A Sticking Question, Part II

This is sort of a follow up to a previous post

I have been attempting to read up some on Federal Vision (FV) recently.  I have tried to do this in the past, but with little success.  I was hearing bad things about the theology and the people “leading” the movement.  Being PCA didn’t really help matters and having Paul Fowler as a professor in seminary didn’t help much either (If you don’t know, he was the chairman of the PCA study committee).  The FVers seemed to be radically changing the categories that I was accustomed to, as well as the definitions of theological terms that I was familiar with.  I saw nothing good of it for a while.  I was considering joining the PCA when the controversy first broke out.  I remember sitting in a presbytery meeting as Joseph Pipa was promoting a book that resulted from the colloquium at Knox Theological Seminary.  His specific target at the presbytery meeting was the issue of paedocommunion.  There was a lot of rhetoric being thrown around (even I could that at the time).  I eagerly waited on the PCA study committee report to come out.  When it came out, I was severely disappointed.  Anyone could tell that the report was pure BS (no offense to Paul Fowler, he is a great guy (I will always be thankful for him introducing me to Ridderbos)).  It made very little sense, you could tell that most of what was there was being taken out of context.  After reading the report and listening to a recording of the debate on the floor of GA, I was no longer satisfied with what I was being told.  But I also was planning to pursue ordination in the PCA at the time, and I knew that questioning its stance on FV would not bode well for me (especially in my presbytery).  I kind of just let it go.

By the time I was finishing up seminary, I began to think a lot about the sacraments.  I became very uncomfortable with what I was hearing from the Presbyterian folk around me.  The more I thought about it, the more I thought that my Presbyterian brothers were losing their grip on the historical reformed faith on the sacraments.  They seemed to have very little meaning for the church anymore.  To read Calvin on the sacraments and then watch the sacraments practiced in the church was shocking to say the least.  The more I thought about it and read, the more I began to think that baptized children were allowed at the table.  But trying to convince your average PCA person of that position was virtually impossible.

The only people that seemed to be open to the idea of paedocommunion were the FVers.  The question I began to wonder about was whether or not it was possible to not be associated with FV, yet still affirm paedocommunion.  I do think that it possible to hold to paedocommunion without taking the FV stance.  But in terms of practicality, I don’t think that it is.  Presbyterians as a whole seem to have lost some of their reformed roots.  (I think this is mostly due to the degradation of reformed worship over the past century.  Presbyterians have lost their theology because they no longer practice it on the Lord’s Day).

The sacraments have virtually the same meaning for Presbyterians these days, as they do for Baptists.  This is where the PCA FV report let me down the most.  I was taught in seminary that all heresies contain an element of truth.  Someone saw the theological pendulum beginning to swing in the wrong the direction and ended up trying to fix it, but swung the pendulum too far in the other direction.  The PCA refused to listen to what the FVers were saying.  They refused to look at what they were trying to regain (even if they did swing the pendulum too far in the other direction.  (that is a debatable point)).

I am still not completely convinced of the FV position, but it is growing on me.  But I too have to worry about falling off the other side of the theological horse.  I think that the question will ultimately remain, as to whether one has to be in the FV camp to affirm paedocommunion.  I no longer think that it is a question of theology, but a question of polity.

Been Awhile

I know it’s been awhile, but things have been rather busy and I recently moved (and that didn’t help matters any).  I don’t have much to say.  I’m a little behind on my reading, and I have a lot that I am still thinking through.  I was recently loaned a book by the elder at my church, The Lutheran Liturgy by Luther D. Reed.  The opening chapter is incredible.  Reed describes the significance of the liturgy as such:

“The liturgy” is a general designation for the officially prescribed services of a church body.  The name is derived from the Greek word, leitourgia, a public act or duty performed by individual citizens for the benefit of the state.  Specifically the term is applied to the approved formulary for the celebration of the Eucharist.  In a less restricted sense, and as used generally, the liturgy denotes the whole system of formal, prescribed services, including the text, the seasons and festivals of the church, the prescribed ceremonial, etc.

In either sense, the liturgy is a work of large dimensions and universal significance.  It is not a “worship program” or a collection of such programs. The latter, usually prepared by an individual pastor for the use of a particular congregation at a single service, develops a topic or theme in accordance with some “psychological pattern.” Lessons, responsive readings and other liturgical extracts, hymns, litanies, and prayers are chosen from various sources and interspersed with organ and choral numbers. This “program” is usually designed as “preliminary” to the sermon in which the topic chosen by the minister is specifically discussed. Such a worship program, however balanced, beautiful and edifying in itself, is necessarily of local and temporary significance. Privately prepared and locally used, it has no connection with the services of other congregations and usually no close relationship with other services in the same congregation. Any such connection or any continuity with the past is soon broken and forgotten.

