Why we bother having church on Sunday mornings

I just got done responding to an email from a guy I know who has come to understand the Faith from a Lutheran perspective, but had a bad experience yesterday when he took his Reformed wife to her first Lutheran service.

Too "Catholic," she said. Too formal. Too morbid (?). Too "scripted" (as if there was ever a church service in even a "non-liturgical" church that wasn't!).

It's a common reaction in a culture with so little a real idea of what the point is of going to church, and in which the talk show format and the deification of warm fuzzies reign supreme.They're poor substitutes for Gottesdienst: God's service to us in Word and Sacrament, forgiving our sins and strengthening our faith. Next to that, our feelings and praises don't amount to a hill of beans.

Here's what I wrote:

Your wife is an American and a Reformed Evangelical, and therefore both theologically and culturally out of touch with historic Christianity when it comes to worship. Some educating needs to happen here about some pretty basic things. It probably might have been well to have had this discussion before she attended a Lutheran service, because it was bound to be something new to her. But it's well at least to be able to explain some things now that she probably didn't understand on Easter morning.

Church attendance is down in all denominations. Ours is becoming an increasingly secular society, and the younger generation even more so than the population at large. It is no surprise to see mostly older people in church. The exceptions tend to be the churches which somehow misunderstand the Great Commission as a command to increase attendance by doing whatever is necessary to fill the pews. Such churches obviously go about things differently than churches which understand the Great Commission as a command to make disciples, not by putting on a good show, but by baptizing and teaching.

It tends to be sort of like the story of the lady who decided to ride the tiger. She had no problem getting on, and rather enjoyed the ride. The problem was getting off again.

Once you start out to give people, not what they need, but what they want- once you start out to make church about the worshipper and the worshipper's emotions and the worshipper's entertainment, instead of about God- it's difficult to stop. When you stop entertaining people and start confronting them about their sins and proclaiming to them the blessed but very deflating news that they are unworthy creatures admitted to heaven not because of what they have to offer to God, but precisely despite it, they stop coming. It kind of makes the whole process something of a waste.

In America a great many people go to church in order to be entertained. That's the model for a great deal of "evangelical" worship: Jay Leno or David Letterman. Lutherans- like Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, and Christians in biblical times- instead come to church to receive what God has to give us, and what we can't live spiritually without. The term "church service" refers to God serving us by giving us forgiveness and strengthening our faith through the Word (and in case your wife missed the point, virtually the entire liturgy comes from the Bible) and the Sacrament. And because we understand that, Lutherans- like Catholics, Episcopalians, the Eastern Orthodox, and Christians down through the ages before the recent appearance of the Jay Leno model of "worship"- use the very same liturgy and the very same words used by the Christians in the catacombs.

"Evangelical" worship is about feelings. Lutheran worship- like liturgical worship generally- is about substance.

There are lots of places to go to hear sing bouncy tunes and express how we feel, but church isn't one of them. God already knows how we feel, and doesn't need our praises. We, on the other hand, desperately need what He has to offer: His Word and Sacraments. Our very spiritual lives depend on them.

And our spiritual lives have to do with funky, down-to-earth stuff like a faith which will sustain us in the face of the worst the devil and the world can throw at us. Frothy show tunes with superficial lyrics about how much we like God tend not to help much. I suggest your wife consider the lyrics of those hymns she considers "morbid" (actually classical hymns that have stood the test of time- in fact, of the centuries; what most Americans fondly think of as "the old hymns," by contrast, are usually barely a century old).

People in our society often prefer bouncy (though often terrible) music with biblicaly dreadful lyrics to what church musicians generally acknowledge to be the highest form of hymn, the Lutheran chorale. Our Lutheran hymns are firmly grounded in the Word, and speak to us of Jesus and the Gospel instead of telling Jesus all about us and how we feel. Not all of our hymns are of Lutheran origin, of course. Not everybody down through the ages who has had his or her priorities straight where worship is concerned were Lutherans.

