When our Augsburg Confession defines the church, it does so liturgically. The “one, holy, Christian church…is the assembly of all believers among whom the gospel is purely preached and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel” (AC VII.1). The believing community is a liturgical community. Faith and worship go together. It is faith in the heart that makes “both God and an idol,” (LC I.2) as Luther says, and the “true honor and worship that please[s] God…[is] that the heart should know no other consolation or confidence than him, nor let itself be torn from him, but for his sake should risk everything and disregard everything else on earth” (LC I.16). Worship, as such, is not unique to the church, but in some sense is common to the world. Faith makes “both” God and an idol. And as Luther says again, “there has never been a nation so wicked that it did not establish and maintain some sort of worship. All people have set up their own god, to whom they look for blessings, help, and comfort” (LC I. 17). Thus, what is unique to the church is “true” worship of God. This is what we mean when we call the church “orthodox.” It practices ortho-doxy, “right-worship.” The world, by comparison, is hetero-dox because it “worships-another,” but in the end, everyone worships. Humans are creatures of faith, which means they are creatures of worship. The real question is not “whether or not” people worship, but “who or what” they worship— God or an idol? This, then, is not only the distinction between true worship and false worship, but also the proper distinction between the law and the Gospel.
I.
Now because of the Fall into sin and the corruption of our nature, what we are most familiar with is not orthodoxy, but heterodoxy, not true worship, but idolatrous worship. We have become false and thus we worship false things in a false way. We imagine God or god according to what we know from nature and reason, outside of God’s word. As such we know 1) that there is a god, 2) that he, she, or it has a law, and 3) that we have not kept it. Paul says as much in Romans when addressing the guilt of the Gentiles saying, “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse” and again, “For when the Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves…They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse…them” (Rom 1:19-20; 2:14-15). Thus, both God and worship are defined by the Old Adam in the language of the law. Since the law of God has been broken, God is a god of wrath, and his wrath needs to be propitiated or appeased. And what sinners by nature have as a means of propitiation is the law, or more narrowly, works or sacrifices of the law, quid pro quo.
The worship of the natural man is thus a worship of sacrifice which is directionally oriented upward, from earth to heaven. In worship we ascend to God in heaven and offer up to him our sacrifices— goods, works, prayers, praise, thanksgiving, and song. The end of these sacrifices, these offerings, is to satisfy an angry God and earn his favorably disposition so that he blesses us. In this worship, humans are the chief actors, and only secondarily is god a divine actor in worship. God is the one acted upon, not an actor in his own right. This orientation is aptly what our English word, “worship,” indicates. It is “worth-ship,” to ascribe or give worth, our muchness, to God. By definition, the direction of “worship” is from man to God and in this way depends on man.
II.
This sort of worship and god is very “natural” to us. It comes from within us, by nature, but, as I’ve indicated, because we are “by nature” sinful, it is an idolatrous worship. True worship of the true God, as such, does not come from inside us, but outside ourselves, extra nos. It is not “natural,” but foreign to our nature. And this is all because it is not according to the law, but according to the Gospel. The Gospel is that “glad tidings” that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom 5:8), that is, “in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them…” (2 Cor 5:19). The word of the Gospel proclaims that God put forward his own Son, “as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith,” and thus “we hold that one is justified by faith alone apart from works of the law.” (Rom 3:25, 28). And, “since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God” (Rom 5:1-2). “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of Life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death” (Rom 8:1-2). This is the Gospel.
The Gospel proclaims an entirely new God and thus an entirely new form of worship. If God has already done and given everything, then the proper worship of God is simply to receive by faith. As the Apology of the Augsburg Confession states, “Faith is that worship which receives the benefits that God offers; the righteousness of the law is that worship which offers God our own merits. God wants to be honored by faith so that we receive from him those things that he promises and offers” (Ap IV.49). Unlike the worship of the law which is active, the worship of faith is passive. It is a receptive piety. This is noted by Luther in his teaching on the third commandment, by which God does not lay on us any particular obligation or specific works, but rather directs us to the word of God and his work (LC I.91). This is nicely summarized by his catechism hymn, “These are the Holy Ten Commands,” which sings, “You shall observe the worship day// that peace may fill your home, and pray,// and put aside the work you do,// so that God may work in you.// Have mercy, Lord!” (LSB 581, st.4).
