Good Morning!
Today in our time going through the Confession of Faith, the document which summarizes what our church and we believe about God and our faith, next to come is the chapter on the Sacraments. In Protestantism we understand that there are only two of them, the Lord’s Supper and Baptism. The Roman Catholics believe that there are seven: baptism, the eucharist, confirmation, reconciliation (confession), anointing of the sick (last rights), marriage, and holy orders (monks, nuns, priests, etc…). They understand, as we do as well, that what makes a sacrament a sacrament is two-fold. 1) They were instituted by Christ, 2) They are means of God’s grace and applied by His hand. What separates us from the Papal religion is that we can find neither command nor example in Christian Scripture where the other five are laid out by our Savior as instruments through which we are blessed by His presence and the power of the Holy Spirit. For some what I am about to say will probably cause them to gasp, but there is actually something we can learn from the Romans on the subject of the Sacraments, and that is in the seriousness through which they take them.
While we find their doctrine of transubstantiation (that the bread and wine transform into the physical body and blood of the Lord, Hoc est enim corpus meum) superstitious bordering on morose great care is taken by the priests in the handling of the elements, because of this belief. There is also great care taken in who is allowed to take the Sacrament. None of us would (or should) be allowed to partake of the Sacrament in the mass. We neither have the requisite right nor has the Church granted access to the table. The idea that the Church should have authority in this matter strikes Western protestants, Americans in particular, as pretty strange. We are kind of breed and taught by our culture that the only person who can tell me no is myself. However, the Bible says that the Church, through the authority given to the Apostles by Jesus Christ, has been given the right to hold the keys of the kingdom (Matt. 16:19), which includes the who, what, where, when, etc… of the Lord’s Supper and Baptism. It may strike some as odd, or even unnecessary, that the Session at Bethany has to pass a motion in an official meeting to approve a person for Baptism, or to hold the Lord’s Supper. But we must remember, and confess that this is the case, because it is what God teaches in His Word. The Church alone is granted the right to oversee the Sacraments, and the Church through its officers (Ministers and Elders) are granted the responsibility to see that the Sacraments are properly administered. They must guard the table from the leaven of unrighteousness.
The practice used to be (and still is in some circles outside our denomination) in the ARP up until the early 20th Century that before the Lord’s Supper would be celebrated that the Church would hold a time of preparation. This usually consisted of three or four days of services. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (or Fri-Mon). The meetings prior to the Lord’s Day would consist of preaching and singing geared towards confession of sin, recovering the meaning of Communion, thinking upon the love of Christ for sinners, etc… then after the taking of the bread and cup there would be a time of worship focused on Thanksgiving for the blessed fullness of the Sacrament’s power and the glory contained therein alone in Jesus. As part of this in the lead up to the celebration the Minister and the Elders would go around to every home in the congregation to meet with the members of the local church. The purpose of the visits would be to ascertain where the individuals were in their own walk with Christ and find if they were spiritually prepared to participate in the meal. Now, most people today would find this abhorrent, not to mention a highly inappropriate invasion of privacy, unfortunately. Here we see a place where our culture leads the Church instead of the other way around. The foundation for this practice is in the responsibility the under-shepherds of the Lord have for making sure Christ’s sheep are being protected, and are in a place where they understand the blessings of the table for their own spiritual well-being. It was a work of concern and care, not an opportunity for gossip.
Paul in 1 Corinthians 11, in the go-to text on this matter, chastises the Corinthian church because they have turned the Lord’s Supper into a revelrous charade of drunkenness and gluttony. His concern is that they have taken what Christ had established as a warm, rich testimony of the remembrance of His sacrifice for sin, and an opportunity for the believer to be fed with the grace of their Redeemer and squandered it in laziness and blasé forgetfulness. He warns them in the strongest manner, telling them that if they continue to treat the Supper as an “of course”, or as just something else to do in the life of the church, then they will find themselves drinking judgment unto their souls. His language there is striking, and it should be eye-opening to each of us. There is much need in today’s church to recapture the uniqueness and the solemnness of coming before the Lord of Glory in faith through His means of grace.
To be sure it is not just the Lord’s Supper where we could use a little bit of reminder of the weight of the matter. Baptism likewise is a sign and seal of the promises of the Covenant of Grace, instituted by Christ for the children of believers and for those converts who have not previously been baptized. While we will spend time in the next couple of weeks on the mechanics of how grace operates in the sacraments this morning as we introduce the subject of the Sacraments it was worthwhile to spend some time considering why they matter, and why the Church should take them seriously, for our own benefit. As Presbyterians we are to have a very high-view of the Sacraments and should cherish them with the honor they deserve, and we need.
For today’s reading help here is some more on the blessings of the Sacrament from Kim Riddlebarger.
https://www.wscal.edu/blog/basics-of-the-reformed-faith-the-sacraments
Blessings in Christ,
Rev. Benjamin Glaser
Pastor, Bethany ARP Church