Calvary Lutheran Church

Main Themes of the Reformation: Worship and Sacraments

Grace and peace are yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our blessed Lord and Savior. Amen.

 Hebrews 12:28-29

“Since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful,

and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our ‘God is a consuming fire.’”

Dear Christian Friends:

            I quote from the sainted Pastor Kurt Eggert, the former project director of the red hymnal you see in front of you,

“Worship is the most important thing that you can do in your life. God created us for worship. He created us to praise his name and to sound out his glory. Ultimately, that is our destiny and our purpose in life and in eternity. Just as the Lord created the sun to shine and the fish to swim and the birds to fly and fire to burn so he created us to give glory to him, to praise the Lord. We are to be God’s living monument to his goodness, to his wisdom, to his mercy and to his love.”

We find similar statements on the vital importance of worship in Scripture. The psalmist wrote, “Praise the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens. . . . Let everything that has breath praise the Lord” (Psalm 150:1,9). David wrote about what our attitude should be toward worship, “I rejoiced with those who said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord’” (Psalm 122:1). And the Lord himself is obviously pleased when we come together to worship him. Jesus said, “Where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 18:20). It makes you sort of glad you came here this morning, doesn’t it?

            Since worship is so central in the Christian life, how we worship is equally as important as that we worship. And that is why worship at the time of the Reformation became a hot topic, in fact, we might say that the fourth

MAIN THEME OF THE REFORMATION—WORSHP AND THE SACRAMENTS.

          Luther defined worship this way, “To hear God speak and to speak to God who hears.” He elaborated a bit more in his Torgau sermon in 1544:

“(Worship is) that we assemble together at one time and place, that we hear God’s Word and lay before God our own needs and those of other groups, and that we lift to heaven strong, earnest prayer, and together celebrate and praise God’s blessings with thanksgiving.”

For that to happen, Luther had to change the worship life of the church in his day. He did so in three ways.

            First, he put worship back into the hands of the people. He did that by having the people worship in their own language. I’ve never worshiped in a church where the language was anything other than English, but I can’t imagine doing so and getting anything out of it. The language of the worship services in Luther’s day was Latin. Except for the clergy, few people understood Latin. So the clergy rather than the congregation was doing the worshipping. The priests were acting on behalf of the people while the people were mostly just observing. Even the singing in the church was taken over by the choirs. So why would people even come to worship? Because the church taught ex opera operato, in other words, just by being there they were performing a good work. It didn’t matter what you did once you got there. Just being there was all that was necessary.

            Luther said, “No.” Worship is for the people, not for the professionals standing up there and performing. And what you do once you got there does matter. In our text the writer to the Hebrews wrote that worship that was acceptable to God is done in reverence and awe, after all, God is like a consuming fire. Worship is like appearing before a judge in a courtroom where we are accused of a crime. He is to be treated with respect and honor, knowing that our freedom and very lives are in his hands. Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, “A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth” (John 4:23). “In spirit” means your whole self is involved in worship—body mind and spirit; and “in truth” means your worship is based on the truths of God’s Word.

            And that was the second way Luther changed worship. The liturgy, the hymns, the sermon were to be based on God’s truths. After all, when Mary sat at Jesus’ feet listening to his word, Jesus said that she was doing the “one thing needful” in life. God’s Word is what we need the most. In Luther’s day much of God’s Word had been replaced with unchristian fables and legends of the saints and martyrs. This was also what constituted much of the prayer life and choral songs. Oh, the Word was still present, in fact, long sections of the Bible were faithfully read from the lectern, which was a good thing, but it was done at the expense of the sermon.

            Someone once said, “Luther’s greatest single contribution to liturgy and worship was “his recovery of the role of the sermon in the service.” Just reading the Word without interpreting or applying it, Luther considered, an injustice. The sermon is not just an add-on or an interruption in the service, a time to nap or visit the restroom. Luther made the sermon a high point in the service. After all, Paul wrote, “God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe” (1 Corinthians 1:21). Yes, people are being saved during a sermon, based on God’s Word.

            Unlike some of the other Protestant reformers like Zwingli in Zurich and Calvin in Geneva, Luther did not reject the Roman liturgical form of worship. They felt that if the Catholics did it, it must be wrong and done away with. Luther did not see why he should eliminate the rituals, the processionals, the creeds, the vestments, the altars, the candles, and crosses if they could be used in a godly way. Luther once said, “One cannot live in the church of God without ceremonies” that is, visual aids which create a sense of reverence.

            Zwingli went so far as to ban all Latin choral songs and parts singing. Calvin banished instrumental music and tolerated only the singing of inspired Psalm in worship. Both removed organs from churches, dismantling pipe organs in England and Scotland including even the organs of Westminster Abby.            Luther went in the opposite direction. To Luther, music and the gospel were a wedding made in heaven. Luther wrote, “Next to the Word of God the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world?”

            Luther composed 36 German hymns and encouraged others to compose hymns as well. 27 of them are found in our hymnal. Many of the contemporary hymns and Christian songs today are subjective and based on how I feel toward God. Luther’s hymns are more objective and based on the gospel’s message of Christ’s redemptive work for us, like Luther’s Christmas hymn, “From heaven above to earth I come to bear good news to every home,” or his mission hymn, “May God bestow on us his grace,” or, of course, his Reformation hymn, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” Thanks to Luther, the Lutheran Church to this day is or should be known as the singing church. Yes, much of what we do in worship today goes back to Luther and the Reformation.

