Why Liturgy?

by Rev. William M. Cwirla

For this Simul issue of Higher Things Magazine, I’m going to take a step back from discussing the details of the liturgy to ask a very basic question: Why liturgy? Why do we have orders of service and rites and forms of worship handed down to us? Why hymnals and service folders? Why assigned readings and hymns?

The most basic answer is because we are “simul”—simultaneously old and new, sinner and saint—in Adam and in Christ. Were we entirely new creatures in Christ, free of “old Adam,” we would need no liturgy. Our worship would be spontaneous, free, Spirit-led, pure and holy. We would spontaneously join the angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven in their endless trishagion (“Holy, holy, holy”) and their eternal praise to the Lamb who was slain but lives (see Revelation 4-5). We would need no hymnal, no service folder, no screens. We would not need someone to say, “Let us pray” or “Come, let us worship the Lord.” We would know what to say, pray, and sing, and our minds and hearts would be completely attuned to the Son by the Spirit giving glory to the Father.

But then comes the “simul.” Though we are now seated with Christ in the heavenly realm as saints (Ephesians 2:6), we haven’t quite arrived at our resurrection. We walk by faith and not by sight. We hear but we cannot see. We live in the in-between time tension of the “now” and the “not yet.” We are now in Christ, but we are not yet risen from the dead. Old Adam still clings to us with his own notions of how we should worship, and for that reason alone, we need the liturgy.

The liturgy is an exercise in sanctified selfdiscipline, in putting to death the sinful flesh with its desires so that the new you in Christ can worship in Spirit and truth. Old Adam would like to worship his way. He would like to sing the songs he likes and sing about what he does. He loves to sing about I, me, and we and he relishes to talk to God about what he thinks is important—parading his piety before God and others.

Don’t think for a moment that Old Adam isn’t religious. He is very religious, but not in a good way. He uses religion to justify himself before God, often at the expense of others. He’s the Pharisee who comes to the temple in order to boast over what he has done and to thank God he isn’t like that horrible tax collector. He loves to pray on the street corner and boast about his charity and fasting. The last thing Old Adam wants is to be justified as a sinner.

The liturgy is an exercise in humility and obedience, two words that our sinful nature hates. I’ve been on sabbatical for the last three months and have been free to worship at different congregations each Sunday. The good part is that I get to sit with my bride in the pew and be a hearer instead of a preacher, a worshipper rather than a presider. The bad part is I don’t get to pick the hymns or decide what to preach. I have to set my will and ego aside at the church door and sing the hymns that are given to me and listen to the Word that is preached to me and worship the way that congregation worships. I have no control over those things.

It’s humbling not to be in control and to be obedient to the will of another. We learn to give for the sake of others. We learn to consider the needs of those around us before our own needs. We learn the way of Christ who humbled Himself in obedience even to death so that He might be exalted and we might be exalted in Him (Philippians 2:1-11).

The liturgy is also an exercise in honoring father and mother under the Fourth Commandment. We didn’t invent the liturgy. It was handed down to us and taught to us by our fathers and mothers in the faith. And they didn’t invent it either, but it was taught to them by their fathers and mothers. When we worship together with our father and mothers, our grandfathers and grandmothers in the faith, we honor them. We aren’t the first to believe in Jesus and, should the Lord continue to delay, we won’t be the last.

The “kid” in us always wants to have our own way of doing things, like the kid’s menu at a restaurant where we don’t like the adult food. The kid’s menu teaches us that we don’t have to eat what the adults eat, that we’re special and can always have what we like. The liturgy teaches us the opposite. It enables us to move from the milk of newborns to the solid food of mature men and women in Christ. To put it bluntly, the liturgy helps us to grow up and stop being spiritual babies.

I know much of this sounds like Law, especially in a third-use, self-disciplined way, and that’s true. Liturgy is an exercise in the third use of the Law, the Christian self-discipline of doing things Christ’s way instead of our way. But the liturgy is also Gospel, delivering the good news gifts of Christ to the baptized children of God to nourish and sustain them in their walk of repentance and faith. God not only kills the sinner, He also raises the saint. And nothing delights the saint in Christ more than to hear the words of our Good Shepherd Jesus and to eat at the table He prepares for us in the face of our enemies: sin, death, and the devil.

Why the liturgy? Because it’s good for us “simul” Christians in our baptismal walk of daily dying to self and rising to Christ. Thank God for the liturgy!

Rev. William M. Cwirla is the pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Hacienda Heights, California, as well as a president emeritus of Higher Things.