Where do you start?

The whole idea of worship is plagued with the presumption that simple is the starting point and elaboration is like choosing side dishes to complement the entree.  It is so common that it pervades not only Rome, with its idea of the Law Mass as being normal, but it also afflicts Lutherans who think of ceremony and ritual as condiments to add bits and pieces of flavor or variation to the norm.  When will we give up this idea?

First of all, in the history of the Roman Church, including the common history we shared prior to the Reformation,  the Low Mass (spoken without assisting ministers) is NOT the ordinary rite but the exception when these things are not available.  We tend to revert to the default and the presumption is that a spoken service without any music and without assistants is the default when it comes to worship.  We we want to be fancy, we add things to it.  Until it becomes the high mass (as the Anglicans taught us) or a Solemn Mass.  No, no no.  It is really the opposite.  Solemn Mass, high mass for you folks who like that term, is the ordinary which cannot always be possible and so an exception is made when, for example, we lack musicians or choir or an instrument or assisting ministers are not available.  We pare down the ordinary to make for the exception.

Luther understood this even if Lutherans don't.  The Deutsche Messe was never meant to be the norm.  It was always the exception -- where Latin was not used, where choir was not available, and where the ordinary (Formula Missae) could not be used, this was an exception.  Luther himself was pretty adamant that Latin continue and loved the language.  But Lutherans have a confused understanding of the reformer's reforms.  We presume that he pared down the rite to bare minimums, tolerating a few ceremonies and practices for a time, until folks could tolerate the simple rite (like Calvin but slower and more patient with the weakness of the people).  But that is not Luther and it is not Lutheran.  Luther was not one to pare down but to preserve as much as could be preserved.  He is a conservative reformer who conserved -- keeping as normative such things from elevation to chanting while being rather reserved when others were more radical.  It was not that Luther wanted these things gone as well but Luther was hesitant to make rules and to insist upon them (though when he had to, he did).

Lutherans are not barebones people who tend to simple is better.  We are moderate about making rules but we are robust about our rites, love the ceremonies without forcing compliance, and joyful in the use of music and musical resources to support the Word.  I am not sure who those people are who insist that plain is better, simple is better, minimalism is better.  I don't know who they are, but they are not heirs of Luther.  I have no idea how it ends up that Lutherans have presumed the norm to be spoken services, accompaniments from CDs instead of organs and organists, in bare settings empty of art and symbol.  These may be exceptions of necessity but that is not how Luther saw the future and it should not be how we are content to live it.