            But thirdly, based on God’s Word Luther changed the understanding of the sacraments. It has been said that Luther restored the sacraments to their proper position. According to the Roman Church baptism, for example, only took away original sin that you were born with, and those sins committed prior to baptism. The sins after baptism had to be removed by the Catholic sacrament of penance or doing something to make up for the sin.

            The Reformed bodies, in their zeal to remove everything Catholic, lost much of the comfort of baptism by looking upon it as a mere ceremony of commitment or devotion on the part of the baptized. Calvin taught that baptism was merely a sign that the Holy Spirit has already worked faith in the person prior to the use of the sacrament. The Anabaptist and Zwickau prophets were the first to deny infant baptism entirely, and insisted that you had to be an adult who had already come to faith to be baptized.

            Luther viewed baptism as the Lord’s going away present at the time of his ascension. It was a gift of divine origin, and so we would expect it to be of major significance, after all, God does not give little gifts. The gifts in baptism are colossal—forgiveness of sins, spiritual life of faith either created or strengthened, and the promise of eternal salvation. Peter told the crowd on Pentecost, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2:38). The promise is for you and for our children.

            When someone comes away from Baptism, he is without sin and completely guiltless. It is not just his original sin or the sins committed up to baptism that are washed clean, but all sins that person would ever commit in his lifetime. When Christ died on the cross, he took all our sins and the sins of the whole world into the grave with him. And where there is forgiveness of sins there is eternal salvation. Peter compared the waters of the flood that saved Noah and his family to the waters of baptism when he wrote, “Baptism now saves you” (1 Peter 3:20,21).  

            Finally, Luther changed worship in the church with a correct understanding of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. He did so in two ways. The first was to give to the people both the bread and the wine. In Luther’s day the Church had removed the wine from the people and gave them only the bread. It was a matter of expediency. Wine is subject to spillage. And since the Catholic concept of transubstantiation meant that the wine had been turned into the blood of Christ, you didn’t want Christ’s blood on the clothing of the people or on the floor of the church to be trampled on. So only the priest drank the wine. But since the Bible does not pinpoint the exact moment when the body and blood became truly present, we can assume that the bread remains bread and wine remains wine until both are consumed by the communicant, after which we know that we have received the body and blood of the Lord.  

            But the greatest contribution of Luther to the Lord’s Supper was to remove the false teaching that it was a sacrifice that the people did for God, as though Jesus offered a bloody sacrifice on the cross, and now I am offering an unbloody sacrifice that merits my forgiveness. So the Lord’s Supper became a good work on my part. Luther instead returned the Lord’s Supper to a true sacrament where God promises and seals his forgiveness to his people. It is Christ’s personal seal of forgiveness and salvation.

            In doing so Luther abolished all the so-called hedge masses and private masses that were offered by the priest alone without anyone else participating. They were sacrifices on behalf of the living and even the dead for their benefit. In Luther’s day a priest by the name of Spalatin boasted that the number of masses performed in his one church in one year averaged 11,000.

            Luther also eliminated what is called the Canon, long prayers before the mass that were spoken in Latin which prepared the priest to become worthy of offering Christ’ body and blood. These prayers were robed in secrecy that had a long tradition going back to the first century. And embedded in these prayers were the words of institution which the priest only whispered under his breath so that no one could hear. It was only by the ringing of the bell that the people knew that the moment had come when the bread and wine had been turned into the body and blood. Luther called the Canon “that abominable concoction drawn from everyone’s sewer and cesspool.” The reason for the severity of his language is that by the words of the canon, the sacrament had again been turned into a sacrifice.

            So on Christmas Day, 1521, while Luther was still at the Wartburg, his good friend, Karlstade, offered the Lord’s Supper in both kinds, bread and wine, in the Castle Church in Wittenberg, the same church where Luther nailed his 95-Theses. Two thousand people packed the church, “the whole town” according to one reporter. Karlstadt officiated in a plain black robe. He recited the mass in Latin but when he came to the words of institution he switched to German. The people for the first time heard in a loud and clear voice the truth that the bread is the body of the Lord and the cup the blood of the Lord. The communicants were directed to take the consecrated bread into their own hands. One communicant so trembled at the thought of holding God in his hands that he dropped the bread and refused to pick it up again. He was later reminded that when Jesus distributed the Lord’s Supper to his disciples he put it in their hands with the words, “Take and eat, this is my body.”

            Luther again had to fight the Reformed theologians who when too far and eliminated the real presence of the body and blood to simply a representation of the body and blood. It was called the “Great Controversy of the Protestants.” But Luther based the real presence on the Word and promises of Christ himself, “This is my body, this is my blood.” 

So the Reformation changed both our worship practices and our understanding of the sacraments. It gave worship back to the people and made the sacraments something that God does for us and not what we do for God. So may our worship continue to be the most important thing we do in our lives. And may we always worship the Lord and receive his sacraments with reverence and awe. 



May we pray.

Dear Lord Jesus, you have given us the privilege to worship you in our everyday lives but especially in this place with our fellow believers. Make our worship the most important thing we do in our lives. Make this hour a time of renewal and refreshment for our souls through your Word and Sacraments. Thank you for reforming your Church in the days of Martin Luther that we might fully participate in our worship life with our whole body, mind, and spirit. And by your mercy always view your sacrament for what they are: precious gifts from you of forgiveness of sins, spiritual life of faith, and the promise of eternal salvation. Dear Lord, how we love to worship you. Amen.