From
Living Theology in the Metropolitan Chicago Synod
Evangelical Lutheran Church In America
Volume 1, Number 2
Lent 1996
Worship and Evangelism
With One Voice
Mark
P. Bangert
(This
article is excerpted and adapted by Let’s
Talk with the permission of the author. The material is from two
presentations made at the June, 1995 Synod Assembly of the ELCA Southwestern
Washington Synod.)
Centering
Worship for the Sake of the Gospel
Clement
of Alexandria, writing a few years before II and III John were completed, said
this about the community of Christians: it is
the union of many, which the divine harmony has
called forth out of a medley of sounds and divisions, and that union becomes
one voice, one symphony, following the leader of the choir and teacher, the
Word. (Protrepticos 9)
Perhaps
Clement was remembering Paul’s words in Romans:
May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant
you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that
together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ. (Romans 15:5-6)
That
both writers pleaded for unity of spirit and behavior indicates that they lived
with plenty of challenges to such unity. Yet, that is small comfort for all of
us who know less than concord and harmony about worship these days. Our
dissonances about Sunday gatherings, our suspicions of one another, our
misrepresentations of one another’s motives result in high decibel shouting
sometimes which has been described in months past as “worship wars.”
Balkanization we don’t need. Yet we are torn apart by our attempts to deal with
the world around us, and are baffled by the culture in which we live. We yearn
for unity and for the certainty that each of us is doing the right thing in our
liturgical assembly. We yearn to live with one voice.
How
do we worship while being faithful to
the Gospel? If we are nothing else, we are Lutherans who know that, try as we
might, there is no way we can tune ourselves into a symphony or sing ourselves
into one harmonious voice. Left to ourselves we can at best clamor and create
dissonance. Let’s face it, such disgusting noise has made us unbelievable to
those even tempted to turn their ears to us. To be Church, to be called to the
community of believers, to sing together as with one harmonious voice, is to
hear and to listen to the still small voice that comes from without (1 Kings
19:4-18).
The
power of that voice is in its seeming weakness. Upon hearing it, Elijah was
moved to wrap his face in a mantle, and only then did he learn how God had
nurtured and preserved 7000 faithful in Israel, who Elijah was sure were all
lost. In the synoptic Gospels we hear that same voice settling on Jesus: “This
is My beloved Son--hear him” (Mt. 3:17, Mk. 1:11, Lk. 3:22). The voice has a
new mouthpiece in Jesus, prompting John to speak of him as the Word from
eternity made flesh. Jesus, knowing himself as the choir leader (to use
Clement’s title for him), says that He is the Great Shepherd, and that his
sheep know his voice and they follow him (Jn. 10:3-27).
With
one voice God has made us a people, with one voice God continues to call us
into assembly as from a tomb of death into the light of day. To be Church is to
be within earshot of the voice of God.
To
say it another way, we are most clearly church when we are gathered around the
Choir Leader, when His presence sings us into one voice. Church growth
advocates such as Timothy Wright (1994:18)
hold that the primary function of worship is thanking and praising God, but
that is not enough. If it were so,
Luther would have never begun his own liturgical revisions, for surely a few
revised rosaries and some translated Latin chants could have provided ample
opportunity for people to join in praise. Rather, he again and again insisted
that the Gospel be heard above all else (“An Order of Mass and Communion”:p.
37), and that the Gospel “be given free course,” (“The German Mass”:p. 69)
adding, incidentally, that the appointed lessons for Sundays and Holy Days be
kept in order that all, including servants, may be cared for by hearing the Gospel
fully.
The
point here, of course, is that to be Church is to be in the presence of the
voice of God in Jesus Christ. Lest we think too narrowly about that, we need to
be reminded that all three of Luther’s proposals for worship orders (“An Order
of Mass and Communion” (1523), “The German Mass” (1526) and a third type of
service for mature Christians which would not necessitate a pre-arranged order)
included weekly Lord’s Supper (Luther’s
Works, vol. 53, 1965:63). This is because Luther understood, as did the
church all along, that Word is Act, that Word becomes enfleshed, and a Word
without bread and wine is a word put asunder.
In
fact, it would be clearer to say that for Luther the Christian community
becomes just that when it worships gathered around bread and wine. All of the
energy he summoned to let the Gospel shine freely for all people was at heart
his self-perceived, God-given vocation to free up the “gift of Christ in the
proclaimed Word and in the thanksgiving-bread and blessing-cup of the church’s
gathering,” as Gordon Lathrop has written (1994:138).
