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A call to restore the Lord’s Table to our weekly worship

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The weight of Scripture is for a frequent communion.  Yet, our hearts may still have some objections.  I’d like to use this final article to address some of those objections and to give some recommendations on how to begin the path to greater obedience in our churches. 

Counter-arguments

It is helpful, at least briefly, to deal with some counter-arguments here.   There are at least two that are commonly given.  The first argues that weekly communion will bring an improper focus on the sacrament so that we will slip into the error of the Roman Catholic Church.  The second argues that if we use the sacrament too often, we will not value it. 

We rightly see that the Roman Catholics give a false pre-eminence to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.  In the 16^th century, the result of this was not weekly communion for the average member of a Catholic church.  Many laymen in the church at that time only had the sacrament once a year.  The high view the Catholic Church had of the sacrament was cause of takingcommunion away from the average Christian.  The reformation restored the Lord’s Supper to the average Christian, although not in every reformation church and only in part for some.  The Roman Catholic fear of the holiness of the Supper (ultimately a failure to understand justification), continued to play a role in the understanding of many Reformed people. This fear, in part, might explain why we still do not practice weekly communion today.

Yet the worry remains.  If we make the Lord’s Supper a more significant part of our church life, we will create a false reliance on the earthly elements of the Supper for salvation, rather than the God who gives the Supper.  That is possible.  That is possible when the Lord’s Supper is done weekly, or monthly, or quarterly, or yearly. History demonstrates that our current system will just as likely result in people having a Roman-like attitude toward the Supper, viewing it as a supper only for the extra holy.  We merely need to think of the Netherlands Reformed Church and their attitude toward the table. You will often hear that one must have a mystical experience of the certainty of faith before we approach the table. This possibility should not undermine our obedience to the call of God to practice the Supper frequently.

We should also note that Baptists will argue in the same way about the practice of infant baptism.  If you practice infant baptism, people will look to the baptism rather than to Christ.  This error happens in churches that practice infant baptism, but that doesn’t make the argument true.  The answer is to teach people that the proper purpose of the sacraments.

A proper understanding of the Lord’s Supper depends on preaching that takes time to teach people about what the Lord’s Supper means. This preaching will always point the eyes of the people to the Lord Jesus Christ who gives of himself in the Supper. As we’ve tried to emphasize throughout this whole series: word and sacrament must work together.  Both must show the Lord Jesus otherwise both will be ineffectual.

Our answer to the second objection is very similar.  Might a higher frequency of communion correlate with less respect for the Supper?  Possibly.  Again, what matters is the teaching.  If we follow Christ in all things, the Supper will be a spiritual benefit for the people of God.  In my experience, and I admit that it is merely anecdotal, our current system does not necessarily result in a deep desire for communion.  We have both those who desire the Supper and those who don’t understand what the big deal is.  The only way to counteract that is good teaching.

The crucial thing in combatting apathy toward the Supper is to emphasize that this is Christ’s self-gift to us.  Weekly communion may be one of the best ways to combat this apathy. To value this truth we must continually be reminded of it. Through the Spirit, we eat of Christ, so that we are transformed into his image.  That is amazing! That boggles the mind!  That should create in us a desire for a closer, deeper, and more frequent union and communion with Christ.

Both of these arguments are based on conjectures of how we might experience weekly communion.  We ultimately don’t know.  What we do know is that if we obey Christ, he will bless us.  That means we can’t base our decision on the possibility of spiritual problems.  Besides, apathy and superstition are things the church will always have to fight.  The question is how best to fight those problems.  If we are willing to hear the Word of God on this point, one weapon in that fight is frequent communion.  We go forward with confidence in Christ; not in ourselves.

If you have followed the argument so far, you will see that in the Supper, there is the offer of Christ himself; our Lord.  The Lord’s Supper was created to give us the assurance that God loves me.  The word without the Lord’s Supper is like a marriage with no physical contact.   Again I ask, why would we refrain from using that good gift frequently?  God is not a miserly God.  Why do we keep this demonstration of his grace limited to a quarterly or a monthly practice?

What to do

As far as I can see, there is no principled stance against weekly communion. There is only a pragmatic one. That is not how reformed ministers are supposed to argue for or against a practice in worship.   I believe the arguments laid before us demand a serious response.  We ought to have weekly communion embedded in our church order.  If we call our churches to preach at least twice a Sunday, we ought to have communion at least once a Sunday.  In this way, we will follow the good pattern, the good tradition, which God has laid out for us in the scriptures. I give the caveat that we would have to give years, perhaps decades, to work through that transition.  God is patient.

Of course, if implemented, we will have many practical problems.  We have a system that is built around quarterly communion (even so many of our churches practice monthly or bi-monthly communion).   We would need a form that assumes weekly communion.  Due to logistical problems, many of our churches that practice communion at the table would likely have to move to the pew (If we think of the feeding of the five thousand as a sort of proto-Lord’s Supper, this is not entirely without precedent).  We recognize that this is a functional thing, not necessarily an ideal thing. 

