From Geneva to Wittenberg: Introduction and Overview

In my spiritual journey to date, I have lived, believed, and worshiped within three major traditions of the Christian faith. I was reared and formed initially as a Christian in the Baptist tradition, but, as I read, studied, and lived more in the faith I had been given, I came to conclusions about the sacraments and Church history that brought my viewpoint in line with the right wing of the Protestant Reformation, that which in its reform of medieval Roman Catholicism sought to maintain the greatest continuity in doctrine and worship with the Church as it had existed prior to the Reformation. This right wing of the Reformation in history has been represented principally by the Reformed churches and system of doctrine and the Lutheran churches and system of doctrine. By a blessed accident (what we would theologically call a Providence), I lived into the conservative Reformation first in the Reformed churches, and now, by a similar but also blessed accident, God has placed me in Christ's body as it finds its expression within the Lutheran churches. Though I am now living, worshiping, and believing as a Lutheran Christian, the blessings of my Reformed heritage (and also of my Baptist heritage prior to that) continue to live with me.

With that in mind, I will take opportunity briefly to sing the praises of what I view to be the chief blessings of the Reformed churches to global Christianity before moving on to the main project I have in view here of comparing the two traditions’ views on controverted matters between themselves and explaining my insights from navigating these issues and embracing the Lutheran take as the one more faithful and true to the Scriptures. I alluded to the word Providence above, and it is in the Calvinist emphasis on God's exhaustively sovereign and providential reign over his entire creation that I find the greatest comfort and benefit of this tradition. God is in control, and he is in control for us, lovingly governing his world and embracing it in the redemption he has accomplished for it through Jesus Christ. I believe this understanding helps us to better praise God and see his glory in all things. Where things are marred due to sin and death in this world, we can see in this understanding of Providence, that our fulfillment and hope in life and death, in good and bad, is the transcendent God who humbled himself, took on our flesh, suffered for us, died for us, rose for us, sits at the right hand of God as Lord of heaven and earth and Redeemer for us, and will come again for us to abolish sin and death from the good creation he loves and is so exhaustively engaged with. The Reformed teach this and find life in it better than most, and we can learn from them here.

I must also praise the way in light of the above, the Reformed tradition has historically preached the whole Scriptures and especially the Old Testament. I would not now trade the blessings of the sermons on a cyclical lectionary of Scripture passages in the Lutheran Divine Service, because these passages center us on Christ, who is taught all throughout Scripture as its central message, and they do this particularly well. It is not for nothing that these texts have been preached more extensively and exhaustively throughout the history of the church than any other passages in the Bible! Nevertheless, redemptive-historical preaching consecutively through whole books of the Bible and through the Old Testament helps to flesh the centrality of Christ out even in those passages that have not been preached as frequently in church history. I would heed the Lutheran caution of not conflating Law and Gospel or flattening the differences between the Testaments, but would that we all preached the whole Scriptures with the rigor and exhaustiveness the Reformed so often have!

I will conclude this brief litany of praises by connecting the exhaustive Providence of Calvinism with the exhaustive focus on Christ throughout all of Scripture that we see in Calvinism by praising the tradition for its commitment to seeing the Lordship of Christ exalted in every area of life. Lutherans, what with Luther's robust teaching on Creation, our Two Kingdoms theology of Christ's Lordship over heaven and earth, and our teaching on vocation as divine calling, do not have cause to hang our heads on these matters quite as much as is popularly thought, but I must give Calvinism props for showing me the way the Christian hope affects all of life and transforms people and societies for the glory of Christ.

Having now praised the aspects of my Reformed heritage that have most blessed me and that I believe to be genuine blessings to the entire Church catholic, I will now put forward some very general comparisons and contrasts and to state in as factual manner I can the controverted issues between the Lutheran and Reformed churches and confessions.

The branch of the Reformation later designated by the term Reformed or Calvinist began under the leadership of Ulrich Zwingli in Switzerland. It began independently from the Reformation in Germany under Luther, but it held several things in common with it. Just as was the case with the Reformation in Germany, its principle for reforming the Roman Catholic Church in doctrine and worship was Scripture alone as the final authority in the Church. Similarly, just as was the case with the Reformation in Germany under Luther, the theological principle for reforming doctrine which Zwingli and the Swiss Reformation took from the Scriptures was justification by grace alone through faith alone. When it came to worship, however, the Reformation movements followed different principles. The Reformed followed what is termed the regulative principle, which states that only those practices explicitly commanded or prescribed in Scripture were to be permitted in the worship of God, while the Lutherans followed what can be called the normative principle, which states that the Church in its worship is forbidden from only those practices that are forbidden in or contrary to Scripture. As a result, the Reformed followed a more rigorous and radical plan for reforming worship, which included exclusive psalmody, the exclusion of musical instruments from worship, the removal of images and crucifixes from the churches, and a more simplified liturgy, while the Lutherans retained practices and traditions from the Church as it had existed prior to the Reformation, such as the singing of hymns, instrumental music, and much of the liturgical form and content of the medieval Mass. Some of the austerity of Reformed worship lessened under the leadership of John Calvin, but vast differences continued in the liturgical principles of the traditions, including down to the present.

The differences in approach to worship express some of the subtle and not-so-subtle differences in doctrinal and theological emphases of the two traditions. The heartbeat and very center of the Lutheran Reformation has always been justification by grace alone through faith alone. For Lutherans this doctrine has always been the rock on which the Church stands or falls, while in Calvinism the concern for the Gospel has often been expressed more in terms of God's immutable predestination than in terms of justification by faith, and obedience to the Law in Christian worship and liturgy have often been placed on equal footing with the preaching of the Gospel as the essence of the Church.

Their differing emphases in preaching the Gospel, the relative weight each puts on the doctrine of justification in their overall system, and their juncture with the differing emphases and principles of worship each tradition follows point us to the first issue between the Reformed churches and Lutheranism that truly is and has been church-dividing from the time of the Reformation. This is the issue of the sacraments in general, and of the Lord's Supper in particular. The Lutherans teach a straightforward doctrine of baptismal regeneration and the sacramental union of Jesus Christ's body and blood with the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper, while the Reformed have a more indirect understanding of the way in which the sacraments work for our salvation. This more indirect view of the sacraments stems from the greater emphasis the Reformed place on God's transcendence and secret predestination in our salvation. The sacraments testify indirectly to election and are means of salvation only to those who will ultimately persevere to the end and be finally saved. For the Lutherans, however, the Word of God, and its objective promises delivered to sinners directly in the sacraments are sure testimonies of God's saving intent. They tangibly present the realities they signify to all those who receive them. The Lord's Supper saves because it is Jesus Christ, his body and blood being immediately present in, with, and under the bread and wine. The Reformed, due to the normative status in their system of doctrine of Calvin's marked improvement over Zwingli on the sacraments, affirm a feeding on the body and blood of Jesus in the Supper indirectly through faith and the Holy Spirit, but for the Lutherans, it is the body and blood of Jesus Christ, through whom we receive the Holy Spirit, that guarantees our salvation and strengthens our faith. We know we are Christians because we have received these gifts to eat and drink to everlasting life.

This, of course, explains the juncture between worship and justification I obliquely mentioned above and failed to describe until now. The primary purpose of worship in the Lutheran view is to receive the forgiveness of sins. For the Reformed, the note of forgiveness in the worship service is still certainly there but the primary emphasis is on the duty to obey God and render him service. This is not to say, conversely, that Lutherans do not understand the Divine Service as moving us to gratefully serve God and our neighbor in response to his glorious gifts, but the primary form of worship God receives from us when we go to church is "the divine service of the Gospel" where "we receive from him gifts" (Defense of the Augsburg Confession, IV II.189).

As the controversy on the Lord's Supper indicates, the issues of grace and election are also controverted and church-dividing between the Lutherans and Reformed. Differences on predestination, the extent of the atonement, the question of the resistibility of grace, and perseverance in grace are the most salient points in the disagreement.

Finally, while both Lutherans and Reformed fall safely within the bounds of Christological orthodoxy established in the Nicene Creed and the Formula of Chalcedon, each has steadily leveled at the other the charge of transgressing those boundaries. The Christological issue that has been in debate, i.e., the degree to which Christ's divine nature communicates its properties to the human nature, is significant for our understanding of the Incarnation itself. Of course, the occasion for the eruption of the controversy was differing teachings on the presence of the body and blood of Jesus in the Lord's Supper and the implications of Christ's Ascension to the right-hand of the Father to this question. The Christological issues, thus, are significant for their role in the sacramental teachings of each tradition.

I want to examine these controverted issues each a little more closely in their turn. I will start with the Christological controversy, advance to the Lord's Supper, and conclude my study with grace and election.

Seminary Shenanigans 2

The following could potentially be the longest blog post in world history. This is the grand project from my Christian Worship class, a transcript of a worship service of our own design, featuring every word to be spoken or sung in said service and including, in our notes, our rationale for using the words, songs, elements, etc. we used and for placing them where we placed them in the course of the service. We were to put into practice the principles we learned during the semester in putting together a worship service appropriate for the context in which we could see ourselves ministering. As my notes indicate, I paid most attention to Gospel re-presentation throughout the course of the service, maintaining the Gospel-flow of hearing-repentance-praise in each major section of the service, and integrating the theme of the service in every aspect of the service. I wish I had paid more attention to utilizing a greater diversity of styles and variously contextualized expressions of worship, but I was focused on meeting the needs of the envisioned congregation. However, since the church is a global movement made up of people from every language, tribe, nation, generation, and socioeconomic background, we should include in our worship services expressions that arise from Christians whose lives differ from our own.

