Here is an excerpt from an LCMS pastor’s recent sermon to his congregation that is available on YouTube:

There's a question about worship. There's all kinds of worship wars. It used to be, I don't know, man, there's sometimes, how many of you? I don't know, sometimes the church is fighting wars that nobody else has a clue about. And they're oblivious, and don't matter to the rest of the world. Things like, "Do you have a pulpit?"

You probably don't know what a pulpit is. Come on, now, we have no pulpit. We got a table and a stool that we sometimes use.

"Do you have an organ?"

Come on, I grew up with an organ. It was the weirdest thing. Who listens to organ music? Well I do. I do when I go to the hockey game: “Dun dun dun dun. Dun dun dun dun. Dun dun,” come on. That’s the only time, that’s the only time I’m hearing organ, right?

It was so weird growing up. My dad wore this thing called an alb. It looks like a white dress. I brought my boys who play football with me, I was in high school, I said, “Hey, come on, man, come to church with me, I just want you to learn about Jesus. He’s changing my life, I want Him to change your life, cuz you’re a wreck (and I was a wreck), so come on!” And they would show up one time, and they would get there, and my dad, “Why is your dad wearing a dress? What’s up with that, dude?” “It’s an alb, and, and, and, yeah.”

“Why is there this little rail back where where there’s an altar?” and like everybody’s, “There’s candles up there, and you can’t go back there, and it’s like this holy place. What’s that about?” I’m like, “Well, we can go to the Old Testament, and…” There was just all these kind of sacred cows, if you will. And sometimes sacred cows are separators from worshiping the one true God.

The congregation and the pastor can be heard laughing during this portion of the sermon.

It is an irony that this pastor would refer to some of the very elements of worship defended in our Lutheran confessions and normalized by centuries of salutary use as “sacred cows.” The word “sacred” has as its Latin root “sacrarare” meaning to make holy. Holiness is set-apartness, or as the world sees it, “weird.” Worship of a truly sacred God should seem “weird” to the world. As far as a “sacred cow” goes, this is a false doctrine of the Hindu religion. It is illustrative of this pastor’s and congregation’s beliefs about what our confessions teach, and what the vast majority of their fellow LCMS pastors and congregations practice (not to mention the vast majority of Christendom for all ages) - that emerged from our confession that worship is focused on the miraculous presence of our Lord - should be considered “separators from worshiping the one true God.” Maybe this is why nothing on the church’s website says anything about being Lutheran or LCMS. And for that, we should perhaps give thanks to God.

As a postscript, Fr. Eckardt has addressed several of these “Why?” questions in his Why? A Layman’s Guide to the Liturgy. He answers such questions as:

• Why is Christian worship liturgical?

• Why is church music so different from all other kinds of music?

• Why is the altar in the middle?

• Why do we come to the altar to commune?