Perhaps the architecture of our churches would have to change so that they look more like banquet halls rather than lecture halls.   Remember, things like pulpits and pews are not necessarily that old.  The church has had had different ways of using space for gathering together.  Of course, that looks far into the future.   What is important is that we do it.  Naturally, this will take different forms in different places.

I do not believe that this is something worth dividing the church over.  Although it is clearly a defect, analogous to belief in credo-baptism, it does not depart from true worship to the same degree as something like credo-baptism or other defective forms of worship in our day.  I do not intend to break with my brothers over this even though their stubbornness saddens me.

Yet I do have hope.  Recently, I came upon Nehemiah 8: 17, when reading Scripture, “And all the assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths and lived in booths, for from the days of Jeshua, the son of Nun to that day the people of Israel had not done so.  And there was very great rejoicing.”  It seems that even though the feast of booths may have been celebrated, it was not done in the way God called Israel to practice that festival until the time of Nehemiah.  One may wonder why David or Solomon or Hezekiah did not follow this institution of God, whether it was the stubbornness of the people or their lack in zealously following all the law of God. 

But God was gracious. More than that; he went from grace to grace.  In restoring his people after the exile, he also gave them a fuller experience of his blessings than they had enjoyed before. 

A call to restore the Lord’s Table to our weekly worship

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We have come to our penultimate installment on the frequency of communion. Here, I argue that communion is deeply embedded in the call of the gospel. This argument demonstrates how this argument is not just about growing in union with Christ and one another; this is about correctly presenting the gospel to those who are outside the church.    Weekly communion is missional in the best sense of that word.

An argument from the call of the gospel

We have already alluded to this in our argument from the week.  But the fact of the matter is that God’s invitation to the sinner is not only an invitation to receive forgiveness of sins, but it is an invitation to a feast.  You can already see this in the Exodus where Moses’ original request to Pharaoh is that Israel goes into the desert for a feast unto God.  Likewise, Scripture pictures the holy land as a place of food and feasting. 

Look at Jesus’ invitation in John 6, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger; and whoever believes in me shall not thirst.”  This episode is after he was miraculously provided food to the five thousand. Again in John 4, He offers the Samaritan woman living water.  Now Jesus is speaking of spiritual food and drink. However, the physical food and drink of the Lord’s Supper are what he gave as a reminder that we need to find our spiritual food in Christ. 

In Matthew, we see this again.  We have the call in Matthew 11, “Come to me you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”  In Isaiah, where that quote comes from, the rest comes via food and water.  We can think of Matthew 22, where the kingdom of heaven is compared to a wedding feast.  Of course, there are many other examples of this comparison. This also nicely ties in with Revelation 19, where we see the wedding feast of the lamb.  The Lord’s Supper is that wedding and is a promise of that wedding.  

Commentators comment on the book of Luke, noting that Jesus always seems to be having a meal in the book of Luke.   This is the table of the kingdom of God.  Jesus says so in Luke 14.  He is encouraging his disciples to invite all to the banquet of God, the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. When one who is eating with Jesus hears this he says, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!”  Jesus goes on to emphasize the high importance of coming to that banquet.  God is inviting Israel to a new banquet in Christ.

 We tend to isolate the table from Jesus’ ministry.  But Jesus gives us a table that is at the center of his ministry.  The Lord’s Supper only continues the festal reality that our Lord is with us.   Jesus has come to announce the kingdom of God; he has come to announce rest.  He comes eating and drinking for the bridegroom is here. Jesus asks the disciples of John who ask about the disciples lack of fasting, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?”  When we worship God, we have a promise that the bridegroom is here with us too.  Why don’t we eat with him now?  At least when we gather to hear him every week?

The Lord’s Supper is a gospel event.  We taste and see that the Lord is good.  The Lord is so good that he has given us a new beginning in Jesus Christ.  Every week he continues to give us that new beginning. 

The penultimate words of Scripture are an invitation to a feast.  Verse 14, “Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life.” Verse 17, “Let the Spirit and the Bride say, “Come… let the one who desires take the water of life without price.”  We say these words, but we do not show people these words through the sacrament God has ordained.  The rest of the gospel is found in eating and drinking the spiritual food that Christ provides. As Christ says, “my food is to do the work of my Father.”  God promises the word for that end, but particularly he has chosen the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to nourish us in our spiritual life.  Why do we devalue the importance of that gift?

The way we focus on the Lord’s Supper in our churches suggests that it is meant to strengthen us in our bonds with each other internally. The Lord’s Supper is about our unity with one another.  This is true.  However, the way Christ and the New Testament give the call of the gospel should make us question the assumption that this is only about the internal life of the church. 

The Lord’s Supper is an invitation for the nations to join in and receive healing from the Tree of Life.  It is a reminder to the congregation that they have received the goodness of God. Further, in their transformation into the image of Christ, they also become rivers of living water.  Our failure to regularly celebrate the Lord’s Supper undermines our message to the nations about the goodness of our God.

A call to restore the Lord’s Table to our weekly worship

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We now add a sixth argument to our series.  God has established enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.  We participate in a spiritual, holy war.  God prepares us a table to strengthen us in waging that war.

