Our standards also teach that one of the purposes of the sacraments is to “put a visible difference between those that belong to the Church and the rest of the world.” Being a Christian means that you have been washed in the waters of baptism and that you have free access to this Table. Those who have not called out to Christ do not have this privilege. This has the effect of placing a visible difference between the new world that God is creating in the Christians and the old world, which is passing away.
The fact that we confess that this visible difference is not of ultimate importance does not make it unimportant. We have to be very careful at this point. We know and confess that people who have been baptized and who come to this Table can be lost. We know and confess that there are some who come to everlasting life without having ever had an attachment to the visible church. Outside the Church is not ordinary possibility of salvation.
But many have taken the reality of these exceptions as a basis for saying that the visible markers created by the sacraments are unimportant. This follows not at all. You have great privileges, privileges of citizenship, in coming to this Table.
When we gather around this Table as communicants, we are declaring our allegiance to God’s kingdom. We are showing ourselves as those who belong to Him. We are doing this in a very public way, showing that we “go to church,” that we are communicant members of a Christian church. This visible difference is something that God loves to use, and He does use it.
This is one of the ways that we proclaim Christ’s death until He comes. The visible difference between those who gather to remember His death and those who would prefer to ignore it is a very stark difference. As we gather for weekly communion, we are telling the world that Christ’s death and resurrection is the foundation of our week (and theirs), and is the organizing principle of time, space, and all history. And there is a visible difference between those who enact these realities and those who would ignore these realities.