III.
“So that God may work in you.” God always works through means, and his chosen means for forgiving, renewing, and blessing us are his Word and Sacrament. Through these, “as through means, he gives the Holy Spirit who produces faith, where and when he wills, in those who hear the Gospel” (AC V.2). Through these, Jesus is among us “as one who serves” (Lk 22:27) continuing in this century the work he “began to do” (Acts 1:1) in the first century. By baptism he makes us his children, in holy absolution he forgives us our sins, and in the Kyrie and Introit he receives us as beggars. In the Salutation we acknowledge that he is the chief celebrant and liturgist of our service. In the Lessons and Sermon he himself instructs and comforts us by his Word. He hears our plea for help in the General Prayers, gives us his Body and Blood in the Supper, and dismisses us with the Benediction of his Spirit.
The old German word for this kind of service is Gottesdienst, or “God’s service,” which is echoed in the even older Greek word leitourgia, or “liturgy.” Our liturgy is that service which God renders to us. “This word [liturgy] does not properly mean a sacrifice but rather public service. Thus, it agrees quite well with our position, namely, that the one minister who consecrates gives the Body and Blood of the Lord to the rest of the people, just as a minister who preaches sets for the Gospel to the people…” (Ap XXIV. 80). Our church service is not truly “worship,” but “liturgy,” a “Divine Service.” It is not a sacrificial service, but a sacramental one. It is not chiefly an active work, but a passive reception of God’s gifts.
The nature of God’s Gospel gifts is that they quite naturally elicit our thanks and praise, but the character of our offerings is likewise transformed by faith. As the voice of faith, our thanks and praise are not coerced by the law, but inspired freely by the Gospel. They are not means of satisfying an angry God or winning his favor, rather they are a means of proclaiming all God’s benefits to me.
IV.
This understanding is deeply biblical from Old Testament to New Testament, however, this understanding does run against the grain of most of what one might see in broader Christian circles. Christian worship today bears the indelible mark of what is called the liturgical movement of the 20th century. Championed largely by Roman Catholic theologians, this movement worked tirelessly to establish a more sacrificial character for worship, claiming the Divine Service as the “work of the people.” If the Divine Service is “the work of the people,” then the people need to work. Lay participation increased precipitously (reading, prayers, distribution), songs of praise and thanksgiving dominated, the prayers of the church were spoken responsively by all, the Supper became a matter of the people’s “action,” “re-presentation,” or “re-actualization,” and liturgical forms changed dramatically to accommodate this new understanding of the liturgy. The chief question idolatrously became, “What can I do, give, offer, or sacrifice to Jesus?” The culmination of the liturgical movement was the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, whose impact was felt the world over. From Rome to Lutheranism, from Anglicanism to Pentecostalism, the liturgy of the Gospel has been obscured in favor of works of the law and the sacrifices of men.
V.
One of our tasks today, then, is to recover and appreciate the Lutheran difference, which is nothing short of recovering and appreciating the Gospel. The Liturgy and the Holy Ministry are creatures and vehicles of the Gospel, God’s own gifts to us. The most blessed and godly thing to be busy with in the Divine Service, then, is receiving by faith God’s promised rest which the world does not know and cannot offer. As the author to the Hebrews writes, then, let us “strive” to enter that rest. Let us recover the virtue of patience which Adam and Eve lost, the virtue of waiting on the Lord, of receiving from our dear Father like the dear Children we are. Let us exercise ourselves in suffering God to wash us, feed us, read to us, and thereby give himself to us. This kind of worship is foolishness to an idolatrous world, but it is the only worship which finally gives the grace and peace we long for and need. May God the Holy Spirit grant us to worship in spirit and truth all the days of our life.
Rev. Philip D. Bartelt
Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd
The Feast of All Saints, 2024
