Tag: communion

Deuteronomy 26:16-27:7

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment
            When the ancient Israelites had been delivered from Egypt through the mighty acts of God and stood on the banks of the Jordan River ready to enter the Promised Land, the LORD gave them a command:  “And on the day you cross over the Jordan to the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall set up large stones and plaster them with plaster.”
 
            The major theme of the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy is remembrance.  God’s covenant people were continually exhorted to remember God and his law.  One of the ways of never forgetting what God had done for them was to erect a pile of large stones and coat them with plaster.  This imposing rock structure would stand for generations to come as a continual reminder that God had delivered his people from bondage and brought them into a land in which they could thrive in serving and enjoying the LORD.
 
            As Christians, we can and should have tangible reminders of significant spiritual events from our lives.  Whenever we have a profound or impactful experience of God, it is a good thing to never forget that experience – especially in future times of discouragement or despair.  Whether at home or work, we need to place reminders of God’s grace around us in order to remain encouraged and faithful.
 
            The Lord’s Supper is one of those tangible reminders of God’s grace to us in Christ.  As the community of redeemed people eat the bread and drink the cup, they are reminded of Christ’s once for all sacrifice for sin on their behalf.  His broken body and shed blood are remembered in a corporate ritual that is purposefully designed to help us never forget the mighty act of God in bringing deliverance from sin and a new life.
            O LORD, help us as your people to remember and not forget the things you have done in our lives.  Especially, enable us to constantly be reminded of your grace to us through the sending of your Son, the Lord Jesus, so that we might live.  May the reminders around us keep us faithful and mindful of Jesus.  Amen.

The Lord’s Table

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
The Lord’s Table proclaims the gospel to us, and the good news of Jesus Christ is what we need to be molded and shaped into disciples.  Just as the simple routines of eating breakfast and getting ready in the morning shape our daily lives, so the ritual of the Lord’s Table is to set the tone for our lives by orienting us around healthy routines of learning to follow Jesus.  We need the Lord’s Table because our hearts are often thorny with cares and worries which leads to a weakening of faith.  A sermon is words; the Table is tangible.  Preaching may say the words “I love you!” but the Table seals those words and makes them real, like a kiss.
 
 
 
            The purpose of the Lord’s Table is to participate in the blessings of Christ by visually re-creating the story of Jesus.  There are three different terms for the Table in the New Testament, and each term is meant to convey a different aspect of the Table’s significance.  One of those terms is The Lord’s Supper.  The focus of The Lord’s Supper is remembrance, a memorial of Christ’s death that is deeply reflective and contemplative.  Paul said to the Corinthians:  A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.  For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself.  Paul said this because at the Table whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes (1 Corinthians 11:26).
 
            A second term for the Lord’s Table is called The Eucharist.  Eucharist literally means “thanksgiving.”  The focus of seeing the Lord’s Table as The Eucharist means that we are celebrating our victory over sin, death, and hell through Christ’s death.  At the Last Supper, the Gospel writer Mark said that Jesus took bread, gave thanks (Eucharist), and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take it; this is my body.”  Then he took the cup, gave thanks (Eucharist) and offered it to them, and they all drank from it (Mark 14:22-23).  We might say that observing the Table as both The Lord’s Supper and The Eucharist means that we will engage in a sober celebration.
 
            The third term describing the Lord’s Table is the term “communion.”  Communion means to participate in Christ and with other Christians.  Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ?  And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?  Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf (1 Corinthians 10:16-17).  This emphasizes that when we partake of the Lord’s Table, we ought to do so with unity and fellowship; we do not just participate as individuals, but together as the community of the redeemed.
 
            As we allow the Table to be a remembrance, a celebration, and participation with each other, we engage in a ritual that helps us to know Christ better and we are better able to realize his grace to us.
 