An argument from holy war

David says, “you have prepared me a table before my enemies.”  I have argued that in the Lord’s Supper, we experience the rest of the Lord Jesus.  Yet, according to Hebrews 4, “a rest remains for the people of God.  We are a people in the midst of a war for the universe. This war is a cosmic war between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. 

We need the spiritual sustenance our Lord Jesus gives because we are going out to war. We are fighting against our three enemies, sin, the world, and the Devil. As participants in the mission of God, we go out seeking to take every thought captive to Jesus Christ.  We need the assurance of the holy armor of God as we go out to this war.  In the Lord’s Table, the Lord promises his peace and his rest as we walk in the valley of the shadow of death. 

When David wrote, “you have prepared for me a table before my enemies,” he may well have been thinking back to the beginnings of the conquest of Canaan.  The people of God enter the land.  They have not obeyed God’s command to circumcise themselves while in the desert and so they get to work circumcising the people so that they may roll away their reproach before God.  This cleansing is followed by a celebration of the Passover. They ate this Passover not far from Jericho.  God set them a table in front of their enemies.  

Christ has conquered the Devil, the flesh, and the world on the cross.  The people of God work out the salvation that Christ accomplished. The people of God are involved in the mopping-up operation.  We eat of Christ himself because we have been brought into the rest of the New Creation.  We also eat because we need strength as we continue to assault the gates of hell.  In the Lord’s Supper, we see the promise that Christ has already won.  We also find strength in continuing to apply that finished work to the mission of God

Maybe you think that faithful churches today are insular.  I tend to think so. Why does cultural engagement so often lead to cultural appropriation of the wicked works of this world?  Why is the church enervated by secularism?  The lack of communion is not the only reason for this.  But it certainly provides a part of the explanation.  We can say that the Catholic Church has the same problems, but we should recognize that the Catholic Church has so twisted communion through their theology and only until recently, through their practice, that it is no longer recognizable as true communion.   The church fails to use the tools God has given her for cultural engagement.

Let us take in Christ so that we may have the courage to take up his armor.  The Lord promised a helper to us, the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit promises to use communion to strengthen us for the war.  We all have demons to fight, our sin, bad situations in our lives, the mockery of colleagues, and the temptations to compromise and join forces with the children of evil.   Why do we fail to grasp for that inner strength the Lord promises as we go out to the valley of the shadow of death?  

The reformers emphasized that this meal is for assurance.  How can we prepare a people to wage war against the works of the Devil if we do not give them this assurance? 

A call to restore the Lord’s Table to our weekly worship

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We have now looked at how the Scripture provides a precedent for weekly communion, we have seen the way in which the theology that underlies the Supper supports a frequent use, we have seen how a theology of presence is foundational to frequent communion, and we have seen how the pattern of word and sign or word and sacrament, provides a model for our weekly worship as well.  Now we turn to an argument from the week. 

An argument from the week

On the 7^th day, God rested from the work he had done. God has day by day, taken delight in his work. “He saw what he had made, and he declared it good.” We can extrapolate from what has come before that God continues to delight in his work on the 7^th day.  He is no longer evaluating his creation though. Rather, he is enjoying the work that he has done. 

God’s pattern is our pattern. We work, and then we enjoy the fruit of our labours.  As Christ says, God did not make man for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man.  On the Sabbath, Israel finished all her work and was able to enjoy the fruit of her labours with her Father and Creator.  That rest was an opportunity for festival and communion with her Creator. And what is communion with our Creator other than the worship of God?

But now Christ has fulfilled the Sabbath and has been raised on the first day of the week. He does so as the New Creation, in whom we are also a New Creation.  As a new creation, he is a source of sustenance to our spiritual bodies, just as the old creation is a source of sustenance to our physical bodies. Baptism marks our entrance into that rest of this New Creation.  The Lord’s Supper confirms to our hearts our continual participation in that rest. 

The Lord’s Supper allows us to eat of the fruit of Christ’s labors and so have the freedom to exercise our good works in the week ahead.  Again that rest is found in communion with God. That communion is worship.  That is why we worship on the day of rest.  From the beginning, the church has joined together on the first day of the week to enjoy the fruit of Christ’s labors. 

The week is re-worked through the cross of Christ.  The cross of Christ is a dividing line of history.  Christ accomplished what Adam could not.  Adam sinned so that man is no longer able to produce truly good things.  He could not produce the good fruit God called him to produce.  Everything is affected by sin.  Christ did the six days of work that Adam was unable to do and so brought about a new pattern. 

We begin by enjoying the fruit of Christ’s labors, rather than end the week by taking delight in our labours.  That doesn’t mean that the labours of Israel didn’t come from grace in the Old Testament.  All our work is a gift from God.  That labour, however, was never able to fulfill the law.  Christ fulfilled the law and brought in a new era, which came with a new week.  A week where we begin in the work of Christ.

