A Walk Through the Liturgy: What’s Not There

Encore Post: In my last post about the liturgy, we talked at length about the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer being fulfilled by the forthcoming events of the Service of the Sacrament. However, I failed to mention anything about the doxological (giving of praise) ending of the Prayer. With this post I am going to attempt to talk more about the conclusion of the prayer in the context of the service as well as discuss something that is no longer found in our Divine Services: The Eucharistic Prayer.

If you noticed at least when following the 3rd Setting of the Divine Service, in the Lutheran Service Book, the petitions are pointed for chanting by the Pastor and the ending is to be sung by the congregation. Some congregations forego the chanting altogether and speak the Prayer aloud. We ought to remember that Matthew and Luke do not record such a conclusion, “For thine is Kingdom and the Power…” That addition, while a good and right addition, came out of the wisdom of the Church. For with those words, the Church confesses of the Father that He is able to bring all these petitions to actualization. And perhaps, that is why the whole congregation is encouraged to joyfully sing the conclusion. They confess with own voices the whole Church’s belief in the Father to whom the Pastor just prayed on the congregation’s collected behalf.

Now to the prayer that no longer shows up in Lutheran Divine Services: The Eucharistic Prayer. In the Early Church (and still found in The Roman Catholic Church) the Eucharistic Prayer came right on the heels of the Lord’s Prayer. Eucharist means “Thanksgiving” so in a way this prayer was a prayer of thanksgiving recounting and rehearsing the deeds of salvation the Lord has done on behalf of His people. Many of the ancient Eucharist prayers rehearse the stories of the Old Testament stretching into the story of Jesus and also including the night of Christ’s betrayal (the Greek word, παραδίδωμι, means betrayal as well as handing down a tradition), which as Jesus says should be remembered.

However, these Eucharistic Prayers began to get quite long, and unfortunately, poor theology crept into the prayers. With that came poor and bad practice from the priests and the believers. In particular, the Eucharistic Prayers because to weave in the idea that the priest was actually “re-sacrificing” Christ on the Altar as an “un-bloody” sacrifice. And this sacrifice was not just a sacrifice of thanksgiving, but a sacrifice given to God that was considered to be propitiatory (See Council of Trent Sess. XXII, can. iii; also see The Apology of the Augsburg Confession about this HERE.) Let us remember there is only one sacrifice for the propitiation for sins: Jesus Christ. Also inside the Eucharistic Prayer was the oblation and intercession for all living as well as all those dead (see a contemporary document concerning oblation and intercession HERE.)

On top of all that, the Words of our Lord were prone to get lost in the middle of the Eucharistic Prayers because of all the extra stuff that came after the recounting of the deeds of the Lord (oblation, intercession, etc.). With that, you should begin to see why Lutherans have shied away from the use of the Eucharistic Prayer within the Divine Service. However, there are some pieces of the concept which still are found in our Liturgy of the Sacrament. For instance, it is good and right that we should recall the works of God, and we in the Proper Preface. The Words of our Lord from the night of his betrayal take center stage, and next time will pick the service with those precious words of our Lord.

Rev. Jacob Hercamp 
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church 
La Grange, MO  

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