preach the Law and the Gospel, something one can see very clearly in Luther’s most famous hymn, “A Mighty Fortress.”  Notice how the first stanza states the truth of the Gospel, that God is like a fortress, and then how necessary that fortress is because the evil one is out to get us.  Despite this, we sing to each other, no matter how Satan may threaten us, because, we proclaim, “one little word”—Jesus Christ—“subdues him,” (v. 3).  Thus, the hymn concludes, we will be consoled, no matter what our situation in life, because “The Kingdom’s ours forever.”  While the editors of the venerable SBH included hymns by Martin Luther, they left out the more homiletical hymns of the tradition:  “Salvation Unto Us Has Come,” (Lutheran Book of Worship – LBW 298) “Dear Christians, One and All Rejoice” (LBW 299), “God Who Made the Earth and Heaven,” (LBW 266), many of Thomas Kingo’s such as “How Fair the Church of Christ Doth Stand,” and many others.

 Preferring hymns that are prayers to God over hymns in which we proclaim the faith one to another is like the move toward the Eucharistic prayer.  The focus changes from proclamation to prayer.  Or to our work, rather than God’s work.  While prayers of thanksgiving are the joyful duty of Christians, and some of our greatest hymns are prayers, the emphasis and focus of our worship subtly changed to what we do in the service, not what we receive (This may account for our weariness at the end of the typical service these days, as we are burdened with more and more to do, rather than gladdened by the good news of the Gospel).

 WHAT’S AT STAKE NOW?

While the SBH is a dear part of many of our own lives of faith, it did continue Löhe’s liturgical movement.  Those who compiled the LBW eagerly espoused Löhe’s liturgy.  Our current liturgical leaders, as they construct the next hymnal, are continuing the liturgical program of Löhe and his followers, only this time with added impetus from Vatican II’s liturgical revival and the ecumenical movement of the 1960s.  In the Renewing Worship materials we see the continuing movement beyond Lutheran beliefs and practices toward more “ecumenical” worship.  We need to be aware of it so we can make good choices as we plan worship in our own congregations.

  

ENDNOTES:

1.  Wilhelm Lohe, Liturgy for Christian Congregations of the Lutheran Faith, 3rd ed., ed. J. Deinzer, intro. Edward T. Horn, trans. F. C. Longaker (Newport, KY): 1902, xi.

 

2.  Oliver Olson, “What WordAlone Must Do to Preserve Lutheran Worship,” p. 13.    www.wordalone.org/conferences/theo2003/Olson_transcript.htm