A Big Weekend!

Communion, Eucharist, Lord’s Supper: Your Pastor’s Perspective Dear Winter Park Family, I prefer the word eucharist. It comes from a Greek word that means to give thanks – eucharisteo . When we take of the bread and the juice, we give thanks to God for the salvation provided to us through God’s Son Jesus the Christ. In recent meetings, your church ministerial staff, as well as your deacons, have engaged in serious conversation over the eucharist. We shared our understanding of the eucharist. We discussed how often we think our congregation should observe the eucharist – weekly, monthly, quarterly. The topic of the relationship of baptism and the eucharist occupied us as well. The dialogue has been rewarding. From this discussion one decision was reached – for the foreseeable future, our church will share the eucharist every other month. As we have reached this decision and the eucharist is scheduled for this Sunday (October 1), I thought I would share my thoughts about who should receive the eucharist in worship. It is a question that frequently is on people’s minds. It is also a question that is seldom addressed, at least in my experience. I recognize there are a variety of opinions on this topic. And in accordance with my recent emphasis on the hospitable church, from Romans 14, I respect opinions about the eucharist that differ from mine. In fact, I welcome different opinions about the eucharist to gather with my understanding of the eucharist under the wide umbrella of the Lordship of Jesus the Christ. My preference is that we reserve the eucharist for baptized believers. Perhaps you recall my statement from some time back, “As I age my theology becomes more traditional.” I suspect one reason for this development is due to my academic specialization in the history of Christianity, especially the early church. Significant exposure to the history of the early church informs me that it was common practice for a person’s first eucharist to occur soon after their baptism into Christ – believer’s baptism that is. The Lenten season was used to train and prepare catechumens (new believers) for baptism. Baptism itself often occurred late Easter Eve or in the opening minutes of Easter day. It is true that believers were sometimes baptized naked. However, perhaps we should not follow our predecessor’s example to a T! At baptism, the newly baptized might be given a mixture of milk and honey and/or salt to taste. Interestingly it was also common for a person to be immersed three times, once in the name of the Father, once in the name of the Son, and once in the name of the Holy Spirit. Soon after a person had received instruction in Christian faith and followed through in baptism, the person would receive his/her first eucharist. The clear example from the early church is the responsibility of the eucharist table belongs to baptized believers in Jesus the Christ. We know this because church orders from the first four centuries survive. These church orders provide specific instruction about baptism and the eucharist among other areas of church life. Of particular interest in this regard is a fourth-century document, that consists of an assemblage of church orders from the second and third centuries, called the Apostolic Constitution s. One of the church orders cited in the Apostolic Constitutions survives by itself and is called the Didache. Didache means “teaching” in Greek. In section nine, the Didache specifically states the unbaptized are not to partake of the eucharist. Early church leaders such as Tertullian from the third century and Cyril from the fourth century also inform us as to these matters. Indeed, I find myself defaulting more and more to the practices of the early church. If it worked for them and there is not a solid reason to overturn their practice, then it works for me too. This is the thinking of my early 50s which is a bit different than my early 40s. There was a recent New Testament studies conference put on by professional scholars for non-scholars. It was called, “New Insights into the New Testament: A New Bible Conference for Non-Scholars”. This was a virtual conference with a focus on the New Testament gospels. I studied with two of the scholars involved in the conference and I am quite familiar with most of the others. One leader of the conference, a scholar for whom I have much respect, advertised the conference by stating the work of some of the participating experts is “undermining the orthodoxies that most of us were trained in and most of us have taught for decades.” This is indeed the case if Robyn Faith Walsh’s book, The Origins of Early Christian Literature: Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture, is on track. I am not persuaded it is. Nonetheless, her work is excellent. This conference, made up of distinguished experts in the field of biblical studies, illustrates my point well. Scholarly theories, as sound as some are, come and go. Just as track and field records eventually are overturned and surpassed, so are the theories of even the most expert biblical scholars. I find the apostle Paul’s words especially relevant here, “For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void. For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.’ Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (1 Corinthians 1:17-20. NASB) Indeed, I find increasing value in the historic traditions of the church even as I continue to appreciate the fruits of modern scholarship. So, believer’s baptism was common practice in the early church. I see no problem with this practice today. And, of course, believer’s baptism is a Baptist distinctive that reaches back to our beginnings in the seventeenth century. It was also a common practice, among Christians of the first four centuries, to reserve the eucharist table for the baptized. Likewise, I see no problems with this practice today. In fact, there is holy reverence in the tradition of baptized believers sharing the eucharist together. It worked for them; it works for me. In Christ, Paul P.S. If you are interested in more discussion on baptism and communion see Everett Ferguson’s Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries (Eerdmans Publishing, 2009).