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"When God has his say, have confidence that his Word and sacraments bestow precisely what he says."
"Word and sacrament" can sound like a cliché when the onus falls on "word" at the expense of the sacraments as manifest through the rites of the liturgy. Yet I contend that "Word and sacrament" isn't a reference to the Bible and two sacraments. No, "Word and sacrament" ministry pertains to the full liturgical performance of the Word of God and its concrete and ceremonial manifestation in the full spectrum of sacraments. So far from being a Lutheran cliché, "Word and sacrament" is shorthand for Christ's self-giving in and through the liturgy.
Liturgical rites facilitate and articulate word and sacrament ministry. The liturgy also establishes a line of demarcation between true beliefs and wayward doctrines—compromise on the liturgy, and one risks hemorrhaging catechumens. When liturgical commitments disappear, congregants likely lose not only pure doctrine but also where that doctrine terminates: in the liturgical encounter with Jesus during the Divine Service. Here is where Prosper of Aquitaine's lex orandi, lex credendi, maxim finds unquestionable substantiation. The Latin means "the rule of prayer, [determines] the rule of belief." It may be expressed in common parlance as "the way we worship constitutes what we believe." Liturgical minimalism and purgation of the inherited rites of the Church empty confessional doctrines of their potency and may even displace them altogether. Worse still, the encounter with living Christ may give way to some foreign experience that aligns more closely with contemporary values than anything else.
For the Evangelical Catholic Reformers of Wittenberg, the things that were indifferent during Mass were neither the rites of the liturgy nor liturgical ceremonies, but supposedly binding ceremonies without which the Church of Rome said the ministry of the Word and sacraments were considered invalid. Luther and the Reformers said the Word of God and the sacraments were not dependent upon supposedly validating ceremonial acts or "sacramentals" for legitimacy or efficacy. That is because the pure preaching of the gospel and the sacraments administered according to the gospel was the ministry of Christ Jesus Himself. Christ determines justification. And Christ determines holy ministry, not ceremonies, not the papacy.
The Divine Liturgy is God engaged in self-giving action in the Church, through the Church, and for the Church.
The Reformers agreed that the ceremonies of traditionalism could change (and in some cases should change), but not the rites that bore the Bible's core liturgy of God's Word and sacraments. The rites were nonnegotiable items of the tradition. The tradition of Christ's action in and through the Church. Those rites could be more or less ceremonial for all intents and purposes. But to monumentalize and memorialize the works of God for the benefit of the people, as well as didactic and doxological purposes, nearly all of the ceremonies were to be retained, so long as they did not corrupt the Word of God or mislead the people in the placement of their faith. For this reason, the Augsburg Confession Article XXIV states:
Our churches are falsely accused of abolishing the Mass. In fact, the Mass is retained among us and celebrated with the greatest reverence. Almost all the customary ceremonies are also retained.
The Apology Article XXIV (written a year later) reiterates the same:
At the outset we must again make the preliminary statement that we do not abolish the Mass, but religiously maintain and defend it. For among us masses are celebrated every Lord's Day and on the other festivals, in which the Sacrament is offered to those who wish to use it, after they have been examined and absolved. And the usual public ceremonies are observed, the series of lessons, of prayers, vestments, and other like things.
The Reformers expressed an overriding concern to preserve the liturgy because the holy gospel was encased in it. In fact, the liturgy and the gospel were inseparable, for the Divine Liturgy delivered the gospel, that is, Christ and his benefits. The rites are the liturgy in action. The ceremonies adorn it with monumentalizing meaning and significance. When the rites are lost, the meaning is lost, and when the meaning is lost, so is the significance. Faithful Word and sacrament ministry is recognized through the manifestation of orthopraxy (that is, "right practice"), while in the real-world experience of Christianity, orthopraxy determines right belief. It's not just remembering the past but participating in the liturgical legacy of Christ that makes a confessional congregation.
Outside of these considerations of valued confessional identity and heritage, there are two basic biblical and theological reasons for retaining past orthodoxy for present and future missional endeavors. First, it is to be embraced and extolled because it is within theology-laden liturgy that God has been pleased to commit his promises to make his Word and sacraments efficacious for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. This should be enough, but both Scripture and history give us further confidence with a second reason: God keeps his Word. This means that not only does the liturgy perpetuate confessional belief, it does so by inherently promoting God's trustworthy character as one who delivers on his promises of self-giving. Thus, gospel content and gospel design constitute the Divine Liturgy. The Divine Liturgy is God engaged in self-giving action in the Church, through the Church, and for the Church.
To be sure, there is risk involved with prizing the liturgy in this way, but it is the risk of faith on our part, the risk of trusting the promise-making God to be promise-keeping in Christ through the very means he has ordained to accomplish his own redeeming and renewing purposes. But it is also this same risk embraced that the Scriptures and the Church dub "the wisdom of God" (cf. 1 Cor. 1:18–31). And since it is a matter of leaning on God's wisdom rather than our own cunning, all of our doubts and fears should be put to rest when it comes to prizing the liturgy as a gospel safebox. I can offer, therefore, no better advice than that which my own father confessor, Tom Winger, told me after a frustrating first year of ministry where I had been beset by the aforementioned missional dilemma: "Have confidence that in the liturgy God has his say," he advised, with wisdom inherited from Norman Nagel. "And when God has his say, have confidence that his Word and sacraments bestow precisely what he says." These words lifted the burden of performance-based ministry off of my shoulders and wholly freed me to love and shepherd God's people with confessional integrity while the Holy Spirit busied himself with saving sinners in need of grace and transforming them into the likeness of Christ.
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