February Fields and the Euchairst

The Superbowl commercial using Paul Harvey's "And so God made a farmer" was very moving, although I'm not going out to buy a Dodge pickup.

The truth is this has been a warm limp brown snowless winter in southwest Missouri. Not far from where I sitting right now, spreading acres of dry dirt fields look sadly abandoned. They would look much better covered under a while blanket of snow. But, for now, the fragments of the remains of last fall's crop lie mingled acres of  dirt. No one would call it a pretty sight. No one makes a landscape painting of a Missouri field in February (unless there's snow).

Calvin was Right

Is the Lord's Supper just a memorial?  Calvin says absolutely not.  And, he's right.

Ironically, on something as central to the Christian life as the Eucharist, many Protestants would find Calvin's views sound surprisingly un-Protestant.  As noted in an earlier post, Escaping Zurich, many evangelicals, actually hold views of the Eucharist consistent with Ulrich Zwingli (a reformer from Zurich a generation before Calvin), rather than Calvin.  As such, this Zwinglian approach to Communion, one that is neither biblical nor consistent with the understanding of John Calvin, has come to be widely accepted as both biblical and Reformed.

Drinking Poison Together

The outbreak of serious illness and deaths at a local congregation has now been traced to a bizarre religious ritual that involved the ingestion of food and drink at a series of recent church dinners.  The tragedy has touched a number of families in the church.

Matters were made worse when people from a conservative congregation in another state showed up outside the church this morning carrying signs that read, "This is the judgment of God on the people of this congregation."

A reporter from the major local newspaper asked the church's pastor about this: "We're confident we will get to the bottom of this.  But, I can assure every one of you right here and now that this is simply an accident and no one is to blame."

The pastor got it wrong.  The illnesses and deaths in the church were no accident.  Some people were being regularly poisoned.  And, at least part of the blame points directly at God.

Juicy Communion

Did you ever find yourself wondering, when you are in a church communion service: Why grape juice and not wine?  Why all the little cups?

Yeah, this post is hardly revolutionary or inspirational.  But, since the questions do come up from time to time, a little lesson in recent (by church history standards) events will answer our two questions.

A Crucifix in Church?

      

      If you look up in Sunday worship next week and see a large crucifix, you can be pretty sure you are not in an Evangelical or even mainline Protestant church.  Crucifixes are Roman Catholic.  Well, they are found in some other groups, like Anglican or among some Orthodox.  But, it would still be accurate to say a crucifix is not what most non-Catholics in America expect to see this coming Lord's Day.

The Magic Story

“And it was right then,” the old man continued, “that I saw magic.”

You could feel the room grow quiet.  Even people who knew what was coming couldn’t wait to hear it again.

“I saw it.  Real honest-to-God magic.  Not the sleight-of-hand we’ve all seen at parties.  I’m talking about actual magic.  No fooling.  Something that’s just downright impossible.  But, I saw it.  Saw it with my own two eyes.”

You could have heard a pin drop.  Everyone held their breath, waiting to hear the rest of the story.

Dining Alone: A Eucharistic Prayer

Dining Alone

Some people say he’s hidden

   In chalice prayer and bread

Substance transformed like Eden reborn

   In part the whole is fed

The Church without Christ

Adapted from a very short story...

     There was once a church without Christ.

      It was not a particularly wicked church.  It was not a church of militant agnostics raising angry hands against God.  It was not a church that had abandoned Christian truth for distorted heresies.  It was not even an unhappy church.  Indeed, it was a happy church filled with people who knew that there was a God in heaven and that Jesus was His one and only Son.  But, as I already noted, it was a church without Christ.

Refused Communion

     This is a true story.  My memory of it is not as rich in detail as I would like.  It is truth, nonetheless.  I was a child.  It was a Sunday morning in early fall.  We were in church in Keokee, Virginia.  We came expecting that worship would include Communion.  But, an elder from the church announced that it would not.  Oh, it had been prepared.  Everything was right there on the table in front of the pulpit.  Everyone could see it.  But, that Sunday, we discovered, it was not going to be served.

