Basic principles of Reformed worship
Emmanuel and St Columba’s 21.x.17
We need to begin at the beginning and ask why we worship at all before we ask how we worship.
One classical Reformed answer to the question ‘Why worship?’ is given in the Westminster Shorter Catechism of 1647 – ‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him for ever.’ Women too, of course, and children. ‘Man’ was synonymous then with humanity. It is a profound theological statement. We worship because God made us to be worshipping creatures, and we are never more fully ourselves than when we are worshipping. If we are to believe Ephesians, the early Christians understood themselves to have been created ‘…according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we who were the first to set our eyes on Christ might live for the praise of his glory.’ (Eph 1:12). We are made for worship
Second, the Reformed tradition argues, we worship because God commands us to worship. The first four commandments concern worship – ‘you shall have no other gods before me’, ‘you shall not make for yourself an idol’, ‘you shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord’, ‘remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy’. The reformers took that very seriously, and we will return to that.
The reasons why we worship lead easily to an exploration of how we worship. For the Reformed the guiding principle is that we worship according to Scripture, by which they meant not a static literalism but that Christian worship should be in obedience to God’s Word as revealed in Scripture. Two examples. First of all, and actually determinative of what we might call Reformed culture, idolatry, and then the ingredients of Christian worship
(a) idolatry
In 1522, whilst Luther was safely ensconced in protective custody in the Wartburg, his erstwhile colleague at Wittenberg, Andreas Karlstadt was let off the leash. Historians now appreciate that Karlstadt was one of the first theorists of radicalism – those who thought that the law of God should take precedence over the laws of princes, and were eventually to evolve into Mennonites, Baptists and Independents of many hues. In 1522 Karlstadt published On the abolition of images. Commenting on the ten commandments he said, 'I say to you...', Karlstadt commented in his (1522), 'that God has forbidden images with no less diligence than killing, stealing, adultery and the like.'[1]
He went on to say that doing nothing about idolatry was like letting children play with knives. The law of God forbad it, and if the state refused to act, good Christians needed to take the law into their own hands and get out their hammers and malets. He was quite clear that the guidance of Scripture should govern how we worship.
That thought was echoed a year later by a learned Swiss reformer called Leo Judt preaching in St Peter’s Church in Zurich.A distinguished Hebraist, and he noticed what the Western church had largely forgotten, namely that there were two ways of ordering the ten commandments. Western Christians, on the authority of Augustine and others, treated the condemnation of idolatry as a sub clause of the first commandment, but Judaism and the Eastern church treated it as a separate commandment. Judt was convinced that Augustine was wrong, and the Reformed followed him and renumbered the commandments. Lutherans and Catholics maintained the Augustinian ordering. Thanks to Judt, and in common with the Eastern Church, the second commandment became ‘You shall not make for yourself an idol.’
Idolatry was a big deal for the Swiss. It deserved its own commandment. Zwingli picked up the theme in his preaching at the Grossmunster, and eventually, with the authority of the city council the '...statues, paintings, murals, altar decorations, votive lamps and carved choir stalls' that had shaped the spirituality of centuries were swept away to be replaced by white-washed walls, a liturgy centred on the reading of Scripture and preaching and a plain wooden table around which the Lord’s Supper was celebrated.[2]
In his new big book on Protestants Alec Ryrie says they have two characteristics. First, they are passionate lovers of God, and second they are brilliant at arguing, and they have never stopped. This was the first big argument, and it was about how we worship. Luther kicked Karlstadt out of Wittenberg and slammed on the brakes. Lutheran liturgy was to become far more conservative, cherishing its medieval inheritance, wary of Swiss radicalism. Artistically, architecturally, liturgically, the reforming river was now to flow in two contrasting directions, Lutheran and Reformed.
For the Reformed, the shape of worship had to be determined by Scripture. ‘You shall not make for yourself an idol’. Our forebears weren’t Philistines – the majority were from the most highly educated, cultivated and civilised elite. They weren’t anti-art. What they objected to was art in church as they saw it in defiance of the very words of God himself. Karlstadt captured it beautifully when he wrote . ‘…all the pictures on earth put together cannot give you one tiny sigh towards God.’ The mystery, majesty and wonder of God was so far beyond the reach of the intellect, the scope of the emotions and the depth of human imagination, that even the finest art was rendered inarticulate and incapable. The unbridgeable gap between God and humanity could only be bridged by God’s love and grace, made manifest in Christ, witnessed in Scripture, made real in preaching and sacraments. As Karlstadt put it, ‘The Word of God is spiritual, and it alone is useful to the believer'.'[3] And that was the big cultural shift – from a spirituality of the eye to a spirituality of the ear.
But the Reformed were clear, worship had to be ‘according to Scripture’. The Reformed were very well aware that Scripture nowhere provides a blueprint order of service, but they did think that worship should always be guided by Scriptural principles. The Basle Reformer, John Oecolampadius taught, for example, that Christian worship should be simple, without pomp and splendid ceremony because Jesus taught a simple, unpretentious way of life.
(b) The ingredients of Christian worship
The mass had been celebrated in the same way across Europe for the best part of a millennium. There was, of course, a little local variety, but the movement of the liturgy towards the consecration of the host, when the sacring bell rang and people fell to their knees in adoration of God made real and present in wheaten disc, was universal. Once that was swept away, once the authority of bishops and the teaching of the magisterium had been set aside, how was worship to be conducted? The Reformers faced a tabula rasa at once energising and terrifying.
