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LITURGY
Throwing My “Bundle of Sticks” in the Fire;
or Reaching Out with the Mass.
My Sticks in the Fire
The language, life, ritual and liturgy of the Lutheran Church
are incomprehensible to the denizens of our insane postChristian world. This unfamiliarity, however, provides an
authentic opportunity to intentionally evangelize the lost
wayfarer and, hopefully, to recover the bored consumer
through meaningful signs of Christ and the Gospel revealed in
the mysterious, biblical, evangelical, confessional, catholic, and
apocalyptic world of the Lutheran Divine Service... or Mass...
or Divine Liturgy.
Common Objections
“Traditional Liturgy” is a barrier
Church must change or die
Content and Form Distinctions
Doctrinal Unity; Practical Disunity
FC X gives freedom in all ceremony
The Adiaphora Trump Card
Assumptions Reconsidered
Statistical Trends:
Eastern Orthodox growth
CGM Stagnation & Emergent Critique
9,000,000 + and shrinking (25-35 k a year)
Anecdotal Evidence
Personal Journey
Theological Confession
Field of Ritual Studies
Liturgical Renewal Movement
Demand for Simplification of Liturgy
Emphasis on Community-Building
Insistence on Rationality
Infatuation with Fourth-Century
Frantic Search for THE LITURGY
Social Science: Modern Subjective
Church Growth Movement
Pragmatic-Outcome Based Approach
Principle of Homogeneity
Production of Popular Atmosphere
Programming to Felt Needs
Marketing, Manipulation, and Magic
Social Science: Modern Subjective
Inherited Worship Dogma
Simplicity: Sitz im Leben NT Era
Immediacy: Direct Experience
Intelligibility: Cognitive Understanding
Transparency: Obvious Meaning
Creativity: Personal & Local Novelty
Spontaneity: Informal & Unpredictable
Relevancy: Applicable to Needs
Ablaze! The Movement
(tm)
Evangelism is Central to Life of Church
Friendship Sundays, Liturgies: CGM is neutral
Church Planting: CGM is most effective tool
Non-Christian Prepared by Secular Methods?
Revitalization for Transformation of Church
Social Systems Theory
Leadership Training and Equipping
Church Transformed by Secular Principles?
Lost in the Smoldering Ruins
Biblical Reality... more than text.
Transcendent... more than feeling.
Sacraments... more than doctrine.
Church Identity... more than Lutheran.
Personal Identity... more than consumer.
Liturgical Ritual... more than verbal.
Ritual Reconsiderations
Complexity, not Simplicity
Mediation, not Immediacy
Mystery, not Intelligibility
Opacity, not Transparency
Habit, not Creativity
Formality, not Spontaneity
Reverence, not Relevance
Power of Good Ritual
Rules and Regularity: Allow person freedom to act
Objective: Christ is at work in His means
Non-Rational: Theological performance
Non-Verbal and Sensory: Engages entire person
Repetitive: Habit makes true experience possible
Transformative: Actions endowed with holy purpose.
Iconic: Opens up heavenly, transcendent mysteries
Liturgical Agent: Attention directed elsewhere
Theological Reconsiderations
Incarnation: Word Enfleshed
Sacrament: Divine Presence
Scriptural Narrative: Divine Encounter
Ecclesiology: Church Triumphant
Eschatology: Heavenly Invasion
Anthropology: Disordered Sinner
The Deep Ritual of A Mass,
Divine Service, or Divine
Liturgy
Biblical: Word of Christ
Confessional: Proclaims Christ
Catholic: Presence of Christ
Evangelical: Work of Christ
Apocalyptic: Reveals Christ
Opportunity for Church:
Recovery of the Sacred
•
Disillusioned words like bullets bark, As human gods aim for their mark,
•
Made everything from toy guns that spark,
•
to flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark,
•
It’s easy to see without looking too far, that not much is really sacred.
Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”
•
•
“He (the Christian in the American South) feels like Lancelot in search of the Holy
Grail who finds himself at the end of his quest at a Tupperware party.” Walker Percy
“In the old Christendom, everyone was a Christian
and hardly anyone thought twice
about it. But in
the present age the survivor of theory and
consumption becomes a wayfarer in the desert, like St.
Anthony; which is to say, open to signs.” Walker Percy
•
The Religious Caveman
At a deeper level of my consciousness I brush aside all the
imposing objections against the reality of the world and the
reality of my own humanity, even though I cannot refute them. I
am afraid I have to admit it: I am a Stone Age man.... People
say, and I should have grasped it long ago, that the objects
around me have not the slightest significance, that there is
nothing in them (and who, after all, am I?). Yes, I hear all this,
but I do not believe it. I am still on the very lowest rung of the
history of mankind. I am an animist.... A man on his knees
because he believes that his Maker is present in a little white
wafer: this is still a stumbling block in many places, and we
must thank God for it.
Mosebach, Heresy of Formlessness
Cultural Challenges
The Bored Consumer
The Modern Rational Illiterate
The Cultural Wasteland
The Bored Consumer
“No. It’s really not about you.”
Self-Indulgent/Self-Absorbed
Anti-Institutionalism
Fast Food Theology
Carole King Theology
Chicken Little Theology
The Rational Modern Illiterate
Self-Centered
 Disordered
 Sentimental
 Enraged
 Depressed
 Lonely
 Bored
 Lustful
 Spiritually Impoverished

The Rational Modern Illiterate
The cultural development in the West “has produced
the
modern,
non-religious,
rationalistic,
metaphysically blind human being. Sociologists of
religion have devoted their attention to this
phenomenon. They have a name for the kind of
man who believes he can make a connection
between the macrocosm and the microcosm by
means of sacral acts, who sees the material form as
a mirror of transcendence, and who lives in the
presence of God (or of the gods): such a man is
homo religiosus. In this sense practically all people
were homines religiosi until the eighteenth century.”
Mosebach, 54
The Rational Modern Illiterate
Now, he's hell-bent for destruction, he's afraid and
confused,And his brain has been mismanaged with great
skill.All he believes are his eyesAnd his eyes, they just tell
him lies.
Bob Dylan, License to Kill
Modern Wasteland
Naturalism: We are mere beasts.
Idealism: We are the Creator.
Romanticism: We are naturally spiritual.
Consumerism: We are what we buy.
Individualism: I am the most important thing in the Cosmos.
Pluralism: There are many, equally valid truths.
Nihilism: Nothing matters.
Moral Relativism: Anything goes.
Modern Wasteland
“The present age is demented. It is possess by a
sense of dislocation, a loss of personal identity, an
alternating sentimentality and rage which, in an
individual patient, could be characterized as
dementia. As the century draws to a close, it does
not yet have a name, but it can be described. It is
the most scientifically advanced, savage,
democratic, inhuman, sentimental, murderous
century in human history.”
Walker Percy
Professional Concerns
Rubricism: Liturgical Fussiness
Traditionalism: Too catholic...
Pragmatism: If it works....
Parochialism: We did it our way...
Egotism: I must increase...
Casuistry: Liturgical Catechesis
The Pastor
Education in Liturgical/Sacramental Theology
Eucharistic Faith and Piety
The Bored Consumer
Catechesis: Classes, sermons, etc.
Conversion: Introduction of Ritual
The Wayfarer in the Desert
Recovering the Catechumenate
Opportunity for Mystagogy