Thoughts on the Divine Service
19. The Sursum Corda, etc.
Dear friends,
In the genre of Swedish Lutheran Catechetical Fiction—which, you might guess, is not particularly immense, the greatest jewel is The Hammer of God by Bo Giertz. In the second book of the novel, a young pastor has fallen under the influence of Pietism, which teaches that Christianity is far more about one’s love for the Lord than about the Lord’s Word for us in Scripture. As he meets his supervising bishop for the first time, he excitedly tells the grizzled veteran something that I heard many times among my Evangelical friends in high school: “I have given Jesus my heart!”
His superior’s response is a show-stopper. With a face as “solemn as the grave,” he replies, “Do you consider that something to give Him?”
He goes on to explain, in part, “The heart is a rusty old can on a junk heap. A fine birthday gift, indeed! But a wonderful Lord passes by, and has mercy on the wretched tin can, sticks His walking cane through it and rescues it from the junk pile and takes it home with Him. That is how it is.”
The young pastor is perplexed. We must note, however, that part of his confusion isn’t due to Pietism, but that we see the heart differently than Scripture does. We see the heart as the seat of emotion, as in, “I feel joy deep in my heart.” The ancients saw the intestines as the seat of emotion, and this remains in phrases like “I have a gut feeling.” Owing perhaps to the poor sales of Valentine’s Day cards featuring a duodenum on the cover, feelings were moved to the heart. For the ancients and Scripture, however, the heart is the seat of character, not emotion.
If you run through what the Bible says about your heart and your character, it’s not encouraging. The heart is naturally hardened against God, full of envy, strife, deceit, wickedness, etc. Calling it a “rusty tin can” is actually pretty kind.
(As a side note, this is why it’s important to understand that the heart is the seat of character, not emotion: the problem is not that you feel sinful, but that you are sinful. Get that wrong, and you’ll join those who say, “As long as I feel good about myself, God must feel good about me too!” That’s a faith-killer.)
The reason I bring this up is that we’re starting to look at the Service of the Sacrament, which begins with a dialog. I’ve already written about the first exchange, “The Lord be with you,” since that salutation also accompanies the Collect of the Day. The second exchange is this:
Pastor: “Lift up your hearts!”
Congregation: “We lift them [up] to the Lord!”
Note that you don’t respond to “Lift up your hearts” with, “Do you consider that to be something to lift up in the presence of God?”, and there must be a reason for this. Either our liturgy has fallen prey to Swedish Pietism, or else something has happened.
Something has happened! We’ve mentioned hearts earlier in the service, at least in Divine Services 3 and 5: “Beloved in the Lord, let us draw near with a true heart and confess our sins unto God our Father, beseeching Him in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to grant us forgiveness.”
How does a deceitful, wicked heart become a true heart? That’s the work of the Holy Spirit, kindly moving us to repentance and the honest confession that we are sinful and unclean. He moves us to call upon God for mercy and forgiveness, and so the Lord forgives us by His Word in the Absolution.
Since that Service of Confession, your forgiven heart has been getting a steady dose of grace and faith throughout the Service of the Word. All of that is building up to the Lord’s Supper, receiving Jesus’ very body and blood.
If you’re going to draw that near to Jesus, you want to do so as one forgiven and cleansed of sin. When the pastor calls out, “Lift up your hearts” and you respond, “We lift them up to the Lord!”, it’s a joyful confession of faith. We’re declaring that our hearts are cleansed by Christ, and that by His grace we are ready to enter His presence, unafraid, for even more forgiveness, life and salvation.
It’s no wonder that the third exchange is one of thanks:
Pastor: “Let us give thanks to the Lord, our God!”
Congregation: “It is meet [proper] and right so to do!”, or “It is right to give Him thanks and praise!”
Why is it meet and right to give God thanks and praise? Because it’s only by His grace that our hearts are clean. It’s only by His sacrifice that we can draw near to Him. There are all sorts of facets of God’s work for our salvation, and we’ll talk a bit about that with the Proper Preface next week. In the meantime, rejoice that, for Jesus’ sake, God has created a clean heart in you.
A few nerdy notes:
• “Lift up your hearts” is called the Sursum Corda, Latin for “up with your hearts!”
• No one is quite sure about the origin of the Sursum Corda in Scripture. The top two candidates are Lamentations 3:41, where penitent exiles in Babylon declare, “Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven;” and Colossians 3:1, where St. Paul exhorts, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.” What joy that Christ, who sits at the right hand of God, is also about to visit in, with and under bread and wine!
• Is the greeting card industry really responsible for redefining the heart? Not at all. But you can bet that intestinal picture-cards wouldn’t be big sellers, even on Valentine’s Day. A picture of an actual heart wouldn’t help much, either.