Zooming in on the Lord’s Supper? Some reflections… Part 4

Is the Lord’s Supper online a shared meal?

Let’s imagine a best-case scenario where a church can gather its entire membership online in a Zoom call. Access to technology is not an issue, and this is not simply a broadcast, i.e. a one-way communication from leaders to people, but a live interaction such that elders can see who is present and ensure that no-one under church discipline is participating. Bread and wine are also present in every home, and so no-one is prevented from eating and drinking.

Although this fulfils some of the necessary criteria for a biblical practice of the Lord’s Supper I remain unpersuaded that this is a shared meal. It is a synchronised meal to be sure. But we have not sat down together and broken bread together. That, remember, is the essence of the Lord’s Supper. To remember the Lord’s death when we meet to share a meal. It matters that we are not sat shoulder to shoulder, accommodating each other, making room for one another, and serving one another.

 So I do not think attempting the Lord’s Supper in this way can be said to be a supper. Nor do I think we can say the church has truly gathered, although that needs a bit more unpacking.

Is the church online a gathered church?

What we mean by “the church online” is of course no one thing. When the church first started using modern broadcast media, there were a number of critiques raised. One was that the television is simply a medium for entertainment and therefore casts anything we do in that vein. That criticism does need weighing carefully I think, even if it minimises the potential of TV to be used for other ends. My own family have gathered round the TV to watch a pre-recorded sermon on Sunday mornings and the temptation to attend to it with less than our full attention and as something for our passive consumption has been strong. To describe that as “church going online” is also to communicate that church is a one-way transmission for my edification. If we persist in calling that church, I suspect we have a hard time recalling people back to meeting together, and we will have set their expectations in some very unhelpful ways.

Another critique, made by Robert Jenson,[1] was that this kind of communication makes the communicator the hub and recipients the spokes. That is to say, the audience have no relationships one to another, only with the hub. In Jenson’s terms, this use of mass media creates a “mass” not a “community.” Quite so. That does not mean such media should not be used, however, Jenson simply observes that they rely on other means to have already constituted the audience as a congregation. “Close pastoral and fraternal care” can accomplish this, such that “the broadcast does not itself carry the burden of integrating its hearers into the congregation.” The question, for our time, is how do we prevent the community ties from degrading when live-streams or broadcasts will do nothing to replenish them?

Enter Zoom (other communications platforms are available). This does allow for what Jenson calls “crosstalk”, i.e. for the members of a church to relate to one another as well as the centre. But can we say that we are “present” on Zoom, that we have met, or gathered? In relation to the Lord’s Supper, can we say the church is sufficiently gathered to qualify for Paul’s instructions about what we should do when we meet?

This is enormously complicated and more subtle than we might think. There are surely degrees of presence, and different concepts in view. I can be physically present but my attention can be completely elsewhere. My kids rightly expect me to be “present” in both senses at the meal table.

When we think about the Apostle Paul’s interactions with his churches, his letters signify both his absence and his presence. His absence is more obvious, and he frequently longs to be with his churches or co-workers (1 Cor 16:7, 1 Thess 2:17, 3:6, 2 Tim 1:4) that he might seem them face to face and so know how they are faring and to impart to them blessings that cannot be communicated by letter (Rom 1:11, 1 Thess 3:10). Likewise, 2 John 1:12 expresses the limits of the written word (and cf. 3 John 14). His letters nonetheless are a kind of presence with his churches. In 2 Cor 10:1-2 Paul is considered “timid” face to face” and “bold” in his writing; 2 Cor 13:2 repeats in absence a warning he gave in person. Most striking though are two further passages:

Col 2:5. Though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how disciplined you are and how firm your faith in Christ is.

Here Paul wants to assure the church of his concern and so speaks of being with them in spirit. I would think this is parallel to the expression in 1 Thess 2:17 that  Paul was torn away from the church in person but not in “heart” – in other words, Paul carries around his concern for the churches with him. In light of that separation, hearing from Epaphras about the Colossians enables Paul to “see” that they are disciplined and standing firm (Col 2:5).

1 Cor 5:3-5. For my part, even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. As one who is present with you in this way, I have already passed judgment in the name of our Lord Jesus on the one who has been doing this.⁴ So when you are assembled and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present,⁵ hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.