In
his 1520 “Treatise on the New Testament, that is the Holy Mass,” Luther cuts
through to the very core and purpose of Christian worship. In the process he
reveals his understanding of the linkage between Word and Sacrament and of the
interrelationship of church, worship, and Word and Sacrament. He writes:
And that he might not give further occasion for
divisions and sects, he (Christ) appointed in return one law or order for his
entire people and that was the holy mass. Henceforth, therefore, there is to be
no other external order for the service of God except the mass. And when the
mass is used, there is true worship. (p. 80)
Every
once in a while, it seems, it takes blunt words to call the church to what
should always be obvious. By the Holy Spirit God calls and gathers the church
and preserves it in the one true faith. God does this by nourishing it through
the presence of Christ in Word and Sacrament. The purpose of worship is to
engage in that holy music whereby the church hears the voice of God as Gospel,
heard, broken, and blessed, and whereby voices are sung into one harmonious
voice of Christ for the sake of the world. Worship is that life-giving
interchange of enfleshed voices. But the center must be clear: the assembly
gathers around Christ in Word and Sacrament.
Let the Full
Voice be Heard
At
minimum, then, the church centers its worship in Jesus Christ, and it does so
by gathering around Word and Sacrament. Does such a minimum require us to say
more?
·
Surely
one must say that the heart of the Gospel is God’s deliverance from sin and
death through the death and resurrection of Jesus. While all are welcomed at
the gathering, access to and participation in the assembly’s life is given through
the waters of Holy Baptism and through the Word and teaching which accompany
it. Those waters are central to the gathering, and its evangelism has those
waters as goal.
·
Surely
one can say that because Sunday marks the dawn of God’s second creation in the
death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Christians will gather chiefly on that
day.
·
Surely,
as Christ is central, the community
wants to be as close as possible to him and to his teachings. It will want to
give place to a full and ample reading of the Scriptures in the first and
second testaments. The unfolding of the year, whether in one pericopal system
or another, provides the experience of embracing the center fully. Theme
liturgies and issue-generated worship always runs the danger of displacing the
center and advancing new gospels.
·
Surely
that Gospel can become clear and present power only if it is contemporized. The
homily places the Gospel alongside the community’s life on a given day and
interprets its eating and drinking against its own needs and the conditions of
the world.
·
Surely,
as choir leader is gift to the world, we come to realize that all that we are
and have is gift. The whole creation is God’s and its purpose is hidden yet revealed
in Christ. Gifts in the gathering are more than pledges for favorite causes,
therefore, but rather signs of who we are in assembly and without.
·
Surely
just as the choir leader Jesus
invites to the gathering voices of all people and the whole creation, the
assembly will be moved to pray for the poor, orphaned, widowed, sick, dying,
and for all sorts and conditions of humanity. Such prayers serve as an agenda
which itself arises from the gathering’s new view of all people, a view
enlightened again and again by being close to the center.
·
Surely,
as voices are tuned to that of the Leader, the assembly seeks to give thanks
harmoniously and fully. The faithful respond to their leader in a Great
Thanksgiving over bread and cup, offering praise for creation, seizing upon the
promises of the meal, imploring the Spirit for unity with Christ and with one
another, thereupon to be surprised--and who of faith would have expected any
other--that the Greatest Thanksgiving is finally to receive from the One who first
spoke.
·
Surely
worship is incomplete without sending for the sake of the Gospel. Any attempt
to turn worship into a chummy affair by which the friendly erect tents to enjoy
themselves and their peculiar visions controverts the Gospel. Sending protects
us from preoccupations with our own self-satisfactions.
·
Over
the entry through washing, the Sunday gathering, the full regular reading of
the Scriptures, the contemporization of the Gospel in homily, the offering of
ourselves and our worlds, the prayer for the world, the blessed cup and bread
with thanksgiving, and the sending--over all hovers a sense of awe, because God
has come to dwell with humans. And, if here and now with humans, then the
assembly also carries within it--as only it can do--the suffering of this
world.
Lutheran
parishes are called to these core ingredients for Sunday worship, not because
they represent something north European, but because this is the way God dwells
with humans. Patterns of Christian worship from every time and every place are
essentially local variations of this core. No matter where you look--be it the
second century commentary of Justin Martyr, north African liturgies, the rites
of East or West Syria, the German Mass of Luther--all attend to this canon,
this rule, as Don Saliers has called it (1994:154-170), because that is what is
required of Christian worship.
