Theology Today - Vol 21, No. 3 - October 1964 - CRITICSCORNER

361 - Is the New "Service" Reformed?

Is the New "Service" Reformed?
By James H. Nichols

For two full generations the Reformed churches of the English-speaking world have been producing service-books for the use of ministers. The new provisional "Service for the Lord's Day" of the joint Committee of the United and Southern Presbyterians moves on toward a book of common worship to be put in the hands of the people.* This is a rejection of our "non-liturgical" Puritan phase, and it brings us closer to our Reformation origins when every major Reformed church had and used such a people's book. In fact, such books were a Reformation invention; they had not been possible in Roman Catholic times prior to the use of printing. And they were only laid aside in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries under the influence of Puritan and pietist ideas.

It is doubtful whether anything new has been said either pro or con on the subject of "set" versus "free" prayers since the seventeenth century. Each has its value in certain circumstances; insistence on the exclusive use of either is doctrinaire absolutism. The forces which are today making Reformation precedents seem more useful than the Puritan are partly sociological, partly theo-

* The joint Committee of the United Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. and the Presbyterian Church, U.S. (Southern) has distributed the proposed "Service" to ministers and churches in both denominations for study, comment, and criticism. Presumably further reports will be made at the two respective General Assemblies in May, 1965. Copies of the "Service for the Lord's Day" may be secured by writing the Office of the Stated Clerk, Witherspoon Bldg., Philadelphia 7, Pa., or 341 Ponce de Leon Ave., N.E., Atlanta 8, Ga.

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logical. But they are widespread. Some pastors and sessions will know that they should not urge the new "Service for the Lord's Day" on their people, but many others feel the need of something of the sort. The provision for an experimental use of the new order gives occasion for a discussion of issues involved in the re-ordering of Reformed worship generally.

Weekly Communion. Perhaps the most startling feature of the "Service for the Lord's Day" to most readers is its recommendation that Holy Communion be a part of every Lord's Day service.

The prevailing custom in American Reformed churches is probably a quarterly Communion. Ministers and people are so used to a preaching service without communion as the weekly norm that most would be surprised to learn that our preaching order is in origin and structure a "dry mass." In this sense the new Service makes explicit the original conception and restores the Calvinistic unity of Word and Sacrament for the regular service.

But this proposed restoration of the regular association of Word and Sacrament is set forth in the "Service" in a highly un-Reformed fashion. It is done without reference to the equally Reformed insistence as the integrity of worship and witness and in such a way as to threaten the Reformed doctrine of the Lord's Supper. Calvin would have been much more concerned to have denominational guide-lines on preparation and qualifications for Communion, on nurture, instruction and discipline, than on the verbal formulations of the prayers. The deepest motive, in fact, for the famed Calvinist discipline was not ethical, but the concern to maintain the approach to the Lord's Supper as one of repentance, reverence and holy awe. Of all this there is hardly a trace remaining in the new Service.

It is notorious that instruction in sacramental doctrine is generally inadequate among us, in communicants' classes and more widely. The bulk of the people in many of our congregations are what would have been called catechumens in the early church. If our boards of education produce satisfactory materials on this subject, they are not generally known or used. Our pastors are uncertain and hazy on the theology of the sacraments. To be a communicant member in good standing in most of our churches does not, unfortunately, mean that one is prepared to approach the Lord's Table in the sense con-

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templated in our traditional confessions and service-books. And if, in this situation, without further attention to instruction, nurture, and methods of preparation, our people are to be brought weekly to the Lord's Table, will we not undermine our very doctrine of the Lord's Supper? Such a procedure is not conceivable with the understanding of the Supper taught in our confessions; it implies, at most, a merely memorialist view.

We may share the aspiration of the joint Committee on Worship for the restoration of the unity of Word and Sacrament and yet doubt whether it can be achieved with as little cost as merely to adopt their proposal. A form of worship cannot be evaluated without reference to the character of the congregations to use it. Where there is as much unfinished business as with us in the theological understanding of the Communion and devotional preparation for it, a weekly celebration seems a desperately risky expedient.