Here I think there are two additional notes. One is that Paul’s absence is polemical. From a distance, he can see what needs doing, even though those present are not administering the necessary discipline. Second, Paul is present with them in the sense that he has communicated his judgment and is with them in spirit when they enact the discipline. Here I suspect there is an authoritative presence. Certainly that is true of Jesus. In Matt 18 Jesus is present where two or three gather in his name in judicial settings and that probably explains the reference to “gathering in the name of the Lord Jesus” and the presence of “the power of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

In light of these texts, we can say that presence is not simply a matter of being there in person. Paul is with his churches in some sense, and his letters can mediate his presence and exercise his authority or care in some crucial ways.

Similar judgments could be made in relation to Jesus himself. In a much more profound way he is able to be present by his Spirit with his people. By his apostles’ words he is able to command his people (1 Cor 7:10), and by the Spirit, he and the Father come and make their home in the believer (John 14:23). And yet we do not see him (1 Pet 1:8) and we long for his appearing (1 Pet 1:7), knowing that we will be transformed when we see him (1 John 3:2).

More generally still, we would want to affirm that believers are united with Christ and so are united with one another. There is one body united by one Spirit (Eph 4:4), and we have permanent access into the grace in which we know stand (Rom 5:2). But these are not adequate grounds to say that the church is permanently gathered, otherwise the commands to meet (Heb 10:25) or the instructions concerning when we do meet (1 Cor 10-11) make no sense.

All of these texts then make us aware of a kind of presence that isn’t full or face to face presence. We need to acknowledge both the potential and the limitations of the ways in which we can be present with others during a lockdown, but I do not think that any of these ways of being present are what Paul means when he speaks of a church gathering to break bread together. One confirmation of that might be the way that the Messianic banquet with Jesus is postponed until there is a face to face presence (Matt 26:29).

In the final post we'll address two final objections to the view I'm defending.

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[1] Robert W. Jenson, “The Church and Mass Electronic Media: The Hermeneutic Problem,” Religious Education 82.2 (1987): 279–84.

Zooming in on the Lord’s Supper? Some reflections… Part 2

A number of arguments have been made in support of continuing to offer the Lord's Supper:

- Arguments on the basis of current practice.

It can be argued that our standard practice of the Lord’s Supper falls short of the NT prescriptions, and so we should not be purists about its observance. Every supper is unsatisfactory in some measure: few churches actually employ one cup and one loaf; fewer still are close to the practice of actual meals together; instead, slightly dry morsels of bread and thimbles of grape juice are passed round. The mood is frequently one of quiet introspection, rather than attention to the corporate realities spoken of in one loaf and one body. And for a variety of reasons, attendance and engagement are not what they could be. So: the Lord’s Supper is already observed in a variety of less-than-ideal ways. So we can relax a little…

By way of response, I must admit I have a great deal of sympathy with these observations.[1] For those of us who argue that the nature of the Lord’s Supper as a corporate and unifying meal of the gathered means that we cannot observe now, it will be interesting to see whether our past practice lends those arguments any plausibility! There might, therefore, be an argument here to review our practice when we begin meeting again and make sure it embodies as best it can the nature of the Supper as given to us. How can we better reflect the corporate, unifying, and festive elements of the Lord’s Supper? I’m not sure though that there is an argument here for observing the Supper in even more irregular ways. Indeed, whatever its shortcomings, all of our current practice has fulfilled the basic essence of the Lord’s Supper: a shared meal of the gathered church, and I cannot see how a live streamed communion service or a synchronised meal over Zoom fulfils that basic criterion.

- Arguments on the basis of current exceptions.

Some appeal to the fact that communion is offered to believers who are housebound or sick, and that provides precedent for making the Lord’s Supper available now. Again, different churches will take a different view on whether this is an admissible practice in itself. What is striking about the Anglican Book of Common Prayer’s provision for communion in such cases, is that it still aims to preserve as many of those distinctives of the Lord’s Supper as possible. It is still be administered by an ordained minister, and ideally that minister would be able to take other parishioners with them so that the body is represented in that visit. It is only in very exceptional circumstances that the minister would go alone.[2] Even in those cases, we are talking about a person actually attending the sick person.[3]

- Arguments on the basis of the priesthood of all believers

It has been argued that the priesthood of all believers in the New Testament legitimates anyone officiating at home. There is an important Reformation principle here that undergirds much of the Protestant practice of the Lord’s Supper, but the Reformers would still have argued that it is the duly appointed ministers of the gospel who should oversee the table, and would see the sacraments as belonging to a separate sphere of authority: the church, not the home. Although some have invoked Luther on this point, it is interesting how he dealt with one related “what-if”:

“If a little company of pious Christian laymen were taken prisoners and carried away to a desert, and had not among them a priest consecrated by a bishop, and were there to agree to elect one of them, born in wedlock or not, and were to order him to baptise, to celebrate the mass, to absolve, and to preach, this man would as truly be a priest, as if all the bishops and all the Popes had consecrated him.” (Luther’s Address to the German Nobility)

Note that what happens in this scenario is the constitution of a church in the wilderness. The people have the right to ordain a minister (they are not stranded without a Pope on that score); but it is the ordained minister who then has the right to officiate. Luther does not support the view that this hypothetical wilderness generation can go ahead and serve themselves, by virtue of the priesthood of all believers.

