The Liturgy is Not a Performance
In this video podcast:
… the Rev. Dr. Tim Ahlman said (at about 18:30):
“It seems like the divide between confessional, mission, whatever, always goes back to worship. And I think we should stop it and give more care. I think high church celebration, smells, and bells, I think it's awesome. If you can do it well, great. Here's one of the here's one of the struggles because a lot of times the contemporary guys will say, well, the the assaults - that's too strong. The hard words against contemporary worship is it's a performance right there are people up on a stage. Well I watch the Issues Etc. closing worship for their gathering Making the Case and I see three pastors up front all in robes [sic] cassocks, you've got a kantor, who has a delightful voice, by the way, off to the side leading the congregation in the liturgy, so I don't know how that is exactly different. And, now you get me going here, and to think that a average middle Midwest very conservative traditional oriented church could pull off what I saw at Concordia Chicago at the issue. There's no way, right? So there there is the performative element that goes into both traditional and and contemporary modern worship music. And if you're going to do whatever your style is, hopefully with a Lutheran ordo in place, do it well. If you can't do it well, don't do it. whatever the style happens to be this this day and age. And if it's if it's liturgy with a pastor and a pianist, praise God. Do the Divine Service.”
Here is the Divine Service as it was celebrated at Issues, Etc.
There is a lot to unpack in Dr. Ahlman’s statement. And I think his words are illustrative, having explanatory power to illustrate why we are divided.
The first thing that I’m going to push back on is his advocacy of “a Lutheran ordo” and his imploring of everyone to “do the Divine Service.” Until recently, you could see what his church considers to be the ordo - especially in the “modern worship” service, but also in their “traditional service” at their public YT channel. The same is true with his friends at King of Kings regarding what they do as far as “a Lutheran ordo” and “Do the Divine Service” go. Their YT channel is here. Note: both of these congregations have stopped posting - and even removed - their complete worship services from public view (they now post only the sermons - or “messages” as the kids say). Here are descriptions of Christ, Greenfield and King of Kings services from when they were posted. There are a plethora of other “modern worship” LCMS member congregations that anyone on the planet with the Internet can watch. How much Lutheran ordo are we seeing?
Here’s a random example of a recent LCMS CoWo Mass (the consecration begins at about 8:45):
Secondly, the idea that highly liturgical worship with vested ministers and chanting cannot be done in the Midwest, or for that matter, the Northwest, the South, New England, Canada, Europe, or Asia is bizarre. Especially odd is the assertion that the Midwest is at some kind of handicap here. Beautiful and reverent liturgical worship is found everywhere, including in LCMS churches, large and small; rural, urban, and suburban; with multiple pastors, or only one. We have such liturgical congregations that Dr. Ahlman would consider “high church” or “smells and bells” in my district: in Louisiana, in Mississippi, in Alabama, and in western Florida. And what’s with saying that you can’t have reverent, beautiful, liturgical worship at “traditional” or “conservative” churches? This is just factually untrue. And here is a sample from the Divine Service at Zion Lutheran Church in Bensenville, Illinois:
But the real issue that I want to discuss is the fact that Dr. Ahlman equates churches with stages and rock music with traditional liturgy, calling them both “performances.” Maybe he considers what he does as a performance, but to suggest that others are “performing” while leading holy worship is just gross. Would he refer to the high priest entering the Holy of Holies as a “performance”? Were the priests who offered sacrifices “performers” like dancing girls at a king’s banquet? Was Isaiah engaging in performative stagecraft when he prostrated himself in his vision of the throne-room of God (from where we get the part of the liturgy known as the Sanctus)? Was Jesus performing a show when He cured lepers, forgave sins, and preached the Gospel to the multitudes? How about that feeding of the five thousand extravaganza? The crowds who stalked Him to make Him their bread king thought it was the greatest show on earth. Plus ça change. Was the Last Supper (the first Divine Service) also a “performance”? Herod was certainly disappointed that Jesus didn’t put on a show and perform for him.
What I do on Sunday morning and Wednesday night is not performing - neither on my part as the celebrant, nor on the part of Jesus who is present. Neither is what I do during daily Matins a performance, but is rather prayer. It is not a show. It is not done on a stage with props. The chalice that we use in the Mass is not fake. It is real, and it has real wine in it. And after it is really consecrated, it contains the real blood of Christ. We don’t put on a show on a stage with a couch and spike tape on the floor so the actors and performers know where to stand. We don’t have a loaf of bread that will never be consecrated as a prop (which kind of smacks of the pre-Reformation Corpus Christi shows). Nor will a lay musician sing the Words of Institution. We are not putting on a show.
When I conduct the liturgy, it is not a performance, preference, or passion. It is, rather, a reverent response to the real, miraculous, divine Presence.
We are not the same.
But my behavior around the altar is the same, whether it is Sunday morning surrounded by people, or during the week, when I am the only person walking in the sanctuary. I reverence the altar, not as a performance, not as a show, but rather because it is holy. It is sanctified by Christ’s body and blood that are consecrated there. It is the Holy of Holies. There is nothing more real in all the universe that the miracle that happens in that sacred space.