A monthly norm might be wiser with most of our congregations. This is considerably more frequent than present practice, but still leaves opportunity for special interpretation and preparation. There would be value to having the full service in the hands of the people and before the preacher, as in the proposed order, and in many churches a further reminder could be ceremonially conveyed by leading the prayers from behind the Table rather than from the pulpit. After all, why have the Table there if it is to be used but four times a year?

The Church Year and Lectionary. A second striking change from Reformed practice generally is the recommended adoption of a full church year with designated Bible readings and collects.

Some systematic ordering of the readings from Scripture, and consequently of the themes for preaching, would be a marked improvement on the current practice of "occasional" preaching with no system whatever. When the readings are generally known in advance, they make possible an effective coördination both of the educational program of the congregation and of the private Scripture reading of laymen with the preacher's schedule, and also make possible an integrity of anthems with the rest of the service, which is almost completely lacking in most of our congregations now. Topical preaching on a catch-as-catch-can basis sacrifices all these ways of strength-

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ening and integrating congregational worship in the whole life of the church.

But the use of the church year lectionary is not the only means of accomplishing these ends, nor is it the system traditional with the Reformed churches. Two systems emerged in the sixteenth century. The north German Lutherans and the Anglicans took over the medieval church year. The south German Lutherans and the Reformed churches generally returned to the patristic pattern of combining the five or six chief festival days of the church year with a system of continuous expository preaching through major sections of Scripture. This is the presupposition of the series of expository sermons, as on Genesis, Isaiah, John, which we have on the one hand from an Augustine or a Chrysostom and on the other, from a Calvin and a Zwingli. Such was the system contemplated in the original Westminster Directory, where the preacher was instructed to begin the reading one week where he had left off at the last. It was Puritanism and revivalism again which undermined this Reformed system and left us with the current custom of unorganized topical preaching.

The two systems are not as different in effect as it might seem at first sight. If one preached "in course" from one of the four Gospels, beginning in Advent and continuing through Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost, the net result might be very close to what would be found by following the medieval church-year for this period. And a Reformed preacher would surely work through one of the Gospels very frequently in his schedule. The lectionary of the joint Committee in effect supplies a harmony of the Gospels instead. One system or the other would seem to offer a highly commendable schedule for the half of the year from December into May. All the main festivals also fall into this period.

But what of the other six months? Is it wise to commit the denomination to an anthology of Scripture readings, organized on some committee's doctrinal or thematic scheme and necessarily omitting significant parts of Scripture? There is no one compelling rationale for the medieval style of church year here, as there is from Advent to Pentecost. There are rival proposals of Trinity season, Pentecost season, Kingdomtide, God the Father, and others. One might as well preach systematically through the Heidelberg Catechism with its related Scriptures, as some Reformed churches used to do on Sun-

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day afternoons. Or why not leave this half-year free with a strong recommendation to preachers to include in it an expository series of perhaps eight to ten Sundays on some other book than one of the Gospels? Such a series will do more justice to the proportions and dynamic movement of a biblical book and can be more readily coordinated with Bible study in the educational program of the church. Most materials for Bible study are better suited for continuous analysis than for someone's anthology of short readings. Our whole modern approach to the Bible and the training of our preachers in exegesis in seminary prepares us more naturally for continuous exposition than for a thematic anthology. At a time of renewed interest in biblical study, why abandon completely the tradition of continuous exposition which of all modern communions we have inherited from the Fathers? Can we not have the best of both worlds, of the church year from Advent to Pentecost and of continuous exposition with some occasional preaching for the rest of the year?

If we do not commit ourselves to the Committee's anthology, this will also leave free the "collect of the day." In Calvin's liturgy this was one of the two free prayers of the service, because its function was to lift up the themes of the reading and preaching of the day, and it would consequently vary with the latter. In the Committee's service the rubric should then indicate what the purpose of this prayer is and the basis of its integration into the movement of the whole.

The Presbyterian joint Committee is surely pulling our collective leg with its suggestion of three readings for a one-hour service. Some ancient services had as many as seven, but they put the morning to it. Either the Committee should frankly campaign for a service of an hour and one half, for which there is no doubt a case, or they should rearrange their readings or rubrics to provide a normal two for each service. Perhaps a third might be suggested for an evening or week-day service. And for two readings it is hard to improve on Knox's system of an Old Testament and a New Testament lection.

