By Dr. Arthur A. Just, Jr.
The relation between liturgy and culture is a burning issue in our Synod today. Ever since the debate over the three hymnals raged in the late seventies and early eighties, Lutherans have been in a muddle about liturgy. Soon, however, the debate over which worship book to use became a smoke screen for a deeper concern, namely does any worship book address the culture in which we live and move and have our being? Questions of "relevance" and "cultural suitability" were suddenly on the table. The issues involved are the Lutheran expression of the biblical content in our liturgies, the effect of culture upon that content, and the liturgical style we choose as the means for communicating that substance.

Many people today are driving an artificial wedge between those who want to maintain a traditional form of Lutheran liturgy and those who want liturgy to speak to this day and age. These concerns are not mutually exclusive. There are some who desire a nostalgic 16th century liturgy and could care less whether it speaks to today's world. There are also some who want to discard everything Lutheran in favor of an American Protestant liturgy. The majority of us, however, want Lutheran liturgy in a modern context. The issue is not traditional liturgy on the one hand, and contemporary liturgy on the other. Rather, the question is how Lutheran liturgy is both ancient and contemporary, and how to best proclaim that to this generation. In recent times too much of our liturgy has been given away to a culture that is hostile and antithetical to Lutheran theology. The reason for this loss is not what many people think it is-there is no great malevolence here, no crazed society for the death of the liturgy. These are sincere pastors who want to save souls by appealing to people in a way that won't "turn them off."

However, many do not realize that Lutheran worship is its own culture, distinct from the pop culture and the evangelical culture of Christianity in our country today. The church must develop and maintain its own cultural language that reflects the values and structures of the Scriptures and not of the current culture. This church language can only be shaped by a biblical theology which affirms the real presence of Jesus Christ in worship and our belief that this presence binds the culture together as a community. The context that shapes our distinct Lutheran ethos is Scripture, theology, and history. Local circumstance is secondary. Traditionally, this Lutheran culture is liturgical, theological, and counter- cultural.

Liturgical ministers need to know the historical context of their tradition, particularly the context of biblical history. What impact does the worship of the Old and New Testaments, of Israel and the Church, have on our Lutheran culture today? The eschatological context of worship accents the continuity of our liturgy from generation to generation. The ancient eucharistic prayers, with their long recital of God's great act of salvation in biblical and ecclesiastical history, proclaimed the presence of the whole Church at the liturgy-past, present, and future. The great witnesses of the faith are present in the assembly because Christ is present in the liturgy.

Therefore, we do not worship alone in this time and this place and this language. We worship with every generation of the Church in one unified liturgy where Jesus Christ and heaven itself are present in God's Word and Sacrament. For liturgy to become associated with a particular culture in a particular time or place would seriously hinder the Church's expression of the eschatological character of its worship. In every age, liturgy bespeaks a trans-cultural and trans-temporal message. The faithful worship with a liturgy they did not invent but which they have made their own-the liturgy of the fathers, grandfathers, great- grandfathers, and so on. It is not insignificant that Jesus sang Isaiah 6 and Psalm 118 (which now make up the Sanctus) in the synagogue in Nazareth. For the people of God to join Jesus and all of heaven in that ancient hymn before it receives him in, with, and under bread and wine forms them into his body, the Church. If our liturgies are too contemporary and omit the historical witness, they risk becoming sectarian, isolationist, and incapable of communicating the Gospel which knows no cultural boundaries. The liturgy, bound to one locale and one people, ceases to proclaim Christ for all people in all times and at all places and becomes by definition sectarian.

The Lutheran liturgical context imposes a grave theological responsibility upon liturgists as they lead the people of God in worship. The first allegiance in mediating between liturgy and culture is faithfulness to the biblical witness and the Lutheran theological tradition that preserves that witness in the liturgy. Any liturgical adaptation must take into account the tradition and the structure of the liturgy. The various theological influences that exert pressure upon us in our peculiar cultural context, particularly the theological impact of Evangelicalism, can no longer be ignored. Pastors, musicians, and lay people need to immerse themselves in our Lutheran liturgical heritage. Ignorance of that context will result in liturgical adaptations that are unaware of the impact of liturgical changes upon the theological substance of liturgy. A tremendous amount of literature exists to assist our understanding of the biblical context of liturgy, and the influence of history, time, structure, theology, missions, and eschatology upon the liturgy.

