a Lutheran’s Confessions

Rev. Paul McCain cites the following quote from Rev. Wilhelm Loehe, whom Dr. CFW Walther described as the true spiritual father of our Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. I share the quote with you because it expresses my heart.

“I declare myself for the Lutheran Church for the sake of the treasure. The Lutheran Church lacks many things I would like to see in it, but it has something that lets it be the true church despite all shortcomings, and for the sake of which I find it easy and beautiful to be faithful to it in its outward misery. Do you know what I am talking about? I am talking about its utterly pure confession and its pure doctrine in conformity with its confession. Who has ever proved that its confession is in error in any doctrinal article? When speaking of its confession, I am not only talking about the Augsburg Confession, but about the entire Book of Concord from the Augsburg Confession all the way to the Formula of Concord. You do not know these writings, dear reader, otherwise you would agree with me. Get to know them and you will agree. What is more beautiful, lovely, powerful, and lively than Luther’s catechisms? What is more catholic than the Augsburg Confession and its Apology? What is more thoughtful and bold than the Smalcald Articles? And what is slandered more wrongfully than the beautiful Formula of Concord in its clean but mild definition of all teachings? Dear reader, I repeat, you do not know your Church’s confessions of faith. Get to know them in order to know why you adhere to your church.”

Pliny the Younger, Governor of the Roman Province of Bithynia in Asia Minor, wrote to the Emperor Trajan in AD 113 about numerous topics, including the worship of Christians in his province. His correspondence is an important source of our knowledge about the worship of the early Christian community.
For example, Pliny stated that Christians would assemble “on a fixed day (i.e. Sunday) before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god.”
Note that they sang responsively as we do in worship (antiphonal singing), they sang to Christ (He was the focus of their worship, as He is the focus of ours), and they considered Him Divine (as do we).
Other sources inform us that the early Christians sang chant music predominantly if not exclusively (inherited from the Jewish synagogue).
The music of the early Christian community is not mandatory for us, but it’s important to know that much of what we do in Lutheran worship goes back to the early church, and why shouldn’t it? The early Christians and their Lutheran heirs share the same focus in worship—Jesus Christ crucified and risen.