The way I conduct myself at the altar doesn’t change whether I am celebrating in my little church in the deep south, or whether I’m a guest celebrant elsewhere. I am vested. I chant the verba. I genuflect before the altar. I elevate the consecrated elements. I never monkey with the words to make them more “meaningful” than the way the Holy Spirit gave them to us. My congregation has a liturgical handbell that is rung - either by my deacon (on Sundays) or by me (on Wednesdays) during the consecration.
It’s not a performance, it is a confession of Christ’s presence. It is an altar, not a stage. The communion vessels call to mind our Lord’s instructions that furnishings used in divine services in His Presence should be elegant, well-crafted, and beautiful - not cheap and not tawdry. I will not serve in the Holy of Holies clad in a sports jersey or casual clothing. I will not crack jokes there. I will not show such disrespect to our Lord by doing so. Other pastors are, of course, free to do whatever they want in this regard. Nothing will happen to them. Whether it should or should not is not my call. I have my opinions, but I have no authority over any other pastor. But I do lament at what goes on in LCMS congregations. It makes evangelism harder for us. It drives people away, and reflects poorly on the rest of us as unserious - or at least, as unsacramental - people. We are unfairly tainted.
In 1914, when my congregation built its second building, those German immigrants and children of immigrants, physical laborers, raised up $750 to buy a new baptismal font. That would be about $25,000 today. This was not a large church. These were not wealthy people. Nevertheless, they sacrificed to import our hand-carved font, made of six different kinds of marble, from Italy. They did so because the Holy Sacrament is deserving of such dignity. They did not use a horse trough or an inflatable kiddie pool on a stage to baptize (or re-baptize) people. We are still joyfully baptizing the faithful with dignity in that same marble font today.
The difference between a stage performance and a sacred rite is that the former is fake, and the latter is real. This is why it gives an at-best ambiguous confession when hard-core CoWo congregations get rid of altars, fonts, and pulpits, replacing them with stages and bandstands. LCMS CoWo congregations are actively imitating worship that is found in churches that don’t confess the Real Presence. In other words, churches (such as non-denominational congregations) that natively practice entertainment-based casual worship don’t believe the elements are real. To them, a consecrated piece of bread remains only bread. A cup of wine (or a convenience pack of grape juice) also remains what it is. To them, there is no real body or blood. It’s a representation, all for show.
And casual worship makes sense in their context. Can you imagine a non-denominational pastor wearing a chasuble, chanting the verba, ringing bells, and reverently genuflecting before the altar and elevating the consecrated elements? It would make no sense in that context, whereas in a Lutheran context, such ceremony and reverence make perfect sense.
We who lead Lutheran worship are catechizing, confessing, and conveying information, with our deeds and actions congruent with our words. If our words don’t match our deeds, this is called, per Jesus, “hypocrisy” - and it is fitting that the word “hypocrite” means a stage actor: a performer. Jesus is the Word, the Logos, and the words we choose are important. God chooses to reveal Himself to us in His Word. But the Word is not divorced from matter. Far from it! For “the Word became flesh and dwelt (tabernacled) among us.” The Christian faith is incarnational, as the Word takes on material vesture in space and time. Practice confesses and reinforces the words we say, and the words we say are bolstered by our practices. Hence the advice to a celebrant to “say the black, do the red.” The black and the red present both a unified confession and a unified catechesis. When the black and the red become asynchronous, at best, we confuse our flocks, and at worst, we lead them astray.
Our Divine Service has been handed down to us because it is a true timeless “best practice,” and liturgical worship is (or at least was until recently in church history) universal among Christians. Within our Lutheran tradition, there is a remarkable unity in liturgical practice all over the world. And certainly, members of LCMS congregations from sea to shining sea, from the tropics to the tundra, can meet at a conference, convention, university chapel, at a sister congregation while vacationing - or train together for the ministry at both of our seminaries - and find unity and familiarity in these shared ceremonial forms, in our ordo. Of course, members of “modern worship” congregations will be lost at such events. They have been deracinated. They have had their heritage stolen from them. They don’t have the joy of joining with other Lutherans and knowing how to worship together, nor do they know the treasury of our hymns. Our ancient collects will sound foreign. Our bowing and crossing ourselves will seem “un-Lutheran” (assuming they themselves even know that they are, in fact, considered to be Lutheran, since many such congregations have purged away the “Lutheran” name).
No amount of “conversation” will change their minds. They want to change our minds. They want us to accept stage-based entertainment/performative worship to be the equivalent to our Divine Service at an altar. They also want us to see what we do as performative. They want to force us to give them our blessing. They want to compel us to share their view that altar and stage confess and teach the same thing. They want us to adopt a postmodern view of worship that says one need not say the black or do the red at all, that the leeway built into the authentic liturgy is not enough, and that whatever they do, no matter how ridiculous, we must embrace and confess it before the world - whether our consciences will permit it or not. They practice open communion in defiance against convention after convention, but then claim to be the real Lutherans because of their genealogies.
We may not be able to make the preening and performing emperor put on some clothing, but we can point out his nakedness, refuse to be bullied by him, and strengthen the bonds of those who want to walk authentically together, saying the black and doing the red - all in submission - not to worldly popularity, but to Him who is truly present on our altars.
Liturgy is not a performance. It is life lived and practiced according to the Word of God and our joyful, reverent confession that He miraculously dwells (tabernacles) with us!