The liturgy, particularly in the restricted sense of the historical service of the Holy Communion is quite different.  It is not a sheaf of pretty autumn leaves but a noble, living tree.  It is the work and possession of the whole church.  It has been carefully prepared and authorized by a general church body.  It is used by thousands of congregations over continental areas.  Its plan encompasses the cycle of a year.  It  includes a certain fixed framework for every service throughout the year but inserts in this selection of variable material appropriate for particular festivals and days.  The beliefs, needs, and desires of all men find expression in its unchanging order for Confession, its Kyrie, its Gloria and canticles of praise, its Creed, Preface, Sanctus, the Prayer of Thanksgiving, the formula for distribution, the Post-Communion Collect, and the Benediction. (Luther Reed, The Lutheran Liturgy, 19-20).

Is there anything more to say?  (Well, actually yes there is.  The whole of the chapter is really worth posting and pondering over for weeks)

Ecclesiastes

I was in the middle of writing the most insightful blog ever last night, when I realized that I hadn’t done my reading for Bible study tonight, so I had to shelve it for the time being.  It is in the pile with all of the other insightful post that are half finished, eventually though I will come back to them (I hope).

For our Bible Study we are reading and discussing Ecclesiastes Through New Eyes: a Table in the Mist by Jeffrey Meyers.  So far it has been an interesting book.  Meyers makes an interesting observation about Ecclesisastes, he says that a lot of people have misunderstood its purpose, it is either Solomon in a period of lost hope or Solomon is showing the fulitity of a non-Christian worldview.  According to Meyers this is not the point of the book, Solomon is imparting some real wisdom on the reader, after all this is a wisdom book.  Ecclesiastes is one of those books that doesn’t hide the hash truth of life from us.  Sometimes life sucks.  It’s unfair.  You can do everything completely right and still fail or suffer.  What does Solomon says to do with all this, basically to eat, drink and be merry in all of it.

This is something that is rather hard to grasp.  I want to believe that if I follow the directions, everything is going to turn out like I want it to, but unfortunately that is not the case.  I spend so much time thinking everything through, going through various situations and scenarios in head of trying to figure everything out.  I want things to have a certain outcome and I try to figure out a means to that end.  But unfortunately life doesn’t work that way.  You can follow steps A and B and expect result C, but instead what you get is D.  You have no idea where D came from or what do with it.  You sit there and try to figure out D.  By the time you figure out D, E has come into the picture and you are left wondering WTF.  This is something that I have to fight on a daily basis, whether it’s trying to figure out what to say to that girl or what do with the rest of my life (because no matter what you do you’re going to screw it up).  This can be down right depressing the more you think about it.  The message of Ecclesiastes is actually full of hope in all of this, Follow the commands of God and accept your lot in life, and for goodness sake eat, drink and be merry.

I wish I had the wisdom to do this, but I will probably continue to try and control my life.  The father tells us to trust him, and yet, we tell him no.  We think that we can handle it on our own.  We think we know more than the creator of the world, this is pure insanity.  This is what happened to Adam in the garden.  God was preparing Adam to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but Adam in his hastiness wanted it now.  He wanted to take control of his life and paid a hefty cost for.  Hopefully we can learn from Adam and from Solomon to wait patiently for the Lord.  In the meantime, let’s eat, drink and be merry.

Quote from Jeffrey Meyers on Paedocommunion

Here a quote from Jeffrey Meyer’s concerning paedocommunion from his article “Presbyerian, Examine Thyself” in The Case for Covenant Communion, 20.

…does 1 Cor. 11:28 really require the kind of self-examination that Calvin and Presbyterians have traditionally thought?  To whom does Paul address the admonition?  What does the verb “examine” mean in the context of 1 Cor. 11?  Does it actually require “mature faith” and an ability to perform internal soul-searching and deep personal introspection before one can be judged worthy of participation at the Lord’s table?  I am convinced that this text has been made to serve a function in traditional discussions about the admission requirements for Holy Communion that goes well beyond Paul’s solution for the problem in the Corinthian church’s practice of hte Supper.  More ominously, I am convinced that that text, properly understood, actually stands against the traditional Presbyterian practice of excluding young children from the table. Those who fail to commune with the youngest, weakest members of the body of Christ (1 Cor. 11:14-26)  are themselves not “judging the body” (that is, the church as the communal body of Christ) and therefore eating the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner.  (emphasis mine and his)

If I ever had any doubts about paedocommunion, Meyers answered them.

