Hymnody and the Spiritual Realm
The Christian faith is a both/and matter. It is neither spiritual to the detriment of the physical (as Gnostics, and as, to a lesser extent, sacramentarian Evangelicals confess), nor is it material to the detriment of the spiritual (as atheists and rationalists confess). Jesus is the eternal Word who was born in space and time. He is the God who created us, and yet He comes to us in creation by means of His Eucharistic flesh and blood. In Christ, the supernatural and the natural come together.
In this day and age of Evangelical dominance in the American religious scene, Lutherans are tempted to adopt the “winning” methodology of the megachurch: entertainment worship, a de-emphasis on sacraments and reverence in favor of casualness and a ginning up of emotional excitement. And part of the “best practices” advocated by the “church growth” faction is to get rid of the hymnal.
The move away from the nearly-two millennia corpus of traditional Christian hymnody - including the 500-year subgenre of Lutheran hymns - follows a general pattern of moving away from the spiritual toward the material. For Christians in centuries past have not been embarrassed to speak of angels and demons. In times past, we kept traditional Christian hymnody - sifting it with every generation, keeping the gems of bygone centuries, and gradually adding our own modern hymnody to the mix - which future generations would, presumably, likewise carefully sift through. This is why our Lutheran hymnals are truly catholic: with a diverse collection of biblical canticles, hymns from the early church, ancient chant translated from Latin and Greek, lyric poetry from the middle ages, as well as our Reformation-era chorales, and modern hymns.
And what we find is a distillation of not only beauty and art, but also of confession and theology.
But Lutherans in the late 20th and early 21st century have done something that no other Lutherans have done before: they have cut themselves off from the hymnody of the past. They don’t use LSB or any other Lutheran hymnal. They grab the here-today-gone-tomorrow pop tunes of the churches that deny the sacraments. And it should be no surprise to see the needle move from the paradox of both/and in matters of spiritual and material (which grounds itself in the Sacrament of the Altar) and shifting to music and worship that are increasingly materialistic and less spiritual.
There are 81 hymns in LSB that explicitly mention angels or the various kinds of angels (I did not count any of these hymns twice). There are 64 hymns that mention Satan, the devil, devils, or demons. And this is erring on the side of conservatism. For example, hymn 850 mentions the “forces of evil.” There may well be other such hymns that use poetic euphemisms for angels and demons. Thus 145 of our hymns (which date from the second through the twentieth centuries) out of a total of 636 in the hymnal mention the spiritual realm. That is roughly 23%.
While I have not done any survey of contemporary worship songs, especially as used in congregations that currently hold LCMS membership, I am highly skeptical that nearly a quarter of them mention angels and demons.
When you listen to this faction in their podcasts, they never seem to talk about angels and demons. They ascribe numerical growth or decline to matters of material methodology, no different than what makes a corporation or firm either profitable or not. They invoke principles of organizational management rather than matters of spiritual warfare. People apparently fall away from the church because there are no parking lot attendants or because our pastors are not using Google and AI properly, and not because they are subject to the crafts and assaults of the devil. There is certainly no spiritual explanation for our decreasing numbers - such as our being judged for our unfaithfulness - that should be considered. It is especially curious because they never seem to address an obvious elephant in the parlor that, while it is indeed important to have clean bathrooms and a culture of friendliness, much of their own material “success” involves the demographics of where their churches just happen to be located. But that is another topic for another day.
Downplaying sacraments and moving away from a spiritual worldview that acknowledges angels and demons is sure to have its consequences. Do these congregations ever celebrate the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels (LSB page xxiii, September 29)? Invoking our Christian freedom, my own congregation celebrates this feast every year, transferring it to the nearest Sunday. It is important that we set aside a feast day in the church for something of this spiritual importance - the acknowledgment of our angelic protectors and also of our demonic attackers - instead of making up fake holidays for the sake of hype.