Part of the problem when those who are used to Reformed worship encounter the historic, liturgical Christian service is basic confusion about what church is for in the first place. But part of it is bad theology. Contrary to the almost universal American myth, we do not necessarily benefit spiritually from singing bouncy songs and feeling warm fuzzies, and what feels good emotionally is not, contrary to what Americans tend to think, necessarily what benefits them spiritually. That would be the reception of God's forgiveness and the strengthening of our faith through the preached Word, the Blessed Sacraments, and the substantial and biblical words of the historic liturgy and doctrinally sound hymns.

Yes, like the Catholics (and the overwhelming majority of Christians on earth, both now and historically) we use the same liturgy that was first used in the Catacombs. The liturgy your wife refers to as a "script" (and btw, the churches she is used to use "scripts," too- just a great deal shallower, more superficial, and less biblical ones) are the very words the early Christians used. They are the way the Church has "scripted" its worship since the beginning, and with good reason: it keeps the main thing the main thing, avoids getting distracted by our emotions- which, as great a heresy as this might be to contemporary American Evangelicals, are really the least important feature of our worship experience.

No, we do not benefit spiritually by merely feeling nice things. We benefit spiritually by having our sins forgiven and our faith strengthened by the means God has provided for these purposes- the Word and the Sacraments. It is these which form that "script," which is nothing more or less than the agenda of the God Who comes among us to serve us on Sunday morning, and to make it possible for us to survive spiritually. In the face of that, on a Lutheran understanding the only appropriate response to what goes on in "contemporary worship" is exactly what God the Father said to Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration: "This is My beloved Son. Listen to Him!"

It sounds like that church you used to attend- like an awful lot of American churches these days- didn't have much of a grip on why we have church services in the first place. If you were being presented to the President of the United States or the Queen of England, would you say, "Howya doin', Barack? Hey there, Liz?" through a mouthful of the hot dog you were holding in the hand you weren't shaking theirs with? I doubt it. Nor, I suspect, would you take it as a sign that people didn't want to be there if they acted in a dignified manner befitting the occasion, rather than laughing and chattering and giggling as if they were the audience at a game show.

In fact, you would undoubtedly find the whole experience to be rather formal. The President or the Queen might well turn out to be a warm and caring person. You might well be deeply moved by what they had to say to you. But whatever warm fuzzies you might get, they would probably be overshadowed by a feeling of awe. And I would guess that you wouldn't have much of a problem with the fact that the whole experience would be rather formal. You would be dressed in your best clothes, and on your best behavior, and use your best manners. You might even be a little nervous about the experience. You would probably regard informality and the unbridled expression of emotion as out of place, given the exalted status of your host.

Yes, Jesus is your Friend. But He's nobody's buddy. On Sunday morning, you are in the Presence of Someone greater than the President of the United States or the Queen of England. And respect is in order. So is a certain amount of formality.

On Sunday morning, you have an audience with the King of the Universe, the Maker of you and of all creation, the One upon Whose Face you cannot look and live. You spend an hour in His presence- and you aren't the one on stage. Your praise is very nice, but He really doesn't need it; frankly, the angels have better voices than you do. No, His agenda is different. It's worth saying it again: He deigns to spend that hour every week with you for the purpose expressed by a term all Protestants use, but the meaning of which they have forgotten- or never really believed. Did you ever wonder why we call what we meet for on Sunday morning a service? Or perhaps did you assume that it referred to our service to Him, as if He needed what we offer on Sunday morning?

Jesus is present on Sunday morning for a rather incredible purpose- a purpose no president or queen would perform at such a function. There are Marine stewards and palace servants to do the sort of thing Jesus does at this particular state dinner; presidents and monarchs do not appear at such events to serve those they have invited. The help take care of that.

But not so at this Banquet. Here, it's the distinguished Host Who does what the staff and the Marine stewards do at White House state dinners.

We call what we do on Sunday morning the divine service because we aren't the ones doing the serving. God is. What we think of Him and what is going on may be nice, but it's finally beside the point. The point is that while He doesn't need our input, we are dependent for our very lives and our very salvation on what He has to give us during that hour each week.