And are we to be delivered over into the hands of the ecclesiastical milliners and the Ladies Altar Guilds with the "colors of the season"? Just what Congregation of Rites is going to settle the proprieties here? In the absence of any intrinsic Christian symbolism a strong ecclesiastical authority will be needed to rule arbitrarily

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among the alternative allegorical options. Surely these are borrowed feathers.

Spoken Responses. The Joint Committee, in its attention to the people's portion of the service, has rather reversed the Reformed tradition by giving a minimum of attention to the sung praise, and by displaying a strong predilection for short spoken responses. Something may be said about each in turn.

Short spoken responses have rarely been enthusiastically received in the Reformed tradition. This was one of the chief points at issue in the "Frankfurt Troubles" among the English refugees in the 1550's. It was a recurrent grievance of the Puritans against the Book of Common Prayer. This style of prayer is conspicuously absent from the Westminster Directory.

The ground of this dislike, one suspects, is a concern for congregational participation. Unison speaking or reading is not an easy exercise for people of diverse cultural backgrounds, especially with a rapid alternation of voices. Singing is something else, where tempo and entrances are sharply defined and the melody assists the memory. In the Reformed tradition the peoples' prayers and praise have been generally sung. For long they were almost entirely constituted of Psalms, and there are many testimonies that the sung praise was the most moving and best loved portion of Reformed worship. It was the distinctive vehicle of congregational participation. Zwingli's experiment in antiphonal recitation by speaking choirs failed and the Reformed congregation has generally been a singing rather than a speaking congregation ever since.

But the joint Committee has set forth a service with ten or a dozen versicles as brief spoken prayers for the congregation, every one different and with a different cue. In substance they are, on the whole, appropriate and fitting. But cumulatively they make for a complicated, elaborate, and fussy service. The Committee declares by way of introduction that it is chiefly concerned for the basic structure of its order, which is an excellent one. But this structure is so overlaid with decorative detail that its virtues may not be recognized or appreciated. Many congregations will be so preoccupied with watching the text for their next cue that they will scarcely perceive what the structure is.

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Perhaps the Joint Committee has musical settings for these versicles in reserve, along with its "collects for the day." There are in many hymnals, of course, settings for the "Lord, have mercy upon us," "O Lamb of God�. Glory be to the Father," "Glory be to God on high," "Holy, holy, holy . . . ., " Blessed be he who comes�. and still other congregational responses. If all this were done, we might have a sung liturgy much like the Lutheran, which provides more congregational participation than the Anglican just by this means. But that would be a very different kind of service from what our people are used to. It is most unlikely that they would take to it with one great leap.

The alternative to such a full sung service would be to reduce sharply the number of brief spoken responses, perhaps by half. The essentials will be preserved and their order will be more apparent if the minister simply says, "Let us pray" or "Let us sing Hymn N." Similarly one congregational interpolation in the Eucharistic Prayer is enough. After the congregational "Holy, holy, holy," one would prefer to give oneself entirely to the meaning of the prayer as led by the minister and not have to watch for the cue for the response "Blessed be he who comes in the name of the Lord." (That response is of dubious devotional value in any case.) Again at the end of the congregational communion it is better for the minister to break into the meditation of the people with a prayer of thanks than to have them watching for a cue for "Bless the Lord, O my soul." That last text might well come in the full Psalm as an alternative to the Song of Simeon, as the Reformers often used it. The effort to recover the meaning of the ancient kiss of peace, on the other hand, seems ineffective if it is to be simply verbal. One might better try the handclasp throughout the congregation, as with the Church of South India.

In general the Committee would probably serve the church better, and better commend the structure of its service, if it reduced the spoken responses, concentrated on the congregational spoken "Amens" and an improvement of the sung prayer.

Sung Prayer. Calvin treated sung prayer together with spoken prayer. From the point of view of the worshipping congregation the former is the more important. But in the new Service, the Committee has virtually excused itself from considering the sung prayer, lavishing all its loving interest on spoken responses.