Calvary Presbyterian Church
Podunk, Midwest
Easter Worship Service
Bold indicates congregational response
* indicates pastor is speaking or leading prayer
† indicates standing

A Note about Congregational Context: I can envision myself working in a confessional or conservative mainline Presbyterian or Reformed church on the traditional side of things in a small town in the Midwest. If I were to wind up serving in the Presbyterian Church (USA), I would imagine such a congregation would be largely graying and thus trending more toward a traditional style of worship. Such a congregation would probably be comfortable with a rather heavier and more ecumenical Eucharistic liturgy such as I have used here, though from my limited experience in this denomination, a service of this length would not meet the needs of many PC(USA) churches. The Presbyterian Church in America, from my experience, seems a bit younger, with more families, children, teens, and young adults. In that context, I imagine the needs of the congregation would require a utilization of more styles of worship. Historic catholics in the PCA would probably appreciate the heavy liturgy, but it may not meet the needs of more mainstream evangelical or "Truly Reformed" folks. That being said, a service lasting an hour-and-a-half with hymns, expository preaching, and moderate liturgy seems to meet the needs of many conservative Reformed churches.

Prelude
*Welcome and Announcements
We welcome you to Calvary Presbyterian Church this beautiful Easter morning—the most joyous day of the year in the life of the Church. If you are visitor with us this morning, we are delighted to have you with us to worship the risen Lord. Please register your attendance with us in the friendship pad at the end of the pew so we can get to know you. [Announcements would follow.]

*Introduction of Service/Seasonal Theme[1]
Jesus Christ has risen from the grave and we gather on this and every Lord's Day to celebrate his resurrection and the victory he has gained over sin, death, and Hell–a victory we share in by faith. This day, however, is different from every other Lord's Day in that it represents the stamp on the calendar of an actual historical event that occurred in this very world we inhabit. It happened long ago and in a physical location far removed from our own, but its consequences are so great and world-altering that we experience the event right now as if we were encountering the newly risen Christ with the disciples all over again. You see, the resurrection is no myth nor is it a purely spiritual event in which the disciples only encountered a ghost. No; Jesus rose bodily from the tomb and changed the world in a concrete and irreversible way. As it was in the beginning, so it is now because of the resurrection and so shall it be in the end. Jesus Christ is Lord of the entire Creation and of all nations and of every heart; he is Lord of life and victor over death. The fallen world has not yet recognized him as Lord, but the resurrection shows us that he is and that he will win the battle. Indeed, he already has. Let us take a few moments to prepare our hearts to join in praising the risen King.
silent preparation

God Calls Us to Worship
*Please rise to join me in the call to worship.

†*Call to Worship: Psalm 150[2]
Alleluia! Christ is risen.
He is risen indeed. Alleluia!
Praise the LORD.
Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens.
Praise him for his acts of power;
praise him for his surpassing greatness.
Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
praise him with the harp and lyre,
praise him with tambourine and dancing,
praise him with the strings and flute,
praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with resounding cymbals.
Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.
Praise the LORD.

*Please remain standing and turn in your hymnals to #205 and we will sing "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today."

†Hymn #205: "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today" Original Trinity Hymnal
Words: Charles Wesley, 1739
Music: Easter hymn, unknown composer, Lyra Davidica (London: 1708)

Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!
Sons of men and angels say; Alleluia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high; Alleluia!
Sing ye heav'ns, and earth, reply: Alleluia!

Vain the stone, the watch, the seal; Alleluia!
Christ has burst the gates of hell: Alleluia!
Death in vain forbids his rise; Alleluia!
Christ hath opened Paradise. Alleluia!

Lives again our glorious King; Alleluia!
Where, O death, is now thy sting? Alleluia!
Once he died, our souls to save; Alleluia!
Where thy victory, O grave? Alleluia!

Soar we now where Christ has led, Alleluia!
Following our exalted Head; Alleluia!
Made like him, like him we rise: Alleluia!
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies. Alleluia!

Hail, the Lord of earth and heav'n! Alleluia!
Praise to thee by both be giv'n; Alleluia!
Thee we greet triumphant now; Alleluia!
Hail, the Resurrection Thou! Alleluia!

*You may be seated.[3]

God Cleanses Us from Our Sins
*We have seen the risen King in his glory. Seeing his glory should cause us to reflect on how far short of that glory we fall. We are sinners who have rebelled against God. In love for us, Christ died for our sins and now he has risen for our salvation. This calls for a response of gratitude and obedience on our part. St. Paul reminds us of this in his first letter to the Corinthians: "Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth." This turning from sin and embracing a new, righteous life begins with our confession of sin to our forgiving and sanctifying God. Before we take this opportunity to confess our sins together, let us now go individually to the Lord in silent confession.[4]
silent confession

*Corporate Prayer of Confession[5]
Almighty God, you have raised Jesus from the grave and crowned him Lord of all. We confess that we have not bowed before him or acknowledged his rule in our lives. We have gone along with the way of the world and failed to give him glory. Forgive us and raise us from sin, that we may be your faithful people, obeying the commands of our Lord Jesus Christ, who rules the world and is head of the Church, his body. Amen.

*Please rise for the assurance of pardon.[6]

†*Declaration of Pardon
Brothers and sisters, I declare to you, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" Believe the Gospel.
In Christ Jesus we are forgiven.
Thanks be to God.

*Please remain standing as we sing the Gloria Patri.

†Hymn: Gloria Patri (printed in the bulletin)
Words: author unknown
Music: Gloria Patri (Greatorex), Henry W. Greatorex, 1851

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,World without end. Amen, Amen.

God Consecrates Us by His Word
Prayer for Illumination[7]
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts!
We lift them up unto the Lord.
Let us hear God's Word.
We rejoice to hear and obey the Good News.

Old Testament Reading: Psalm 118[8]
This morning's Old Testament reading is Psalm 118. In the psalmist's praises to God for delivering him from the hand of his many enemies, we see God's deliverance of Christ from the grave foretold. Like the psalmist, who was surrounded and nearly overcome by many hostile nations, God's Anointed was put to death by a joint Jewish-Gentile conspiracy representing the whole of rebellious humanity. As in the case of the psalmist, however, Christ was delivered from defeat in a most surprising manner, being revealed as the very point to which God's deliverances of Israel from the nations had been pointing all along. Listen to the Word of God:

1 Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.
2 Let Israel say: "His love endures forever." 3 Let the house of Aaron say: "His love endures forever." 4 Let those who fear the LORD say: "His love endures forever."
5 In my anguish I cried to the LORD, and he answered by setting me free. 6 The LORD is with me; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me? 7 The LORD is with me; he is my helper. I will look in triumph on my enemies.
8 It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in man. 9 It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in princes.
10 All the nations surrounded me, but in the name of the LORD I cut them off. 11 They surrounded me on every side, but in the name of the LORD I cut them off. 12 They swarmed around me like bees, but they died out as quickly as burning thorns; in the name of the LORD I cut them off. 13 I was pushed back and about to fall, but the LORD helped me.
14 The LORD is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation. 15 Shouts of joy and victory resound in the tents of the righteous: "The LORD's right hand has done mighty things! 16 The LORD's right hand is lifted high; the LORD's right hand has done mighty things!"
17 I will not die but live, and will proclaim what the LORD has done. 18 The LORD has chastened me severely, but he has not given me over to death.
19 Open for me the gates of righteousness; I will enter and give thanks to the LORD. 20 This is the gate of the LORD through which the righteous may enter. 21 I will give you thanks, for you answered me; you have become my salvation. 22 The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; 23 the LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. 24 This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
25 O LORD, save us; O LORD, grant us success.
26 Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD. From the house of the LORD we bless you. 27 The LORD is God, and he has made his light shine upon us. With boughs in hand, join in the festal procession up to the horns of the altar.
28 You are my God, and I will give you thanks; you are my God, and I will exalt you. 29 Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God!

Gospel Reading: Luke 24:1-12[9]
Our Gospel reading this morning is Luke's account of the resurrection. Listen for the pointed question the angels waiting in the empty tomb have to ask of the women and of us, God's Easter people. Their words remind us that death has been thoroughly defeated in the resurrection of our Lord. The reading begins in the 24th chapter of Luke, verse one, and ends at verse 12. Listen to the Word of God:

1On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.' " 8Then they remembered his words.
9When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. 10It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. 11But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. 12Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.
This is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ!
Praise be to you, O Christ!

*This is a new song, so you might not have had the chance to hear it before. It’s based on the heavenly praise that is given to the conquering Lamb in the book of Revelation. It is thus titled "Revelation Song." You will find it printed in the bulletin. Let us continue our praise of the risen King in the words of this song.

