At the Mass this morning...

...Pastor used the LSB updated version of what used to be the General Prayer in TLH, p. 5 (i.e., the one from the Common Service). This prayer praises God “especially that Thou hast preserved unto us in their purity Thy saving Word and the sacred ordinances of Thy house.” But in the new version, that is changed to “Your saving Word and the holy sacraments.” It kind of arrested my attention this morning with a question:

Is it right to hear “the sacred ordinances of Thy house” as being “the holy sacraments”? Certainly, it is true that that is how the Reformed speak of what we call the Sacraments, and maybe it was resistance to that Reformed lingo that led to the change. But today, as Pastor prayed, it occurred to me that the term wasn’t being used by the Reformed, but by Lutherans, and in our ears it would almost certainly have had a broader application. 

We praise You, Lord, for preserving for us Your saving Word and the sacred ordinances of your house: certainly Holy Baptism and the Holy Eucharist, but also the private or corporate Absolution, Holy Ordination, Holy Matrimony, Confirmation, and even the liturgies attending the burial of Christians, not to mention Matins and Vespers and the catechism liturgy. Maybe the stuff that the Book of Common Prayer calls “sacramentals.”

Are these not ALL sacred ordinances of God’s house, purified from all non-Scriptural or Gospel obscuring elements? I think limiting the term “ordinances” in Lutheran use to what we’d strictly call sacraments, while no doubt well-intentioned, was a mistake. 

Yes, that’s the odd sort of thought that passes through the brain for a minute during prayer, before I am recalled to the duty of actually attending to the intercession, so that I can speak faith’s “amen” at the conclusion.