Sunday Mess
During my vicarage, a member of the congregation published a poem in the parish newsletter bemoaning and beseeching divine protection from "hymns nobody knows." I responded the next month in the same forum with a poem of my own, entitled "Equal Time" and signed, "An Anonymous Vicar:"
While the reception it received wasn't exactly hostile, it was... well, a bit, shall we say, underappreciated.
Even faster than the focus on doctrine in Missouri Synod circles (and maybe springing from some of the same causes), our consciousness of precisely the Means of Grace- the Word and the Sacraments- as the entire point of our gathering together on Sunday morning seems to be fading away. We no longer seem to have the foudational Lutheran awareness that we call what we do on Sunday morning a "Divine Service" (Gottesdienst) precisely because the really important thing that happens is in it is that God serves us.
Though we can't help but praise Him, that is not why we gather. He does not need our praise. Though we bring Him our hurts and our needs and even our wants, the whole point is the healing and help for these He bestows upon us in the Means of Grace. When our own emotions and our own praise and- God help us!- even our own entertainment becomes the focus of our Sunday mornings, it is no longer Christ who is at the center of the experience. It is ourselves. We wallow in the very self-centeredness which is the major symptom of the deadly disease of sin, for which we come to the Great Physician each week to receive the medication at His Table.
Ours is a sorry lot if we find the focus on emotional fluff or on mere entertainment rather than upon the Medicine that we need as a matter of life and death!
This afternoon, while rummaging through some posts I made on this blog back in 2004, I came across this one, which links to a page containing a list- together with dates and places- of various "contemporary" travesties on the Roman Catholic Mass.
The "Messes" (as the page characterizes them-aptly, in most cases) remind me of the silly kind of stuff we college-aged Lutherans used to "groove on" seeing done with the Blessed Sacrament back in the late Sixties. We sometimes inflicted what was basically the same sort of thing upon ourselves in seminary during the Eighties, whether with "clown Masses" (complete with balloons and celebrant in grease paint) and- more frequently- heterodox liturgies contaminated with feminist ideology, treating the masculine pronouns through which God primarily predicates Himself in Scripture as somehow "idolatrous;" repeating the word "God" over and over again lest we offend God by calling God "He;" calling, at times, not upon, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but upon "the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sanctifier;" and generally focusing, not on the medicine for our own self-centeredness, but on our own politics and our inherent right to improve upon the way that God Godself had chosen to reveal Godself to us.
I want to emphasize that I am not suggesting that anything nearly this outlandish as what the linked-to web page describes is taking place in American Lutheran churches today. I wish I could say the same about the travesties we visited upon the liturgy at seminary. But as contemporary American Lutheranism (with the aid, comfort and support of the leaders of both the ELCA and the Missouri Synod) tragically drifts further from the characteristic biblical and Lutheran emphasis on the Word and the Sacraments as the substance of the divine service and more into Methobapticostal subjectivism and shameless gimmickry, it strikes me that it might be salutary to consider what can happen to the Sacrament of the Altar itself when we take our eyes far enough off the ball- or rather, off our Lord and Savior, contemplating instead our own subjective emotions and our own spiritual navels.
The page is mostly (shudder!) a picture gallery. But among the "lowlights" mentioned on it, though not actually pictured, are:
Kyrie elison! There can be no doubt that our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters have suffered even more, at least in some places, from the ravages of me-centered "worship" and liturgical gimmickry than we have. At the same time, there, but for the grace of God (alone)...
Point worth pondering: When we so far lose sight of Christ and so firmly concentrate upon ourselves and our own emotions and even our own entertainment, grace is exactly what we forget we need- often no longer find- on Sunday mornings.
The organ plays, the pages turn,
The people out there groan;
Though lips may move the voices raised
Are Pastor's and my own.
"We did not know that hymn," they'll say;
"It surely was distressin.'
You should have picked my favorite one,
Not one that fits the Lesson!"
"A few, good hymns is all we need.
That's what I really think;
To have five hundred sixty-nine
Is just a waste of ink!"
But I suspect there was a time
When that familiar few,
Were hard to sing as mine, today-
'Cause they were also new!
And something also puzzles me,
And needs to be explained:
Are we here for the Means of Grace,
Or to be entertained?
While the reception it received wasn't exactly hostile, it was... well, a bit, shall we say, underappreciated.
Even faster than the focus on doctrine in Missouri Synod circles (and maybe springing from some of the same causes), our consciousness of precisely the Means of Grace- the Word and the Sacraments- as the entire point of our gathering together on Sunday morning seems to be fading away. We no longer seem to have the foudational Lutheran awareness that we call what we do on Sunday morning a "Divine Service" (Gottesdienst) precisely because the really important thing that happens is in it is that God serves us.