A Sticking Question

Over the past few years there has been a “drastic” shift in my thinking about communion, especially in the area of fencing the table.  I grew up Baptist.  Anyone that has been to a Baptist church when they take communion (usually at an evening service once a year or so) knows how they fence the table.  I think that Doug Wilson’s quote in the previous post accurately pictures the way that a Baptist church practices communion.  Fencing the table in that context looks something like this (perhaps an over-characterization): “If you have sin in your life that you have not confessed or sinned against a brother or sister that you haven’t confessed, then don’t take communion, because God will judge you.”  You kind of live in fear of communion (probably one of the reasons it is done so infrequently, but there are other reasons as well).  This was the view of communion that I held even as I moved over to a more reformed understanding of things.  You still get the same kind of warning in the Presbyterian church (especially in the PCA, the “Baptists” of the Presbyterian denomination), but it is couched a little bit differently.  The PCA BCO basically says something all the lines that the only people invited to partake communion are those that members in good standing in an evangelical church.  The more I thought about this idea of fencing the table, the more I began to dislike it.  I really didn’t like the way the PCA BCO suggested.  It really doesn’t make much sense to me.  I remember talking with my former pastor about it one time (because the church basically read the line out of the BCO word for word).  I asked him if the PCA consider the PCUSA to be an Evangelical denomination.  My feeling was that the PCA wouldn’t consider the PCUSA to be evangelical and he concurred in some sense.  (This may be a debatable issue.)  Then I asked if he would deny someone visiting the church that was a member at a PCUSA church.  He said, no.  So then I asked why make that statement.  My thinking began to shift to the concern of denying people from the table, who shouldn’t be denied the sacrament.  I got to the point where I just wanted to throw out fencing the table language altogether.  I basically jumped on the Methodist band-wagon and affirmed open communion.  (I still think that Wesley may be correct that the communion meal can indeed be a salvific encounter with the Lord for a non-believer, or non-covenant member).  I have since kind of fallen back to what those in the paedocommunion camp have put forth.  Since communion is a covenant meal it can only be taken by those who are members of the covenant.  The sign of membership in the covenant is baptism, therefore all that are baptized may partake of the communion meal.

But this leads to a question, if I take this latter approach, does that mean I have to buy into the Federal Vision Theology or can one affirm paedocommunion without Federal Vision?  The meaning of baptism is going to have to be discussed in the latter approach to “fencing the table”.  I can’t think of anyone within Federal Vision that denies paedocommunion, but I am having a hard time finding people that believe in paedocommunion that aren’t in the Federal Vision camp.  The problem is that I don’t if I completely buy into Federal Vision.  I am sympathetic in some instances, but as of right now I don’t know if I can take it as a whole.

I know I have neglected this thing, but I have been somewhat busy lately, but I’ll try to keep up with it a little better.  I am reading some interesting books right now that I want to finish before I post some things that are on my mind right now.

A quick quote

I haven’t posted in a while, but I do have a couple of posts that I am working on (sporadically at best, mind you, as I have been rather busy lately).   I just started reading The Case for Covenant Communion edited by Gregg Strawbridge, which I am hoping will be good and will help me make up my mind on this issue.  The forward by Douglas Wilson was rather good.  I really liked what Wilson had to say, including this remark:

“Instead of curling up into an introspective cocoon, the saints should be learning to discern that the Lord’s Supper is a corporate event, not an individual event.  Instead of dimming the lights and bowing their heads and closing their eyes, the believers should be looking around the sanctuary, loving and discerning the body.  Instead of groveling in confession, the body of Christ should be seated together with Christ in the central meal of the kingdom. This is the place where the friends of God rule.” (The Case for Covenant Communion, vi)

I will come back to this later.

Weekly Communion and Significance

In my previous post I mentioned that the only common argument against weekly communion is that it would lose its significance.  I said there that I didn’t want to spend any time dealing with in that post, but now I would like deal with this common argument.  To me this is rather ludicrous argument.  It is one of the most irrational arguments that I have ever heard.  ”If we have communion every week, then it will lose its significance.” Or so it is said.  If you ever try to press someone on this issue, he or she never really has any justification for this belief.  I also mentioned that Donald Bloesch’s book The Church was the only book that I can remember reading that says that communion should not be a part of the weekly Lord’s Day Service.  Here is his reasoning: “Because of the Pauline admonition to examine oneself carefully before partaking of Holy Communion, my recommendation is that Communion should be celebrated at but ordinarily not more than once a month.  If this sacred meal becomes too familiar, we begin to lose sight of the fact that is a special occasion in the life of the church, and it is likely that we will ignore the injunction to examine ourselves and repent of all sin before comuning with Chirst in the eucharist.  Communion is a high point of the worship service, but it is not essential for a worship celebration. While the ideal is weekly Communion, the pressures of modern life argue for a less frequent observance of the supper.” (Donald Bloesch, The Church, 164. emphasis mine) There may be various other reasons for non-weekly communion, but I would assume that most of them are fairly analagous to this.

