Tradeoffs in time. . .

Oddly enough, those Lutherans pushing for more ceremony in the liturgy have been joined by those pushing for less in searching out the past to find examples to prove their points.  The problem is that those looking for more have the long view of history behind them and the solid words of confessional integrity to support them.  Those pushing for less have a skewed version of nostalgia on their side.  For my part, I lived through both.  I was a child growing up in the 1950s and 1960s when TLH was king and I was a pastor when WS 1969, ILCW, LBW, LW, HS 98, and LSB came along to coax Missouri into a more authentic liturgical identity on Sunday morning.  There were tradeoffs along the way and these are some of them as I see them.

Yes, until talk of a pan-Lutheran hymnal and service book became official, Lutherans looked very much alike on Sunday morning -- no matter their choice of left or right on the doctrinal spectrum.  They followed the same order with slight musical variation and there was little of the now vaunted diversity among Lutherans across the nation.  We simply opened the book and followed it.  For those who openly disdain the book and for the myriad of variations within it now, it can be tempting to long again for the days when we were all Lutheran people of the book (be it TLH or even SBH).  But there were also things not so rosy in that picture of our past.

 LCMS communing statistics first appear in 1930 and report an average communion of 2.10 times a year per member. At that time, most congregations offered Communion four to six times a year. In 1950, 1970 and 1990, LCMS members communed on average 3.22, 5.91 and 8.44 times per year. Through these decades, most congregations increased offering the full Divine Service to at least twice a month.  (From a LW Article in 2021)

For all the uniformity in rite and the general reverence which accompanied the execution of those rites, we were people of the Word but not so much of the Table.  When I grew up, it was common enough to be normal for Lutherans to go without the Sacrament in rite all but 4 Sundays a year and then either to depart the pew prior to the Eucharistic liturgy or to sit in the pew rather than commune.  For those who want to remember this period fondly, it is also worth remembering that we were ceremonially low, the black gown prevailed, sacramental piety was almost non-existent, nobody even talked about private confession, and the most uniform principle of liturgical ideal and practice was whatever was not Catholic.  Coincidentally, that also turned out to be non-catholic and against our own confession.  That is a fact conveniently forgotten.  Even in the hymn section of the book, the people were probably more comfortable with generic hymnody than either the Lutheran chorale or the offerings of the pre-Reformation variety.  It would be hard to even distinguish a Sunday in Lent from one in Easter except for the note in the bulletin or the hymn slide announcing the day on the hymnboard.  But there was uniformity and the person behind the rail and those on the other side did not treat worship as a casual or indifferent thing.

The lost opportunity of the liturgical movement was not the rites that could have been or should have been or should not have been.  No, the lost opportunity of the liturgical movement was the failure to marry a high sacramental practice, manifest uniformity of look and feel throughout the congregations, an appreciation for the ceremonies which could not be commanded to an existing reverence, a commitment to the hymnal, and high view of the Word.  That was the loss I lament.  Not a book or a setting of the Divine Service but the loss of how this might have been real renewal.  Sure, we did increase both the number of times the Sacrament is offered and how often folks commune.  That is good, right, and salutary.  But somehow we managed to do so while devaluing the shape of the rite and its words at the same time.  Sure, we have more pastors in albs and chasubles than I would have ever imagined half a decade ago but at the same time we seem to have lost the idea of what the ordained pastor is and does along with a confusion of what complementary role the laity play in this thing called worship.  Sure, we have more people now in the same book than when the liturgical experimentation began but we have turned from the book to the screen even where liturgy is still king.  Worst of all, we have somehow labeled all the stuff of worship from the rites and music of the absolution to the liturgy of the Word to the the liturgy of the Sacrament adiaphora.  Astonishingly, we have somehow said that Scripture is silent about what ought to happen in worship or how it might happen.  We somehow cannot even find it within ourselves to bind us to the confessional norm of every Lord's Day receiving the flesh and blood of Christ and then conveniently forgot to fight back when the government said liquor stores were essential but the gathering of Glod's people around His Word and Supper was not.  All of this confusion and tom foolery has left us very similar to where we were before the liturgical movement took hold -- arguing the basics again.  This time the basics are the ordo of the Divine Service, reverence, and the value of uniformity.  Really?

We traded one set of problems for another and in so doing admit that we remain more driven by minimums than by fullness, by settling for rather than striving for, and by utility over beauty.  If we had better learned the lessons of Covid, we might just have kept it all but put it on the screen rather than in person.  It is not simply our mess, Rome is suffering as well.  Canterbury also.  It is hard to find a real Calvinist anymore and it is hardly more of a memory the fundamentalism of the past against the evangelical gold standard of worship that seems to prevail where once the tent revival was king.  My point is that we cannot waste our time picking and choosing a moment in time which looks better to our sensibilities than another without failing again in the opportunity to hold to a high understanding of the Word and a similarly high understanding of the Sacrament.  We should never be bound by minimums except to rein in the erring but should all be working for the much more that belongs to our rich theological and liturgical history and heritage.