How much is too much?

As a child growing up, my mother set the table for the family meals and often we ate on fine china in the dining room.  She served the food in bowls and did not put the pots on the table.  We did not eat off disposable paper or plastic tableware.  She was not unusual.  It was how everyone did it.  Perhaps those days are long gone for many families and fast food or take out served on paper or plastic has become the norm.  I do not know.  I still eat on stoneware and china.  My wife was raised the same way.  How we eat now is at least in part a reflection of that but it is also our expectation that less is not more -- that more is more.

Even though paper and plastic disposable tableware has become normal fare for some, perhaps even out of necessity though largely because values have changed, it is not a choice for the moment.  It will also inform and shape what happens in the lives of those children who learned that fine dining comes in a bag and is put on plastic or paper that will be discarded along with the leftovers.  What we do is not simply about the moment but about the future.  What we do not only sets precedent but expectation of what should be as well as being a reflection of what is.

There are those who would insist that a congregation like the one I serve is too liturgical, has too much ceremony, has too many images, stained glass, painting, statues, etc.  It is literally too much for them.  Some would even try to suggest that it should be scaled back for the sake of other goals -- accessibility is usually mentioned as if people are being kept from Jesus because we have too much ritual and art.  There are a few who might suggest that this is not Lutheran but is Roman Catholic (when have they last visited a Roman Mass to see what happens there and the context of it all?).  Now, Lutherans are not quick to make rules about what folks in the pew must do.  It is free.  If you want to cross yourself, do.  If not, don't.  Some kneel, some don't.  The list could go on and on.  But I wonder if the question ought to be turned around.  How much is too much?

The Lord is lavish and extravagant in His mercy -- too lavish and extravagant for most of us.  We would find a religion in which the deserving get more a reasonable alternative to the mercy that offers the same to every laborer in the vineyard.  But the Lord refuses to let this restrict His generosity.  In fact, He pointedly asks why we would begrudge Him that generosity when we have received exactly what He has promised.  So why do some begrudge us the generosity of a liturgical life richly provided for with music, ceremony, ritual, and building?  Is not the Lord worth it all -- of course, knowing full well that nothing we do is worthy of Him no matter how noble but it is His grace to receive all things we do through Christ who completes them just as He completes us?  How much is too much?  Where do you draw the line?  We are always trying to place limits on the Lord and it is no different for those who would say what you do on Sunday morning is too much or, typically, too catholic.  But that is the point.  How best to use our freedom?  To do less or to do more?

It seems to me that we are replete with places and churches where they are content that less is more in creed and confession as well as liturgy.  Why use our precious freedom to herald the cause of simplicity?  All across Christendom there is the unabashed move to strips words of meaning and doctrine of its truth to make anything and everything subject to the tyranny of the individual and his or her own preference.  Why would we want to add our voices to theirs?  The cause of beauty in service to worship, of the arts in service to God, and ceremony which actually gives form to what is really believed, taught, and confessed is too great to be squandered on a sea of minimalism.  Plus, the danger is that having married the spirit of this individualistic age in which preference rules over all, we will most certainly be left a widow in the next generation.  Worse, we will have children who do not know their mother!