This is a table of thanksgiving, joy and forgiveness. Everyone here should be here in a spirit of gladness and overwhelming gratitude. But suppose you are not? What then? The temptation is to shrink away, to hold back. This is easier when churches celebrate the meal intermittently, but when we have the Supper every week, …
Solid Joys and Lasting Treasure
Food is substantive. We are alive and so we eat food that is tangible, weighty. We are not sitting down to this Table in Sheol, or Hades, a place of grim shadows and shades. So we are not eating shadow food, but rather the bread of heaven. On the level of our physical senses, of …
The Sabbath Cornerstone
As we seek to return to an observance of a Christian calendar, we need to be careful to avoid the mistake that our fathers made. In the course of the medieval period, the year filled up with so many saints days that they had the effect that barnacles have on a ship that at one …
This is the Table of That Rejoicing
We live in a time when everyone wants to be the victim. This is a therapeutic age, and everyone wants to be the hurt one, the aggrieved one, the one with emotional scars—so that the certified therapists can validate us in our wounding, stamp our cards, which will then require the outside world to feel …
Not Impersonal Fuel
We are not coming to the Lord’s Supper as though it were a gas station, and as though the grace imparted were the fuel. It is true that the Scriptures speaking of grace, and mercy, and peace as abstract nouns. This is certainly a scriptural way of speaking, provided we do not do what sinners …
Making It Particular
When the two sacraments that Jesus Christ instituted are neglected, men will always substitute in new sacraments of their own devising. God has given us this Table so that at the conclusion of our covenant renewal service, we might have closure. Just as the peace offering closed the cycle of Old Testament sacrifices, so the …
Tender Hearts at the Supper
In the name of keeping the ungodly and rebellious away from the Table, many well-intentioned Christians have only succeeded in keeping the tender-hearted away. It is analogous to the bumpersticker that says when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. When the hard-hearted are whacked, only the tender-hearted listen. When warnings are given to …
The Death of Divided Loyalties
We know from the Word of God that the ways of the flesh and the ways of the Spirit cannot be reconciled. They are mortal enemies, and can be nothing but mortal enemies. As long as God is holy, and as long as sin is filthy, the two will be at odds, that is to …
Then Go Away
There are three Persons in the triune Godhead, and the eternal Logos is one of those Three. He is numbered among the divine entities who mutually indwell one another, and who make up the one true and living God. This one, who is numbered among the Three, became flesh and dwelt among us, and He …
Being Made Worthy
Breaking a bad habit is hard to do, and the difficulty is directly proportional to how long the bad habit was indulged. The Christian church needs to break two bad habits when it comes to the Lord’s Supper. These two habits consist of looking in the wrong place as we meditate. The first place we …