We participate in Christ; we enjoy the fruit of Christ’s labors so that we begin the week in the rest of Christ. In this way, the Lord’s Supper is about the pattern of work and rest that God has worked into the world.  In the new covenant, we begin the week with the knowledge that we have been given rest through Christ’s work, so that we, as the Heidelberg Catechism says in Lord’s Day 38, may rest from our evil works.  When we celebrate infrequently, we lose something of that constant reminder.

The Lord’s Supper communicates the work of Christ to us.  Christ is the seed that dies.  We take in that seed.  Through that participation, we produce good works.  We can’t do good works apart from Christ.  The law couldn’t save it could only condemn.  But because we begin the week in Christ, we can do good works.  Again, we see the importance of the Lord’s Supper in the process of sanctification.  

Perhaps our modern world doesn’t understand rest, because the church has not adequately understood the rest that God gives in communion.  Rest isn’t merely ceasing to work.  Rest is the festival, as exemplified in the Lord’s Supper, it is coming together in communion with God.  And on Sunday, we come together and enjoy the fruits of Christ’s labors.  Ultimately that is the gospel.  If we had weekly communion, we might appreciate the fullness of that gospel.  

A call to restore the Lord’s Table to our weekly worship

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We continue our series on the question of frequency of communion.  We have seen how the New Testament laid down a pattern of weekly communion. In our last article, we saw how frequent communion fits with the theological meaning of communion.  This week I lay out an argument from order.  Basically, I desire to show how the Preaching of the Word and the Lord’s Supper work together as two means that God uses to regenerate his people. The basic structure of those two means is, first, preaching, and second, confirmation of God’s word in the Lord’s Supper.

An argument from order

We emphasize the importance of the word in our tradition.  We are right to do so.  The practice of the Lord’s Supper without the word is worse than useless.  It is a horrible misuse of God’s gift. The Lord’s Supper is treated as a magical pill for spiritual life, rather than lifting the heart of the recipient beyond the symbols of bread and wine to the true source of sustenance at the right hand of God. 

How do you get the word inside of you?  Through taking in the bread and the wine. The word and sacrament belong together. Weekly preaching without the Supper should seem as inconceivable to us as a weekly celebration of the Supper with monthly preaching.

Although not as bad, the reverse is also deeply defective.  Throughout the scriptures, the Lord often confirms his great works to his people with signs.  God demonstrated his love for Noah with a rainbow.  God established the Passover upon the exodus of Israel.  Following his ten words on Mt. Sinai, God gave his people the entire temple system to train them in his word. Sacrifice too, was a type of sacrament a sacrament, which happened in the temple daily.  Sacrifice was a sign to the people of God, of God’s favor.   It is not surprising to find the same pattern of word and sign in the New Testament.  The scriptural pattern is the declaration of God’s covenant, followed by confirmation with signs.  God calls us to repentance.  God teaches.  And God confirms that teaching through a sign.   There is a wholeness in confirming the word with the sign.

We are creatures with bodies.  God speaks to us and assures us of the truth of his word to us through the rituals of baptism and communion.  Baptism is once, just as Christ’s death covers sin once and for all.  We only need one sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins.  Communion is the continual feeding upon the spiritual sustenance of Christ.  Just as we need daily bread to live, so we need spiritual food and drink for our spiritual life.  Because our hearts so easily stray, we need the confirmation of that spiritual reality often.  

The bread in the Lord’s Supper is significant.  We are many grains crushed and beaten and then baked into the one loaf of Jesus Christ.  We can gather this from a passage like 1 Corinthians 10:14-16.  The sword of the word is the instrument God uses to make this harvest, and the Lord’s Supper confirms our unity with Christ and with one another.  

The wine confirms that our sins are forgiven.  This is the cup of the new covenant, wherein God declares his favor through Jesus Christ’s work.   The cup connects to the cup of judgment.  Since kings judge, it is a kingly cup.  In the wine, God declares that we are righteous, and by letting us drink the wine, he declares that we participate in his rule. This is why Paul can say that “saints will judge angels.”  

We can also think of the words from Revelation 20: 4; God gives his saints judgment.  The word is purposefully ambiguous in the Greek, suggesting that in receiving the judgment of favor from God, they also receive the right to judge with Christ. Even if you disagree with the particular interpretation of that verse, we can see in Scripture that the saints are judged favorably and being judged favorably they will judge with Christ (2 Timothy 2: 11-13).  The wine is a foretaste of that reality.  It confirms the promise of forgiveness of sins that we have heard. Further, we may now use that word to call the world to hear Christ’s judgment.

Hebrews 4 provides another supporting image.  The word pierces, and the word divides.  We might think of the high priest killing and dividing the sacrificial animal.  Here we are the sacrifice, the living sacrifice that is being offered through the word to God.  This is followed by the feast in which we are restored to the communion Adam had with God. However, we do that today in a fuller sense: for the Spirit of God is transforming us into the image of new Adam.  The Spirit is making us into emblems of Jesus Christ to the world around us. We see in these word pictures that Scripture declares a deep connection between the word and the Lord’s Supper.   