The first time that I read this my iniation reaction was that, “the pressures of mordern life argue” for weekly communion.  Bloesch’s contention is people need time to properly prepare for the Lord’s Supper.  ”Communion should be celebrated about once a month, thereby giving time for the necessary inward preparation.” (Bloesch, 142.) “The Sunday or Wednesday preceding the observance could be devoted to self-examination and confession.” (Bloesch, 164.) I really don’t understand this line of reasoning.  I wonder how preparation for communion and the Lord’s Day Service are any different.

The problem with Bloesch’s reasoning and those who offer similar reasonings is that for them there is a disjunction between word and sacrament, between worship and communion.  I do not mean that they deny a connection between worship and communion, even Bloesch acknowledges this, in one of the quotes above he calls it a high point of worship (but it is not the climax of worship on his view, a very important distinction).  But according to Bloesch and others it is not an essential part of worship.  It is not part of the ontological essence of worship.  Once we begin to divorce word and sacrament, the preaching of the word and the sacraments, we begin to lose focus of their significance.  As a result the Lord’s Supper begins to develop a new significance.  Not only does the Lord’s supper’s significance begin to change, but the other elements of worship develop a new significance.  This is why Barth can accurately describe modern worship, when he says: “At the Reformation the Roman church of the sacraments was replaced by the church of the Word on the basis of the gospel. But very soon this was taken to mean that the administration of the sacraments might be omitted from worship as nonessential, all the emphasis now being put on the sermon. Today, then, we have Rome on the one side, still the sacramental church, and Protestantism on the other, the preaching church, which also administers the sacraments, but not so publicly. Both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant overemphases represent a disruption, a distortion, and even a destruction of the church. What kind of preaching is it that receives its prominence from the suppression of the sacraments, that cannot refer to the sacraments wihch it has to interpret and by which it is to be interpreted? We do not live by what our pastors can say but by the fact that we are baptized, that God has called us. Today, it is true, everyone can see the lack and attempts are being made to make it good by all kinds of substitutes such as the renewing and deepening of the liturgy, the richer embellishment of worship with music, and similar devices. But all these efforts are doomed to failure in advance because they rest on a totally wrong orientation.”  (Karl Barth, Homiletics, 59-60.)  When we begin to lose sight of the proper relationship between word and sacrament, we begin to lose sight of worship as a whole.  Without a proper understanding between the relationship of word and sacrament worship cannot function properly, it becomes an exercise in futility.  Or as Barth put it “doomed to failure.”

When the sacraments are divorced from worship the significance of worship and the sacraments drift away from a significance that draws on each other.  They each begin to move towards insolated events in worship.  This is not just true of preaching and the sacraments, this is true of every element in worship.  They should all be inter-related to each other.  They should draw meaning from each other.  It should be one continuous movement from the Father’s calling us to worship at the beginning to the proclamation of his blessing children at the end of the service.  Instead what we have in most worship services is a bunch of isolated elements that are rarely meaningfully related in the worship service.  They seem to exist on their own.  They are not drawing meaning from each other.  As Barth points out there is a focus on preaching in the protestant church.  This is because we have lost sight of the relationship between the elements of worship.  All that matters is that the Word is preached, the rest is just ad hoc.  It is only when things are approached as a whole that we can see the proper significance of word and sacrament.

This  idea of a wholistic view of worship helps guard us from the mistakes of Bloesch’s view of communion.  Bloesch does rightly see a lot of good in the sacrament.  There is a rich theology in the sacrament for him (although he does at the same time miss the full richness of the tapestry at the table of the Lord).  A non-wholistic view allows us to incorrectly elevate certain aspects of the meal.  It may cause others like Bloesch to focus on Paul’s warnings in 1 Cor. and cause us to miss the full blessing of the table.  I will again appeal to Thomas Watson here to give us a glimspe of the rich tapestry set for us at the Lord’s Table.

