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