Lutheran worship calls people to faith again and again through the proclamation of the Gospel through Word and Table. In this service, God acts and the people respond. In form, Lutheran worship is both evangelical and Catholic.
The pattern of Lutheran worship becomes clear—even exciting—once one perceives that its meaning is dependent on a series of paradoxes. Lutherans desire to be evangelical in their worship, to see to it that everything serves to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ. They also desire to be catholic, to be part of the great tradition of liturgical acts which unite most Christians through the ages and throughout the world. And they believe that being truly catholic is the surest way to be evangelical and that being evangelical is at the center of being catholic.
Or, to say it in another way, Lutherans fiercely resist making something required in worship which ought to be free, as if God would only be happy if we were to do a certain ceremony in a certain way. The gospel of Christ sets us free from trying to please God with our worship patterns. But Lutherans also fiercely resist making “freedom” required, as if the only truly Christian worship were made up on the spot. Such “freedom” in worship is frequently full of hidden tyrannies—the tyranny of the moment, of current taste, of the leader, or of hidden and unexplored patterns. It is not God who needs our liturgies; we need good rituals, in order to be called to faith again and again. We are also free to be in communion with the Christian past, to use all the good gifts which come down to us through the history of Christian worship.
Indeed, some of those gifts which come down to us are so important that we simply cannot do without them. The Scripture which is read in the church is that collection of writings that Christians came to regard as authoritative and as appointed for public reading. We cannot do without it. And the core events of Lutheran worship are none other than those things which the churches have anciently done and passed on, believing them to be gifts from God: the washing which Christians do in Jesus’ name, the preaching of Christ as the meaning of the Scriptures, the announcement of the forgiveness of sins, and the meal which the church has always held as full of Christ’s presence and promise. Lutherans believe these very concrete, earthly gifts—water, a book, people speaking God’s promise, bread and wine—are the “means of grace,” the way God gives us the Holy Spirit, (which is God’s own self), and so leads us to faith. We cannot live, we certainly cannot be Christians, without them. So there is no “Lutheran worship” in which these “means of grace” are not central.
But then we are back to another paradox. We do these things. We receive and enact these traditions. We evangelically criticize and rearrange these traditions. We do these things not to please God but because we need them. But, finally, in and through these things, it is God who acts. Lutherans believe that the principal service done in “the worship service” on Sunday morning is not our service to God but, astoundingly, God’s service to us. God speaks in the words we speak and sing to each other, especially as those words are faithful to Christ, who is the meaning of the Scripture. And God acts in the washing and the meal we hold, especially as those concrete acts are faithful to the gospel. These things from Christian tradition are central to Lutheran worship because they have to do with Jesus Christ because they are under the promise of Christ or are “instituted” by Christ. Indeed, for Lutherans, the trust that God acts through our actions and is encountered in “earthly stuff” is directly related to the trust in God’s full presence to the world in the human existence of the man Jesus. The paradoxes of Christian worship correspond to the paradox of the identity of Christ.
The “official” way in which Lutherans express this free tradition or bound freedom, this evangelical catholicism, is found in their confessional definition of the church:
It is also taught among us that one holy Christian church will be and remain forever. This is the assembly of all believers among whom the gospel is preached in its purity and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel. For it is sufficient for the true unity of the Christian church that the gospel is preached in conformity with a pure understanding of it and that the sacraments be administered in accordance with the divine word. It is not necessary for the true unity of the Christian church that ceremonies of the human institution should be observed uniformly in all places. (Augsburg Confession, Article VII)
At their best, then, Lutherans love old worship traditions but are always criticizing them, asking how they can better serve the gospel of Christ. Along with the central traditions of the “means of grace,” they also receive less important but deeply useful traditions. They observe Sunday as the day of meeting, the day for the Lord’s Supper. They keep Easter and Christmas and the old cycles of observances that came to surround these feasts. They mark some saints’ days. They use a traditional lectionary. They use the old western texts for the Mass and they chant parts of these liturgical texts. They use traditional vestments for the leaders of the liturgy and for those being baptized. Indeed, this love of tradition can sometimes extend to things that are less useful: Lutherans are frequently conservative, even in the nonessentials, and suspicious of change.
Yet, a Lutheran liturgy may occur with none of these secondary traditions. Lutherans believe that the traditions themselves are simply ways that the gospel was unfolded in a variety of historical circumstances. Such “inculturation” needs to continue. In communities of non-European cultural traditions, for example, patterns of music, leadership, and vesture for worship may be very different. What will make these liturgies “Lutheran” will be the centrality of the “means of grace” in the service and the accent on God’s mercy through Christ in the preaching.
Hymn singing is also central. One of the major ways in which the Lutheran reformation welcomed change into medieval liturgical practice was the vigorous encouragement of vernacular singing by all the people in the liturgy. This took place in the sixteenth century, well before hymns—as distinct from psalms—were welcomed in most other Protestant circles. It is still a key Lutheran characteristic, showing us yet another paradox: Lutheran liturgy gives a serious and important role to the pastor as the leader of the liturgy. But Lutheran liturgy is also seriously intent on the participation of all the people. Even where the old liturgical texts are not communally chanted or where a variety of lay leadership roles have not been encouraged, participation will be strongly evident in the singing of hymns. Hymns are not just a nice thing to do before one gets on to the sermon. They belong to the core of any Lutheran liturgy.
But then we are at the final paradox. Almost all of these things—the centrality of Scripture, baptism and the Lord’s Supper; an evangelical recovery of old tradition; an accent on both strong leadership and strong participation; the use of hymnody—are found widely in the Christian world today. They belong to the characteristics of the ecumenical liturgical movement. Thus, while they are tied to the identifying marks of Lutheran worship, they are by no means a Lutheran possession. Indeed, in another sense, there is no unique Lutheran worship. The worship of Lutherans is rather a reception by them of the pattern of worship among catholic Christians, together with its ongoing questions and renewals. Lutherans see that pattern, applied non-legalistically, as the best vehicle for the gospel to which they are devoted. Finally, the best Lutheran worship is not narrowly Lutheran at all, but catholic and evangelical, universally recognized by Christians and always centered in the God who is known in Jesus Christ.