They are separate means of grace.  The western church has always had a liturgy of the Word and a Liturgy of the sacrament. The preaching does not do what communion does.  Communion does not do what preaching does, even though their purposes overlap. They do not provide exactly the same thing; that is why we need both.  God gives both to strengthen us in Christ. What the one declares, the other confirms.

We might make one more analogy; that of the head and the heart.  The word speaks to the head, specifically to the ears.  We are to hear the word and comprehend it through our minds. But it can’t just go in one ear and out the other.  Through our minds, it reaches our hearts.  The sacrament confirms the Holy Word to our hearts.   The Lord’s Supper helps me to understand how the factual and historical death and resurrection of Christ are working themselves out in the spiritual death and resurrection, the regeneration that is going on in my heart right now. 

Why does it work this way?  It is because the sacrament works upon my body.  God knows that I am a being with a body.  That is why he gives sacraments and why the sacraments are so appropriate and so needed.  We can think of Article 33 of the Belgic Confession: God gives sacrament for the sake of my insensitivity and weakness. I need the sacraments because I am a created being.  So the center of my being, the heart, is strengthened in assurance toward God.

For some reason, in the west, we have a lot of talk about the head and the heart the pits the two against one another. But if we confirm the words directed to the head within the heart through the Lord’s Supper, we break through that false dichotomy.   

Let us not separate what God has brought together.

A call to restore the Lord’s Table to our weekly worship

Part 1, Part 2

God has given us the essential elements of worship.  God has demonstrated a pattern for our worship.  Through the scriptures, he allows us to dig deep into the meaning of those elements.  The goal of worship is to enjoy the presence of God.  The presence of God also gives us a foundation for regularly celebrating the Supper of our Lord with him. 

An argument from presence. 

Who speaks in our worship?  Ultimately it’s not the minister; ultimately, it’s not the congregation; it is our Lord Jesus who is speaking through his word.  Here is one of the main differences between a historical and biblical understanding of worship and many modern understandings of worship.  Worship is God coming to his people and speaking to them.  It is a conversation between God, through the minister and the congregation. 

When God is present among his people, he serves them a meal.   We see this clearly in the Old Testament sacrificial system.  God is present in a powerful way in the temple.  The people of God bring many offerings to the Lord.  For many of the offerings, the Lord gives a portion back to his people.  We find another wonderful example of this in Exodus 24, where the seventy elders of Israel join Moses on the mountain to eat and drink with God. 

God is Israel’s king, and kings give out good gifts to their subjects.  We can think of Melchizedek bringing out bread and wine to serve to Abraham after Abraham has defeated Cherdolaomer of the Chaldeans.  Melchizedek is greater than Abraham (demonstrated by the tithe Abraham gives to Melchizedek according to the book of Hebrews), so he is also the one who offers Abraham a feast in the book of Genesis (Genesis 14).  Another example of this is the feasts that we find in the book of Esther.  The great King Ahasuerus welcomes the peoples of the Empire of Persia to a banquet where there is plenty of meat, bread, and wine for all.  He demonstrates the goodness of the peace that he brings in this way. 

God, the great king of Israel, does the same for Israel.  This truth comes out beautifully in the book of Deuteronomy, especially chapters 14 through 16.  There the people of God are commanded to bring the tithe to God and are warned not to come before God empty-handed.  What are they to do with those gifts?  They are to feast before the Lord (Deuteronomy 14: 22-29).  When they are in the presence of God, he hands out gifts. 

Jesus ascends on high and is also a gift-giver.  In Acts 2, we see the signs that the Spirit is with the church in a new way.  God will no longer give his special presence to his people in the temple.  Through Christ’s work and the Holy Spirit, He promises to be present in a unique way in and among the men and women of the congregation.  Just as the Spirit dwelt in Christ so he lives in us. That means when the congregation gathers together, the Lord is there breaking the bread. 

In his last days on earth, Jesus demonstrated this.  Almost every time he meets with his disciples after his resurrection, it is connected with a meal.  Literally speaking it is a supper served by our Lord, although I wouldn’t argue that it is necessarily the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.  Even before his death and resurrection, we see a Lord who is always eating.  The Evangelists tell us in the gospels that the Jews accused our Lord of gluttony and overindulging in wine.  The number of meals found in the gospel bear witness to the fact that our Lord comes as a bridegroom offering a festival.

The point of the Lord’s Supper is spiritual nourishment.  The Spirit uses bread and wine to lift our hearts to heaven.  The Lord is there.  The king, who has ascended, wants to pour out his gifts.  Why are we so miserly in giving out those gifts?

Do we believe that the Lord is there leading us in worship?  Then we will enjoy the Supper he offers us. 

A call to restore the Lord’s Table to our weekly worship

Part 1

Here I continue to present my argument that our churches should adopt the practice of participating in communion at least weekly.  I have given a case from precedent or the pattern that God has laid down in Scripture.  Here I present an argument from the meaning of the Lord’s Supper. 

