The Lutheran Way: Liturgical Freedom Tempered by Love

It’s been quite a run since I was called to head up LCMS World Relief and Human Care in 2001 and then elected president in 2010. I’ve probably been to 60 countries around the world and worshiped with Lutherans in almost every one. The languages have been many. Finnish is a particularly unique and extremely difficult language. I was in a two-hour service and only recognized two words: “Pontius Pilatus.” Ha! And the same has occurred in Africa, Asia, India and many places.

However, I always know exactly what’s going on in the service and can fully participate. Why? All follow the order of the liturgy. There are different hymns, different types of music, traditional and regional liturgical settings, some different customs, local practices with respect to Confession and Absolution or taking of offerings (some of our African partners dance up the aisle as they bring their offerings), and sometimes multiple sermons. But I always know when Confession and Absolution is happening, when the Creed is confessed, when the Words of Institution are being spoken, when the Lord’s Prayer is prayed, when the Aaronic blessing is given. That’s the way it should be within the LCMS: great freedom, but with the anchors to the service always there.

During the Reformation, the Lutheran church retained the liturgical structure of the ancient church. In the LCMS, following in this tradition, we’ve sought to exercise freedom tempered by love. After all, we confess nothing less than that we are the ancient church catholic gone right!

Our beautiful Augsburg Confession takes exactly this stance. “For the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree about the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments. It is not necessary that human traditions, that is, rites or ceremonies instituted by men, should be the same everywhere. As Paul says, ‘One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all’” (AC VII 2–4). Yet there are many admonitions in the same document toward unity and uniform practices. “It is lawful for bishops, or pastors, to make ordinances so that things will be done orderly in the Church, but not to teach that we merit grace or make satisfactions for sins. Consciences are not bound” (AC XXVIII 53).

Our Book of Concord simply followed Luther. Martin Luther wrote:

For those who devise and ordain universal customs and orders get so wrapped up in them that they make them into dictatorial laws opposed to the freedom of faith. But those who ordain and establish nothing succeed only in creating as many factions as there are heads, to the detriment of that Christian harmony [Einträchtigkeit] and unity of which St. Paul and St. Peter so frequently write. (AE 53:46)

The LCMS Constitution gets the spirit of Luther and the Augsburg Confession right when it states that one objective of the Synod is to “encourage congregations to strive for uniformity in church practice, but also to develop an appreciation of a variety of responsible practices and customs which are in harmony with our common profession of faith” (LCMS Constitution III 7).

This is freedom tempered by love. Luther found this in the New Testament and particularly in St. Paul: “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another” (Gal. 5:13–15). First Corinthians 9:19 was also important to Luther: “For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all.”

In his little tract “The Freedom of a Christian,” Luther asserted:

A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.

A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all. (AE 31:344)

The teaching of the free justification of the sinner before God, based not on works of man, and certainly not on any man-made rites or ceremonies, frees the Christian from any compulsion or requirement to follow rules to obtain salvation. But insofar as a person is indeed a Christian, he/she will seek to love his/her neighbor in every way. That may mean suppressing my own individual opinions and preferences in matters not commanded by God, to accommodate and serve my neighbor in love.

I once summed it up this way:

Luther’s liturgical program was bold and liberal (excising those elements contrary to the Gospel in the Order of Mass and Communion; rendering a completely new setting in text and tone, in the vernacular), yet decidedly [small “c”] catholic and conservative in maintaining the structure of the ancient liturgy. In fully recognizing the inherent freedom in the lion’s share of matters liturgical (“everything in the mass up to the Creed is ours, free and not prescribed by God” [AE 53:25]), Luther advocated a freedom limited by love, which serves the neighbor. The freedom of the individual submits in love to the needs of the neighbor. The result is unity and uniformity, provided no universal demands are made as though matters not mandated by God’s Word are true divine service (i.e., by divine mandate and allegedly meriting grace). For then consciences would be bound where God Himself has not bound them. Within prescribed boundaries of uniformity, the bishop or pastor had the right of liturgical discretion. It was in the course of the events and negotiations at Augsburg that the confessional contours were defined and Luther’s liturgical convictions became the public doctrine of the church.[1]

And this genius still marks orthodox Lutherans and the LCMS today.

—Pastor Matthew C. Harrison

[1] 1 Preface to Martin Chemnitz and Jacob Andreae, Chemnitz’s Works, Vol. 9: Church Order (St. Louis, Concordia Publishing House, 2015), xxvi.