But American Protestants tend to miss the point. They fixate on themselves, as if they were the point of the gathering.They tend to be like Peter, whose reaction to seeing Jesus and Moses and Elijah talking on the mountain was to start babbling about how great it was to be there. Remember God's response? I'm paraphrasing only slightly here: "Hey. This is My Son here. Shut up and listen!"

But there is more. On Sunday morning, we get to do more than see Jesus. We do more than shake the hand of Jesus. We get to touch Him in a much more intimate way. You and your wife do not enjoy such intimacy as the communicant does with his or her Lord. You eat His very body. You drink His very blood. You literally take Him and His life into yourself. He is the Vine; you are the branch. Without His life flowing through you, you would shrivel up and die. And here, He infuses you with His sap, as it were; with His very body and blood.It might be well and good to fill shot glasses with grape juice and pass the crackers down the aisle if you're merely going through the motions of an obscure ritual designed to bring to mind Somebody Who isn't really there. But the Supper Jesus actually instituted on the night on which He was betrayed is another matter. He is present in person in this Meal. Through it, He gives us His very life. This is not a wine and cracker tasting; it is something a great deal more serious than that, and it's fitting that we not take it lightly.

Your wife also had a problem with the common cup. Aside from the fact that Jesus and His disciples used one cup at the Last Supper, Paul uses the one bread and one cup as a symbol of the unity of the people who celebrate the Supper together. In our individualistic society, we might be more comfortable making the Sacrament something between "me 'n' Jesus," but Scripture doesn't leave us that option.

Actually, it's been proven over and over again that the chemical reaction between the alcohol in the wine and the gold lining the chalice produces an environment in which germs simply can't survive; bacteriological studies of dirty chalices right after they're used by a congregation and those individual cups after they have been washed in detergent and hot water consistently show that the "dirty" chalice is closer to sterile than the freshly-washed glasses are. Now, you could make a case that it would be harder to get further from what the Lord's Supper is all about than to be unreasonably worried about getting germs from one's brothers and sisters in Christ from sharing the common cup, but I suppose that if that were a real danger it would be a legitimate concern. As it is, most churches reluctantly provide individual glasses as an option for those who are uncomfortable with the common cup. But it really isn't an issue, from a practical point of view.

The real issue in all of this is that in a Lutheran (and, I would argue, a biblical) understanding, Jesus is not Up There Someplace, listening to the service on His radio. He is literally present with us- present in His Word, present in His body and blood, and even present in the words we use to worship. Again, they are His words- the words of Scripture, and the same words that were used by the persecuted Christians in the Catacombs. They, too, used "scripted" worship- in fact, the same script. You would never confuse the worship of the early Church with the Tonight Show- or with the average "Evangelical" Sunday morning service, either!

Incidentally, the church you used to go to- and the churches your wife grew up with- used "scripts," to. I have to chuckle at churches which claim not to use a liturgy. They all use liturgies. Those who claim not to just use rather shoddy ones and change them fairly often. I've had considerable exposure during my years in the ministry to Christian Reformed, RCA, Baptistic, Methodist, Congregationalist, and other Protestant churches, and the liturgy in each of them actually stayed pretty much the same from week to week. If anything, the variations in the historic liturgy between, say, Lent and the Pentecost season are a greater departure than they generally practice during an entire year. Admittedly the liturgies of the "non-liturgical" churches are less formal and elaborate, as well as less historical. But then, I would suggest that they probably didn't do nearly such a good job of keeping what is important in the forefront, and eliminating the stuff that tends to distract us from the reason why we go to church in the first place. That's because they're centered on the worshipper, rather than on God, and how we feel about Jesus, instead of on Jesus.

Again, it all has to do with what you understand to be going on each Sunday morning. A pep rally for an absent Lord is one thing. But it's something very different if He is present in what is preached, in what is read- and yes, and in what is sung and spoken by the congregation, as well as in what is eaten and drunk. And again, the historic liturgy is almost entirely taken from Scripture. If it is a script, He is the scriptwriter.

