Gottesblog

This is the catholic faith: that we worship one God in three person and three person in one God. Everything comes back to our worship, our liturgy, our life together in Word and Sacrament, the one sent by the Lord bringing his gifts to the Lord's people and their praise sent back up to the throne of grace. That's the catholic faith.

In the comments to the previous post we reached a point where recourse to Luther's letter in the Wolferinus episode was necessary. Rather than post it down there in the comments, I thought it better to bring it up to its own post - which I had intended to do anyway, just a little sooner than I anticipated now.

OK, so we have our taxonomy below with two additions and one clarification.

In the Receptionism vs. Consecrationism debate we have an Agnostic option: We just don't know whether or not our Lord's Body and Blood are present after the consecration while the host remains on the paten before a communicant receives the host.

Gottesdienst is a journal of the Evangelical Lutheran Liturgy. We concern ourselves with the study of Christian worship in the Lutheran tradition. Therefore, we necessarily discuss theology and history - because what we say and do in worship should be determined by our theology, and most certainly is influenced by our history.

The Church has her own culture and language – even call it a style if you wish. It is a culture and language informed by the Word of God and blessed and handed down to us by generations of the faithful. That culture and language will find slightly different expression across time and place – but it will always be recognizable as the Church's own. Ceremonies and orders will differ across time and place – but they will always comport with the Church's culture and language. If it were possible, you could pick up King David and drop into St. Chrysostom's sanctuary in the fifth century AD and he would know what was going on. Likewise, you could take John the Golden-Mouthed and plop him into a Lutheran sanctuary during Divine Service and he would know what was going on.

Lutheran parishes and parishioners start down the American Evangelical worship road for a variety of reasons - I think most would agree that a desire to be relevant in the current culture is most widely stated as the starting point. The idea is that this culture in this time, unlike any before it, must have the whole of Christian worship turned toward its own expectations, musical styles, cultural symbols, etc. The liturgy, of course, is always being tweaked, grows, changes, etc. In the past, this had been a slow (and not always steady) process. But this generation of (American Boomer) Christians needed something more. The Church's liturgy was putting people off. They couldn't connect. The liturgy had become a stumbling block - a barrier to people hearing the Word.

In our last episode, we explored the distressing side of vacationing in the Missouri Synod. Now for the other side of the coin.

What a joy to walk into a sanctuary in another town and immediately feel at home. While no two places are alike - here are the signs of faith, there are the signposts of a place set aside for the worship of God.