Hymn: "Revelation Song" (printed in the bulletin)[10]
Words and Music: Jennie Lee Riddle, 2002
Copyright: Integrity Music, 2006

Worthy is the, Lamb who was slain
Holy, Holy, is He
Sing a new song, to him who sits on
Heaven's mercy seat
[2X]

(Chorus)
Holy, Holy, Holy
Is the Lord God Almighty
Who was, and is, and is to come
With all creation I sing
Praise to the King of Kings
You are my everything
And I will adore You

Clothed in rainbows, of living color
Flashes of lightning, rolls of thunder
Blessing and honor, strength and glory and power be
to You the only wise King

Chorus

Filled with wonder, awestruck wonder
At the mention of your name
Jesus your name is power
Breath, and living water
Such a marvelous mystery
Yeah...

Repeat Chorus [3X]

*Epistle Reading: 1 Corinthians 5:20-27
20But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 23But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. 24Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27For he "has put everything under his feet."
This is the Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God!

*Please join me in prayer.

*Pre-Sermon Prayer
O gracious Father, we pray that you would lovingly apply your Word to the hearts and lives of your servants for our growth in grace and effectiveness in ministry to your Church and world. Speak through me that your Word may be declared faithfully and effectively in my weak and fallible words. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

*Sermon: Jesus Christ Declared Lord at the Resurrection: 1 Corinthians 5:20-27[11]
Fallen Condition Focus- We want to segregate God to a small slice of life, but Christ is Lord of all.
Proposition- Christ is Lord.
· Lord of creation
· Lord of the nations
· Lord over death
Our Easter Response
1. Recognize God's glory in the creation; Christ is renewing it.
§ Commune with and glorify God in everything.
2. Recognize God's glory in the affairs of humanity; Christ is King.
§ Offer nation to Christ in faith that his Kingdom has come and will come.
3. Recognize Christ as Lord of life and death; Christ has defeated death.
§ The whole cosmos is passing from death to life; join in.
§ There is a great assembly, the Church militant and triumphant, praising the King and cheering us on.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

*We have heard God's voice in the proclamation of his Word. In response, join us as we confess our faith together with the Church universal in the words of the Nicene Creed.

†*Nicene Creed[12]
We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds:
God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made; being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made: who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried; and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father.
And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead; whose Kingdom shall have no end.
And we believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord, and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets. And we believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. And we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen!

Choir Anthem: "Hallelujah Chorus" (words printed in the bulletin)[13]
Words and Music: Georg Friedrich Handel, Messiah, 1741

: Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! :

: For the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! :

For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. : Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! :

The kingdom of this world
Is become the Kingdom of our Lord,
And of His Christ, and of His Christ;
And He shall reign for ever and ever,
For ever and ever, forever and ever,

King of kings, and Lord of lords,: King of kings, and Lord of lords, :
And Lord of lords,
And He shall reign,
And He shall reign forever and ever
King of Kings, forever and ever,
And Lord of lords,
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

And He shall reign forever and ever, : King of kings! and Lord of lords! :
And He shall reign forever and ever,
King of kings! and Lord of lords!
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

God Receives Our Sacrifices
*The mighty Christ who rules so magnificently intercedes on our behalf with the Father. Therefore, let us approach God’s throne with confidence in bringing him our praises and petitions. Do we have praises and concerns regarding ourselves or loved ones that we would like to share now? Any events in the life of the nation or the world or the church that we should pray about?

*Prayers of the People[14]
[It would be most appropriate if prayers of the people were brought before God in the form of an extemporaneous pastoral prayer. In addition to the particular praises and petitions brought before the congregation for this time of prayer, I would mention concerns that are currently weighing heavily on the congregation or praises in which all are rejoicing, such as those already printed in the bulletin. I would lift up concerns and praises in the life of the nation, the world, or the church that might not have been mentioned by the congregation or in the bulletin. I would also continue prayers in accordance with the general theme of the service or the season in the church calendar. I also think it is important in the course of such prayers to petition God for the growth of love and fellowship within the congregation and for the outreach of the congregation to the community. I would pray especially that our congregation would be welcoming to those who are somehow "different" from the majority of the people in the church community. The last would be a weekly soapbox petition on my part, both for myself and for the members of the congregation.]

*In view of God's generosity to us in Christ, let us present our tithes and offerings for God's service.

Offertory[15]

†Hymn: Doxology (printed in the bulletin)
Words: Thomas Ken, 1674
Music: Old hundredth, Ge­ne­van Psalt­er, 1551, at­trib­ut­ed to Lou­is Bour­geois

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

†Presentation of Tithes and Offerings and Diaconal Prayer[16]
Heavenly Father, we thank you for all that you have done for us in creating and redeeming us and in sustaining us in earthly and heavenly life. We pray that you would take these, our gifts to you from the bounty of what you have first given us and make them useful for the growth, maturation, and advance of your Kingdom to the ends of the earth. In Jesus's name we pray. Amen.

Christ Feeds Us at His Table
* Eucharistic Instruction and Invitation to the Table[17]
We come to this table because our Lord has died and risen again. We solemnly remember his death for our sins, but we also joyously celebrate his resurrection and eagerly anticipate his coming again. As in his resurrection, Christ demonstrates his lordship to us here. Just as Christ has brought us to eternal life from the midst of death by his resurrection, at this table the Holy Spirit brings the nourishment of Christ's body and blood to our souls through our eating of bread and wine, which, by its very nature, like all food, is dead. We thus taste and see his lordship over death. We taste and see Christ's lordship over Creation at this table because natural eating and the gifts of the field and the vineyard become for us the means of communion with God they were always intended to be. This is only because of the resurrection, through which the curse on nature is being reversed. We taste and see Christ's lordship over the nations at this table, because he assembles people from every language, tribe, and nation to become in him one new people of one body and one blood. This, of course, can only be because of the resurrection, through which he has made those who were not a people his very own people. Therefore, Christ invites to feast at this table all of those who trust in him alone for salvation, having been baptized in the Triune name and sharing in vital union with his body—the Church. Please join us now as we thank God for his great gifts to us in Christ.

*Prayer of Great Thanksgiving[18]
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts!
We lift them up unto the Lord!
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give thanks and praise.

It is indeed right, our duty and highest joy, that we should at all times and in all places give thanks to you, O holy Lord, Father almighty, everlasting God. You created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them. You made us in your own image; and in countless ways you show us your mercy. Above all we praise you for the glorious resurrection of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. He is the true Passover Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. By his death he destroyed death, and by his rising brought us eternal life. Therefore with angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven, we worship and adore your glorious name, praising you forevermore:

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.[19]

All glory and blessing are yours, O holy God, for in your great mercy you gave your only Son, Jesus Christ. He took our human nature, and suffered death on the cross for our redemption. There he made a perfect sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. We praise you that before he suffered and died, our Savior gave us this holy sacrament and commanded us to continue it as a lasting memorial of his death and sacrifice until he comes again.

Therefore, remembering his incarnation and holy life, his death and glorious resurrection, his ascension and continual intercession for us, and awaiting his coming again in power and great glory, we claim his eternal sacrifice and celebrate with these your holy gifts the memorial your Son commanded us to make. Great is the mystery of faith:

Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

Merciful God, by your Holy Spirit bless and make holy both us and these your gifts of bread and wine, that the bread we break may be a communion in the body of Christ, and the cup we bless may be a communion in the blood of Christ. Here we offer ourselves to be a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to you. In your mercy, accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, as, in communion with all the faithful in heaven and on earth, we ask you to fulfill, in us and in all creation, the purpose of your redeeming love.

Help us, O God, to love as Christ loved. Knowing our own weakness, may we stand with all who stumble. Sharing in his suffering, may we remember all who suffer. Held in his love, may we embrace all whom the world denies. Rejoicing in his forgiveness, may we forgive all who sin against us. Give us strength to serve you faithfully until the promised day of resurrection, when with the redeemed of all the ages we will feast with you at your table in glory.[20]

Through Christ, with Christ, in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor are yours, almighty God, now and forever. Amen.[21]

*Lord's Prayer[22]
And now, as Jesus has taught us, we are bold to pray:
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

*Words of Institution and Distribution
The Lord Jesus, on the night of his arrest, took bread, and after giving thanks to God, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying: [breaks the loaf] “Take, eat. This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, [lifts up the cup] "Drink this, all of you; for this is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins. Do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

As we are distributing the bread and wine, turn in your hymnals to #207 and join us in singing Martin Luther's classic Easter hymn, "Christ Jesus Lay in Death's Strong Bands." We'll sing the first two stanzas as the bread is passed and then the final three stanzas as the wine is passed. When you receive the elements, please wait so we may eat them together.

Hymn #207: "Christ Jesus Lay in Death’s Strong Bands" Original Trinity Hymnal[23]
Words: Martin Luther, En­chridi­on (Er­furt, Ger­ma­ny: 1524); translated from German into English by Richard Massie, Martin Luther's Spiritual Songs, 1854
Music: Christ Lag in Tod­es­band­en, Geistliche Gesangbüchlein, 1524; arranged by Johann S. Bach, 1724

Christ Jesus lay in death's strong bands,
For our offenses given;
But now at God's right hand he stands
And brings us life from heaven;
Therefore let us joyful be
And sing to God right thankfully
Loud songs of hallelujah. Hallelujah!