Nothing is so characteristic of Reformed worship, so embedded in itshistory, itspersecutions, its biographies, its devotional life, as the Psalter. No other tradition in all Christian history, save perhaps that of Benedictine monasticism, has ever so used and loved the Psalms. For long generations the Reformed used hardly anything else in sung prayer. The metrical Psalter, in particular, was the distinctive mark of Reformed worship, in French, in German, in Dutch, in Italian, in Hungarian, in English, in Scots. Great portionsof it were known by heart and came spontaneously to the minds and lips of laymen as well as pastors in private prayer. Reformed sevice books of the sixteenth century were editions of the Psalter with the psoken prayers of the service and the catechism.

What is left of the Psalter in the new Serivce? There are three optional rubrics for a Psalm, after the call to worship, the declaration of pardon, and the Old tEstament reading respectively. Perhaps it is too much to ask of the Committee to expect them to solve our present problem with the Psalter. We have been left with no version of the Psalter suitable for congregational sung praise. Here and there a congregation with strong musical resources chants the Psalms effectively. But this is an archaic idiom and not generally available. The metrical Psalter has left a few surviving representatives in our hymnals, but as a collection it has become as archaic as plain chant. Responsive reading is probably the best solution of the ghree for most congregations. But surely at least once in every Reformed service there should be a prescribed Psalm, recognizable as such, whether read or sung or chanted. In the proposed Service it would probably best appear as a Psalm of thanksgiving after the declaration of pardon and followed by the "Glory be to the Father."

It is also a little surprising that the Committee has excused itself from a serious consideration of hymns and anthems as sung prayer. Surely no one who worships in our churches supposed that ministers have no need of help here! As the variable portions of the peoples' prayers (the "propers"), hymns, as successors to the Psalms, constitute the larger portion of the liturgy. If the Committee had treated the spoken prayers as casually as they have the sung ones they sould simply have noted in the appropriate places, "Here a prayer may be said," and let it go at that. Perhaps if the text of the hymns had been written out as prayers the Committee would have been led to lay down some criteria for discrimination. Surely that is a good test for a pastor to use when choosing the hymns before the service.

It is true that the Service does designate the first hymn as one of praise, and the second as expressing thanksgiving for redemption. Why could they not have suggested have a dozen hymns in each case as model prayers for these steps of the Service? Or why not half a dozen specific hymns as alternatives to the Song of Simeon? The hymn after the sermon and Creed, one assumes, should have some relation to the Scripture and the sermon theeemes, but if so, why should this not be stated in a rubric? What are some model communion hymns to follow the offertory? It is at least as important to help ministers with the type and quality of hymns as it is to suggest model intercessions or confessions. Much of what is sung in our churches will not bear close examination for its appropriateness as an act of public prayer. There are many who will testify to feeling cheated in services of worship by carelessly chosen hymns and Psalms as often as by inadequately prepared sermons.

The Reformed Type. One generalizing comment raises some delicate questions. How far can and should such a new Service seek to preserve the distinctive flavor of its Reformed heritage? Where does one become sectarian, or antiquarian? Rather tentatively the judgment might be ventured and the new Service is not Reformed enough, that it gives an impression of a rather rootless eclecticism, that where it is questionably antiquarian, as it is now and then, it is so not in a Reformed way.

Is there not a certain propriety in affirming our community first of all with the other Reformed churches of the world by the use of some common traditions in worship? This need not be exclusive or sectarian. The basic structure of the new service is not one to offend Anglicans or Lutherans at least. But when three prayers of confession are suggested, why should not one ofthem be that prayer of confession (perhaps abbreviated) which the French Reformed Church has treasured and used as Calvin's for 400 years, which was adopted by Knox for the Scots, and which found its way through the Palatinate liturgy into the services of the Reformed Dutch and the

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Hungarians? When two prayers of thanksgiving after communion are supplied, why should not one at least be the Bucer-Calvin prayer carried to Scotland by Knox? Why throw away without discussion our own tradition of continuous biblical exposition as the principle of ordering the calendar? Why abandon the Reformed concern for the relation of worship, nurture, and discipline? Must we give up completely on the Psalms as our peculiar heritage? Should the Presbyterian tradition of a reading of the Words of Institution as Christ's warrant for the service be left up to "the custom and preference of each congregation"? Should not the Commandments, or at least our Lord's Summary of the Law, find its accustomed place in our service? No doubt we have much to learn from sister communions and the Fathers, but do we need to be ashamed of so much of our own heritage?