Christian
worship happens through form. Because God comes to dwell with humans in the
form of a human being, or in words, or in water, or in bread and wine, the
canon or ingredients will occur in and through form. We need to exercise care,
therefore, when we speak of “informal” worship as if to suggest that it has no
form. The word, of course, has other connotations which we will take up later.
Let it be said, however, that the voice of God and the voices of the holy choir
will be incarnated, enfleshed through form, and that each and every form
potentially assists or detracts from that which it proposes to convey. It is
finally impossible to be non-liturgical.
The
history of church music makes it clear that nearly any style of music can be
shaped to serve the Gospel. World church musics, such as the Christian gamelan
orchestras of Bali, or the Bhajan singing of India, imply wider perspectives on
useable repertoires of church music. For the time being, it is sufficient to
say that church music serves best when it both solicits awe over God’s creative
voice in our midst, and tenderly embraces the immensity of human suffering.
The
faithful delivery of the canon of ingredients with Christ at the center is what
the Lutheran Book of Worship proposes
to do. That its use across the land so often beclouds this intention is
generally apparent. But, as Martin Marty has said, “be sure to locate the
scandal of ineffective worship (1994:5).” Many of the foundational principles
of that book have not been put into practice. While I would like to be the
first in line to utter a litany of the book’s weaknesses, I also am here to say
that its intended purpose is faithfulness to the center, Jesus Christ. That
same kind of faithfulness sparks With One
Voice, a book which at the same time addresses many of the difficulties
belonging to the LBW.
Worship
centered in Jesus Christ and in the canon of ingredients is in fact consumer-oriented.
The blessedness of the baptismal bath, finally, is that God has led us through
the sea of reeds to the promised land where there is milk and honey. In the
Egypt of our spiritual darkness we could not know or imagine the sweetness of
this food. To consume anything else leaves us hungry. Christological
centeredness is the real gift to the spiritually hungry of today. To offer a
menu based on self-perceived hungers is to lack faith in the promises connected
to God’s own best gifts.
Shaping
Worship for the Sake of the World
Like
vocalists on tour, we live in and are sent out into a world which has its own
sets of patterned living, its own assumptions, its own motivations, its own
sufferings. Worship is beneficially shaped for this world when we are clear
about the center, faithful to the canon of ingredients, and astute about
culture. Shaping is a local thing, partly, but it is regional and national as
well. Learning how to distinguish the center from those elements which can and
should change from place to place, is, as Luther said, “the greatest and most
useful art (“Treatise on the New Testament”:81).”
But
there is more at stake here than simply rearranging components of culture
artfully to serve the center. The church dare never be taken captive by culture
even as it yearns to embrace it. There is always a counter-cultural stance we
must take, simply because there is always only one center. Gordon Lathrop shows
the way here. The church, he writes:
welcomes the gifts of the many cultures of the world:
their languages, their music, their patterns of festivity and solemnity, their
manners of gathering, their structures of meaning. But [it] also urges that
these cultural patterns must not become their own new law or usurp the place of
the center; they must rather come into the “city” to gather around the “Lamb”
(Rev. 21:22-27); they must be broken to the purpose of the Gospel of Christ.
Cultural patterns of all sorts . . . are welcome here. But they are not welcome
to take the place of the Lamb. They are not welcome to obscure the gift of
Christ in the Scriptures read and preached, in the water used in his name, and
in the thanksgiving meal. (1994:138ff)
When
trying to shape worship for the sake of the world we must also keep in mind that
there is more than a subtle complication in trying to be contemporary. In fact,
accurate descriptions of contemporary culture generally tend to be dialectical;
that is, one characterization needs to be balanced by another. Or, what appears
to be an obvious trait may after all conceal a deeper conviction yet unspoken.
What
now can be said about shaping worship for the sake of the world? How do we look
at specific characteristics of our contemporary scene?
In
his book, A Community of Joy, Timothy
Wright claims that for worship to be contemporary it should use some form of
rock music, be informal, and avoid ceremony (1994:68ff). These
assertions--seemingly verifiable--are worth a second look.
It
may be true that Baby Boomers (born 1946-64) do music via rock. But which rock?
In Chicago we have stations which specialize in 60’s Rock, 70’s Rock, and 80’s
Rock, not to mention Nu-Age light jazz, and “Golden Oldies,” and a host of
other marketable categories. Further, what may be true of the “Boomers” may not
be true of the “Busters,” for whom ecumenical tastes in music prevail. To be
contemporary may mean a more sophisticated look at common musical vocabularies.
