Pursuit, identification, the offer of life through sacrificial love—this is what God's faithful presence means. It is a quality of commitment that is active, not passive; intentional, not accidental; covenantal, not contractual. In the life of Christ we see how it entailed his complete attention. It was whole-hearted, not half-hearted; focused and purposeful, nothing desultory about it. His very name, Immanuel, signifies all of this—"God with us"—in our presence (Matt. 1:23).
And the point of God's active and committed presence, of course, has always been to restore our relationship with him. This, of course, is the meaning of the Eucharist. God's coming to us, his becoming flesh and blood like us, and his atoning sacrifice for us are manifested in the bread and the wine that is fed to us. His faithful presence is manifested in the body that was broken and the blood that was shed for the remission of sins. In the Eucharist, we not only have a backward-looking remembrance of what God accomplished long ago but we have a celebration of the start of God's restoration in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. In the Eucharist, Christians celebrate the in-breaking of the new creation within the framework of the old; the kingdom that is to come within the present.
I continue to insist that if we truly believed and understood all that is signified in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, our partaking of it would occur with far greater frequency. Bavinck has noted that the Supper is 'not merely a reminiscence of or a reflection on Christ's benefits but a most intimate bonding with Christ himself, just as food and drink are united with the body.' Indeed, to use Hunter's terminology, it is a visible sign and seal of God's faithful presence among us. How is it, then, that we do not run to the Table as often as we can?
Since I was just chipping away at the book one essay at a time, it took me a while to finally finish Knots Untied, the collection of essays by J.C. Ryle that I have been reading and commenting on here in the last several weeks. In an essay on the Lord's Supper, Ryle raises the question of what is to function as the primary element of worship. Some Protestants, particularly evangelicals, have a tendency to elevate the preaching of the Word as the primary element, sandwiched between a few songs. In some cases, the preaching and the music occupy such a place that almost everything else becomes unimportant and worship loses its character altogether.
Anglicanism, the context in which Ryle is writing, tends in two directions (at least among those who hold convictions about such things): Anglo-Catholics tend to view the Eucharist as the pinnacle of worship, while evangelicals align themselves with the Reformed perspective, which takes the preaching of Scripture as primary. Ryle's essay, written from an evangelical perspective, attempts to demonstrate that the Anglo-Catholic position is unwarranted. He comments:
Like the ark of God in the Old Testament, this blessed sacrament has a proper position and rank among Christian ordinances, and, like the ark of God, it may easily be put in the wrong one. The history of that ark will readily recur to our minds. Put in the place of God, and treated like an idol, it did the Israelites no good at all... Treated with reverence and respect, it brought a blessing... It is even so with the Lord's Supper.—Placed in its right position, it is an ordinance full of blessing. The great question to be settled is,—What is that position?
...The Lord's Supper is not in its right place, when it is made the first, foremost, principle, and most important thing in Christian worship. That it is so in many quarters, we all must know... The sermon, the mode of conducting prayer, the reading of 'holy Scripture,' in many churches are made second to this one thing,—the administration of the Lord's Supper.—We may ask, 'What warrant of Scripture is there for this extravagant honour?' but we shall get no answer... To thrust the Lord's Supper forward, till it towers over and overrides everything else in religion, is giving it a position for which there is no authority in God's Word.
If you are looking to Scripture for evidence, as Ryle suggests, it is hard to miss the prominent place that the preaching of the Word holds in the ministry to which Christ calls his people. Ryle notes further on that the New Testament speaks with relative infrequency about the Supper in comparison with how often it speaks of and gives examples of the verbal presentations of the gospel. Looking to Luke and Acts, for example, it is time and time again the proclamation of the gospel that brings people to repentance and faith. Even in Jesus' own ministry, his making known the presence of the Kingdom through miracles and healings was always secondary to his announcements that the Kingdom of God was at hand.
The focus of Ryle's essay, as I mentioned above, is merely to demonstrate that the Lord's Supper should not hold the place it does in high church Anglicanism. However, he does not end up sharing his thoughts on its place and significance. This is unfortunate because the tendency in evangelicalism is to go too far in reacting to the excesses of those they deem to be making an idol of the sacrament, and they in turn undermine its value and partake of it far too infrequently. Would Ryle align himself with John Calvin, who rightly stressed that the Supper should always accompany the preaching of the Word because it is a visible representation of the gospel?
It is important to remember that Jesus' institution of the Supper before his death and resurrection is of enormous significance for the church. Too often evangelicals forget this an adopt a view of the Supper that reduces it to a mere memorial. The invitation to the table is an invitation to enter into intimate communion with Christ. It is an invitation to "taste and see that the Lord is good" (Ps. 34:8). It is an invitation to be united with Christ by physically partaking of the elements. It is an invitation to have a foretaste of the coming marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:6-10). It is an invitation to receive—not just to remember—his grace.
Of course, a further question arises that underlies this whole discussion. While we can go back and forth all day on whether the preaching of the Word or the celebration of the Lord's Supper should be primary in our worship, we need to first ask if it is even warranted to single out one element as the primary act of worship. Are we right to herald one part of our worship as the most important, whatever it may be, or must we understand worship as one unified whole, each part—singing, prayer, preaching, sacrament, offering, doxology—playing an equal part in our communion with God before his throne?
When I was growing up, I remember there being a number of debates about whether we should continue to use wine for the celebration of the Lord's Supper, or switch over to grape juice. All kinds of different reasons abounded for why some thought we should go to grape juice—"Wine tempts those who are recovering alcoholics," "It really doesn't matter what you use since it's just symbolic of Jesus' blood"—and eventually one of the churches I was a part of settled on half-wine and half-grape juice in the tray that was passed around. Most evangelical churches these days, it seems, don't even consider wine an option anymore.