“The…circumstance of time is that Christ did appoint the sacrament a little before his sufferings.  ’The Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread’ (1 Cor. 11:23).  He knew troubles were now coming upon his disciples; it would be no small perplexity for them to see their Lord and Master crucified; and shortly after they must pledge him a bitter cup; therefore, to arm them against such a time, and to animate their spirits, that very night in which he was betrayed he gives them his body and body in the sacrament.

This may give us a good hint, that, in all trouble of mind, especially in approaches of danger, it is needful to have recourse to the Lord’s Supper.  The sacrament is both an antidote against fear and a restoration to faith.  ’The night in which he was betrayed, he took bread’ (1 Cor. 11:23).” (Thomas Watson, The Lord’s Supper, 3-4)

The warnings of Paul should not cause us to relegate dining with Lord once a month.  It should call us to see the deeper meaning in the supper.  The Church is called to be one body.  The church in Corinth was not acting like this.  They brought the Greek culture to the table with them, where the most prominent people were treated better than the lower class folks.  This is indeed an abuse of the Table, and Paul’s warning is proper.  Abuse the Lord’s Table and he will judge you.  Bloesch focuses too much on this point.  If we look at communion as an essential part of worship, it will help guard us from focusing too much on one aspect of the Lord’s Supper.  The Lord doesn’t warn us to stay away from his Table, He invites us to it:

“He was always the guest.
In the homes of Peter and Jairus,
Martha and Mary,
he was always the guest.
At the meal tables of the wealthy,
where he pled the cause of the poor,
he was always the guest.
Upsetting polite company,
befriending isolated people,
welcoming the stranger,
he was always the guest.
But here, at this table,
he is the host.
Those who wish to serve him
must first be served by him.
Those who want to follow him
must first be fed by him.
Those who would wash his feet
must first let him make them clean.
For this is the table
where God intends us to be nourished;
this is the time when Christ can make us new.
So come, you who hunger and thirst for a deeper faith,
for a better life, for a fairer world.
Jesus Christ, who has sat at our tables,
now invites us to be guests at his.” (The Worship Sourcebook, 315.)

Some Thoughts on Communion

Sorry about the delay between posts, I have been somewhat busy these past couple of weeks.  I decided to run a 5k about a week and half ago, so I was a bit more concern about not making a fool of myself attempting to run.

Anyways on with the post,

One of the interesting things that Barth says in the quote from the previous post was, “In every respect the church is a physical, historical entity, with true and visible corporeality, and yet in every respect it is also wholly invisible as the mysterious body of Christ. Because the church is both at one and the same time, there must never in any circumstances be separation between administration of the sacraments and the proclamation of the gospel.” (emphasis mine).  As I making my decision to leave GPC, this was one of the most important points along the road.  GPC practiced communion every two months and every two months does a dismal job of practicing communion.  One of the many problems with the modern church is that it has lost sight of the sacraments.  This really seems to be a problem for reformed churches, where the sacraments have a very rich meaning.  In the opening of Thomas Watson’s The Lord’s Supper he says, “Oh! What flames of devotion should burn in our hearts!  How agile and nimble should we be, mounting up as on wings of cheribum, when we are able to meet the Prince of Glory who brings the olive-branch of peace in his mouth, and whose kisses leave a print of heaven upon the soul.” (Thomas Watson, The Lord’s Supper, viii.  As a side note, Watson’s little book is one of the best I have ever read.  I didn’t realize how much I was missing until I read his book.)  In the average service where communion takes place (It is such a sad thing to have to qualify a Lord’s Day Service (as antoher side note, I prefer this language over worship service, but that is a discussion for another day) in this manner.) I highly doubt that this accurately describes what is going on.

Most of the books that I have read push for weekly communion (Donald Bloesch’s The Church, the 6th book in his systematic theology is the only notable expection, but then again its Bloesch and I disagree with him on most things, evangelical Barth, my ass.)  I strongly believe that communion should be part of the weekly Lord’s Day Service.  Jeffrey Meyer’s sums up my stance fairly bluntly, “The Lord’s Supper ought to be a normal part of our weekly worship. Period.” (Jeffrey Meyers, The Lord’s Service: The Grace of Covenant Renewal Worship, 214.)  He does elaborate his postion a little bit early in that same chapter, “We live to eat and eating structures our common life.  This is how God has made us.  This is why covenant renewal worship  should not end with the sermon and offering.  It should never end without Communion.  God has called the Church together to eat with Him…On the Lord’s Day God invites us to His House for meal.  Yes, He cleanses and consecrates us, but before God sends us out to serve Him in the world He first sits down for a common meal.  He must strengthen and nourish us with bread and wine for service in His kingdom.  We must experience the shalom of God at the table.  Therefore, the culmination of the covenant renewal service occurs when we sit down and eat dinner with Jesus, receiving from Him by faith His own lifegiving flesh and blood.” (Meyers, 213-4.)