It was a strange and dreadful strife
When life and death contended;
The victory remained with life,
The reign of death was ended;
Holy Scripture plainly saith
That death is swallowed up by death,
His sting is lost for ever. Hallelujah!

[Hymn pauses at end of distribution of bread. If second verse concludes prior to end of distribution, instruct musicians to continue playing tune until congregation has been served.]

*Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body; for we all partake of one loaf. Is not the bread we break a participation in the body of Christ?[24] [All eat.]

[Hymn continues as distribution of wine begins.]

Here the true Paschal Lamb we see,
Whom God so freely gave us;
He died on the accursed tree—
So strong his love!—to save us.
See, his blood doth mark our door;
Faith points to it, death passes o'er,
And Satan cannot harm us. Hallelujah!

So let us keep the festival
Whereto the Lord invites us;
Christ is himself the Joy of all,
The Sun that warms and lights us.
By his grace he doth impart
Eternal sunshine to the heart;
The night of sin is ended. Hallelujah!

Then let us feast this joyful day
On Christ, the Bread of heaven;
The Word of grace hath purged away
The old and evil leaven.
Christ alone our souls will feed,
He is our meat and drink indeed;
Faith lives upon no other. Hallelujah!

[Hymn concludes. If hymn ends prior to end of distribution of wine, instruct congregation to sing verse 1 again.]

*Likewise, is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? [All drink.]

God Commissions Us for His Service
*Matthew and Mark tell us that after supper Jesus and his disciples sang a hymn before they departed the Upper Room. Before we leave this place, let us do likewise. This hymn will serve as our prayer of dedication for the week. It is the last song printed in the bulletin. Rise as we pray in the words of the fourth stanza and refrain of "In Breath and Flesh and Power."

†Hymn for Mission: "In Breath and Flesh and Power" stanza and refrain 4 (printed in the bulletin)[25]
Original Composition
Words: Jamie Stober, 2010
Music: cleansing fountain, 19th-century American camp meeting tune, arranged by Jamie Stober 2010

Lord we have been with You this Easter Day in the new Jerusalem.
You have fed us with the bread of life and filled our hearts with hymns.
Strengthened by Your death and victory, conform our lives to You,
And send us as Your co-laborers in making all things new.

In making all things new, in making all things new.
And send us as Your co-laborers in making all things new.

†Benediction and Dismissal: Numbers 6:24-26
Now may the LORD bless you and keep you; may the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; may the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace.

†Three-fold Amen
†Postlude

Notes
[1] In this rather lengthy opening, I have provided a discussion of the guiding themes of the service to all present and an explanation to both Christians and seekers of the unique significance of Easter. The Gospel-progression of the service starts rolling as we begin to see the glorious nature and works of God and his Christ in these remarks.
[2] Psalm 150 is a most appropriate call to worship for an Easter service, with its call for exuberant praise in response to God's mighty works and awesome nature. The praise of God with the creational gift of music and the expressed desire that "everything that has breath praise the Lord" sounds a sub-theme—Christ's lordship over the Creation—of the service's dominant theme of Christ's lordship declared in the resurrection.
[3] The practical need to be seated corresponds with the need to shift to a more appropriate posture for the upcoming confession of sin. Kneeling later for the confession would have been desirable, but I thought that would begin to be too much up and down movement.
[4] A rubric in which I attempt to build a logical connection between praise and confession of sin. The overall Gospel-progression of the service moves from recognition of God's character to confession of our sin. In my rubric, I place confession of sin within the context of repentance in response to God's forgiving love, preparing us for the next step in the overall Gospel-progression of the service, that of receiving instruction from God for living a life of grateful obedience.
[5] Used by Permission from The Worship Sourcebook (Grand Rapids, Mich: Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, 2004), 638.
[6] God raises us up from our humiliation by declaring us forgiven sons and daughters, therefore, we rise to hear the declaration of his pardon and remain standing afterwards in the dignity he has given us through Christ's blood, thanking him by singing the Gloria Patri. The call to worship and confession portion of the service together represent the first of multiple cyclical Gospel-progressions of hearing-repentance-praise within the service. Note the distinction and continuity between the multiple Gospel-progressions within the service and the overall Gospel-progression of the entire service.
[7] Time-honored tradition or vain repetition? I could think of more appropriate, less done-to-death prayers for illumination, but inserting the sursum corda here in the Liturgy of the Word helps to cement the relationship between Word and Sacrament, since the sursum corda also appears in the Liturgy of the Upper Room.
[8] Psalm 118 is an appropriate choice in light of the Easter theme of Christ's lordship I have chosen to emphasize. This Psalm shows that the Father has given Christ a great victory over the nations and over death in the resurrection—victories that are important sub-themes in this service.
[9] I suppose some explanation is in order for breaking from the traditional liturgical order and preaching from the epistle instead of the Gospel reading. I'm not a very good theologian, so I don't know how to preach this passage without accessing apostolic reflection on the resurrection, hence my use of the epistle reading for my sermon text.
[10] I have certainly drawn on the richness of past expression in this service, but I felt it imperative to include the freshness of current expression. Since everything else in this service is traditional, including this one new song feels a bit like throwing the proverbial dog a bone. Because its content is so thematically appropriate, however, including "Revelation Song" in this heavily traditional service is not as arbitrary as some choices of contemporary music in traditional contexts seem to be.
[11] The sermon is the point in the overall Gospel-progression of the service where we receive God's instructions for our new obedience. In this instance, I believe I have done a good job of integrating the sermon theme throughout the rest of the service and that the Gospel storyline flows effectively through the arrangement of Word, song, prayer, and Sacrament. Because there is such continuity between the sermon and the non-preaching elements, I would opt for a shorter sermon on the order of 20-25 minutes. Also part of my rationale for this decision is that the long recounting of salvation history in the Eucharistic Great Thanksgiving carries some of the weight of proclamation and Gospel re-presentation the sermon is typically called on to carry.
[12] I chose the Nicene Creed rather than the Apostles’ Creed because of the former's strong Christological focus and because the former is used more universally (in the Eastern Church but without the filioque, of course) than the latter. Christology and catholicity are appropriate emphases for Easter. As I noted in the preceding rubric, I include the Creed after the sermon because it represents a doxological confession of faith in response to God's works on our behalf and desires for our lives, as proclaimed in the sermon. Not to mention, the historic Creeds create a sense of belonging to a huge, centuries-spanning, globe-embracing mystery. This represents the rising toward culmination of a cyclical Gospel-progression of hearing-repentance-praise in the consecration by the Word portion of the service and also the beginning of movement in the overall Gospel-progression of the service from hearing God's instruction to being commissioned for his service.
[13] I absolutely love this piece of music! I chose this to serve as the climax of the cyclical Gospel-progression within the consecration by the Word portion of the service. I am concerned with the flow of the service here because this crescendo of praise might raise the whole service to its peak, whereas my desire is to have the Lord's Supper as the climax of the service as a whole. However, placing the "Hallelujah Chorus" prior to the Eucharist could also be strategic in preparing us to "lift up our hearts" into the heavenlies to feast with Jesus.
[14] I chose to place prayers of the people here as an appropriate response to the re-presentation of the Gospel in the consecration by the Word portion of the service. The preceding rubric serves to transition us seamlessly from praise to petition and to call us to covenant faithfulness in offering ourselves to God through prayer.
[15] The people's offering of themselves in response to God's grace continues with their offering of financial gifts. The preceding rubric serves as both transition from prayers to the offering and as a call to covenant faithfulness in returning to God a portion of his gifts to us.
[16] I have not yet addressed congregational participation in the service. Of course, the songs and the prayers have been participatory, the choir has had the opportunity to offer beautiful music, laypersons have led the prayer for illumination and offered Scripture readings, and a deacon is here providing the prayer for the offering. Multiple prayers and a reading in the service are dialogical and responsive. I have strived to strike an appropriate balance between proclamation and participation in this service.
[17] I have placed a brief Eucharistic reflection here to thematically tie the Lord's Supper, the sermon, and the whole of the service together. It thus also serves as a good transition from one part of the service to the next.
[18] Used by Permission from The Book of Common Worship (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993). I chose to include a Prayer of Great Thanksgiving in the Lord's Supper because, in regard to the overall Gospel-progression of the service, it covers the same ground as the sermon in re-presenting the Gospel, prepares us to receive tokens of that Gospel, and is a both a call for covenant faithfulness and a response of covenant faithfulness. The prayer is parts praise, proclamation, dialogue, petition, and instruction, balancing passive receiving and active participation.
[19] The responsive sections of the Prayer of Great Thanksgiving emphasize God's glory, inspire a sense of transcendence and awe, and join our hearts to the faithful of all times and places, considering that these praises have been uttered constantly on earth and in heaven since the Church began.
[20] In the prayer's petitions for the Church, the world, and for loving faithfulness in ministry to the world, vertical concern for God's glory is balanced with horizontal concern for our neighbor's good.
[21] The Prayer of Great Thanksgiving is heavy on propositional content but presents it in such a way that it inspires transcendence and mystery, effectively balancing cognitive and emotional characteristics of Gospel presentation.
[22] I chose to include the Lord's Prayer in the Communion liturgy, rather than earlier, to ratchet up the sense of catholicity and the communal orientation of the Sacrament.
[23] If it's Easter, and you need a Communion hymn, so help me God, you can do no other than sing Luther's great hymn. A couple things about this might be tricky, though: 1) holding hymnals while passing communion plates, and 2) the logistics of coordinating the timing between distribution of the elements and the verses of the song. I give three of the five verses for the distribution of the wine because it takes a bit longer than the bread.
[24] The prompts for eating and drinking focus on the communal and cultic aspects of the Sacrament.
[25] I chose to place this song here to serve as a prayer for Christ to empower us to carry out the work he has commissioned us to do in response to his grace. I decided to be creative in expressing the dedication prayer through song. I probably would not actually use this rather amateurish song of my own creation in a service, but it works quite well in the context of an Easter service.