Though we can't help but praise Him, that is not why we gather. He does not need our praise. Though we bring Him our hurts and our needs and even our wants, the whole point is the healing and help for these He bestows upon us in the Means of Grace. When our own emotions and our own praise and- God help us!- even our own entertainment becomes the focus of our Sunday mornings, it is no longer Christ who is at the center of the experience. It is ourselves. We wallow in the very self-centeredness which is the major symptom of the deadly disease of sin, for which we come to the Great Physician each week to receive the medication at His Table.
Ours is a sorry lot if we find the focus on emotional fluff or on mere entertainment rather than upon the Medicine that we need as a matter of life and death!
This afternoon, while rummaging through some posts I made on this blog back in 2004, I came across this one, which links to a page containing a list- together with dates and places- of various "contemporary" travesties on the Roman Catholic Mass.
The "Messes" (as the page characterizes them-aptly, in most cases) remind me of the silly kind of stuff we college-aged Lutherans used to "groove on" seeing done with the Blessed Sacrament back in the late Sixties. We sometimes inflicted what was basically the same sort of thing upon ourselves in seminary during the Eighties, whether with "clown Masses" (complete with balloons and celebrant in grease paint) and- more frequently- heterodox liturgies contaminated with feminist ideology, treating the masculine pronouns through which God primarily predicates Himself in Scripture as somehow "idolatrous;" repeating the word "God" over and over again lest we offend God by calling God "He;" calling, at times, not upon, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but upon "the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sanctifier;" and generally focusing, not on the medicine for our own self-centeredness, but on our own politics and our inherent right to improve upon the way that God Godself had chosen to reveal Godself to us.
I want to emphasize that I am not suggesting that anything nearly this outlandish as what the linked-to web page describes is taking place in American Lutheran churches today. I wish I could say the same about the travesties we visited upon the liturgy at seminary. But as contemporary American Lutheranism (with the aid, comfort and support of the leaders of both the ELCA and the Missouri Synod) tragically drifts further from the characteristic biblical and Lutheran emphasis on the Word and the Sacraments as the substance of the divine service and more into Methobapticostal subjectivism and shameless gimmickry, it strikes me that it might be salutary to consider what can happen to the Sacrament of the Altar itself when we take our eyes far enough off the ball- or rather, off our Lord and Savior, contemplating instead our own subjective emotions and our own spiritual navels.
The page is mostly (shudder!) a picture gallery. But among the "lowlights" mentioned on it, though not actually pictured, are:
The "Dracula" Mess -- in which a presbyter vests after the fashion of Bela Lugosi in Dracula (get it? Drinking Christ's blood?).
The "Gingerbread" Mess -- in which the matter is baked in the shape of a gingerbread man, and when communicants tear off a piece of "Mr. Gingerbread," the presbyter yells "ouch!"
The "Pet" Mess -- in which dogs appear to share in the Mess and possibly partake of the "cookie."
Kyrie elison! There can be no doubt that our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters have suffered even more, at least in some places, from the ravages of me-centered "worship" and liturgical gimmickry than we have. At the same time, there, but for the grace of God (alone)...
Point worth pondering: When we so far lose sight of Christ and so firmly concentrate upon ourselves and our own emotions and even our own entertainment, grace is exactly what we forget we need- often no longer find- on Sunday mornings.
Comments
Even in our church, Mr. Waters, where our pastor maintains liturgical services and also instructs his congregation regularly on the liturgy--either through using a special liturgy set specifically for instructing-while-doing, or through reminding us during his sermon that this-or-that part of relevant scripture we have already prayed today in the liturgy (and God bless him for it!)--people still request the oddest music for funerals for family members--church members!--or for weddings, or complain how we never sing 'the old hymns', meaning American gospel/Methodist/Baptist hymns. He rightly points out when we've sung a hymn that was composed in the 15th century that you can't get older than that!
I'm the organist, and what I hear is it's all either too fast or slow, too loud or soft, too high or low: it all boils down to simply a matter of personal preference. No one who makes such complaints ever seems to grasp there might be as many complaints as there are people, and what could make him or her think such personal preference should be of such earth-shaking interest. And I'm sure they assume what I do as a church musician is simply to follow my own tastes.
Pastor uses a great tag line on all his emails, and it shows up elsewhere as well:
A lady said to her pastor, 'Pastor, the liturgy doesn't say what I mean.' The pastor replied, 'Madam, you must learn to mean what the liturgy says.'
Its interesting that I just came home from choir practice, where we were struggling with this weeks anthem which in my humble opinion is a bit over our heads. We just don't have enough voices to handle four parts. I could see the directors frustration mounting but then to her credit (credit the Holy Spirit) she ended by positively emphasizing the message and the fact that its all music to God's ears.