 
 
            One of the wonderful realities about communion is that believers all over the planet share in Christ together.  Communion and participation is important because we can easily be fragmented and not fellowship with one another, both in the local church, and the world-wide church.  Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians because they were divided among themselves.  He emphasized the work of Jesus on the cross as bringing reconciliation between God and people.  Christ’s work of reconciliation has restored a broken relationship between us and God, and also between one another.  The relations between the Corinthians were not good; they existed as a network of special interest groups, instead of being aware of each other and intentionally participating with each other.  They did not necessarily fight among each other, but simply ignored other people in the church.  Each group wanted their own way, and they had not yet learned how to talk to one another and work together in a unity and fellowship that reflects the gospel.
 
            One of the things we need to be aware of as we think of sharing in communion together is that we are not to approach the Table to be with people who are like us in the way we want them to be. We come because we have staked our souls on the fact that Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and the church is the best place, the only place, to be while we all struggle to figure out what that means. We come because we’d be hard pressed to say which is the bigger of the two scandals of God: that he loves me—or that he loves everyone else.  The Lord’s Table is the great leveler, where we all have equal footing and accept one another according to a common confession of Christ.
 
            So when we talk about the Lord’s Table as being communion, we are emphasizing that it is not just a remembrance, but a participation in the body and blood of Christ.  And since that is true, communion is participation with all Christians everywhere.  The Lord’s Table is not just to be an individual experience in isolation from others.  There is solidarity not only between the individual and God, but between all believers.
 
            Therefore, we are not alone.  Communion lets us know that God is with us, and that he has so closely identified with us that he took our place on the cross.  As a result, every believer in Jesus is linked to all the others so that, when one suffers or rejoices, all suffer or rejoice, whether it is an African pastor rejoicing over newly saved persons out of animism, or a suffering Syrian Christian trying to survive in a refugee camp.
 
            We must live up to what we profess.  Our participation in Christ results in participation and unity with each other.  Since we are God’s forgiven people, we are to work at living the Christian life together.  This unity is symbolized by partaking together of the same loaf of bread, and drinking from a common cup.
 
            On one Sunday, a group of missionaries and believers in Papua New Guinea were gathered to observe communion together.  After one young man sat down, one of the missionaries recognized that he seemed to be quite upset.  But, then, in a while, the young man seemed to be fine.  The missionary leaned over and whispered to him, “What was it that troubled you?”  The young man replied, “The man who just came in happens to be the man who killed and ate the body of my father.  And now he has come in to observe communion with us.  At first I didn’t think I could do that.  But it is all right now.  He is washed in the same precious blood as I am.”  And so together they had Communion.
 

 

            We have peace because of Jesus.  His death has brought reconciliation not only between us and God, but between each other.  As we approach the Lord’s Table, let us be aware not only of our personal relationship with God, but our relationships with one another in the local church, and our unity with the world-wide church.  May our lives be shaped and formed around the cross of Jesus Christ, as we remember, celebrate, and participate together.

The Importance of Baptism and Communion

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment

Okay, I know there are some people who think that I am out of my crazy skull talking about baptism and communion as things that actually shape a person’s worldview as if they play a central role in a Christian’s life.  Are they really that important?  The short answer to that is “yes”. Here is the longer answer, and I will frame it by asking two questions: what place do the sacraments (or ordinances in non-Reformed theology) have in the Christian life? and, why do we even need them since we have the preaching of the Word?

We get something in the sacraments that we don’t get by sermons alone. The sheer physical presence of the elements of water, bread, and wine engages the whole person in sight, touch, and smell and not just through an engagement with the mind through the ears. The sacraments present the good news of Jesus to us, along with the Word, more clearly. Perhaps all of us have had the experience of receiving an e-mail with an attachment we cannot open. We may gain a certain amount of knowledge and understanding from the e-mail itself, but without the attachment the communication is insufficient and lacking. Holy communion and baptism are the attachments opened to us revealing the presence of Jesus among his people and showing us the incredible union we have with God through Christ’s redemptive events.