Seminary Shenanigans 1

The semester is over, so my really busy days are over for a while. I now have no excuses for not blogging more frequently, so stay tuned for my snarky, irrelevant, and irreverent thoughts throughout the summer. I'll take the opportunity in my next several posts to share my big projects from my seminary courses at Covenant this past semester. I would like your input and constructive criticism on my labors.

I most enjoyed and benefited from my Christian Worship class with the fantastic Dr. Mark Dalbney. I love the guy. He's full of great stories, is youthful and funny, knows more about Reformed worship than all but a half-dozen people on the planet, and has worshiped and led worship in the most widely divergent worship circles you could imagine. He grew up and began ministering in a tradition that only sings the Psalms, and that without musical accompaniment, and has evolved from that point to a contemporary worship guy who also exhibits a deep love for traditional hymnody. You can hear his lectures and access course materials here.

Here's the hymn I wrote for this class. You know that old Gospel song, "There is a Fountain Filled with Blood?" Well, I wrote a Communion hymn called "In Breath and Flesh and Power" to the tune of that old song. I might have biffed the assignment a bit by using an unoriginal tune, especially an old one, but I like the lyrics. I took a few risks with them, but feel I have faithfully articulated a well-rounded, Reformed view of the sacred Supper, though it rather provocatively trends Lutheran in verse two. Ecumenist and sacramentalist that I am, that doesn't bother me, so get over it. What I do worry about theologically, however, is whether in the first few lines of the first verse I diminish the glory of the Word of God spoken and written in extolling the value of the Sacrament? Keep in mind, in the full-bodied Reformed sacramental understanding, the Sacraments are nothing more or less than the Holy Spirit's application of the Word of God (in the Jesus sense too) and His promises to us in a bodily, material, communal manner; therefore, the Sacraments’ glory and that of the written Word is one. That being said, I do not wish to undermine that proposition by affirming the value of the Sacraments at the expense of the Bible. You be the judge of whether or not I have done this. Here's my song.

"In Breath and Flesh and Power"

Verse 1
Christ, meet us not in speech alone, but in Breath and flesh and power.
We have heard Your voice in holy Word and sang with You this hour.
By the Spirit's power, lift now our hearts in holy conqu'ring love.
For we long to share the blessed feast—Your once-offered flesh and blood.
Refrain 1
Your once-offered flesh and blood, your once-offered flesh and blood.
For we long to share the blessed feast—Your once-offered flesh and blood.

Verse 2
Jesus, what a joy to feast with You in Your resurrection power.
You have raised us to Your heav'nly throne for this blest, appointed hour.
For here we know You face-to-face as will be when Kingdom comes.
This table then will be faith's stay till the Consummation's done.
Refrain 2
Till the Consummation's done, till the Consummation's done.
This table then will be faith's stay till the Consummation's done.

Verse 3
Christ, as we share love's meat and drink with brother, sister dear,
Make one our hearts in charity, casting out unholy fear.
Unite us as one temple built on You, our cornerstone.
One holy loaf permeated through with You and You alone.
Refrain 3
With You and You alone, with You and You alone.
One holy loaf permeated through with You and You alone.

Verse 4
We have been with You this Easter Day in the new Jerusalem.
You have fed us with the bread of life and filled our hearts with hymns.
Strengthened by Your death and victory, conform our lives to You,
And send us as Your co-laborers in making all things new.
Refrain 4
In making all things new, in making all things new.
And send us as Your co-laborers in making all things new.

Taking Zwingli to Task

As a certain controversial friend has noted, I haven't posted anything on this blog since the Reagan administration. Well, JK, since the market demands it, I will oblige by putting forth this tidbit I posted on the discussion board for my Christian Worship class this week. Since anti-Gnostic crusading is one my favorite hobbies, I couldn't resist taking a pot shot at the Reformer who didn't even allow singing in his services. Sorry, Brother Ulrich.

For most of my life, my experiences of corporate public worship have been haunted by the specter of the Platonic Protestant from Zürich. I don`t mean to speak badly of one of our great Reformers, but Zwingli`s errors are with us still today causing all sorts of problems. When we think of worship exclusively as internal, as purely spiritual, or as a primarily individual affair, when we think the whole point of worship has been to simply learn something about God, when we see religious matters moved from the public sphere and placed outside of life in the real world and relevance to daily life, we have met with his influence. It`s no wonder I was so carnal when I was a Zwinglian.

Unfortunately, I`m still far more the Zwinglian than I want to be, but I`ve come to see far more and more that the goal of public worship is to see God in his glory, exult in him, love the brotherhood, and go forth transformed to do his work in the world each time I come from the assembly of his people. Zwingli was right to point us to the Word of God as the content and source of our worship, but thank God for the liturgical reforms of John Calvin, through which God`s Spirit has been freed to utilize that Word more effectively for its full effect on worshipers in all of their capacities--and this for the renewal of the Church and the world.

I`m not saying this can`t and doesn`t happen in a Zwinglian context. It can and does because of the enlivening influences of pietism and revivalism, but I have found in my own life greater transformation in the context of classical Calvinian worship through Word and Sacrament. It feeds heart, mind, body, and strength, and I crave it week after week.

The Worship Wars 2

Not the ranting of a curmudgeon on the pitfalls of worship forms but a few remarks about the relationship between worship forms and culture inspired by an article in this month's issue of Christianity Today. In "Here We Are to Worship," (page 33) Brad Harper and Paul Louis Metzger give us six principles that should guide our efforts to keep worship relevant and authentically Christian. They draw these principles from John D. Witvliet's book, Worship Seeking Understanding.

The burden these six principles place on us is to answer this question in the affirmative: "Do changing worship forms adapted from popular culture facilitate an authentic encounter with God in Christ through the Holy Spirit as described by the Scriptures and understood by historic Christian orthodoxy?"

1. All liturgical action is culturally conditioned.

We've got to determine the level of contemporary culture's influence on our worship. How deeply influenced are our worship forms by Western consumer culture?

2. The relationship between liturgy and culture is theologically framed by creation and the Incarnation.

Creation implies that human cultural activity is a God-given good, and the Incarnation, with Christ coming in the flesh and taking upon Himself a particular cultural identity, shows us that God is fully capable of revealing Himself through the particularity of human cultures. Thus, popular culture forms and symbols can be utilized powerfully and positively in worship.

3. Integrating liturgy and culture requires us to be critical of our own cultural context.

Does a culturally-conditioned worship form represent God and communicate the Gospel with integrity? For instance, are we coming before the throne of God to offer him the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, or, are we simply looking for an ecstatic experience of a higher plane of reality? Are the needs we seek to address in worship the biblical needs of forgiveness of sin, repentance, and reconciliation with God and neighbor, or, are we simply seeking to address the popularly cultivated desires that drive the consumer marketplace?

4. The extremes of either complete identification with or rejection of a given culture should be avoided.

As Harper and Metzger state it, "The best array of worship forms will illustrate that the church is both embedded in culture, speaking through its constantly changing forms, and also a countercultural community, one that represents transcendent values and truths that confront cultures' fallenness."

5. Worship must reflect common elements of the Christian tradition through the unique expressions of a particular cultural context.

In tailoring a church's worship to a particular culture or subculture, we must be careful that those outside that particular culture be able to connect the church's worship to Christ and the Gospel. Harper and Metzger make the point that the strategy adopted by larger churches of offering both a contemporary service and a traditional service effectively divides congregations, as younger people invariably opt for the contemporary service and the older for the traditional. If we continue to divide churches into smaller and smaller segments, such as adult Sunday school classes and youth groups, for instance, when are there opportunities for a particular church to come together as a single multigenerational and multicultural community to worship its common Lord?

6. The liturgical actions of the church—including proclamation of the Word, common prayer, baptism, and Eucharist—are among the "universal" or common factors in the Christian tradition.

While it is essential for the Church to communicate the Gospel and draw people to worship God in ways that appeal to their particular cultural situations, we must not forget that the Church is a historical community that "always finds its identity in the same God revealed in Jesus Christ." As such, we must maintain a certain continuity in our symbols and forms of worship with those of the past. The symbols, rituals, creeds, and texts that have united Christians throughout the ages are nonnegotiable because without them we forget who we are and we risk losing the central theological and relational realities that can only be expressed therein.

