The Lord's Supper

There are few things that separate Christians more than the Lord’s Supper. Certainly there are countless doctrines that are debated and argued over, but in our world today, nothing seems to divide Christians like the Lord’s Supper.

The most obvious form of this is the practice of close or closed communion. When someone visits a church, like Faith, that practices closed communion, they can feel singled out and even rejected because they are not welcome to receive the Sacrament alongside the members. This leads to questions like, “Do you think you are better than the rest of us?” or even, “Do you think that I am not a Christian, or will not be saved, because I am not a Lutheran?” (The short answer to these questions is “no,” but there is more to it than we can get into in this short post.)

However, this only scratches the surface of the divisions that Christians have over the Lord’s Supper. We are divided over whether or not Jesus’ body and blood are truly present in the Sacrament. Those who agree they are present are still further divided over how they are present, and those who agree that they are not present are still divided over whether Jesus is spiritually present or not at all. Then Christians are also divided over what it means to receive the Sacrament in a worthy manner, let alone who is worthy to receive it.

On top of this, there are questions regarding how we should practice the Lord’s Supper: How often should it be celebrated? Is there a right form of how to celebrate it, and if so, what form is that? Do we use a single, common cup or do we use individual cups? We could go on and on.

Here at Faith, the Sunday morning education hour is where we have opportunity to work through such questions. We have been looking at what Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions teach us and then what we as Lutheran Christians say about what we believe, teach and confess.

Our goal was not just to answer one or two questions, but to do our best to understand all that God is saying to us and doing for us through His Word, and prepare us to witness to Christians and non-Christians with the whole counsel of God's Word.

I hope to share with you over the coming weeks and months many of the insights that we have learned. If there is one thing I can say to sum up what we have learned: it is that it seems that as soon as we think we have nailed down what God is doing for us in His Means of Grace, we learn that there is even more happening than we think.

Please join us for our study of God's Word on Sundays, beginning at 9:15 a.m. Coffee and goodies provided.