Manna

A Sunday in the Days of Martin Luther

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,

teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom,

singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,

with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”

Colossians 3:16

For today’s Bible Study I am not going to outline a whole Sunday liturgy or “order of service”.  There is a lot of that material available, but it’s not the point of what we’re studying.  We have spent a few weeks now understanding what Sunday means to us Christians, its New Testament beginnings on Easter Sunday, and also what it is not (what belongs as much in your homes as in the Sunday Divine Service).  What I want us to look at today is the rich diet of the Word that our Lutheran Fathers consumed.  We will compare that to our impoverished, self-inflicted famine of the Word.  And we will challenge ourselves to once again hear the admonition of St. Paul, “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly.”

Early Luther Is a Bit Disorganized

            Early in the Reformation (1523) Martin Luther started releasing an order for worship in the churches who were embracing the Gospel and leaving behind the superstitious and egregious practices that had developed over centuries under the Papacy.  It is remarkably conservative- keeping a lot and deleting only those things that clearly contradict the Gospel.  Luther’s writing about it is very disorganized (in my humble opinion) and perhaps that’s just Luther’s writing style.  He is not a modern, liturgical scholar.  He was a professor of the Bible trying his best to quickly address a real need.  So the initial attempts of Luther detail the liturgy quite well, but maybe not the ins and outs of a weekend like I want for this study.

One thing is crystal clear, however.  The Word of God was the most holy thing they had and was to be the chief focus.  Luther summarized the emphasis on learning the Word of God this way:

“Let everything be done so that the Word may have free course instead of the prattling and rattling that has been the rule up to now.  We can spare everything except the Word.  Again, we profit by nothing as much as by the Word.  For the whole Scripture shows that the Word should have free course among Christians.  And in Luke 10, Christ himself says, ‘one thing is needful,’ i.e., that Mary sit at the feet of Christ and hear his word daily.  This is the best part to choose and it shall not be taken away forever.  It is an eternal Word.  Everything else must pass away, no matter how much care and trouble it may give Martha.  God help us achieve this. Amen.”

            Since this is a Bible study, go read Luke 10:38-42.  Feeling a bit convicted?  I know I am and I’m a pastor for crying out loud!  Our hustle and bustle has planted us firmly in Martha’s camp and we’ve clung to the “Doctrine of Vocation” as if it could be pitted against the Christian duty to live in God’s Word, to be shaped by God’s Word, and to value God’s Word as the one thing we need more than all the rest of the mammon we pursue. 

Weekdays and Sundays in Wittenberg, Germany

            The people in Luther’s day were not sinless either, but let’s look at their daily and weekly diet and see what we might adopt.  In 1523 Luther indicates that every weekday (and Saturday was a work-day) they would gather for Matins at 4 or 5 in the morning!  Scripture would be read and a preacher would interpret part of the lesson.  The reading and preaching would last about a half hour and the whole service about an hour. After all, people needed to get to work!  This daily reading would- over time- cover the entire Bible.  Luther writes, “Thus Christian people will by daily training become proficient, skillful, and well versed in the Bible.”

But wait! There’s more! They would gather again at 5 or 6 in the evening for Vespers. A daily reading and preaching on the Old and New Testaments, what a daily dose!  Luther does say these daily services may not be attended by the whole congregation, but pastors and the school children ought to be there.  We know from other sources too that the Saturday evening Vespers was a particularly important service of preparation for the next morning. 

            Sunday would then have a lengthy Divine Service, the liturgy being a much longer and fuller version with mostly the same parts we use to this day.  The preaching would always be on the Gospel lesson and could go for an hour or longer.  Later that same day they would return for Vespers where the preacher would often preach on the Epistle lesson.  As we’ve seen before, they truly saw it as the Lord’s Day, not an hour or two. 

The Lord’s Supper would always be celebrated at the Sunday morning Divine Service.  Preaching & Communing, Word & Sacrament were held together.  The custom of dropping the Sacrament for a service of preaching alone did not creep into Lutheranism until at least 200 years after Luther.  Thanks be to God our Synod has been striving earnestly for more than a decade now to reverse that awful custom and restore the joy of weekly Communion in our churches!

A Little More Orderly

            As the Reformation spread it was clear to all that this work of providing Gospel-centered (Evangelical) Orders for Worship was necessary.  So Luther employed his own parish pastor, Rev. Dr. Johannes Bugenhagen, to get to it!  And boy did he ever!  While Luther the professor and public personality did an inestimable amount of work to spread the Gospel during the Reformation, we cannot forget men like Bugenhagen who did a lot of the ground work and perhaps did more to affect the daily and weekly spiritual life of everyday Germans.

            In 1528 (same time as Luther is preparing the Catechisms) Bugenhagen provided a “Church Order” for the city of Braunschweig.  His very lengthy discussion on the importance of Lutheran schools would be interesting for us to study too, but for now we’ll stick to his Sunday schedule. It’s presented much more orderly than Luther’s earlier scribblings.

            It paints a difficult picture for a different reason – there are more churches than pastors.  This is the case now in many of our rural villages where two churches share a pastor, rather than what we have (one church, two pastors, repeating the same Divine Service 2-3 times).  Bugenhagen makes time adjustments over the year to account for the changing amount of daylight, but here is what we see clearly.

            Even with a shortage of pastors, everyone basically doubling up, the churches expected to have a Saturday evening Vespers where the pastor would preach for about an hour on one of the texts of Scripture.  They would be back at 4 or 5 in the morning on Sunday for Matins and a sermon the Catechism (geared towards teaching the Ten Commandments, Apostles’ Creed, and Lord’s Prayer), and then they would have the Divine Service where the Gospel of the Day would be taught in the sermon. 

            Given the shortage of pastors the weekday preaching duties would be every other day in alternating parishes, but the sermons would still last about a half hour.  As for me, sitting here in the year 2020 I am floored by their preachers’ stamina, to be preaching literally every day, four times at two churches on Sunday.  They did not do this to meet some divine quota.  They did it because they knew “the one thing needful.”

What Have We Learned for Today?

            The need for God’s Word and the love for the Gospel and their people prompted these Reformers to establish daily reading and teaching of Scripture, with a full day on Sunday.  Their people were biblically illiterate, some truly illiterate, and the Bible was only beginning to be translated into their language.  They were a long way off from what we have- where every home has a Bible and lay people are literate- able to read.  Beyond that we have study Bibles and devotions and commentaries in the parish library.

            We have so much at our disposal and we treat it all as disposable.  We won’t be offering daily Matins at 4 or 5 in the morning.  Nor will we be offering daily Vespers at 5 or 6 in the evening.  I do hope and pray that you have morning and evening devotions in your home, reading Scripture and learning it well.  Does that happen?  I fail at it in my own home.  I know you do too.  Let each of us examine what things are dwelling in our home richly, extravagantly, and eating up all our time.  And let’s replace it with the Word of Christ, with the prayers of Matins and Vespers. 

            Besides that daily practice, let us examine our own approach to Sunday…SunDAY, not Sunday morning as if that’s the only time we can afford to give-up.  We are not giving-up anything.  It already belongs to our God and Lord, Jesus Christ.  It is the Lord’s Day (Rev. 1:10).  His Word is precious and holy- I hope we preachers will challenge ourselves to always preach it in a manner worthy of the honor it is due.  And I pray you hearers will truly set aside all other fleeting things to faithfully, weekly hear this Word and Preaching.  Take it home and discuss it.  Re-open the Epistle lesson at home Sunday evening and learn what it says for us and our application.