Nathan Mitchell, who writes "The Amen Corner" in Worship, chose the topic "Liturgy and Culture" for his first column as a commentator on liturgy and related matters. Mitchell describes the two positions in this way:

Rival camps have emerged-the one insisting that "culture should be adapted liturgy," the other complaining that liturgists are snobbish cultural imperialists who seek to impose Eurocentric values and visions of the world on an American culture that is essentially pluralistic. The "adapt culture to liturgy" camp, invoking the work of anthropologists like the late Victor Turner, views ritual as basically a mechanism of continuity designed to consolidate a group's identity and world view in the face of forces that threaten to subvert them....The "adapt liturgy to culture" camp, on the other hand, argues that ritual is capable of strategies beyond those of "continuity maintenance" or "resistance to change." Indeed, ritual is not intrinsically concerned with either embracing or resisting change, but with "creative socialization," that is, with the way groups perceive, interpret and manipulate their social milieu so as to express the values by which the events and emotions of their lives are ordered and reordered. Inculturation is a sign of maturity and authenticity in a liturgy, while its opposite signals rituals that are immature, brittle or moribund.
Both these camps-the "culture critical" and the "culture friendly"-reflect laudable concerns.

Mitchell's comments, of course, reflect the discussion in the Roman Catholic communion, but he clearly describes the two camps in our own fellowship. The "culture critical" camp insists that what is wrong is not the liturgy but those who do the liturgy and their theology. The problems are less liturgical and structural and more theological and catechetical. What is wrong is not the liturgy but the culture. Instead of asking "what's wrong with the liturgy," they ask "what's wrong with the culture," concentrating on the transformation of the culture through liturgy, not vice-a-versa. For them, the goal of good liturgy is always the transforming of culture by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Culture, untransformed by liturgy, in effect destroys liturgy. The Church becomes indistinguishable from the culture and the Gospel is lost. The theology of the cross is summoned as a warning against such liturgies. Rather, the liturgy should help the Church show the world how to live under the cross. The "culture critical" camp does not ignore the cultural context of the liturgy, but for them, the liturgyn conforms the world to the Gospel, not the Gospel to the world.

Liturgy transforms culture and is the primary context in which evangelism takes place. Liturgy is like us-an earthen vessel that bears, by God's grace, the presence of the Redeemer. There is an historic liturgy, but in every generation that historic liturgy recognizes and responds to the cultural context. To ignore that context is to become a liturgical fundamentalist and stand condemned as a museum keeper of a dead tradition. The liturgical structures of Word and Sacrament transcend all cultures and create our Lutheran theology of worship, which is its own culture. Culture and cultus are derived from the same root word. Culture does not create liturgy but is formed by it. The Gospel, within culture to transform culture, shapes our Lutheran liturgy where we remember God's great justifying acts of salvation of the past, and he remembers us.

The whole life of the Church must be viewed through the liturgy. "The law of worshiping founds the law of believing" still holds true for the "culture critical" camp. The worship of the Lutheran Church, with its own liturgical tradition and its unique cultural and historical context, will be different from those around us. Some imitation will take place, but at the end of the day, we are Lutherans, not Roman Catholics or Anglicans or Southern Baptists or Pentecostals.

Is there is an alternative between the "culture friendly" and "culture critical" camps that will allow us to be faithful to our liturgical tradition, while at the same time contemporary in our expressions? Yes! Lutherans have a liturgical tradition that mediates between the two extremes and still maintains a liturgical ethos that is incarnational and sacramental. Luther restored the historic liturgy in a relatively simple setting, especially when compared to other liturgical traditions. Lutheran liturgy is liturgical without being ceremonial, timeless without being inaccessible. Instead of seeking after greener liturgical pastures, we should look at our own tradition, learn it, and discover its riches.

Endnotes

1. N. Mitchell, "Liturgy and Culture," Worship 65:4 (July 1991): 364.

Originally published in Lutheran Worship Notes, Issue 27, 1993.