Both sides now. . .

Lutherans loathe rules on piety.  That is our problem.  Not even encouraging Biblical and laudable custom has led to an absence of much of any piety at all.  Fasting even before the Sacrament is rarely spoken of and even more rarely practiced.  There are no rules about standing or kneeling, or sitting -- directions, yes, but always as common local custom which people are free to ignore.  In my own parish there are plenty who neither kneel nor stand and remain sitting most of the time.  People stand and kneel at the rail.  Some receive in the mouth and some in the hand.  We have no obligatory rubrics but directions without any real consequence for those who do not follow them.  Even the signs telling people that we should not bring food or drink into the sanctuary are routinely and regularly ignored by those with their giant Starbucks, Dutch Bros, or other coffee -- plus the water bottles glued to our hands.

You might think that this Lutheran aversion to rules about piety and behavior during the Mass was innately Lutheran -- what with adiaphora and such.  But our antinomianism with regards to the rubrics is not simply our Lutheranism showing through.  The micromanaging of the postures of the faithful during the Mass is far from traditional even in Rome. In the Latin Mass, there are few rubrics laid upon the faithful except reverence.  Reverence and local custom were the obligation.  Dictating the every move of the faithful was not.  Reverence is always good, right, and salutary but the making of endless rules over the postures of the faithful is a bridge too far.  They are not only unhealthy but vitiate against reverence in the Mass. It was not the Mass of the Ages that sought to control the faithful in this way but that began with the post-Vatican II changes.  Along with liturgical changes to text and form, there was the desire to enforce such freedom from what some felt was a stifling power of the past.  Of course, until the post-Vatican II changes, communion in the hand had largely become unknown to the faithful -- even Lutherans did not invent this return to what is supposed was an occasional practice of the ancient church.  

You must do this and you must do that are rubrical demands laid upon the one at the altar but the folks in the pew are largely free from such controlling rules.  We thought it was Lutheran.  It turns out it was actually catholic practice.  Now, do I like it when there is a chaos among the various postures of the faithful during the Mass?  No.  I do not.  But the pressure comes not from the demands of the clergy (certainly not from the bishop) but from the goal of reverence and the power of local custom.  There is nothing wrong with that.  When we introduced kneelers to a congregation unfamiliar with them and instinctively unwilling to restore them,  we did so by reminding them of the freedom of the faithful and that by not having them at all those opposed were actually dictating to the rest what they must do.  There is a good reminder in this.  Plus a little humor.  Sometimes us liturgical types lack a self-deprecating humor and take ourselves too seriously.  Apparently some Roman bishops and Lutherans opposed to such ceremonial actions are also without such humor as well.