Imagine expressing Christ's sacrificial death and the life we must live as a response in any way other than through the cross. What about the Lord's Supper? In light of the importance of bread in the biblical narrative (think about the manna in the Exodus, the showbread in the temple, or the miracle of the loaves and fishes) and the appropriateness of breaking bread to symbolize the breaking of Christ's body, could we use anything other than bread here? Can you think of a replacement for wine that better represents life, blood, sacrifice, and judgment? How better do we express the central reality of the Church, namely, Christ dead, buried, and risen, and the communal character of His body than through this most elemental meal?

How does this all relate to the question of contemporary versus traditional worship? I think these principles are sustainable in either worship form. At any rate, in either form we must maintain the tension between the ancient, normative liturgical actions and the culturally-determined innovations that aim at relevant expression of "the faith once delivered to the saints" and worship of the Triune God. Perhaps the best way to do so is to combine elements of contemporary and traditional worship forms.

For the Life of the World 3

The Time of Mission: Eastern Orthodoxy and the Sacrament of Time

The last few times, we have been up on the mountain in the new Jerusalem. We have been talking about the Sunday feast of the Church, the Eucharist. We have gotten a glimpse of heaven. Now we have to go back out into the world again to do mission. We have to come out of the timelessness of heaven and enter again into time.

Time. How do you view time? That's an ambivalent subject. It's a two-sided issue. Time opens up life as a possibility for growth and fulfillment. We move forward hopefully into the future. For all of this good possibility that time opens up for us, though, we all also experience time as an enemy. We're always running out of it. We're always on the clock. Time is tick, tick, ticking away. One day, the clock is going to run out for each of us. Time ultimately means death. On that unhappy note, let's begin our exploration of the Eastern Orthodox perspective on time. As our author lets us know, what Eastern Orthodoxy provides when it comes to time is not a solution but a gift.

The gift is liturgical time, the Church calendar. Fortunately, I think, Protestants are beginning to reclaim the Christian year, the feasts and the seasons and even the old liturgical cycles of prayer. The Reformers, especially Zwingli and Calvin, rejected a lot of this stuff as ceremonialism and superstition. They thought that one day was just as sacred as the next and there's also the fact that they couldn't find any mention of feast days and seasons in the Bible. They thought that these were man-made traditions that Christians were not obliged to follow. I think they were right to reject the idea that observing the days of the Church gets us points with God but I think this was a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

What is the benefit of the liturgical calendar anyway? Schmemann talks in the opening pages of this chapter about the "symbolism" of feast days and seasons. Are these just symbolic decorations or occasions for remembrance of things that happened in the past, or are we to understand them as having some other kind of significance?

Well, he thinks that viewing these times just as symbols is a problem. For him, it reflects the Christian rejection of time as having any real meaning. So, I raise the question, What do we understand to be the significance of time in our faith? Does it have any real significance? Isn't Christianity really about salvation from time? We talked a while back about the otherworldly perspective that thinks of Christianity in terms of salvation from the world. I think we see this in our attitude toward time also. We want to escape time and the world and all of the frustration and difficulty that go along with them. We want rest and relaxation. Vacation, retirement, heaven. Rest. When we think of Christianity's relation to time in this manner, the liturgical calendar is basically just a way to decorate meaningless time with beautiful symbols and colorful rituals. Do you all agree with his portrayal?

Well, Christ didn't enter time just to rescue us from it. Nor did he leave us here in time just so we could fill it up with symbols. Just as he came into the world not just to save us from the world but to transform the world and give it back to us as a means of communion with God, so has he come into time not just to rescue us from time but to transform time and return it to us as a means of communion with God. Alongside the sacramental Church and the sacramental world we have discussed, Eastern Orthodoxy has sacramental time.

The first place to start in discussing the sacramental time of Orthodoxy is in talking about the Lord's Day. Christians have always had their own special day. Of course, that stretched all the way back into Judaism with the Sabbath, but Sabbath and Lord's Day are not interchangeable. They're connected, but there's a difference. In Judaism, the Sabbath is the seventh day, but, in Christianity the Lord's Day is the first day of the week. It's also the eighth day of the week. To understand this though, we need to talk about the Jewish Sabbath first. What does Sabbath represent in Judaism? Schmemann talks about it on 50.

In the Jewish religious experience Sabbath, the seventh day, has a tremendous importance: it is the participation by man in, and his affirmation of, the goodness of God's creation. "And God saw it was good. . . . And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." The seventh day is thus the joyful acceptance of the world created by God as good. . . . It is the active participation in the "Sabbath delight," in the sacredness and fullness of divine peace as the fruit of all work, as the crowning of all time.

There is a problem with God's good world though. It is also the world of sin and revolt against God. We aren't in Eden anymore. Because of this, the seventh day as it is in the fallen world has to point beyond itself to the day of God's triumph over evil. That's why we get this talk about an eighth day. It's beyond the limits of the seven, where death now reigns. This eighth day is also the first day because it marks the beginning of a new time—that of God's Kingdom.

This is where the Christian idea of the Lord's Day comes from. It fulfills the Jewish Sabbath. It's not incidental that Jesus rose from the dead on the day after the Sabbath. It's the eighth day of broken creation. It's the end of the old creation and the beginning, the first day, of the new creation, the day on which, in remembrance of the Resurrection, we ascend into heaven to share in a foretaste of the Lord's Banquet in the "age to come." Notice too how Schmemann says that this first day and eighth day business shows up in John's account of the Resurrection. I hadn't noticed that before.

It's also important to understand that the Lord's Day is a fixed day. For the early Christians, in addition to Sunday being the day of Christ's Resurrection, it was just one of the days of the week. I think he says that for three centuries Sunday wasn't even a day of rest. Notice how this otherworldly event of Christ's Resurrection, and the celebration of it that includes the Eucharist, which we have seen is a step out of time and into eternity, notice how, in spite of all of its heavenly significance, that it is just one of the days of the week. Sunday belongs completely to the world as well. That the Lord's Day belongs both to the world and to heaven indicates that the joy of Sunday is to spill out into the rest of the week and fill the whole week with the joy of the Lord. Every moment, every hour, every day, is to be understood in the light of the Lord's Day.

On 51 and 52, Schmemann describes it this way:

On the one hand, Sunday remained one of the days, the first of the week, fully belonging to this world. Yet on the other hand, on that day, through the eucharistic ascension, the Day of the Lord was revealed and manifested in all its glory and transforming power as the end of this world, and the beginning of the world to come. And thus through that one day all days, all time were transformed into times of remembrance and expectation, remembrance of the ascension, and expectation of its coming. . . . The week was no longer a sequence of "profane" days, with rest on the "sacred" day at their end. It was now a movement from Mount Tabor into the world, from the world into the "day without evening" of the world to come. Every day, every hour acquired now an importance, a gravity it could not have had before: each day was now to be a step in this movement, a moment of decision and witness, a time of ultimate meaning.

I think this is as far from dualism as we can get. All of time, each moment, each hour, each day becomes sacred in this sort of understanding. The Lord's Day sanctifies time, makes it communion with God. This is what makes our mission as the Church possible. It transforms each and every day into the time of mission.

The next thing Schmemann points us to when it comes to the sacramental time of Orthodoxy is the Christian year with its sequence of liturgical feasts and celebrations. The whole idea of this revolves around the joy of the feast. Schmemann has some interesting things to say about our modern skepticism when it comes to the joy of the feast. He says we are too adult and serious in our modern Christianity to enjoy what was once such a central aspect in the life of the Church. In this description, I see that Puritan work ethic creeping around that makes us feel guilty when we aren't doing anything productive or serious, when we’re partying instead of working. I am certainly prone to those Puritan moments of guilt when I'm not doing something productive, when I'm enjoying myself instead of working. What about you all? We really can't resonate with the idea that the joy of the feast is the root or even the goal of our work in the world as the Church, but that's where we are headed with the Orthodox understanding of the Christian year.

Just as is the case with the Lord's Day, for the Orthodox, the feasts of the Church and the liturgical seasons are all about filling up time with meaning and giving it purpose. In this respect, the early Christians were simply carrying on a tradition from the pagan cultures around them, in which feasts were central aspects of life. In those cultures, the feasts served to make the hard work and the fruits of that work and the natural cycles of time all worthwhile. The feasts were a source of power and meaning for the rest of life. What the early Christians did was take those feasts, as Schmemann says, through death and resurrection and made them apply to Christ. In that context, then, what the feasts did for the early Christians was to enable their mission, to give them their power to go out into the world and spread the Gospel of the Kingdom. Let's read that first paragraph of section 5 on page 55.

"Through the Cross joy came into the whole world"—and not just to some men as their personal and private joy. Once more, were Christianity pure "mysticism," pure "eschatology," there would be no need for feasts and celebrations. A holy soul would keep its secret feast apart from the world, to the extent that it can free itself from its time. But joy was given to the Church for the world—that the Church might be a witness to it and transform the world by joy. Such is the "function" of Christian feasts and the meaning of their belonging to time.

Do you all resonate with this? Are Christmas and Easter times that really excite you and encourage you to do mission? I must say that we do Christmas really well around here. It was truly a pleasure to be with you all this past Christmas and to join in all the pomp and pageantry and beauty of the Vespers service and the Christmas Eve service and Epiphany. Those were times of excitement for me. I can really see how the Christian feasts can put a fire in our bellies and give us the joy and energy to go out and change the world and people's lives for God's glory.