The elements appointed by the Lord Jesus are 'bread and wine' and that the right to determine these rests with him alone, and not with the temperance movement of the nineteenth century. While Jesus changed the water into wine, the temperance movement changed wine into grape juice concentrate [or Ribena]. No one has any right to change the elements of the Lord's Supper, any more than water may be replaced in baptism by orange juice. To do this is to usurp the authority of Christ.
Many would brand this as legalism, of course, but I think that is an unfair accusation. Letham's point is that these are not pragmatic concerns we are dealing with, but a question of the authority of Christ over our worship.
I began to read John Stott's book on preaching, Between Two Worlds, this morning. He opens with a brief historical sketch examining the place of preaching in the thought and practice of some of the notable church leaders down through history. I was a little surprised to read this about some of the great Catholic figures in the Middle Ages:
'The Age of Preaching', wrote Charles Smyth, 'dates from the coming of the Friars... The history of the pulpit as we know it begins with the Preaching Friars. They met, and stimulated, a growing popular demand for sermons. They revolutionzed the technique. They magnified the office.' Although Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) was a man more of compassionate service than of learning, and insisted that 'our acting and teaching must go together', he was nevertheless 'as committed to preaching as to poverty: "Unless you preach everywhere you go", said Francis, "there is no use to go anywhere to preach." From the very beginning of his ministry, that had been his motto.' His contemporary Dominic (1170-1221) laid even greater emphasis on preaching. Combining personal austerity with evangelistic zeal, he traveled widely in the cause of the gospel, especially in Italy, France and Spain, and organized his 'black friars' into an Order of Preachers. A century later Humbert de Romans (died 1277), one of the finest of Dominican Ministers General, said: 'Christ only once heard Mass...but he laid great stress on preaching.' And a century later still, the great Franciscan preacher St Bernardino of Siena* (1380-1444) made this unexpected statement: 'If of these two things you can do only one – either hear the mass or hear the sermon – you should let the mass go, rather than the sermon... There is less peril for your soul in not hearing mass than in not hearing the sermon' (21-22).
Recognizing, of course, that it is a much more recently composed document, it is nonetheless interesting to note that the Catechism of the Catholic Church seems to exalt the Mass over preaching, in contrast to what the Medieval leaders taught: "The Eucharist is 'the source and summit of the Christian life.' The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it" (par. 1324).
However, despite the declaration on the primacy of the Mass, when you turn to the section of the Catechism that speaks about Scripture, it appears that it is to be viewed on the same level: "For this reason, the Church has always venerated the Scriptures as she venerates the Lord's Body. She never ceases to present to the faithful the bread of life, taken from the one table of God's Word and Christ's Body" (par. 103), and, "'The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures as she venerated the Body of the Lord': both nourish and govern the whole Christian life" (par. 141).
Does this mean, then, that Scripture in and of itself, or perhaps as interpreted and contained in the tradition of the Church is on equal footing with the Mass? Does the nourishment that comes from Scripture come through the preaching of Scripture, or in some other way? Or is the Catechism simply saying that the two are equally important?
Given my limited knowledge of Catholicism I may be missing something simple and obvious on this matter. Therefore, please discuss below.
*On a side note: the story of Bernardino's missionary work on the ever-authoritative Wikipedia page is quite interesting. He seemed to have been something of a medieval Whitefield.
Hunger and thirst...teach us that humans ultimately live in a state of dependence. If we understand them rightly, we have to confess that we receive life as God's gift. Even the energies that we expend in taking care of ourselves and our basic needs are finally sustained by powers and forces beyond ourselves. Every day of our lives, we are dependent on food and drink to keep us alive. We never eat and drink once and for all; we have to eat and drink again and again, and so we continually pray, 'Give us this day, our daily bread.'
So too we are dependent on God's grace for our basic identity. We can never simply choose to be whoever we want. Nor will we ever know ourselves well enough to say, 'I finally have it all together. I have no need of God or others.' Dependence on daily bread symbolizes our dependence on God for our life's meaning and purpose. Our baptismal identity, like our physical energies, must be renewed every day. We need daily sustenance in the life to which Christ has called us. For that reason, 'one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God' (Matt. 4:4).
This daily sustenance comes to Christians in Word, sacrament, and patterns and rhythyms of life together. God feeds us again and again. God continually renews our capacity to receive Christ's self-giving love and, then, to offer our very selves to God and others. 'Give us this day, our daily bread' is never just a call for physical nourishment, but is also a plea for the bread of heaven that is life in the risen Lord.
In the end, Jesus himself must feed us and quench our thirst. He declares, 'I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty' (John 6:35), for 'the water that I will give them will become in them like a spring of living water gushing up to eternal life' (John 4:14). Christians have found this spiritual food and drink whenever they have celebrated the Eucharist. Baptism first marks us in our new identity in Christ, while the Eucharist gives us strength to persist in our baptismal identity, even in the midst of trial and temptation. Baptism sends us into the world, and the Eucharist offers us food and drink for the journey. Baptism tells us who we really are, and the Eucharist deepens and confirms our identity. Font leads to table. The helpless baby we place in God's hands will surely receive the basic nutrition that she needs to live out her baptism (122).
The Eucharist is not just a memorial. Through it Christ sustains us and gives us life. Let us stop starving ourselves of the nourishment he gives.
