I am also curious about Lutherans celebrating the Christ Mass. Martin Luther disagreed about the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation - i.e., the belief that the wine and bread become the actual blood and body of Christ -do Lutherans still observe the Mass with the qualification that it is only symbolic?
Lutherans don't accept the theory/doctrine of Transubstantiation, but we do believe that it is the true and literal body and blood of Christ. The idea that the Lord's Supper is "only symbolic" was an idea that began with Ulrich Zwingli, for which reason Luther regarded it impossible to accept "the Swiss" (e.g. the Swiss Reformers), in fact Luther is quoted as having said, "I would sooner drink blood with the pope than mere wine with the Swiss".
It's important to understand that the Lutheran rejection of Transubstantiation has more to do with a Lutheran problem with trying to explain the mystery of the Eucharist than the precise details of Transubstantiation itself. Transubstantiation was a scholastic idea that was used to explain how the bread and the wine became the body and blood of Christ; it explains this by applying Aristotelian philosophical language. Namely that the substance changes while the accidents--the outward forms--remain.
In distinction Lutheranism simply doesn't explain how the Mystery of the Eucharist happens, only that it does; and we confess this on account of Christ's Word, "This is My body...this is My blood".
BTW, if one is defining catholic in its literal sense of universal, then all true followers of Christ are part of the catholic church. Many make the claim of apostolic, of which I put no stock in.
That's true enough, but historical catholicity is more than just the Church invisible, it is also the Church visible. This is why Lutherans understood the importance of keeping the historic practices of the Church catholic rather than re-inventing the wheel; not because all those practices were necessary, but because they continued to identify us as being part of the historic continuum of Christian catholicity going right back to the apostles.
Sola Scriptura, as understood by the Evangelical (Lutheran) Reformers, was not the idea that everything the Church does must be found in the pages of Scripture, it was that Scripture alone served as the final arbiter of true Christian faith.
Or to use a kind of analogy:
The radical wing of the Reformation removed the drawer from the dresser and emptied the whole thing out and then put back only what it believed to be necessary.
Lutherans opened the drawer and only removed what it believed to be errant innovation, keeping everything else.
The Reformation wasn't about tearing the old house down to rebuild it, but taking a broom to the old house because the old house was--and is--worth it.
-CryptoLutheran
Two separate holidays. And if we don't get our holiday off from work, we should just celebrate at whatever time of day we can, even if it is a midnight worhip service and love feast afterward. The more I think about it, the more I like it.
