Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Advent Midweek 2019 | In nomine Jesu.
We keep the liturgy of the ancient church for four reasons. The first is because we got it from our fathers. You don’t throw out what you got from your fathers, not unless you have a very good reason for doing it. Even Martin Luther, who led the great Reformation of the Christian Church and brought the Gospel back into the hearts of God’s people, changed only what needed to be changed to give God the glory. He kept everything else. The basic liturgy. It causes needless confusion and offense and division to throw out what we’ve always had. We’ve seen this in Lutheran circles in the least fifty years, who rode the wave of disrespect to parents in the sexual revolution and decided to disrespect our spiritual fathers by tossing out our heritage, so that we can now go into a Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod congregation and have no idea that it’s Lutheran, because we see no liturgy, no vestments, no hymnals, nothing that could let us know this is the church of our fathers and grandfathers. If it aint broke, don’t fix it. Bad grammar, wise words.
The second reason we keep the liturgy is because it’s beautiful. Nothing that has come in and tried to replace the liturgy – the praise bands, the relevant messages with casual clothes, the puppet shows, the extemporaneous prayers, the 7-11 praise songs – none of it can compare with the beauty of the liturgy we sing every Sunday. To hear the Gloria in excelsis sung in four parts is to hear how heaven sounds. The angels have to be constrained not to come down and sing with us. Our liturgy and hymns are the inheritance of Bach. People pay to hear choirs sing what we sing on a regular basis, what our children learn to sing at home.
The third reason is because the liturgy teaches us, and if it doesn’t do the perfect job, it does the best job. We will meet countless Christians in heaven who never heard a good sermon in their lives, or never understood a word their priest said, or never had the privilege of reading the Bible, countless Christians who were saved and came to believe in and love their Lord Jesus because of what the liturgy taught them, that He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, that He gives his body and blood for the forgiveness of sins, that He gives us peace and has mercy on us. These are the words of the liturgy that have taught and captured hearts for almost two thousand years. They taught and captured mine, my parents, my children, and God-willing, my grandchildren.
And finally, we keep the liturgy because it’s reverent. It respects who God is. He is holy. He deals with serious things. Not only with our world and all its affairs, but our death and our sin. His love for us isn’t flippant or fickle. It’s hard and enduring. We praise Him with gladness, absolutely. We pour out our hearts to Him. We thank Him for all He gives us. We involve our emotions in calling His mercy down on us and magnifying the Lord. But all this we do not forgetting ourselves, who we are and who He is, that we owe Him everything, that He is a Father whom we respect and a Husband whom we adore.
So there are the four reasons for keeping the liturgy. Because our fathers gave it to us, because it’s beautiful, because it teaches us God’s Word, and because it keeps our worship of God reverent. Now, why did I just say all this? What does it have to do with Advent, or Christmas, or angels?
Everything, actually. The angels, who make their appearance in Scripture especially around the birth of our Lord Jesus, they teach us all these things. They teach us the value of learning from our fathers, of beauty, of teaching Christ, of paying reverence to our God.
You won’t find a greater example of reverence than the seraphim, who cover their feet and their faces before God – think of that, these holy angels, who have nothing to be ashamed of, no sin to be found guilty of, still with total awe before this God, they hide their feet and faces. Here’s our example for reverence and awe. But these angels aren’t like slaves, they’re not cringing beneath this God. No, they love Him. They adore Him. They speak His praises, and that always means confessing Him, preaching Him, teaching Him. So as they praise this God in reverence, they teach what He is and what He does. We sing their words every Sunday. Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of Sabaoth – the three in One, three holies, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one Lord, heaven and earth are full of His glory. Not just heaven, but earth, is full of His glory. St. John says these words are fulfilled in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus, in Christmas. Earth is filled with God’s glory when God becomes a man, which is why the angels again sing at His birth, “Glory to God in the highest and peace, goodwill to men.” Because here is God’s glory, to become one of us, humble Himself to become a helpless baby, live for us, suffer for us, die for us, to draw us to Himself and forgive us our sins and make us children of our God. That’s God’s glory. And the angels sang of it there in Isaiah’s day. It’s still the object of their wonder, that God would so love us. It’s why an angel takes a burning coal from the altar to touch Isaiah’s lips and speak to him the forgiveness of sins.
“Woe is me!” Isaiah says, “For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” So we begin each service confessing our sins, as we come into the presence of the King, the Lord of Hosts. And the angels teach us not to be afraid. To be reverent, yes, in awe, yes, but unafraid to approach Him, unashamed to stand before the Holy God and live. “Here, this has touched your lips, your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” No one approaches God without this. And we have it. Our Lord pronounces us forgiven. He touches our lips with his body and blood taken from the altar. Our sin is atoned for, our guilt is taken away by the altar of His cross, where He suffered the fire of God’s wrath in love for us.
This is all a thing of beauty. Not just the theology of it, but how it’s presented. The seraphim join in chorus in singing the Holy, Holy, Holy. The solo of the angel’s voice to the shepherds is joined by a multitude of angels singing the Gloria in excelsis, what we echo here at church by the pastor singing Glory be to God on high, and the congregation joining together in response. With the angels reverence and God’s Word and beauty all meld together in seamless symphony.
Because they preach beauty. They preach Christ. Gabriel says Jesus will inherit the Kingdom of his father David, and so speaks to honoring our parents, a thing Jesus would do perfectly in His life on this earth. But Gabriel and every other angel that appears in the New Testament has nothing else to say but to speak of Jesus. He is the Son of the Highest. He is the promised Christ. He will rule forever. He will be called Jesus because he will save His people from His sins. He is the glory of God on earth and in heaven, His goodwill toward us. He brings peace between us and God.
And this is by the far the greatest lesson the angels teach us. It sums up what is valuable about tradition, what is beauty, what is truth, what is reverence. To preach Christ for us. Immanuel. They won’t shut up about it. And so we won’t either. As the angels’ words and songs are all marked by their preaching of Christ, so it goes with the Church. She is the Church because she preaches Christ and she preaches Christ because she is the Church. He, His blood and righteousness, this is what our fathers have handed down to us, this is what we consider beauty, our glorious dress, this is the truth that sets us free, this is what commands our reverence and awe of our wonderful God. The angels teach us this. And we thank God for their example.
In nomine Jesu.