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[1] There is though sometimes an undue primitivism lurking here, that says our aim should only be to recover first generation Christian practices. Even within the NT we sees aspects of development and the formalisation of church offices and structures.

[2] In the BCP text, “In the time of the plague, sweat, or such other like contagious times of sickness or diseases, when none of the Parish or neighbours can be gotten to communicate with the sick in their houses, for fear of the infection, upon special request of the diseased, the Minister may only communicate with him.”

[3] For my money, I think the BCP has it right: that ideally someone who is housebound and wishes to share in the Lord’s Supper could do so if a group of church members attends their home, as a microcosm of the whole body.

Zooming in on the Lord’s Supper? Some reflections… Part 1

This has become a sprawling debate. I have tried to capture the major arguments here without naming lots of names. Of course no-one is making all these arguments; I’ve just found it helpful to spread out the pieces and try and organise them a little…

By way of a headline, I don’t think we can celebrate the Lord’s Supper until we physically gather again as God’s people. But I want to acknowledge the breadth and quality of many arguments for a different conclusion. There are some biblical arguments that need addressing and there are very tricky questions around what it means to be “present” online. Could it not be said that the church has gathered in a Zoom chat room?

Let’s begin with some basic convictions about the Lord’s Supper, widely recognised:

1. The Lord’s Supper is the sign of a sacrifice for sins offered once for all. The loss of the Lord’s Supper would be much, much worse if we believed it atones for sins. 

2. The Lord’s Supper is a sign for the new covenant community.

a.       It signifies the unity of God’s people. There is one loaf, one body, one cup. Indeed, it constitutes us as one. We who are many are one “because there is one loaf.” (1 Cor 10:17)

b.      It is to be celebrated as the gathered church. Paul’s instructions on the Lord’s Supper are given along with other aspects of corporate worship under the category of things to do “when you come together” (1 Cor 11:18, 20, 14:23, 26).

c.       It is closely related to church discipline. To excommunicate someone is to ex-communion them, to deny them the right to eat at the family table. 1 Corinthians 5-6 speaks of those who should be excluded from table fellowship because of their sinful conduct as an act of discipline.[1] Likewise Matt 18:17 speaks of ending fellowship as the climax of a process of discipline.

This responsibility to “judge those inside” the church falls to the whole church community in 1 Cor 5:12-13 and the unrepentant sinner’s case is brought before the whole church in Matt 18:17. That said, there is a clear need for mature believers to be engaged in the process (Gal 6:1) and it is the responsibility of leaders in particular to refute error, rebuke, correct, and restore, as the Pastoral Epistles demonstrate.

Protestant churches have developed a number of ways of administering the Lord’s Supper which will raise some more specific issues, beyond the need to observe the basic contours on the Lord’s Supper. In some traditions, it is only the ordained ministers of the gospel or elders of the church who may preside. In others, the bread and wine must be consecrated by an ordained minister and any surplus reverently consumed.[2] To the extent that these are felt to be important, they will feed into our decision about what is permissible or advisable in this season.

But, to return to those broader convictions about the Lord’s Supper, the basic question emerges clearly enough: if the church can’t meet together, then how can it celebrate the Lord’s Supper?

The next few posts looks at a number of recent arguments arguing it can...

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[1] In the words of the Westminster Larger Catechism Question 173: “May any who profess his faith, and desire to come to the Lord’s Supper, be kept from it?” Answer: “Such as are found to be ignorant or scandalous, notwithstanding their profession of the faith, and desire to come to the Lord’s Supper, may and ought to be kept from that sacrament, by the power which Christ hath left in his church, until they receive instruction and manifest their reformation.

[2] What is meant by consecration varies; it can mean that bread and wine are accompanied by words which proclaim their significance (thereby keeping word and sacrament together). See Calvin Institutes 4.17.39 on this); it can also include the prayer that the Spirit would enable the people to feed in Christ in the Supper.