And
while informality may be the prevailing pattern of behavior, some are
expressing dissatisfaction with its practice. And in group settings informality
is always in tension with hospitality.
This
brings us to ceremony which originates in part for the purpose of enabling
hospitality. Greeters dress up, put on deodorant, stand up, look for the stranger,
and are prepared with smiles and warm words, all for the sake of the other.
Ceremony adopts formal conventions in order to honor the other. But ceremony
also ventilates a certain need we all have for ritual moments. That need and
its peculiar fulfillments may be stronger in our culture than we are first led
to believe, e.g. the popularity of the sweat-lodge, fascinations with Satanism
or with Eastern religions, or the fuss families invest in that interesting
event called the prom.
We
learn, that Americans are obsessed with surface and that impression and image
prevail. One should not be permitted to ask after anything more. But there are
contrary voices to this theme of prettified emptiness. Consider the new
spiritualities, the yearning for authentic personhood which accompanies womens’
studies, or the search for authentic personhood in general. Preoccupations with
surface show up in worship when, on the one hand it focuses on ceremonial
actions deliberately medieval and pretty, and when, on the other, it relies on
leaders trying to be late night talk-show hosts. Yet packaging is important to
our culture, and we ought to make sure that all surfaces are permeable and
permit one to discover the center, and the deep realities of awe and human
suffering.
Sometimes
our worship is shallow by default. Declaring ourselves sympathetic with
contemporary culture and its longing for the deep experiences of personhood
will appear as surface gesture unless accompanied by forms which, for instance,
lift up women rather than oppressing them linguistically or ritually. However
the center and core take shape, Christians need to test for content and depth
beneath the formal surface. Contemporary culture is also said to be shaped by
post-modernism. In a nutshell post-modernism holds that the individual is all
important, that the subject creates the world and reality, and that we all are
people who no longer believe but have beliefs. There is no truth or reality
beyond what we ourselves concoct. But there is a related but contrary view.
Because no truth can claim external verification any longer, fundamentalism
looks very attractive to those whose tolerance is fully taxed. Fundamentalists
feel justified in imposing personally-held truth by fiat or threat.
In
this atmosphere we dare not urge our product too forcefully as if to contradict
the weakness the cross. But the time is
fit for a firm witness to the one who said “I am the Truth.” Note that he did
not say, “I have a Truth,” but rather, “I am the Truth.” and they knew and we
know that He could say that because he lived
faithfully and truthfully. We are called to table fellowship with the tax
collectors and Samaritans of our own day. We are called to not throwing stones.
To be truth is to live out the vision
of the wedding banquet, eating and drinking with people of every nation and
race.
The
church-growth model of Sunday worship has challenged all of us to think ever
more sharply about what it is we do when we assemble for worship. It has
invited us to be more hospitable, to think seriously about our culture, and to
find ways of reaching generations which have temporarily given up on what they
have experienced as Christianity. We would all be less well off were we to
avoid these invitations.
At
the same time, the vision of the Christian assembly gathered to toast the
resurrection around Word and Sacrament with Christ as the center is far more
compelling than any alternative. Creatively bringing that vision to life may in
fact bring to life a band of people whose behavior in the streets will attract
seekers of authentic faith. If that has happened too little, then let us listen
yet again for the melody from the leader of the choir, and let us work even
harder to sing as with one voice.
Mark P. Bangert
Christ Seminary
Seminex Professor of Ministry/Worship/Church Music
Lutheran
School of Theology at Chicago
Sources
LATHROP,
GORDON
1994 “A
Contemporary Lutheran Approach to Worship and Culture: Sorting Out the Critical
Principles,” Worship and Culture in Dialog, Geneva,
Switzerland: Lutheran World Federation.
LUTHER,
MARTIN
1960 “Treatise
on the New Testament, that is the Holy Mass,” is in Luther’s Works American Edition,
vol. 35, Philadelphia: Fortress.
1965 “An
Order of Mass and Communion,” and “The German Mass,” are in Luther’s Works American Edition, vol. 53, Philadelphia: Fortress.
SALIERS,
DON E.
1994 Worship as Theology, Nashville:
Abingdon.
WRIGHT,
TIMOTHY
1994 A Community of Joy, Nashville: Abingdon
Press.