We come to the Lord’s Table every week, but what the seating arrangements? What should our posture be, and how is the Supper laid out?
In the aftermath of the Reformation, this is one of the things that came to be reformed. Previously, the people would come to the Table rarely, they would come down a long nave, and they would kneel to receive just one of the elements. That is hardly a posture of table fellowship. After the Reformation, the statement made by the seating was strikingly different. The Scots and the Dutch particularly wanted to have the statement be that of a family seated at a table together, and they went so far as to have a very large Table made, at which the congregation could sit down together. But then, as a congregation grows, you have to eat in shifts, and you are losing some aspects of that wonderful picture.
Another device that developed—the one we are using here—is the device of having the congregation seated on three sides of the Table. We are gathered at Table throughout the service, and we, as a family, are gathered around that Table. This is one of the reasons we decided to move from portrait seating to landscape seating. We are all here together.
The minister consecrates the elements, and officiates at the Table. The elements are distributed by elders, deacons, and sometimes when we are short-handed by men from the congregation. But liturgically, the waiters are the elders of the church. When the elements come to you, all of you pass them up and down the rows, and you do it family style.
And why family style? We are the household of faith, and so it is that we are privileged to give the body and blood of the Lord Jesus to one another.
So come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.
My wife and I noted with interest your willingness to delegate the distribution of the elements to men of the congregation when short-handed. We’re in a church now that does the Supper in a way that I gather is pretty common, but we’re not used to it yet: everybody forms two lines and heads up to the front to receive the elements from individuals there. The congregation cycles through different family groups to stand up there with the bread and wine (okay, juice), and sometimes this involves elders, sometimes laymen, and sometimes their wives. Two questions I’d like to get… Read more »
There’s a whole spectrum of practices here. The “coming forward to the rail” approach seems like the most pragmatic way of keeping the distributors limited to pastors or elders, no matter congregation size. My tradition allows elder distribution but the practice of many congregations is “clergy-only.” In any case, the pastor is officiant. Pastor Wilson’s description is definitely more a “family-style” meal but requires more hands on deck. It allows folks to partake in unison, rather than the “first in line” approach of a traditional Eucharistic liturgy. There is give and take with any congregational approach to the Supper. The… Read more »
It’s unfortunate that no one practice captures all that can be gloriously pictured in the Table, or do so in a way that is most practical for congregations of all sizes. I very much like Wilson’s view of the Supper as an extended family reunion feast. Many families are represented, but all have come together as one larger family. If someone were charged with hosting a very very large family reunion, it might be practical to ask each individual family to send someone up to get a portion for their immediate family. That should naturally be seen as a role… Read more »
“If someone were charged with hosting a very very large family reunion, it might be practical to ask each individual family to send someone up to get a portion for their immediate family.” Although in my mind, it kind of kills the point of a family reunion if you build in the assumption that everybody’s going to stay seated with their immediate family for the meal. Family reunions are a time for mixing; while worship services are less this way, I’m not sure I like the idea of structuring a vital element of the service in a way that both… Read more »
Careful now. Let’s not overstate our case. There are different movements in a family reunion just as there are with Lord’s Day worship. I’m sure most of us have witnessed the chaos when family structure breaks down at a large meal. The kids can rush the food tables like a swarm of locusts as people look around wondering where the parents are. As a matter of practicality and consideration (and unless other arrangements were made), you would want your kids within arm’s reach when it’s time to sit still and listen, and when it’s time to eat. This is part… Read more »
“As a matter of practicality and consideration (and unless other arrangements were made), you would want your kids within arm’s reach when it’s time to sit still and listen, and when it’s time to eat.” Not really, not if they’re over eight years old or so. They’re fine on their own in a friendly community setting. They know how to sit still and listen at the appropriate moments, and frequently go off to eat with their friends at less formal church gatherings or large social gatherings without any “prior arrangements.” And my now teenaged and 20-something kids are still part… Read more »
I just want to clarify that a family who sits together for a meal is not killing a family reunion, or denying the larger context of free fellowship (including running and playing). Sitting together as a family doesn’t preclude simultaneously sitting together with other such families for fellowship, for example. My main point was that a representative who gathers the elements in service of their family during the Supper shouldn’t be confused with any sort of mediatorial role. I don’t think Jane is offering the following view, but there are some who apparently hold that the nuclear family should dissolve… Read more »
“I don’t think Jane is offering the following view, but there are some who apparently hold that the nuclear family should dissolve into individuals when gathering together as the Church family, and then be reconstituted after the service. I think some of this view is a reaction, to offer an antidote against an overbearing patriarchy in the home. But I’m not persuaded that this is a wise approach because I don’t see the Church family to be in conflict with the nuclear family. They are to be friends.” This is only a problem for those who think the sacraments are… Read more »
I don’t see how our children can’t be God’s children, thus eliminating the need to set the two at odds. Also, didn’t Christ have the Spirit descend on Him in the flesh? Didn’t the disciples have the Spirit come upon them in the flesh?
I guess I’m just saying the imagery of your statement confuses the heck out of me. Could you expound?
Sure – the New Covenant is not about physical seed. It’s not tribal and it’s not hereditary. Circumcision was about the children of Abraham. Paedobaptism is about the children of Christians. But the actual New Covenant sacraments are about children of God. They are not about generations but about regeneration – the second birth, not the first. If that distinction is honoured, the problem about how much of our human households is allowed into church becomes irrelevant.
But the Old Covenant wasn’t about only physical seed either. It was about spiritual seed being planted in your physical seed. Paedobaptism is about the children of Christians, just as circumcision was about the children of Israelites: but both those physical signs were accompanied by the expectation of faith. That’s why Paul says that not all the physical seed of Abraham was truly an Israelite. There was an invisible Israel, just like there’s an invisible church. Just because the invisible Israel and the visible Israel didn’t match, and just because the invisible and visible church don’t either, isn’t any reason… Read more »
Certainly not every Jew was a “true Jew” because it was a social demarcation. Some were Jacobs and some were Esaus. But baptism separated between the Jacobs and the Esaus, and its purpose did not change. It did not reinstitute a social demarcation. It celebrated the true Jews, regardless of their birth, and still does so today. There’s no indication in Scripture that any sign is required upon infants either before or after the circumcision, which was only about males, and thus physical seed, anyway. The Seed has come. To baptise babies is to say that He hasn’t come in… Read more »
Yes, you are correct that I don’t hold that view. However, I also don’t believe that there’s something fundamental to a family sitting together in worship. It is normally a good practice, for all kinds of practical and symbolic reasons? Yes. But I don’t think it is so essential that it makes sense to structure worship around it, since at a given moment it may not be happening, for fully justifiable reasons (or maybe more properly, in a way that doesn’t even require justification, it just is.) Speaking in a strictly pragmatic way, if you set up the distribution of… Read more »