We are accustomed to speak of Word and sacrament together. In the normal order of things, they do go together, but it is not as though God is constrained. He ministers to His people when, where, and how He pleases.
When God gave Moses His Word on the mountain, their communion there did not include a covenant meal together.
“And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments” (Ex. 34:28). But ten chapters earlier, when God communed on the mountain with the nobles of Israel, food and drink was involved, and Moses and Aaron were both there. “And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink” (Ex. 24:11).
We believe in the importance of the church, and in the importance of right worship, and we believe that God promises to meet with us here. And we believe He really does meet with us here, and that we commune with Christ by faith as we partake in faith. But whenever people have a high view of worship, what does it look like as the evangelical faith deteriorates into another kind of faith? What does that temptation look like?
It looks like a “God in a box” religion. It looks like we have figured out the right ways to contain Him. It looks like we have planted and tended a petite garden, with rectilinear, gravel paths, and strict instructions for God to keep off the grass. When that happens, it looks like idolatry.
And so, let us come and commune with the living God.