Communion: what happens at the Lord's table?

I had a good-natured debate with a Anglo-Catholic friend a while ago about the nature of the Eucharist. His assertion was that Protestants, by insisting on the purely symbolic nature of the Lord’s Supper, had deprived the Eucharist of any spiritual power or dynamic between God and participant. As he understood it, Evangelicals viewed Communion was simply and solely a commemoration of an event in history. He contrasted this with the Catholic Mass where, as he saw it, God mysteriously and powerfully interacted with communicants.

It made me realise that we need to be so careful about how with think out and communicate what we believe about the Lord’s Supper. For although we Evangelicals do affirm that the bread and wine are only symbolic reminders of the body and blood, the Lord’s Supper is most certainly not simply an act of commemoration comparable to, let’s say, Martin Luther King Day in America or the two minutes silence for the Armistice.

Evangelicals, rather than using the term sacrament, tend to describe the Lord’s Supper or baptism as ‘a means of grace’. I think that is a term which can help us not to underestimate what is happening at the communion table. When believers come to the table to recieve those symbolic elements of the bread and wine in faith, God meets with them in a special and powerful way. Through this act instituted by the Lord himself, God communicates his grace to every heart assembled there, applying the work of Christ on the Cross to our hearts and ministering individually to every believers need. Whether through fresh assurance of forgiveness, renewed perseverance, rebuke for coldness, chastening for lovelessness, comfort in grief and pain, reminding us of our eternal hope or a myriad other ways, the Holy Spirit sustains us by imparting to us that fountain of blessings that flows from Christ’s work on the cross. This is where the true power of the Eucharist lies, and why we impoverish ourselves if we stay away from the table. At the communion table we meet with God as at no other time, which of course is why we call it communion - because we are communing with God himself.

Therefore I would suggest that mysterious ideas of the elements turning into the actual flesh and blood of Christ are not prerequisites for a high view of the Eucharist. The Lord’s Supper is a profoundly powerful, spiritual interaction without invoking ideas of Christ being resacrificed each time we celebrate it. So, let's stop and think before we describe Communion as ‘purely symbolic’ lest we strip the Lord’s Supper of its true spiritual power – a power which derives not from superstitious ideas about the bread and wine but from the mighty work of Holy Spirit applying to every believer present the glorious completed work of God’s son, now seated at the right hand of God on high.

Bible Coffee Club

I recently came across this very thought-provoking blog. http://bibleandcoffee.blogspot.co.uk/  Several of the contributors are people I hold in very high regard and I like the eclectic mix of stimulating topics. I only wish this was a real Bible coffee club rather than a virtual one so that we could further the discussion! Whilst you may not agree with everything written here, you will find yourself stretched and challenged to rethink important areas of life and faith from a Biblical perspective.

Giving freely

‘All that we have comes from you Lord, and of your own do we give you…’

God’s people are constantly encouraged to give ‘generously’ or ‘freely’ (e.g. Deut 15:10-14, Ps 37:21, Ps 112:9, Romans 12:8, Matt 10:8).  In saying this, I don’t believe that God is just concerned about quantity but more with the attitude in which we give. There is a freeness in giving which has nothing to do with quantity.

As a general principle, I believe that when we give money to the Lord’s work we should give without strings attached – with no stipulations as to how the money should be used and not expecting anything in return. I’ve heard people in churches say things like ‘We must be careful not to upset person X because he’s one of the church’s main financial supporters’ and I’ve known people give money with stipulations with the intention of influencing the direction the church is moving in. These are practices we have learnt from the world, where money speaks and where he who has money has influence, but they haves no place in God’s church.

I’ve also seen Christian organisations hamstrung by gifts ringfenced (no doubt with good intentions) for specific ministries. I know of charities that have become unable to meet the needs of those they served despite having large amounts of money in some accounts because the money could not be touched because it had been ringfenced for areas where there was now little need and could not be transferred to areas where there needs were pressing. This is another reason why I believe we should generally make gifts without making strict stipulations as to their use.

Some feel justified in using their money to gain influence, when the objective is to direct the church towards a particular theological position or what they believe to be God’s will, for example giving the church money earmarked for Bibles of their preferred translation or using a gift to ensure the continuance of an activity where we disagree with the church over its continuance. To me this still seems very dangerous because we are essentially using our money to impose our will on the church, thereby placing ourselves outside the authority of the church.  If in our churches the wealthier members of the church sometimes have influence over its life not possessed by those with limited means, there is something wrong – but many churches fall into this trap at times.

The words at the top of this post are a paraphrase of 1 Chron 29:14 spoken at the offertory in the Anglican church. This reminder that we are just stewards will help us to keep the right attitude to giving: We should not expect our gifts to carry any personal influence simply because the money is not ultimately ours to give. An honest steward would not derive any personal benefit from money he administered but was expected to make the best possible use of it solely for the profit of his master. The profit our Master seeks is his glory and the advancement of his gospel. Therefore, we give our offerings in faith, trusting to God how it will ultimately be used. We need not be disturbed if the church collection is stolen, our church does not seem to use our money as we would have wished or church finances are taken (such as, in some recently examples, when congregations have to leave a denomination that no longer upholds the Word of God or perhaps in the future by the state) because it was not our money but Gods. He is sovereign and will ensure his resources achieve the ends that he desires., in spite of human frailty, theft and the enemies of the Gospel. 

Is God really our Father?

