QUESTION OF LUTHERAN WORSHIP ANSWERED. I first of all would like to thank Quala Mess Baraki for his questions and keen interest in knowing what the Lutheran approach to Christian Worship is. Secondly, I would like to thank final year student Reuben and vicar Giwisa for illustrating what Lutheran Worship is and how it can made to suit both the old and the new generations. I would like to expand a little into the theology and practice of Lutheran Worship. Firstly, the theology of Lutheran Worship, as in all Lutheran approaches to theological thought, is centred in the Doctrine of Justification. This Lutheran teaching is clearly stated in the Augsburg Confession article 4 concerning justification; which reads as follows (German translation by Kolb and Wengert, 2000), “Furthermore, it is taught that we cannot obtain forgiveness of sin and righteousness before God through our merit, work, or satisfactions, but that we receive forgiveness of sin and become righteous before God out of grace for Christ’s sake through faith when we believe that Christ has suffered for us and that for his sake our sin is forgiven and righteousness and eternal life are given to us. For God will regard and reckon this faith as righteousness in his sight, as St. Paul says in Roman 3:21-26 and 4:5.” Now worship is every human being’s daily living in the presence of God. So worship is a 24/7, every minute activity by a Christian. According to Luther’s theology, everything someone does is his or her worship to God. We are all called through the Spirit with different gifts to serve his church. Some are called to be pastors, evangelists, missionaries and laypersons of the church. Most of us are called to be ordinary people serving in the government, businesses or at home like being a house wife or subsistence farmer. For Luther, a holy person is someone who does what God calls him or her to do to the utmost best of his abilities. That person is a holy being. That is the true worship. The simplified order of the Lutheran Corporate Service is as follows: 1. To call on the name of God and feel his presence among his people. 2. To confess sins to God and listen to his words of forgiveness. 3. To hear his words of revitalization from slavery to sin and liberation from all bondages. 4. To offer gifts and talents and prayer of thanksgiving to God and his Church. 5. To be blessed by God to go out into the world to do God’s Will until he returns. Luther’s reformation in worship was centred around the Word of God, the Sacrament of Baptism and the Sacrament of the Holy Communion. Luther translated the whole liturgical Latin Mass into German, composed German hymns for worship and used the forbidden organ instrument to glorify God. Luther saw the church not as a hierarchy of Divine Power but a gathering of the faithful around the Word and Sacraments. So Lutheran Worship is centred around the means of God’s grace: Word and Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion to forgive Sins, and strengthen and sustain faith of believers for all good works pertaining to the building of God’s kingdom on earth in Christ. Lutheran Worship is also a celebration of life, community and culture. As such, the Lutheran Sunday worship is really a Service of the Word and Sacraments. Think of it as a service station where vehicles go to refuel. The Sunday Corporate Service starts with the invocation of the Triune God, who creates, justifies and makes holy all those who call upon his name. After the invocation, is the Confession and Absolution where sinners, in realizing their encounter with God in the invocation realize their sinfulness and confess their sins and God through the mouths of his servants declare the forgiveness of sins. The forgiven respond with the glorification of God and prayer of the day before the Word of God is heard, the confession of our shared faith (example: Apostles’ Creed) is made and the Preaching is heard. The preaching is the peak of the worship. The fifth article of the Augsburg Confession says, “To obtain such faith (which justifies us through Christ), God instituted the office of preaching, giving the gospel and the sacraments. Through these, as through means, he gives the Holy Spirit who produces faith, where and when he wills, in those who hear the gospel. It teaches that we have a gracious God, not through merit but through Christ’s merit, when we so believe. Condemned are the Anabaptists and others who teach that we obtain the Holy Spirit without the external word of the gospel through our own preparations, thoughts and works.” After the preaching, offerings are given for the work of the church, prayers of blessings of the church (like marriages, etc) are offered to God, sacraments (of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion) are received from God for the assurance and sustenance of faith, and God gives his blessing upon his people as they go their separate ways, enriched and empowered to worship him from then until the next Sunday, when they will return to God’s altar to be nourished again and then to go back into the world to be salt and lights in the world. That is the theological explanation of the ‘format of worship’ we call liturgy. For interest’s sake, the liturgical order of worship has been handed down to us from the early Christians during the time of the Apostles of Jesus Christ, who were also entrusted with this order of worship from the Jewish Judaist liturgy from the Old Testament times. So we do not have a man-made liturgy in a sense that it was developed by Lutheran reformers or the Catholic Church, but we could say that Jesus Christ used a similar liturgical order of worship when he was alive. Now concerning the different worship styles that we see in our Lutheran churches today, the Augsburg Confession also states in the 7th article of the Augsburg Confession concerning the Church, “It is also taught that at all times there must be and remain one holy, Christian church. It is the assembly of all believers among whom the gospel is purely preached and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel. For this is enough for the true unity of the Christian church that there the gospel is preached harmoniously according to a pure understanding and the sacraments are administered in conformity with the divine Word. It is not necessary for the true unity of the Christian church that uniform ceremonies, instituted by human beings, be observed everywhere. As Paul says in Ephesians 4:4-5, ‘There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism.’ “ As such, although the 5 basic steps of the traditional Christian Corporate Service need to be upheld at all costs, all liturgical formats do not necessarily have to be the same. For example, the old Lotu Buk is a transliteration of the old American Hymnal. The Book of Worship is the transliteration of the new American Lutheran Hymnal. The Amamas Wantaim Na Lotu Long God is a contemporary worship resource of ELCPNG that aims to capture the worship culture of both the old and the new generation in corporate services and also in family devotions and fellowship groups. Even then, the Lutheran Confessional essentials, especially the 3 symbolical creeds of the Ecumenical Church (the church of the inhabited earth or worldwide church): Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed, are always present to show that the Lutheran Tradition originated from the teachings handed down from the Apostolic Succession (from the Disciples of Christ). While Christian Worship is the daily living of the Christian in the presence of his/her God, Christian Theology is the on-going contemplation of this life-long journey of Christian Worship in a Christian’s life. As such, Worship and Theology has to be bound into one in our Corporate Service of the Word and Sacraments for our service to be theological, faith strengthening, and reassuring, both for the individual Christian and also for the faith community.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 15:37:29 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015