If this is what communion is all about, then why on earth would any church object to offering every week.  Meyers thinks that the only objection is that it might lose its significance, which is an absurb objection on so many levels (in his and my opinion).  I really don’t want to spend any time on this objection.  I think that there is another problem that needs to be dealt with.  This is the problem that communion has been practiced so poorly in the past century that it has lost all meaning.  For the average parishoner it has no meaning.  It has already lost its significance.  I think that this is plainly evident when you look at how communion is practiced at most modern churches.  I have always found it funny (in a rather morbid sense I must admit) that at your average reformed church more time is spent on fencing the table than anything else.  We have to make sure that we get Paul’s warning out to the masses.  When I was in seminary I remembering spending most of a class period debating different positions about fencing the table.  I never really understood how people in the reformed faith could care so much about this one point.  This one point was discussed more than anything else in my worship classes concerning communion.  I still don’t understand it to this day.  The PCA has had huge debates concerning fencing the table.  The Paedocommunion controvesery resulted in a lot people being called heretics.  Granted who is invited to the Lord’s Table is very important.  I don’t think that telling the people that only those that are “members in good standing in an evangelical church” (from the PCA book of church order chapter 58, slightly paraphrased), should really ever be said during the communion service.  (I doubt that anyone who says it actually believes it.)  We have turned a gracious invitation of the Father into something else.  Instead of communion being a offering a grace and strength from the Father, it has become a time of condemnation.  The focus of the communion service focuses more on Paul’s warnings and fencing the table than it does inviting us to a foretaste of glory, a foretaste of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.  If we have lost sight of the meaning and purpose of communion it is easy to see why churches shy away from practicing the sacraments of the church.  The problem is not that people are afraid that communion will lose its significance if it is practiced weekly.  The problem is that the new significance is something that no one wants.  People live in fear of coming to the communion table.  They are afraid that the Lord is going to strike them down, if they forgot/neglected to confess something to Him.  They are afraid that God is going to judge them as sinners when they come to the Table.  Nothing is further from the truth.

“Has Jesus Christ made his gospel-banquet?  Is He both founder and the feast?  Then let poor doubting Christians be encouraged to  come to the Lord’s table.  Satan would hinder from the sacrament, as Saul did the people from eating honey (1 Sam. 14:26).  But is there any soul that has been humbled and bruised for sin, whose heart secretly pants after Christ, but yet stands trembling, and dares not approach to these holy mysteries?  Let me encourage that soul to come: ‘Arise, he called thee’ (Mark 10:49).

OBJECTION 1: But I am sinful and unworthy, and why should I meddle with such holy things?

ANSWER: Who did Christ die for but such?  ’Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners’ (1 Tim. 1:15)  He took our sins upon him, as well as our nature.  ’Surely he hath borne our griefs’ (Isa. 53:4).  In Hebrew it is our sickness.  See thy sins, says Luther, upon Christ, and then they are no more thine, but his.  Our sins should humble us, but they must not discourage us from Christ; the more diseased we are, the rather we should step into this Pool of Siloam.

Who does Christ invite to the supper, but the poor, halt, and maimed (Luke 14:21)?  That is, such as see themselves unworthy, and fly to Christ for sanctuary.  The priest was to take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood and sprinkle it upon the leper (Lev. 14:7).  Thou who hast the leprosy of sin upon thee, yet if as a leper thou dost loathe thyself, Christ’s precious blood shall be sprinkled upon thee.” (Watson, 60-1.  I hope you can begin to see why this is one of my favorite books.)

The modern church has taken this away from the saints.  No longer do we receive this grace of the Father through the Son by the Spirit.  No wonder the church doesn’t make the sacraments a regular part of the weekly service.  If all they are going to offer is judgment and condemnation.  Maybe Bloesch was right that we shouldn’t have communion every week.  But let us as a church not lose hope.  Grasp on to the promises of the Father in the communion service.

I think that John Knox ’s communion prayer is one of the best there is, it sums up the beauty of communion better than I ever could:

“O Father of mercy, and God of all consolation, seeing all creatures do knowledge and confess thee as Governor and Lord, it becometh us, the workmanship of thine own hands, at all times to reverence and magnify thy Godly Majesty: first, for that thou hast created us to thine own image and similitude; but chiefly that thou hast delivered us from that everlasting death and damnation, into the which Satan drew mankind by the means of sin, from the bondage whereof, neither man nor angel was able to make us free; but thou, O Lord, rich in mercy and infinite in goodness, hast provided our redemption to stand in thy only and well -beloved Son, whom of very love thou didst give to be made man, like unto us is all things (sin excepted), that in his body he might receive the punishments of our transgression, by his death to make satisfaction to thy justice, and by his resurrection to destroy him that was author of death; and so to reduce and bring again life to the world, from which the whole offspring of Adam most justly was exiled.