‘For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom all fatherhood derives its name.’ Ephesians 3:15

I find there is a danger when thinking about God as our Father that we view this as simply the Bible’s way of telling us something about his qualities; i.e. that we are supposed to extrapolate back from our experience of our ‘real’ fathers and thereby understand something about God. But as the text above says, all fatherhood derives from God and not the other way around. Lets be clear about this: God is not some kind of metaphorical father. God is more truly our Father than our human fathers will ever be. As Christians, we are first of all children of God and then children of our human fathers. Our human fathers are just the reflection of the reality which is the fatherhood of God. Their God-given role is to reflect or re-enact God’s fatherhood to us in the way that they treat us. In loving, giving, protecting, feeding, disciplining and so many other things, they reflect what God does for us. They do so imperfectly - some are very precious pointers to God; others barely seem to reflect God’s character at all. The Bible is under no illusions about the imperfections of our human fathers, but it wants those imperfections to make us desire the reality of God’s fatherhood all the more, rather than use them as an excuse to reject God’s fatherhood.

Think about it: God brought us into existence more truly than ever our human parents did. He designed our bodies and created the awesome processes by which we came into existence through our human parents. He knows every aspect of our physical and spiritual being and understands our deepest needs in a way that even the best human parents can never do. He knows our most intimate thoughts and feelings. He disciplines us with absolute fairness and wisdom. He is always willing to give us good things and able to do  for us ‘more than all we can ask or imagine', if we will but ask. He has demonstrated the unquenchable nature of his love in the cross of Christ – a love that is unconditional, for he sent Jesus when we were still God’s sworn enemies. As Paul recounts in Romans 8, God has a profound jealousy for our preservation that will not allow anything to threaten our welfare or separate us from his love.

 

Will you be my Facebook friend?

If you use Facebook or other social networks even a little bit, then I strongly recommend you read this this terrific little book  by Tim Chester.  We're discussing it this week in our women's book group. At 48 pages, it won't take you long! Despite the size of the book I could quote many helpful passages but I’ll confine myself to these 12 guidelines for social networking with which the author closes the book:

1.       Don’t say anything on line that you wouldn’t say were the people concerned in the room

2.       Don’t say anything on line that you wouldn’t share publicly with your Christian community

3.       Ensure your online world is visible to your offline Christian community

4.       Challenge one another if you think someone’s online self reflects a self-created identity rather than identity in Christ

5.       Challenge one another if you think someone’s online self doesn’t match their offline self

6.       Use social networking to enhance offline relationships, not replace them

7.       Don’t let children have unsupervised internet access or accept as online friends people you don’t know offline

8.       Set limits for the time you spend online and ask someone to hold you accountable to these

9.       Set aside a day a week as a technology ‘Sabbath’ or fast.

10.   Avoid alerts (emails, tweets, texts and so on) that interrupt other activities, especially reading, praying, worshipping and relating

11.   Ban mobiles from the meal table and the bedroom

12.   Look for opportunities to replace disembodied (online or phone) communication with embodied (face-to-face) communication

Does self-denial equal self-hatred?

For many years as a young Christian I struggled terribly with the idea of self-denial. My warped understanding of what the Bible was teaching led to years of great unhappiness, frustration, introspection and an increasingly bitter, fearful attitude to God. If you find yourself having the same struggle, please read on. I hope and pray that  these reflections will help liberate souls from this dark, unproductive prison.  

It seemed to me from what I read in the scriptures that self-denial equalled self-hatred. Worked out, this meant that my own desires, whatever their end, were to be denied. Conversely, whatever I most disliked or feared seemed most likely to be God’s will for me. Not surprisingly I found it very difficult to feel love God as a result. It seemed God did not love it seemed did not in fact love me at all but wanted to wipe out all trace of me as an individual. Of course, such thoughts only served to increase my sense of guilt that I felt so negatively towards God.

It was only after a long, depressing struggle that God finally broke through to me with the light of his love and helped me to understand the kind of self-denial he desired. Nowhere in the scriptures are we commanded to hate ourselves, nor simply to deny our own desires or needs as if the denial of them were an end in themselves. Denying ourselves is always linked to affirming someone else (the Lord), and the denial of our own desires to some alternative, positive action. Jesus had commanded in Matt 16:24 when he said that ‘if anyone would come after me he must ‘deny himself, take up his cross and follow me’ (Matt 16:24) and this is what Peter tells Jesus he and the disciples have done in Matt 19:26: ‘We have left everything to follow you!’ Jesus himself, the ultimate example of self-denial, did not simply deny himself for its own sake, but ‘…for your sakes became poor, that you through his poverty might become rich’ (2 Cor 8:9)  and ‘…for the joy set before him endured the cross’ (Heb 12:2).

What I believe the Bible is commanding is an attitude of joyful, liberated self-forgetfulness that comes from being entirely secure in our knowledge of who we are in Christ and of God’s love for us, overwhelmed by what God has done for us and sure of our future in heaven. Such a person simply doesn’t need to keep thinking about themselves. Such a person will be willing to put their own desires and needs second when the glory of God or the needs of others demand it. The Bible teaches us such self-denial for the sake of others, but never teaches a blanket denial of all our desires nor makes denial of our desires a spiritual end in itself, except those desires that are inherently sinful. In fact, in Colossians 2 Paul criticises such teachings because they delude people that they are doing the right thing and do nothing to curb true sinfulness.

Striving to hate ourselves only serves to focus our attention on ourselves more than ever, embitters us against a good and loving God and traps us in endless introspection. A self-forgetful person has their attention and affections taken up with Christ. Instead of producing miserable, dutiful Christians such a mindset produces Christians who are winsome, joyful and effective.

The length of grace

God is so good to us. When we've strayed from him and just begin to step just a few feet back towards him, like the father of the Prodigal Son he is watching out and runs miles to meet us. Yet so often in our own relationships we are only prepared to meet people half way, and even then have got the tape measure out to make sure the other person isn’t a few inches short of the mark. How truly amazing is God’s grace – where would we be if it were not for his mercy?