Who the man?

Some notes from Grayson Perry, The Descent of Man (London: Penguin, 2017).

 “Men are constantly performing for an invisible authority, the Department of Masculinity. We never know when we are being observed, so we constantly keep watch on ourselves and each other; we guard the boundaries of the role. We are all the authority figure and the prisoner. I often look at men and they seem to be victims of this drive to perform their gender. What are they afraid of? Why do they play the man so extremely, whether with muscles or knowledge or wit?” p54.

“Nearly every masculine garment is coded to associate the wearer with dramatic versions of their gender role. Every extraneous buttonhole, pocket and patch is not really about real function but is as decorative as a lacy frill.” p66

“Whenever I talk about masculinity, about its behaviours, feelings and aesthetics, it often feels historical. A trait that Fight Club and much of the rhetoric around manhood seems to exhibit is nostalgia. Feminism has always been forward looking. Women’s rights will come, a woman’s role will change and expand, she is working for a better, a more just future… Men, though, always seem to be harking back to some mythical golden age (for men), when men were ‘men.’ A time of hunting (dangerous, thrilling), a time of war (dangerous, thrilling and boring), a time of heavy industry (dangerous, boring), times when all the vintage men’s equipment – anger, violence, physical strength – could be put through its paces.” p91.

“I'm not entirely convinced by the power of celebrity male role model. They are exotic distant beasts. For the role modelling to work, I think boys need the reliable constant drip-drip of day-to-day contact and attention from a good man probably his father. A boy needs to have his mentor’s sensibility rub off on him and reinforced frequently and casually, not just read about him on some gossip website or see him on some chat show... 

I find few focused examples of what men could or should be in a gender-equal world…The problem is that because they are new there is no compelling back catalogue … of role models… I can see the need for a new male archetype, but is he sexy and thrilling? He’s practical and convenient, like a washing machine. Men need a vision of masculinity that is not just predicated on the thrilling highlights of an outdated romantic narrative - it needs to celebrate the true everyday happiness that comes from stable intimate relationships and a meaningful role in the here and now.” p104-5.

“Every so often in a bar I notice a man - often all muscles or joshing with a raucous group of mates - who seems to have an unnamed fear in his eyes and a nervous laugh. He seems to be showing fear and discomfort at where he has found himself, as if he is trapped, playing out a role that does not fit. This man emits anxiety, as though for a brief moment he has managed to glimpse around the edge of the mask and realised that all the Investment he has made in being a man is suddenly worth nothing. All the laughing at offensive jokes, all the pumping iron, all the drinking, competing, all the suppressed pain and hiding of sadness, all the colluding and sexist office politics, all the coping alone, all the diseases diagnosed too late, all the hours of boredom talking about sport, all of it, all of it, all of it, for what? To keep up the act - to be a footsoldier for an imaginary leader that sits in the top corner office of our subconscious. That imaginary man is of course the CEO of the Department of Masculinity. This idealized self, this boss, is hegemonic masculinity... the archetypal bully all men carry around in their heads tutting, sighing, and sniping when they don't come up to scratch.”  p118

George Orwell on "modern English of the worst sort"

 George Orwell (Why I Write, pp110-113):

“I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

The first sentence contains 49 words but only 60 syllables and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains 38 words of 90 syllables: 18 of its words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images and only one phrase (‘time and chance’) that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its 90 syllables it only gives a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first.

Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still if you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes.

As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of the meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by somebody else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier - even quicker, once you have the habit - to say in my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think.”

If one attraction is that it’s easier, another must be that it sounds clever, or learned.

And Orwell’s prescription:

“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions: what am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is the image fresh enough to have an effect? and he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?”

Romans reading

I've had a couple of recent requests for info on what's recent and worth reading on Romans.

Here's an email reply...

Hi Philip,

Lovely to hear from you and apologies for a slow response!

depends what you're after of course. Tom Schreiner and Doug Moo are both about to publish the second editions of their commentaries which will substantially update those very strong works. Both due end of this year I think which may come too late for you.

Will Timmins has published his PhD on Romans 7 - it'll be a key part of the debate for decades I suspect -  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Romans-Christian-Identity-Testament-Monograph/dp/1107197090

John Barclay's Paul and the Gift has some very stimulating material on Romans and is well worth engaging with.

On the Greek text, John Harvey's volume in the EGGNT series is very helpful for keeping Greek fresh ;)

David Peterson's commentary (Holman - Biblical Theology for Christian Proclamation series) looks good though I've not dug deep yet.