O Lord, we acknowledge that no creature is able to comprehend the length and breadth, the depth and height, of that thy most excellent love, which moved thee to show mercy where none was deserved; to promise and give life where death had gotten victory; to receive us into thy grace when we could do nothing but rebel against thy justice.  O Lord, the blind dullness of our corrupt nature will not suffer us sufficiently to weigh these thy most ample benefits; yet, nevertheless, at the commandment of Jesus Christ our Lord, we present ourselves to this his table, (which he hath left to be used in remembrance of his death until his coming again), to declare and witness before the world that by him alone we have received liberty and life; that by him alone thou dost acknowledge us thy children and heirs; that by him alone we have entrance to the throne of thy grace; that by him alone we are possessed in our spiritual kingdom, to eat and drink at his table; with whom we have our conversation presently in heaven; and by whom our bodies shall be raised up again from the dust, and shall be placed with him in that endless joy, which thou, O Father of mercy, hast prepared for thine elect, before the foundation of the world was laid.  And these most inestimable benefits, we acknowledge and confess to have received of thy free mercy and grace, by thy only beloved Son Jesus Christ: for the which therefore, we thy congregation, moved by thy Holy Spirit, render thee all thanks, praise, and glory, for ever and ever.” (The Genevan Book of Order)

Brought Back From the Dead

I have decided to bring this back from the point of extinction. I will plan to stick with the general theme as laid out in the first post. What I will endeavor to do (and most likely fail at) is to post quotes that relate to worship in some sense and to occasionally (hopefully either weekly or biweekly) post some randomn thoughts about worship.

The main reason that I am resurrecting this blog is that I have had a recent shift in thinking about worship.  (Although the shift in thinking is not all that recent.  I guess it is more accurately described as following my convictions.)  I have recently left the church I have been attending for 4-5 years due to what I see a degradation in worship practice, especially in the last year or two.  (Althought other factors played into that decision as well.)  I wanted a place to collect some of the ideas that have been stewing around in my mind over the past several months.  I remembering attending a worship service at my previous church and just thinking, “what is going on, this makes no sense at all.”  That started me on journey to find worship that made sense, worship that was logical and didn’t seem like it was just pulled out of a hat.  After reading Thomas Watson’s The Lord’s Supper and A. Daniel Frankforter’s Stones for Bread, I knew that I could no longer continue worshiping at my former church (mostly because worship was not what was happening on Sunday morning.  I don’t know what you’d call it other than entertainment).  I didn’t realize the danger that was present in going to church Sunday after Sunday and not worshiping.  I didn’t realize the spiritual effects of such worship until I began to look at my life and how my own spiritual health had declined sense I graduated from seminary.  Although subjective reasoning is not the best barometer for evaluating worship, it can provide valuable insights, sometimes you just have to trust your gut.  The more I studied, read and talked to people, the more I began to realize that worship at GPC just didn’t cut the mustard.  All that said, let’s jump into a new endeavor.

And there is no better place to begin than with Karl Barth.  The more I read Barth, the more I like him.  The following quote is taken from his book Homiletics, which is actually a collection of lectures that he gave while teaching at Bonn.  It is a very good book on preaching and it has definitely had an impact on the way that I prepare sermons.  This is a long quote but well worth the read.  I will come back to this quote in a couple of days and discuss some of implications for worship, not just preaching (this post is already quite long, so I will save some more for another post).

“…Article VII of the Augsburg Confession describes the true church as follows: evangelism pure docetur et recte administrantur sacramenta (the gospel is taught and the sacraments are rightly administered).  By bringing the sacraments and the preaching of the gospel together, the article shows us what is the link between being put in a specific place and conformity of preaching to revelation.  Significantly, we put the sacraments first, for we do not know what preaching is if we have no knowledge of the sacraments.  There is preaching in the full sense only where it is accompanied and explained by the sacraments.  What happens in the sacraments is that with visible signs we are  pointed to the event of revelation that underlies and is promised to the church, and this in a way which, unlike that of preaching and all else that the church does, is not just a matter of words but of visible, bodily action.

