We often take for granted why we do the things we do and even why we think the way we think. It is important to slow down from time to time to take our glasses off to examine the lenses in which we look at the world. Over the last two-thousand years words have changed meaning as they have passed from one language and culture to the next. Different worldviews have been developed, passed away, and redeveloped again. The church at times has moved in some majorly wrong directions, reformers have stepped in to bring correction, and we’ve continually needed reformation as the world has changed and has carried the Bible along with it. We often take all of this for granted and assume that the way we approach and read the Bible is the same way that the early church did.
Our church is part of what is called “The Restoration Movement” which spurred out of the Presbyterian Church back in the 1800’s. If you want to know more about that movement, I’d love to talk to you about it, but I won’t do it here. One of the original intentions of our movement was to be a “Continual Restoration.” In short, we are a movement of people who want to continually come back to the Bible to guide us in what we believe, what we practice, and who we are supposed to be as those who are called by God to bring reconciliation to this broken world. As a movement of continual restoration, it would be a mistake to assume we have “arrived” and gotten everything right in how we read the Bible. In doing so, we have dismissed the Holy Spirit from among us and have told God that we’ve got him all figured out. As I said before, it is important to take the glasses off, clean the lenses, and look back at where we’ve come from so we can see where we need to be.
As we continue our study on the Lord’s Supper, we move this week to a hotly debated topic: Jesus’ presence in the Lord’s Supper. Is Jesus present? Literally? Figuratively? Not at all? Is this “just a symbol”? Is this a mystery we take in faith? What does it mean to receive the body and blood of Jesus as our spiritual meal of nourishment? What does it mean for Jesus to be present as the Host at the Table?
When it comes to this debate, we are part of a branch in the tree of Christianity the stems from a guy named Huldrych Zwingli who was a church reformer living in Zurich, Switzerland at the turn of the 16th century. He could not accept “transubstantiation” (where the break and wine literally become the physical body and blood of Jesus), nor could he find a suitable way to explain that Jesus was present in the elements at the table, so he therefore taught that the practice of the Lord’s Supper was only a memorial to remember (in thoughtful reflection) what Jesus did for us so many years ago in the events of the cross to save us. He was reacting to the church in the Middle Ages who took the belief that Jesus was present at the Lord’s Table to an unhealthy form of superstition.
I won’t bore us with every detail of how the church got to that level of superstition in the Middle Ages. What I want to do is look at what the early church believed about Christ’s presence at the Table and the Biblical framework for that belief.
Between now and Sunday, I want to challenge you to wrestle with this hard subject. What would it mean for us to take seriously that Christ is present with us when we gather around the Table? What does it mean for us to feed our spirit with the nourishment Christ provides us? I don’t expect us all to agree with this discussion, but it is an important one to come back to and reexamine.
The early church believed that Christ was present in the Lord’s Supper. They did not feel the need to explain it or rationalize it. They simply took it in faith and called it a “mystery.” In my studies on the Lord’s Supper I keep coming back to what the function of the Lord’s Supper is in the church. The image I keep coming back to is the image of the church being the Temple (1 Cor 3:16-17). Where was God’s presence located in the Temple? The Holy of Holies. In the Temple, only the High Priest could come close to God’s presence on behalf of the people. Christ brought us near to God so that when we approach the Table, we come close to the presence of God. So close in fact that we are allowed to take his presence inside of us. We then carry the presence of God into the world moving outward from the Table. If the church is the New Temple, then the table of the Lord’s Supper represents the New Holy of Holies where we draw close to God’s presence to be transformed into the image of Christ.
I’m not 100% sold that Paul would agree with my imagery. But, if this imagery was accurate what role would the Lord’s Supper play in the shaping of the church if we all believed that the reason we came together on Sunday was to draw closer to God’s presence as a community so that we might carry God’s presence into the world?
“The Lord is in his holy Temple; let all the earth keep silent before him.” – Habakkuk 2:20