An argument from meaning

The Lord’s Supper pictures Christ’s gift of himself to us for the sake of our life in him. It’s helpful here to see the connection between the two sacraments, one applied externally (I speak physically here) and the other applied internally.  In Baptism, Christ washes us, declaring us clean before God. The sign is applied externally because it demonstrates the promise of Christ’s covering. It is the declaration of the forgiveness of our sins and the promise of the Holy Spirit. Baptism is an initiatory rite.  It marks the beginning of our relationship with God.  The Lord’s Supper keeps the bonds of that union tight.  Through the Lord’s Supper, God continues to confirm our faith in our hearts through the promise of union with Christ. 

The Lord’s Supper pictures a taking in of Christ.  An image that, through the Spirit, becomes a reality. In the Lord’s Supper, we internalize the promises of Christ.  It declares to us that Christ is our only spiritual sustenance. In the words of Belgic Confession Art. 35, we receive nothing less than Christ himself in the Lord’s Supper, “who nourishes, and sustains the spiritual life of the believers, when he is eaten by them, that is, spiritually appropriated and received by faith.”  All our salvation is from Christ.  We cannot justify ourselves, and we cannot sanctify ourselves. The Lord’s Supper reminds us that everything we have comes from God’s grace.  We receive grace through the constant application of the Spirit in crucifying the old man and bringing the new man to life.  God declares to us that he is transforming us into the image of Christ.

This work of transformation happens over the entire life of the Christians. We are not presumptive about this work of salvation, but seek to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.  We need that constant reminder that this is not of our strength, but it is the Spirit who is working in us so that we have the strength, the energy, and the freedom to work this out.  It is the Spirit who works in us to work and to will.  The Christian life is a working out of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Weekly communion is a constant reminder that of the central truths of the gospel.  It is not I who live, but Christ, who lives in me.  I must put my flesh to death on the cross of Christ.  I must find life in Jesus.  Of course, we hear that in the word, but we also need that confirmed to our hearts every week.  The breaking of the bread and the pouring out of the wine are integral to the life of the church because they so clearly demonstrate our union with Christ and his righteousness.  Through faith, The Lord’s Supper is effectual in bringing that union about.   We want to be fat with the gospel of Jesus, not always on a diet.

The whole point is assurance.  I learn through the word.  God assures me of the truth of that word through the sacrament.  All Christians struggle with the assurance of their new reality in Christ.  God gives us the gift of the Lord’s Supper to strengthen that assurance.  Use it!  I now taste and see that the Lord is good.

The question remains how do we avoid the mistake of the Roman church and turn our focus on the earthly elements rather than heavenly sustenance?  The gospel that we have a living king in the flesh at the right hand of God must continue to come out clearly in all our teaching.  We must also emphasize that that king is accomplishing our transformation through the Spirit, who comes from his side.  If we continue to set our participation in the Supper in the context of a risen Christ and a mighty Spirit, we will avoid looking to the earthly elements in the Supper for sustenance.  Regardless of our practice, that realization is what we need for a healthy church.  It is our union with the once dead and risen Christ that is fundamental to living out our salvation. 

I sometimes wonder if the reason our churches struggle working through the connection between justification and sanctification is found in that we do not live out those doctrines in weekly communion. We know that sanctification flows from justification in our minds, but do we have a “from the gut” understanding of this truth.  The connection, of course, flows from our union with Christ.  The Lord’s Supper is all about union with Christ.  In Christ, we no longer belong to this world, but we are citizens of heaven. 

What greater way to live that out, than to physically live out that union with Christ? That is what the Lord’s Supper is. We boldly come before the throne of grace, clean in Christ, and there we find what we need to live in Christ. Christ is the seed that is taken into ourselves so that good works flow from our hearts as naturally as from a spring.  Both our status as Christians who may eat with Jesus and our need to receive spiritual sustenance are deeply entwined together in this holy meal.

We can flesh this out with the doctrine of Christ’s three-fold office.  As a priest, I eat with Christ, and so I demonstrate that I share in his death and resurrection.  Therefore, I declare in the Lord’s Supper my willingness to offer myself as a living sacrifice to him.  I am a priest offering myself to God in gratitude for what Christ has done.  We also see our kingly office.  We declare the righteousness of God that is found on the cross and offer the reconciliation of God to all men through the body of Christ. God is righting the wrongs of history at this table. 

Finally, we see our prophetic office.  We follow Christ in declaring the coming of the kingdom of God.  We declare the forgiveness of sins, equally and freely offered to all. So we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.  Here is the table! Come and see that the Lord is good! 

We might object:  weekly communion isn’t necessary for a positive Christian life. Neither are churches who practice weekly communion shining examples of God’s goodness.  Of course not. On the one hand, churches without weekly communion have lived out the gospel.  On the other hand, churches with weekly communion have not.  In these, communion was used for its own sake and was not used to point the congregation to Christ.

Weekly communion does not magically make us better Christians, but then again, neither does the practice of having two services every Sunday. The point is that weekly communion will strengthen those churches who do have the gospel.  In the same way, churches are more greatly edified by having both a morning and an afternoon service. 