Do such pastors and churches practice house blessings? The rite is in our Pastoral Care Companion. It is an ancient custom among Christians to have the pastor annually come and bless our houses during the season of Epiphany - or in the aftermath of violence, occult activity, or paranormal phenomena. While most people recognize the important material stewardship issues of changing air conditioner filters and smoke alarm batteries, it is easy to forget the spiritual hygiene of the Word of God and prayer. Sadly, a lot of our traditionalist Lutherans likewise are more material than spiritual in this regard. But at least a traditionalist pastor, used to using the liturgical resources of our church, will at some point come upon this godly tradition.
I wonder what a CoWo house blessing (which is really a form of exorcism) would look like. I’m sure the demons would have a good laugh.
And this is another cost of ditching (or gutting) the liturgy.
In the Nicene Creed, we confess that God is the Creator of “all things, visible and invisible.” The Proper Preface typically contains the words: “with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven,” which is a confession of the angelic hosts as well as our departed loved ones beyond the veil. In the Sanctus, we sing to the Triune God who is Lord of “Sabaoth” - that is, of the armies of the angels. And in the Holy Supper, the reverence of the celebrant is a reminder of the greatest spiritual Presence of all, of the King Himself, God coming to our altar, to our sanctuary, to our bodies: the same incarnate God born of Mary, nailed to the cross, buried in the tomb, and raised from the dead. This is not a symbol, but a spiritual reality made manifest in our physical realm. How can anyone be casual or flippant in that reality? Why would our churches schedule Sundays where the divine Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is unwelcome (after all, Jesus, we have You down for the first and third Sundays)?
CoWo churches nearly all abolish the liturgy and the hymns. And instead of sifting for the treasure, they toss the chaff into the air and catch it, throwing the wheat away. They confess a materialistic feel-good “gospel” whose effects are measured, counted, and actuarially analyzed by material means, not even acknowledging the spiritual.
In his latest Liturgical Observer column in our Christmas 2025 Gottesdienst print journal (“The Results Are In: Evangelical Style and Lutheran Substance Are Not Compatible”), Dr. Eckardt reports on a “traditional” (so-called) service at one of these “church growth” congregations. The “traditional” (not the “contemporary,” mind you) service opted out of the Nicene Creed (no “visible and invisible”), and the Proper Preface (no “angels and archangels and all the company of heaven”), and the Sanctus (no “Sabaoth,” and no reminder of Isaiah’s reverence in the throne-room of God). The Words of Institution were said over bread and wine, but without any kind of confessing ceremony to visually and audibly reinforce that “is” means “is.” Thus even in the liturgy (such as it was) the confession of the spiritual reality was neutered. And in addition to this “traditional” service (which also removed not only the Kyrie, but also the Gloria in Excelsis, which is the song of the angels) there was a CoWo service, which enforces a sense of casual ordinariness to that which is supposed to be holy and set apart. Needless to say, in such services, ephemeral “contemporary” songs replace the treasure of timeless hymnody. Such is the Church of What’s Happening Now rather than the church that steps into eternity through the miracle of Word and Sacrament, driving people to a reverence that is both a reaction to, and a confession of, the supernatural spiritual realm that surrounds us.
The Church of What’s Happening Now has no sense of being not only in the presence of the Triune God - like Isaiah in the sixth chapter of his book, which is part of the universal liturgy of the Christian church of all ages (the Sanctus), but also of being in the midst of the souls of our loved ones and of all Christians who have ever lived, who wait in joyful expectation with us for the return of Christ and for the bodily resurrection.
What a sad purchase of pottage made at the expense of their birthright.
It’s important that we keep the liturgy and the hymns, that we have our homes blessed, that we constantly remind ourselves of the reality all around us that we cannot see. And this is a part of our Lutheran identity that the industrial behaviorists and the purveyors of entertainment are willing to throw away. Even the hymn most identifiable around the world as quintessentially Lutheran, A Mighty Fortress, reminds us of the “devils” that “all the world should fill” who are truly “eager to devour us.” What protects us from them is our Lord Jesus Christ, “of Sabaoth Lord,” coming to us in Word and Sacrament, protecting us by the ministry of angels - not by entertainment, and not by industrial management principles.
And if these churches are still teaching the Small Catechism, they should be instructing their little ones to pray liturgically twice daily: “Let Your holy angel be with me, that the evil foe may have no power over me.”
Amen.