I'm starting to run out of time here, but, I want to take a brief look at his critique of the idea of the feasts as times of commemoration. He points out that remembering Christ's death, burial, and resurrection is always central to our mission. We don't just think about Christ's Passion during the Easter season but all through the year. In the Orthodox perspective, then, what we are doing on our special days, in some way, just as is the case with the Eucharist and the Lord's Day, is sharing in the very mystery that we are signifying. During the Easter season, for instance, we are given the gift of the very joy that Mary Magdalene and the apostles experienced on that day when they found the tomb empty and when they encountered the risen Lord. Schmemann really has a wonderful description of the Easter Vigil in the Orthodox Church. As he quotes St. Gregory of Nyssa, the night of the Easter Vigil is the night that becomes brighter than day. It is this joy that gives time its ultimate meaning and transforms the year into the "Christian year." He also talks about how the 50 days between Easter and Pentecost are given to us as the joy of the feast. I really think that we need to recover this full Easter celebration in the Western Church. I'm not sure how we do that though. At any rate, it is the joy of Easter in the Orthodox tradition that enables the Church to enter back into the world after Pentecost and carry out its mission. And he emphasizes that this mission is taxing and difficult. He calls it fasting for the world, it's effort, sacrifice, self-denial, and death. This is especially so for the Church in the places where there is persecution. It is only through the gift of Joy that the feasts bring that the Church can fulfill its mission, that we can be, as Schmemann says, "the fragrance of the Holy Spirit, the presence here in time of the feast of the Kingdom."

Finally, I'll conclude with a brief note on Schmemann's discussion of the Church and the individual Christian's relation to the time of day. He talks about the Vespers service in the evening and the Matins service in the morning. The thing to take from this is this idea of the rhythm of the beginning and end. Vespers is at the end of the day, but it is in the beginning of a new day. It is the end of life in the world of sin and death but the beginning of the evening without end that Christ will bring when he comes. Schmemann refers us to the story in Luke's Gospel of the old man Simeon, who had waited for the coming of the Lord. God had promised to Simeon that he would see the coming Messiah before he died. When Simeon saw the Christ child in the temple that day and held him and gloried in him, he was ready to depart. It was the end of his days, but the beginning of God's reign, which he was about to experience in an ever deeper way in his death. When it comes to Matins, Schmemann makes this point about how we are at our weakest and most pathetic in the morning. With the rising of the sun, we are at the end of the night of sin and weakness and death and at the beginning of the new day of the Lord's reign.

We will conclude with the thought that time becomes meaningful when we refer it to beginning and end. In this way it becomes "Christian time."

We are always between morning and evening, between Sunday and Sunday, between Easter and Easter, between the two comings of Christ. The experience of time as end gives an absolute importance to whatever we do now, makes its final, decisive. The experience of time as beginning fills all our time with joy, for it adds to it the "coefficient" of eternity.

For the Life of the World 2.2

"Lift up Your Hearts!": Eastern Orthodoxy, Reformed Protestantism, and the Eucharist (Part 2)

What is the Lord's Supper?

Westminster Shorter Catechism again, Q 96- The Lord’s Supper is a sacrament, wherein, by giving and receiving bread and wine, according to Christ’s appointment, his death is showed forth; and the worthy receivers are, not after a corporal and carnal manner, but by faith, made partakers of his body and blood, with all his benefits, to their spiritual nourishment, and growth in grace.

What is the role of eating? If we do not commune with Christ after a "corporal and carnal manner" but by "faith only," can we not be "made partakers of his body and blood” without eating? Can't we just watch it and think pious thoughts and get the benefit that way? This question reveals the shortcomings of most Reformed views of the sacraments in general. We haven't done particularly well with our attitude toward human actions and things. If no significance is attached to the eating, we can end up with something like the medieval Roman Catholic view that Luther and Calvin were fighting against. At a certain point in the Middle Ages, it became customary for Christians only to receive the Communion bread once a year. The rest of the time they were told that they could receive the benefit of the sacrament simply by watching the priest break the bread at consecration. I think this represents a devaluing of the material.

There is also another direction we could go if we don't attach any significance to the eating. We could end up with a Baptist view of the Lord's Supper where God doesn't do anything at all in the sacrament. It's all about what we do. We simply obey and remember. We don't receive any direct spiritual benefit from the ritual because eating is natural and material but God is supernatural and spiritual. We don't want to confuse nature and supernature or matter and spirit. Well, this kind of understanding is a serious problem. This is a clear example of the dualism that completely separates the world and nature from God. Sounds an awful lot like that darned noneucharistic life in a noneucharistic world Schmemann has been warning us about. This is precisely why I'm not a Baptist anymore.

According to Schmemann, something else that smacks of dualism is the distinction we make between Word and Sacrament. We are accustomed to thinking of sacraments merely as secondary helps to the Word. We usually think of the Word in terms of God's activity and the sacraments exclusively in terms of our activity. If we think of it that way, from a Calvinistic perspective the sacraments really aren't that important. Well, I don't think Calvin would agree that the sacraments are unimportant but he unintentionally created that impression when he described the sacraments as appendices to the Word.

So, if the distinction between Word and Sacrament is artificial, how do we overcome it? I want to point us to what Schmemann says on page 33 about the Word being as sacramental as the sacrament is "evangelical." What does the statement that the Word is as "sacramental" as the sacrament is "evangelical" mean?

There’s a couple of things. The first thing is that Scripture is the sacrament par excellence of the Church. I don't want to devalue Scripture, but it must be apparent that the words printed on the page or the words spoken by one reading Scripture or preaching from the Word are also things, things as earthly as water, bread, or wine. These are all earthen vessels that only through the power of the Holy Spirit can carry and deliver the weight of Divine reality. Due to the power of the Holy Spirit, who both inspired the writers of Scripture and who enlivens the printed or spoken words of the Bible for us that read them or hear them today, God speaks to us through His Word. Likewise, it is only through the power of the Holy Spirit that a community ritual meal becomes a sharing in the Body and Blood of Christ. Granted, there are some important ways in which the Scriptures are unique from the things we properly call sacraments (Scripture, being God-breathed, is, with or without the Spirit's new activity of enlightening us, already sacramental), but, just as bread and wine, the ritual actions, the Word spoken, the people, the minister, etc., require the action of the Holy Spirit in order for the sacrament of the Lord's Supper to truly take place, so too do we need the Spirit's activity in order for the Bible to make its transformative mark on us.

The second thing is that the sacraments are an essential part of our evangelical mission as the Church. We are commanded to preach the Gospel to every creature, but we are also commanded to baptize and to gather together to share the Eucharistic meal by which we remember Christ and eat Him as our spiritual food. The sacraments themselves, particularly the Eucharist, both enable our ministry to the world and demonstrate the Gospel to an unbelieving world, showing forth Christ's great love for us and our love for one another. Sacraments are also evangelical because, like the Word, they are means by which the seed of faith can be planted in our hearts and by which that seed can be watered so that it bears much fruit.

Is the above description consistent with the significance of the Lord's Supper in traditional Reformed faith and practice? If not, how central should it be?

We have customarily thought of and acted as if the Word has precedence over the sacraments. I don't think this was the intention of the Reformers. For Calvin, for instance, the right administration of the sacraments was every bit as much a mark of the Church as the right preaching of the Word was. Calvin wanted weekly Communion, but the Geneva city council would not let him. It might have gone differently had Calvin been able to have weekly Communion, but the sacraments have always had second billing in our tradition.

I think this is a mistake, especially when we think about both Scripture and the sacraments as means the Word of God uses to communicate with us. Who is the Word of God? Jesus, of course. He promises to make Himself present both in the Scriptures and in the sacraments. In some sense, then, the Bible and the sacraments are both the Word of God, or, more properly, manifestations of Him. They are really two sides of the same coin, and they complement each other really well. The Bible, for instance, appeals to our minds and to our hearing, while the sacraments appeal to our senses of sight, touch, smell, and taste. God seeks to get to our hearts through every aspect of our humanity so I think we should give Him every opportunity to do so. With that in mind, I think that Word and Sacrament should be equally central to our faith and practice.

Let's look at another perspective. I'll read the following statement about the Lord's Supper. Tell me if this is the statement of a Presbyterian or of an Orthodox or a Catholic.

The Eucharist is the world in miniature; it has cosmic significance. Within it we find clues to the meaning of all creation and all history, to the nature of God and the nature of man, to the mystery of the world, which is Christ. It is not confined to the first day, for its power fills seven. Though the altar stands at the center, its effects stretch out to the four corners of the earth.

Is this the statement of a Roman Catholic or an Orthodox? Well, I changed a few words—I turned Lord's Supper into Eucharist and table into altar to make this sound like something an Orthodox or Roman Catholic would say but actually it is from a Presbyterian pastor and professor who is part of a group that has caused a big commotion over in the Presbyterian Church in America and the other conservative Reformed denominations about the importance of the sacraments and the Church in our salvation. In fact, Peter Leithart, whose words I just read has been investigated not less than three times by his presbytery and has endured at least one heresy trial for his positions. Many Reformed evangelicals think all this sounds too much like Catholicism, so some of them are waging a campaign against those who are attempting to recover the full-bodied Reformed sacramental and churchly heritage.