We can also bring up the example of those churches that lack infant baptism.  Many Baptist churches do have the gospel, but if we believe that the practice of infant baptism is good, we must also say that they weaken themselves through withholding the gift of infant baptism to their children.  Even though a given church that baptizes their infants may be weaker than a given church, that does not make the practice itself unhealthy.  Like the Baptist, who chooses not to baptize their infant, we choose spiritual weakness by offering Christ’s self-gift in communion so infrequently.

A call to restore the Lord’s Table to our weekly worship

(This article will hopefully be published (a much shorter version) in the Clarion, the magazine associated with the Canadian Reformed Churches).  I write to my federation, but all faithful churches should hear the call to restore to the communion table to its proper place in the life of the congregation.)

The churches ought to receive the nourishment of Christ at the Lord’s Table at least weekly.  Calvin wrote, later in life, of the practice of celebrating the Lord’s Supper four times a year, “I have taken care to record publicly that our custom is defective so that those who come after me may correct it the more freely and easily.”  In my experience, though Scripture is clear on this question, the correction of this defect has not been as free and easy as one would hope. 

As Canadian Reformed Churches, we have an opportunity to correct this oversight on the part of our fathers.  Within our tradition, we have, from the past, the voice of Van Rongen, who has called on us to reconsider the frequency of communion among ourselves.

I am arguing that the church ought to celebrate communion at least weekly.  At least: there is room to do it more often.  Preaching was never limited to Sundays in the history of the church. Neither should communion.  We may celebrate the Lord’s Supper at any assembly of the saints.

In the same way, that we desire to preach at least once a week, so we ought to want communion at least once a week. The word and sacrament belong together. Weekly preaching without the supper should be as inconceivable to us as a weekly celebration of the supper with monthly preaching.

I do not intend to make an argument from the history of weekly communion.  There are many excellent resources out there that demonstrate the respectability of this practice.   A simple google search of “Michael Horton, weekly communion,” will bring you to an excellent article on the history of it, which he wrote for the Mid-America Reformed Journal.  Robert Godfrey has also done excellent work on the history of weekly communion.   I can also recommend Paul Aasman and Theo Lodder’s works.  Each of those men wrote a short series of articles for the Clarion. Paul Aasman in 1997 and Theo Lodder in 2008-9.  These also form a good historical and theological background for what I will argue in this series. 

I would like to focus on the argument from Scripture.  I will give seven arguments: “an argument from precedent, an argument from meaning, an argument from presence, an argument from order, an argument from the week, an argument from Holy War, and an argument from the call of the gospel.  In my first article, I take up the first argument.

The argument from precedent

The New Testament church practiced weekly communion.  We can note three places in the New Testament, where we see this practice implied.  We see it most clearly in Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11. 1 Corinthians 11-14 contains Paul’s warnings about how the Corinthians meet with each other for worship.  In 1 Corinthians 11: 20, Paul assumes that the Corinthians celebrate communion whenever they come together. If the pattern of weekly gatherings holds, they also had weekly communion. 

We see weekly communion in Acts 2:42, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and the prayers.”  The breaking of bread here is a reference to the Lord’s Supper. In his article, defending more frequent communion, Paul Aasman (Clarion, March 7, 1997) argues that this is not a sound argument for weekly communion because of the regular use of the phrase “breaking of bread” for a fellowship meal.  He fails to fully see how the whole story of Luke-Acts presents the development of the fellowship meal into a sacramental meal.  The connection of the breaking of bread to the worship of the church in Acts 2:42 underscores that point.

This is the way things develop in Scripture.  Common phrases take on new meaning in light of new events.  The Lord’s Table is closely tied with and is a transformation of the fellowship meals that Christ has with his disciples in the gospel.  Now the kingdom has come and the Promised Spirit, which allows the disciples to eat with Christ.  What better way to do that than through the way of the breaking of bread. This breaking of bread, the pattern Christ established on the day of his death. 

In verse 46 of the same chapter, we see a daily breaking of bread, which I understand again as a reference to communion.  God tells us this to demonstrate the devotion of the early Christians.  They are excited about the new kingdom that God has established and wish to celebrate it daily.  We can also gather from this that the Lord’s Supper is certainly not limited to Sunday celebration. 

As time went on for the New Testament church, it seems that communion was more closely tied to the first day of the week. In Acts 20:7, we see this beginning to take shape: “On the first day of the week, we came together to break bread.”   We see an implication that the practice of gathering together had become a weekly practice.  There was a natural connection between coming together and breaking bread.

Like the practice of infant baptism, the frequency of communion is implied rather than directly commanded.  We infer infant baptism from the continuity between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.  It is the same with weekly communion. This is not surprising when we consider Old Testament worship.  Eating was part of one’s worship before God in the temple.  We can particularly think of something like the peace offering, where worshippers would partake of the animal that they had offered to God.   To worship God was to participate in the festival of God. 