One of the first to attempt liturgical reform was Martin Bucer (1491-1551) in Strasbourg. His work was to be deeply influential. Calvin, who spent three gloriously happy years working alongside him between 1538-41 before he returned to his life’s work in Geneva, acknowledged his indebtedness to Bucer in his own liturgical work. Bucer’s hand can also be discerned in the history of the BCP because Thomas Cranmer engineered his appointment as Regius Professor of Divinity here in 1550. Sadly he died within a year and was buried in Great St Mary’s.
Bucer and Calvin both found Acts 2:42 a key text – ‘They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and prayer.’ They derived four ingredients of worship from Acts 2 – the reading and teaching of Scripture, fellowship and almsgiving, the breaking of bread, and prayer and praise. And it was of course obvious that worship had to offered in the name of Christ.
It is worth noting in passing two other Scriptural principles which grew in significance for the Reformed. The first was Paul’s long discussion in 1 Corinthians 14 about worship when he pleads with his eager, charismatic and unruly flock that ‘God is a God not of disorder but of peace’ and that ‘…all things should be done decently and in order.’ The Reformed were to be big on order and seemliness.
Paradoxically though, they found an equally important principle in Paul’s second letter to Corinth (2 Cor 3:17) - ‘Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.’ Many who have written about our tradition point to that axis of freedom and order as a critical and creative tension at the heart of our worship.
Those are some of the principles which our Reformed ancestors deemed important:
· We worship because God commands us to worship
· We must worship as God intends us to worship, without idols and with ears attuned to the God who comes to us through his Word
· The diet of worship should contain the reading/preaching of the Word, fellowship and almsgiving, holy communion, and prayer / praise
· Orderliness and freedom are both important and held in tension
Having established those principles, let’s think about our own worship. I’ll come back to communion later, but what I’d like you to do now is think about a normal service of the Word and talk me through an order of service.
Check to see if the ingredients are there.
What I’d like us to do now is to take a few snapshots of Reformed worship across the centuries before we come back to reflect on our own worship.
(a) Zwingli in Zurich (1525)
In 1525 he set out the ‘normal’ Sunday service of the Word. It drew on Ulrich Surgant’s service of pronus or pronaus, based on the medieval service of prone from his Manuale Curatorum (1502). It was intended to be a separate preaching service before Mass[4]. The structure was:
Announcement of Text
Lord’s Prayer
Ave Maria
Sermon
Bidding Prayer and remembrance of the departed
Lord’s Prayer
Ave Maria
Apostles’ Creed
Decalogue
General confession
Absolution
Zwingli adapted the model, centering on the reading of Scripture and the sermon. There was no music. Interestingly, he preserved a Hail Mary, the commemoration of the dead, and the ending with the Confession and Pardon because he thought you could not confess until you had heard the promises of the gospel proclaimed in the sermon.[5] His principal innovation was to reject the lectionary, preferring the ancient method of lectio continua.
Studies of Reformed worship tend to begin with Calvin, the acceptable face of Reformed liturgy, but they omit Zwingli at their peril. A generation before Calvin, he created a pattern which has been remarkably influential, not least in the separation of the ministry of the Word and the eucharist, the frequency of celebration, lectio continua and the use of the institution narrative as a warrant.
(b) Bucer in Strasbourg (1539)
Bucer was a fine liturgist and a dedicated peacemaker who tried (and failed) to reconcile the Lutheran and Swiss reformations. In this service he draws on Zwingli, and a German mass of 1524 by the reformer Diebold Schwarz whose liturgical reform predated Luther’s.
The Liturgy of the Word
[from the communion table]
"In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit"
Call to Confession
Prayer of Confession
Word of Comfort [1 Timothy 15 or other passage]
Absolution
Psalm or hymn, and sometimes the Gloria in excelsis
[singing was unaccompanied, led by the Precentor]
Prayer for Illumination
Metrical Psalm or Ten Commandments
[from the pulpit]
Scripture reading
Sermon
The Liturgy of the Table
[celebrated weekly in the Cathedral, monthly elsewhere]
[from the communion table]
Collection of Alms
The Apostles' Creed [sung]
Intercession and Consecration Prayer [ending with the Lord's Prayer]
Institution and Fraction
Communion [while psalm is sung]
Post-communion Prayer
Aaronic Benediction [6]
If Zwingli had pushed the theology of the primacy of Scripture to its logical conclusion by separating Word and eucharist, Bucer restored liturgical sanity by holding Word and Sacrament together within the broad historical structure of the mass. So, even when the Sacrament was not celebrated, its form was retained, reminding the faithful that the central act of Christian worship was the holy communion. Music was restored through singing, and movement too as the people went forward and gathered around the Table to receive.
(c) Calvin in Geneva (1542)
This was to be Calvin’s model – ‘I took the form of Strasbourg, and borrowed the greater part of it.’[7]. Back in Geneva in 1542 he produced a simplified version of the rite, La forme des Prières. As ever compromises were necessary with the magistracy – the absolution became an assurance of pardon, the sung Decalogue disappeared as rapidly as it came, and the institution narrative was placed before the prayer of consecration as a Scriptural warrant. [8]
Liturgy of the Word
Scripture sentence
Confession of sins
Metrical psalm
Collect for illumination
Scripture lesson
Liturgy of the Faithful
Intercessions
Lord’s Prayer
Apostles’ Creed (and preparation of the elements)
Scriptural Warrant
Exhortation
Prayer of consecration
Fraction
Delivery
Communion (psalm sung, or Scripture read)
Post communion prayer
Aaronic blessing
(italics = taken from Calvin’s Strasbourg rite)
Just as in Strasbourg, the service of the Word remains an ante-communion, a silent reminder of what should be. Just as in Strasbourg, music was cherished, as Calvin used the talents of Louis Bourgeois and Claude Goudimel (Palestina’s teacher) and the poetic ability of Clement Marot to create a psalm-singing people.