Broken Things at Home and Church

       Once a year we have a garage sale.  For me, it is not a happy time.  It is a kind of cathartic ritual of displaying my many home repair failures in broad daylight before our chuckling neighbors.  Behind the wreckage of my folly in believing the DIY YouTube video that assured me this was a repair job any idiot could do at home, it is not hard to imagine snippets of marital dialogue.

       “Turn it back off!  Whatever you did made it worse!”

       “Look, is that smoke coming from the back of the microwave?”

       “OK, the repairman came this morning.  He worked on it for two hours.  He said whatever you did to it the last time you tried to fix it…well, let me read it off the $200 bill he left for labor, “Like Humpty-Dumpty, this thing is broken – broken is underlined.  PS: In the future, keep all tools away from your husband.”

       And so it goes. 

Nicodemis and the Communion of the Unexpected Jesus

            “Send us the promised Messiah.”

            Doubtless the old man had prayed the same pray hundreds of times since his youth.  Doubtless he had said the words in fervent and genuine hope. 

            And yet, now, on a brisk winter night in the back streets of Jerusalem, he stood in front of the controversial young preacher from Nazareth, looking intensely at him in the torch light, and did not recognize the very answer to his lifelong prayer.

Musical Communion

Many years ago, I was involved in my doctoral studies at Abilene (Texas) Christianity University.  ACU is associated with the churches of the Stone-Campbell Movement that do not use musical instruments in worship.

Most of Sunday worship was familiar.  The order was typical.  The music was generally well known.  Since the churches of Christ had a great emphasis on vocal harmony, it would not be remotely accurate to describe the services as unmusical.  Some outsiders have labeled them as the people who don't use music in worship.  That is so untrue.  They are only the group that do not use instruments to accompany their music in worship.

The most obvious change that struck me as unexpected and awkward was the Lord's Supper.

Celebrating Violence in Church

In Eucharist we have to face a table of great violence.  

Flesh torn.  A body broken in pain. 

The table is not made of wood.  It is carved out of betrayal, cruelty, torture, and, finally, the violent taking of a life.

Relax.  We'll get this mess cleaned up. 

A Fraction of the Truth

I am dyslexic.  And not just a little.  I am blessed with one of those odd brains that seems perpetually baffled by such complex issues as which direction an "S" is supposed to face; or which is right versus left.  Yes, I've heard the old tried and true solution: "Now, make your thumbs and index fingers into the Letter L and then look down and see which Letter L is correct [left hand] and which is backwards [right hand]."  OK people, this doesn't help.  Both L's look perfectly fine to me.

Like other dyslexics, mathematics was not a high point in my education.  

Crowded

      So, here’s what happened.
      I sat down for a nice lunch.  I was actually looking forward to it.  I was waiting for the food to be served when this big redneck in overalls plopped down right beside me.
      “Howdy,” he grinned, unembarrassed by his two missing front teeth.
      “Hello,” I mumbled back politely.
      Focus.  Focus.  It’s okay.  Maybe he’ll leave in a few minutes.  And then I’ll have the table to myself again.
      “You savin’ this for somebody?” I turned to see who talked and this genuinely large black guy was already sitting down on the other side of me.
      Redneck on the left.  Urban black guy on the right.
      “Great,” I thought. 
      Mental note: This is not to time to bring up the Zimmerman case.

Escaping Zurich: Why Evangelicals Get Communion Wrong

Escaping Zurich: Why (many) Evangelicals Get Communion Wrong

The language we use when talking about Communion has a great deal more to do with our history than our Bibles. 

[note: Although written primarily for churches of the Stone-Campbell Movement that practice weekly communion with an assumed Zwinglian theology, the following is also broadly applicable to most American Protestants]

A quick review of any English Bible will demonstrate words like memorial or emblematic or symbolic are not actually found in any of the passages about Communion.  So, where do they come from and why do we hear them so often?  The flip side of that question might be: why are there a number of biblical phrases and teachings about the Lord’s Supper we rarely hear?