To early believers, the gathering of believers is temple worship. We can think of Christ’s conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 4.  Christ says that a day is coming where all men will worship in Spirit and Truth.  Through the Holy Spirit, God now permits sacramental worship wherever one lives.  We see this in Hebrews 11, where the people of God approach Mt. Zion to hear the word of Christ.   In Deuteronomy 16:16, Moses tells the Israelites that when they come to worship God in the temple, they should not come empty-handed.  Neither should we.  Now that churches can have temple worship wherever they worship God, eating becomes a part of that worship. Weekly communion naturally flows from the new order that Christ has established.

Now we may respond by noting that we do not have a direct command in the New Testament to practice communion weekly.  We only have the phrase “as often as you do it.”  We need to be careful with such an argument. As we know well from our Baptist brothers, there is no direct command to baptize babies either.  We imply that.   

We can also note that the New Testament does not directly command the weekly preaching of the word. It does not give commands regarding the frequency of either the Lord’s Supper or the Preaching of the Word, other than the call do it regularly. Strictly speaking, even the call to meet together in Hebrews 10 is not a warning against neglect of preaching and the Lord’s Supper, but the neglect of meeting together. I do not agree with this interpretation.  I merely note that we should be consistent in the way we follow God’s teaching for worship.

In terms of worship, the church has always worked from the assumption that the pattern laid down in Scripture is there for our benefit.  We should have an excellent reason to depart from that pattern.  And there are exceptions to every rule.  The recent lockdown is a good example. It kept the church from gathering together to worship God, which is never ideal. Apart from these exceptions, there is no good reason to depart from the pattern of weekly communion.   

Besides, these are the means of grace.  These are the primary ways in which our Lord has ordained to show his love to us, to comfort us, and to assure us in our faith. When we, in our pride, make excuse after excuse, and so allow ourselves to depart from the pattern laid down for us, we are undermining God’s self-revelation to us.

In the matter of proclaiming the gospel, we rightly follow the example that the Spirit laid down for us in the New Testament.  We are suspicious of those who try to minimize the importance of this example. Whether they argue for one service a week, sermons that do not find their primary source in Scripture, or those who promote the ten-minute sermon.

Why do we question the presented patterns of communion?  If we bring this kind of suspicion to the text of Scripture, we may lose the strength of the argument for a weekly half-hour sermon, much less two half-hour sermons.   To argue that the frequency of communion is an example we can take or leave is a self-defeating argument.  We should approach the scriptures with a desire for maximal obedience, not minimal obedience.

We know that the Lord’s Supper is a remembrance.  We often narrow it down to the cross of Christ.  We should be focussed on union with Christ.  I like how J. Todd Billings puts it in his recent book, “Remembrance, Communion, and Hope: Rediscovering the Gospel at the Lord’s Table.”  You’ll notice he uses the language of “drama.”  This can be used well or not so well. If we understand by this that we are called to apply the lessons of Biblical history to our lives and so continue to apply the work of the Cross of Christ in the World, we are on a good path and that is where Billings is leading us.  The person he got this from, N.T. Wright, doesn’t always use the idea of drama so well.  He ends up using it in a way that undermines the truth of scripture.  Billings, however, is careful to use what is useful in Wright’s understanding of the drama of scripture. Here is the quote.:

“If our identity is to be transformed in the triune drama of salvation [Billings means by this that we desire to move from the family of Satan to the family of God, which is accomplished with ever greater union with the church of history and the God of history, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit], then we need a robust and multifaceted remembrance of God’s promises.  This will be inseparably connected with a present communion with our Lord Jesus Christ mediated by the Spirit.  This will also involve a hope for the return of the same Christ, and the final consummation of creation giving way to the promised kingdom.  Though all this, dwelling upon and receiving God’s word in Scripture, we are given words of life to direct our path, reveal our script in the drama, and show us the identity to which the Spirit is conforming us in Christ.

Why is this threefold approach necessary?  N.T. Wright claims that the story of Jesus is incomplete without the story of Israel in the past, and also without the story of God’s future, which frames the church in the present.  In parallel to this, Wright speaks about the Lord’s Supper as a place where “past and present come together.  Events from long ago are fused with the meal we are sharing here and now.” Moreover, if the bread-breaking is one of the key moments when the thin partition between heaven and earth becomes transparent, it is also one of the key moments when God’s future comes rushing into the present.”  For “Jesus—the real Jesus, the living Jesus, the Jesus who dwells in heaven and rules over the earth as well, the Jesus who has brought God’s future in the present—wants no just to influence us, but to rescue us; not just to inform us, but to heal us; not just to give us something to think about, but to feed us, and to feed us himself.  That’s what this meal is all about.”  The Supper—like the gospel itself—involves a convergence of God’s mighty acts and promises in the past, the in-breaking and anticipation of God’s future, and nourishment upon Christ in the present.  Anything less is a reduction, something other  than living before the face of the triune God.”

One more thing should be explained.  What does Wright mean about bringing the future into the present?  He is talking about justification.  God takes something that he would give us at the end of time, and by the righteousness of Christ allows us to share in his justification.  Because Christ lived a righteous life, we too may share in that righteousness.  Wright has some suspect thoughts on justification, but on this he is absolutely right.