Baptism confirms church membership.  Life begins with baptism, not with birth.  The point of being baptized is that a relation is set up between revelation and the baptized in a specific place (Rom. 6:3).  This ebaptisthemen eis Christon Iesoun (being baptized into Christ Jesus) does not merely involve a reference to the eph’ hapax of revelation but, with and beyond all that can be said, it involves the event of baptisma.  If baptism denotes the event of revelation from which we come, however, the Lord’s Supper is a sign of the same event, but now understood as the coming event that is awaited by us (1 Cor 11:26).

It is in this church in which are administered the sacrament of grace and the sacrament of hope–and both are both–that preaching takes place.  Because both the sacraments and preaching can take place meaningfully only in the church, it is true of both that they are legitimate only in their relation to one another.  Preaching is a specific event, the signum (sign), which can point us to the great Christian theme is legitimate only when it derives from that other signum which in the form of an event points to the event of revelation.  It is legitimate, then, only when it does not seek to be anything other than a commentary, an interpretation of the sacraments, a reference to the same thing, but now in words.  When the need is seen that preaching must be a signum, even a sacramental act–sacramental in the sense of distinct, defined, different from every other possibility–then we have good reason to place ourselves where this demand can be met, since it is there that God has promised us this grace.  The place is the church.  In the light of what God does in baptism and the Lord’s Supper–that God himself elects us for membership of Christ’s body and gives us food and drink for our pilgrimage to eternal life–in this light our preaching is done, namely, in the knowledge that all our listeners are baptized and thus called to a state of grace, and that what has taken place already will undoubtedly take place again.  With the reference to baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the demand that preaching have a backward and forward thrust, a whence and a whither, achieves concreteness, and we are given the place in which we must inwardly set ourselves as proclaimers of the Word.

If we now look at the real situation of the Protestant church in the light of these basic considerations, we immediately note at this point an obvious lacuna.  At the Reformation the Roman church of the sacraments was replaced by the church of the Word on the basis of the gospel.  But very soon this was taken to mean that the administration of the sacraments might be omitted from worship as nonessential, all the emphasis now being put on the sermon.  Today, then, we have Rome on the one side, still the sacramental church, and Protestantism on the other, the preaching church, which also administers the sacraments, but not so publicly.  Both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant overemphases represent a disruption, a distortion, and even a destruction of the church.  What kind of preaching is it that receives its prominence from the suppression of the sacraments, that cannot refer to the sacraments wihch it has to interpret and by which it is to be interpreted?  We do not live by what our pastors can say but by the fact that we are baptized, that God has called us.  Today, it is true, everyone can see the lack and attempts are being made to make it good by all kinds of substitutes such as the renewing and deepening of the liturgy, the richer embellishment of worship with music, and similar devices.  But all these efforts are doomed to failure in advance because they rest on a totally wrong orientation.

Appeal is wrongly made to Luther in these circles.  Luther certainly wanted to take over as much as possible of the liturgical riches of the Roman Mass, but to include communion.  Calvin untiringly urged that Communion should be administered at every Sunday service.  The weakness today is that we do not administer the sacraments at Sunday worship.  In practice baptism ought to come at the beginning of the service–in the presence of the congregation– and Communion at the end.  The sermon would then have its meaningful place in the middle between the two.  Of a service of this kind it could then be rightly said: recte administrare sacramenta et pure docere evangelium.  But so long as we do not grasp what Evangelical worship is in its entirety, our theological efforts, including  the liturgical movement will be invalid.  Only when there is true worship with both sermon and sacrament can the liturgy be given its rightful place, for only then can it fulfill its purpose, namely, to lead up to the sacrament.  In every respect the church is a physical, historical entity, with true and visible corporeality, and yet in every respect it is also wholly invisible as the mysterious body of Christ.  Because the church is both at one and the same time, there must never in any circumstances be seperation between administration of the sacraments and the proclamation of the gospel.

We would surely be better Protestants if we would let Roman Catholicism with its onesidedness remind us of what we are missing…” (Karl Barth, Homiletics, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley and Donald E. Daniels (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press: 1991), 57-60.

Welcome

Welcome to my new blog.  I have grown tired of xanga after almost four years.  There just seemed no point in continuing the blog, as it seemed to have no purpose.  I am going to use this blog to focus certain themes, mostly thoughts on reformed theological thought and for now primarily on the issue of worship.  Over the past few years I have began to grow tired of the growing trends in modern protestant reformed worship.  I just wanted to have a place to collect my ideas and the old xanga site seemed to have outlived its usefulness.  Hopefully I will use this site with some frequency, but I can’t make any promises.