The big deal here is that we need more than just talk in communication of the gospel. Just as lovers need more than just the words “I love you” (sermon), they need an embrace, a kiss, some action that reveals and seals the words as real. This is the role of the sacraments in the life of faith, that they assure us, in a material way, of the great love shown to us in Christ (VanderZee, Christ, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, pp.191-2). They lift us to heaven where Jesus is seated at the right hand of God and help us to know the reality of grace. The Belgic Confession says this of what we are speaking:

“We believe that our good God, mindful of our crudeness and weakness, had ordained sacraments for us to seal his promises in us, to pledge his good will and grace toward us, and also to nourish and sustain our faith. He has added these to the Word of the gospel to represent better to our external senses both what he enables us to understand by his Word and what he does inwardly in our hearts, confirming in us the salvation he imparts to us.”

It is a misguided belief that the only things believers need is a lively sermon and some good praise choruses for their worship experience. Two thousand years of church history testifies to the importance of the sacraments in the life of Christians. We push them to the periphery at our own peril. They are meant to seal the message of union with Christ to us with greater certainty. When they are practiced with the attention they deserve, along with the preaching of the Word, it provides a solid foundation from which to construct a decidedly Christian world and life view of human need and divine redemption. So, how do you view your life and the world around us?

Twenty-Somethings and Reality

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment

 

            A statistic that probably is being discussed more than any other right now in the Church is that the age group 18-29 years old is leaving in great numbers.  Depending upon the study (and many have been done!) the numbers run anywhere from 65%-80% will be gone from the Church by age 29.  As a former minister to college students, I can attest first hand to this reality.  This is a topic that well deserves a great deal of attention, and needs to be addressed from a variety of angles.  Here is just one angle I want to explore:  that of instilling a decidedly Christian worldview into the lives of college age persons through the sacraments. 
 

One of the great tasks of the church, and a vital pursuit for any believing college student, is to continually come in line with a Christian world and life view. Our postmodern and post-Christian society works against becoming spiritually formed according to biblical categories. The university, as important as it is, can be the vehicle of promoting a rival worldview to Christianity. More than one professor in my undergraduate experience told me that they enjoyed shocking freshman students into thinking in more secular terms and away from their “narrow” thinking about God and the church. Although that has been a few years ago, I continually speak with students who feel like they are swimming upstream of the prevailing attitudes on reality in our society and university culture. One of the most significant means that the church can help inform students and promote a Christian worldview is through the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Western society, and sometimes even the church, tends to hold to a cleavage between the spiritual and the material in an inherent dualism inherited from ancient Greek categories of thought. Yet, in the sacraments these two elements are firmly united. The good news of Jesus is not just proclaimed by stating propositions of truth, but, as Frank Senn has said in his book Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical the forgiveness of sins is declared “by sentences joined to a bath, the laying on of hands, and communal eating and drinking” (p.31). God is the creator of all things, both visible and invisible (Colossians 1:16). The incarnation of Jesus is where the invisible God became a visible human. There is no dichotomous reality here between the material and the spiritual, but an essential unity. Leonard VanderZee has said that this unity makes the sacraments “a place where God meets us and where the spiritual and physical come together for our wholeness and healing” (Christ, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, p.28). Now that the Lord Jesus has accomplished his great redemptive events of cross and resurrection, the sacraments serve as material signs to us of the now invisible Christ. John Calvin called this a “visible word” that declares God’s saving work in Christ on behalf of every human being.

There is certainly a profound place for didactic instruction in the church on a Christian worldview, and I would argue that it needs to take place. But this is insufficient. God himself has instituted baptism and the Lord’s Supper as means of proclaiming forgiveness and declaring the unity of reality, and the great union we have with God because of Jesus. When we partake of this, we are doing much more than remembering; we are providing and re-enacting a view of the world that is in contradistinction from prevailing notions outside of Christendom. Here is where college students can find a place of seeing life from God’s perspective.  Emphasizing the place of the sacraments in the life of the Church gives an alternate view of reality from that provided in many secular environments.  This, certainly, is not the last or only word on addressing the great slide of a whole generation of people out of the Church, but the Word proclaimed at the Table is a necessary element to help college students meaningfully connect with a Christian view of life and reality.

 
So, what are some reasons you think people ages 18-29 are leaving the Church?  What are some ways that they might reconnect with their faith?  How might you build a meaningful relationship with a person in this age group?  Do you think the sacraments are important for spiritually forming people?  How about asking those in this age group who have left your church why they did so?