The Divine Service is a very different critter if in the preaching and in the Sacrament we actually receive Jesus, and not just symbols of Somebody Who couldn't make it. It's a celebration, not of what we feel, but of objective the objective reality that God is here, and here for us.

The historic liturgy may not express what you feel. But then, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, it's not supposed to. It's supposed to teach you what you should feel. You are not the point of what is going on here, any more than you would be at a reception at the White House or at Buckingham Palace to which the President or the Queen might have graciously invited you. Would you expect to be able to decide what the proper way to behave would be there, on the basis of what you feel at the moment? Would you decide that people didn't want to be there because they aren't laughing and telling jokes?

Bad (though popular) music with banal, shallow and usually theologically superficial or downright unbiblical lyrics might entertain us. But to paraphrase a great Christian teacher, St. Vincent of Lerins, "We end up believing what we pray." You would be amazed at the number of the destructive teachings (purgatory comes to mind) that have resulted from nothing more or less than sloppiness about what and how we pray. It is well to be careful, then, what we pray- or sing!

Something better is available. The Lutheran chorale- generally regarded by church musicians as the highest form of hymn- has passed the test of time. Unlike even what Reformed Christians tend to call "the old hymns-" which are actually almost without exception only about a century old- these hymns have been around since the time of the Reformation, and in many cases had their origins even earlier. And in terms of depth, they are to nearly all "contemporary" Christian music as the Marianas Trench is to a bottle cap. And they certainly are based on an understanding that we need to hear how God feels about us a great deal more than He needs to hear about how we feel about Him.

I, too, went to a supposedly non-liturgical "Bible church" when I was growing up. But I really appreciate the fact that when I go to church now, I can reflect on the fact that I'm not just worshipping with the people in the same building with me. All over the world, my brothers and sisters in Christ are worshipping God in the same words, in a hundred languages and accents, but nevertheless as one. And it goes further than that. The unity with which we Lutherans get to worship on Sunday extends beyond space, to time. We may be speaking English rather than Latin, but we are joining our voices to those of the persecuted Christians in the catacombs in Rome, and all the great saints of the ages. That's that "cloud of witness" Hebrews talks about- and every time I think about it, I get shivers down my spine.

But most of all, I am grateful for a liturgy that keeps the main thing the main thing, and gives me no opportunity for my straying heart and wandering attention to mistake my agenda on Sunday morning for God's. I am grateful that I am not thrown back on my own resources, but get to meet Him face to face every week, to receive what He has to give Me- and to reflect how utterly, radically, and entirely unimportant my feelings or praises or reactions or anything else are that might distract me from the gift of forgiveness through the Word and the Sacraments that is the only thing that finally counts on Sunday morning.

To receive that gift in concentrated form- to encounter Jesus, rather than merely to hear about Him- is something that takes getting used to. The Old Self doesn't like learning that it isn't the star of the show. But it's an unspeakably precious thing, this realization of what Sunday morning is really all about. And I pray that both of you continue to experience it, and come to appreciate what a blessing it is.

I think those distractions would be there for you in the Reformed church. I would certainly not discourage you from worshipping there with your wife, since the Word of God is preached there, too, even though not in its purity. I would certainly discourage you from receiving communion there; it isn't the Supper Jesus instituted, and by communing at a Reformed altar you would be confessing the Reformed faith.

My suggestion would be to try to get your wife to recognize that what's going on here is that she is operating out of a set of priorities and expectations different from what Lutherans have, and what most Christians throughout history have had, and certainly what the early Christians had. I suggest that you encourage her to be open to examining her presuppositions and considering the historic and biblical ones. I'll certainly keep both of you in my prayers, and would encoruage you to include her reaction on Sunday morning in yours. The gift of sacramental and liturgical worship is an unspeakably wonderful one, and I pray that she comes to appreciate it.

In Christ,
Pastor Bob