David Starling has a super article in Themelios - 'For Your Sake We Are Being Killed All Day Long': Romans 8:36 and the Hermeneutics of Unexplained Suffering.

Sigurd Grindheim is also a writer I've always enjoyed and I notice he's written a couple of journal articles on Romans lately:

 “A Theology of Glory: Paul’s Use of Δόξα Terminology in Romans,” Journal of Biblical Literature 136.2 (2017): 451–65;

 “The Kingdom of God in Romans,” Biblica 98.1 (2017): 72–90.  If they are of interest it's always worth seeking an author out on Academia.edu /social media and asking for a PDF...

Trust things are well at your end,

Yours in Christ,

David.

What to do with a downcast soul?

Seems to me something disturbing happens in discussions of psalms 42-43. 

Often these two psalms are thought to have been just one originally, given the repeated refrain ’Why are you downcast O my soul?’  (42:5, 42:11, 43:5) and other parallel language (e.g. Ps 42:9 and 43:2). That’s not the disturbing thing, mind you, just some context.

What’s disturbing is the way the psalms are regularly used to commend giving yourself a good talking to.  That the answer to a downcast soul is to take yourself in hand and engage in “self-talk.”

Tim Keller, for example, in My Rock and My Refuge reflects on Ps 42-43, saying “Change and hope come as we, in effect, argue with ourselves.”

Or James Montgomery Boice summarises the psalmist’s model to us under three headings. He:

1. takes himself in hand

2. he challenges himself to do what should be done

 3. he reminds himself of a great certainty.

Both of them, I suspect, are influenced by Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ famous Spiritual Depression, which presents Ps 42-43 as the crowning witness to spiritual depression and its cure: 

The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul: ‘Why art thou cast down’ – what business have you to be disquieted You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself ‘Hope thou in God’ – instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way. And then you must go on to remind yourself God, Who God is, and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged himself to do. Then having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man, ‘I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God.

So what’s disturbing about that? Well, the trouble with this approach to Ps42-43 is that it fails to notice what is the most significant speech. It is not, ultimately, what the psalmist says to himself, but what he says to God – that’s where hope lies. That’s where the psalmist’s longings get satisfied.

The desperate need is there at the beginning of psalm 42: the psalmist longs for God, longs to be near him, and is taunted by enemies who tell him God’s nowhere to be seen in all this: ‘Where is your God?’ 42:3, 10. The psalmist is in danger of agreeing, feeling forgotten (42:9) and rejected (43:2). The solution, though, clearly comes in 43:1 and 43:3 when God acts. It is not about the psalmist giving himself a good talking to, it is God sending his “light and faithful care” – “Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my joy and my delight.”

So where does hope and change come from in Ps 42-43, it comes through the psalmist talking to God – calling on him to act. 

In the meantime, there is a place for talking to ourselves, of course. Even when we feel forgotten, we are to remember who God is. We are not to judge by appearances. The enemies see him stricken and think God is absent. The psalmist reminds himself that is not true– God is in the trials we face; note 42:7 “your waves and breakers have swept over me.” And he reminds himself of who God is, not least in 42:8 where he speaks of God as YHWH, the God of covenant love and faithfulness.

As Spurgeon says:

As though he were two men, the psalmist talks to himself. His faith reasons with his fears, his hope argues with his sorrows. These present troubles, are they to last forever? The rejoicings of my foes, are they more than empty talk? My absence from the solemn feasts, is that a perpetual exile? Why this deep depression, this faithless fainting, this chicken-hearted melancholy? As someone says, "David chides David out of the dumps; "and herein he is an example for all desponding ones.

But that cannot be the whole story. The danger is that we could end up functionally agreeing with the ones taunting the psalmist. We end up acting as if we are on our own and it’s down to us to talk ourselves out of these situations. 

Relatedly, there is a danger that we end up treating psalm 42-43 as a static model of self-talk, rather than a dynamic story that, in the case of the psalmist, awaits resolution, but in our case has found some resolution. God has sent his light and his faithful care. His Son. We have been brought into his presence. We have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God. 

To be sure, we still await the arrival of the heavenly Jerusalem descending and being with the Lord face to face. And this interim phase includes many hardships that might cause us to be downcast. But these psalms do not teach us to look inward in those moments or seasons but to look upwards and call on God to act. 

On balance, I think I’d rather say that that is “the main art in the matter of spiritual living.”