This is an important question. How central is the Lord's Table in our life together as a congregation? This gets into the issue of frequency. How frequently should we take Communion?

Well, I certainly have a position on frequency. I think every Lord's Day celebration should include the Lord's Supper. Not only does it "show forth Christ's death till He comes" but it guards against this whole tendency toward dualism. The Lord's Supper with its emphasis on ritual and the community of faith and material things tells us right away that our spiritual lives are not lived apart from the world or from other people or even from material things. Our spiritual life must embrace the world, people, and things, not just as purely incidental to our lives, but as means of connection with God.

If we move forward on this idea that the Lord's Supper is the world in miniature; that it is central; that its significance fills all seven days of the week and the four corners of the earth; we have a lot of room to fill out our definition of the Lord's Supper. Of course, the Lord's Supper is a sign and remembrance of Christ's death. I think we all understand that. We have talked about the importance of Communion for our mission—how it turns us into the Body of Christ so that we can be His physical presence in the world and tell others about His Kingdom. We've talked about how for the Orthodox this gets into the whole question of the Eschaton—that time when Jesus returns and sets everything right. It gives us a glimpse of that time so we can prepare the world for His Return. I think we have a bit of that in our Reformed understanding of the Eucharist as well.

In talking about all that this sacrament means for us, I think a discussion about the many different terms we use to describe it would be productive. Somebody give me a name for this sacrament.

1. Lord's Supper- it tells us that this is a meal Jesus has with all of his friends. Not only is Jesus our dear friend at this meal but we are all dear friends to one another. This term points us to his death because it was the last meal he shared with the disciples.
2. Communion- I like this one because it tells us something about our relationship to one another as the Body of Christ. We are one. We must truly love one another. That scary passage of Scripture in 1 Corinthians (11:17-32) that talks about profaning the Body and Blood of Christ by unworthily taking the Lord's Supper is most likely about people in the Church failing to love each other—failing to recognize the Body of Christ in the poorer members of the Corinthian congregation. Paul ultimately says that the sacrament will damn us if we fail to love each other.
3. Lord's Table- This is my favorite because it illustrates our relationship to God. That we get to eat at the table with Jesus says that we are the very sons and daughters of God.
4. Eucharist- This is the one that's most important for the Orthodox. I want to spend a little time with this one. The term Eucharist makes us understand that the sacrament is joy, that it’s praise, that it's thanksgiving. We focus a lot of attention on the fact that this sacrament is about Jesus’ death, but it's also about the Resurrection. It's in the context of the Resurrection that this meal is thanksgiving and joy, that it is Eucharist.

This concept of Eucharist is very strong in the Communion liturgy that we use. I just want to emphasize very strongly once again that the Eucharist is a liturgy. We have to include all of it as sacramental. We can't take it apart and focus just on the bread and wine. It's a seamless action and procession of thanksgiving from beginning to end.

With that in mind, I hope you guys noticed in the last part of this chapter how similar our liturgy is to the Eastern Orthodox liturgy Schmemann discusses in our book. They differ from one another in a few places, but, for the most part, each has a very similar structure to the other and very similar content to the other. I want to have us meditate on this idea of thanksgiving, of offering, of sacrifice that is present in both of our liturgies. Schmemann has some very profound and beautiful yet also very difficult things to say about all this in the last 10 or 12 pages of the chapter. There is a lot of giving going on. Let's look at this on page 35:

This offering to God bread and wine, of the food that we must eat in order to live, is our offering to Him of ourselves, of our life, and of the whole world. . . . It is our Eucharist. It is the movement that Adam failed to perform, and that in Christ has become the very life of man: a movement of adoration and praise in which all joy and suffering, all beauty and all frustration, all hunger and all satisfaction are referred to their ultimate End and become finally meaningful.

I think this correlates really well with the statement from Peter Leithart that the Eucharist covers the four corners of the world. We are offering ourselves and the whole world to God when we offer the gifts of bread and wine.

Well, it's after this point that trying to follow Schmemann begins to make my head hurt a little. It gets a little confusing. He begins to talk about how Christ has already offered all that is to be offered to God by giving Himself, so Christ offers Himself as a Eucharist to God. Well, we as the Church have been taken up into Christ's Eucharistic life, so Christ offers us as a Eucharist to God as well. To make it even more confusing, we then offer the self-offering of Christ as a Eucharist to God. In the end, we end up with four offerings that have occurred in the Eucharist. First, we have offered ourselves and the whole world to God. Second, Christ has offered Himself to God. Third, Christ has offered His Body, the Church, to God. Finally, as a response, we offer Christ's self-offering to God.

This kind of talk makes some Protestants very nervous, especially those who are highly suspicious of anything that sounds remotely Catholic. This begins to sound like we are sacrificing Christ all over again or that we are doing some kind of good work here to earn God's grace. I really don't think that's what's going on here. In fact, we get a very strong affirmation of grace in this. All of this is possible only because of what Christ has done in His once-and-for-all death for our sins on the cross and in His Resurrection, and, at the end of the liturgy, God gives the bread and wine that we have offered to Him back to us as the gift of Christ's Body and Blood.

No one has been "worthy" to receive communion, no one has been prepared for it. At this point all merits, all righteousness, all devotions disappear and dissolve. Life comes again to us as Gift, a free and divine gift. . . . Adam [and Eve are] introduced into Paradise, taken out of nothingness, and crowned king [and queen] of creation. Everything is free, nothing is due and yet all is given. And, therefore, the greatest humility and obedience is to accept the gift, to say yes—in joy and gratitude. There is nothing left we can do, yet we become all that God wanted us to be from eternity, when we are eucharistic.

With that in mind, we can conclude our look at the Lord's Supper with Calvin's view of Christ's presence in the sacrament. This is from his "Short Treatise on the Lord's Supper":

We all confess, then, with one mouth, that, in receiving the sacrament in faith, according to the ordinance of the Lord, we are truly made partakers of the real substance of the body and blood of Christ. How this is done, some may deduce more clearly than others. But be this as it may, on the one hand we must, to shut out all carnal fancies, raise our hearts on high to heaven, not thinking that our Lord Jesus Christ is so abased as to be enclosed under any corruptible elements. On the other hand, not to diminish the efficacy of the sacred mystery, we must hold that it is accomplished by the secret and miraculous virtue of God and that the Spirit of God is the bond of participation, for which reason it is called spiritual.

Two things. One, Calvin understands Jesus’ words about his flesh and blood to be a promise. He rejects any idea of the bread and wine being transformed into actual flesh and blood, but he somehow still manages to take what Jesus says quite literally, even if he doesn't understand how exactly it works. And he makes it very clear that he doesn't know how it works. Listen here to Calvin's rather surprising mystical side:

Now if anyone should ask me how this takes place, I shall not be ashamed to confess that it is a secret too lofty for either my mind to comprehend or my words to declare. And, to speak more plainly, I rather experience than understand it. Therefore I here embrace without controversy the truth of God in which I may safely rest. He declares his flesh the food of my soul, his blood its drink. I offer my soul to him to be fed with such food. In his sacred supper he bids me take, eat, and drink his body and blood under the symbols of bread and wine. I do not doubt that he himself truly presents them, and that I receive them. Institutes 4.17.32.

The second thing we must note about Calvin's doctrine of the Lord's Supper is that he bids us to "Raise our hearts on high."

A question: Where is Christ physically at right now? He's in heaven at the right hand of the Father, right? Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human, right? Can human beings physically be in more than one place at a time? Well, as much as you might sometimes feel the need to be in two places at once, you that are parents know that this is impossible. Okay, let's try to get this straight; if we encounter Christ in His humanity in the Lord's Supper, explain to me how Jesus can be at a thousand different Communion services all at once. Jesus is human, so He can't do it without destroying His ongoing humanity, can He? What He can do, though, is bring all of us to His place. This is where Calvin looked East toward the Orthodox view of the Eucharist for help.

Leonard Vander Zee explains Calvin's solution:

For Calvin, the sursum corda, "lift up your hearts," was a favorite liturgical phrase, because at the Lord's Table we lift up our hearts to Christ in heaven by the Spirit who has united us with him in his glorified humanity. By the same Spirit and through the sharing of the bread and wine, we now partake in a unique way of that union with Christ.

Calvin's solution for the problem of Christ's physical presence in the sacrament is for the Holy Spirit to lift the Church into Christ's presence in heaven. This is the reason our Eucharistic liturgy is so similar to the Orthodox liturgy Schmemann has shown us. We are basically striving to do the same thing that Schmemann shows the Orthodox to be doing in their celebration of the Eucharist. We are ascending into heaven to offer ourselves and the world to God and to share in a foretaste of the great banquet of the Lord. Let's say a small part of the Great Thanksgiving we share with the Orthodox as we conclude?

Lift up your hearts!
We lift them up to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.

I think we're ready to head into worship now. We will be gathering around the Lord's Table today, so let's go together and ascend with Christ into heaven to share in a foretaste of the heavenly banquet.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.