May 29, 2006
Memorial Day
Memorial Day doesn’t have the same meaning for all of us. For some it represents the beginning of weekend summer outings and camping. For marathon shoppers it’s a great day for saving 50% to 70% on a purchase. Actually, Memorial Day is intended as a day of remembrance for Americans killed on active service, and during this time of war it is especially meaningful. Within the church, Communion is also a time that doesn’t have the same meaning for all of us. A previous minister of mine would give the weekly Communion meditation flippantly as though his audience were un-churched 3rd graders. In the middle of explaining emblems he’d say, “…were not doing anything strange or weird. When the trays are passed to you, you’re going to find a ‘cracker’ and a little glass of juice…” I suppose he thought he was being relevant to ‘seekers’, but I find the instructions for the Lord’s Supper in I Corinthians 11:17-34 to be anything but flippant. Today, I struggle with the singing and entertainment that goes on while the emblems are being served. Scripture tells us, “A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.” (vs. 28). I can’t learn the words of a new song, tap my foot to the beat of the music and confess my sins at the same time. I’m just not mentally ambidextrous when it comes to examining the attitude of my heart!
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Gail;
----Because this same mentality can be seen flowing from the current service leaders, I think a quick analysis of it is in order.
To state the obvious, this comic act occurs in a room full of people, most of whom are Christians familiar with the communion service. The remainder are not Christians, most of whom are also familiar with the communion process. Since the speaker is presenting such a simplistic explanation, you know he is speaking to the very few in the room who are almost certainly non-christian, and certainly know nothing about the communion process. It should be quite obvious then that the speaker is not directing himself to edify the church during the communion service, which is the Scriptually expected participant, but instead, he is attempting to include non-believers, who are Scripturally expected to be excluded. This does not give me confidence in the intelligence of the speaker, whom I would be hoping is not a leader in the church (or worrying about the church if he were.) But moving on, since we know this kind of speaker is not talking to the Christians present, with little risk of being wrong, we can conclude that he is expecting the Christians to sit quitely in sweet repose attending to the Lord only and not expecting any edification from him, the speaker. This conclusion is safe because the purpose driven church mentality (in which these speakers are always well studied) views the individual Christian as a dutiful little worker ant with all provision for the church and no need of its own. They are ministers to the unchurched, trained to know that nothing is about them. At this point, the suspition raised above, about the lack of the speaker's intelligence, is joined by an observation of the speaker's confusion. For if the little minion worker ant Christians were all busy doing their little ministry jobs on the unchurched, the unchurched would already have been qued in on the workings of the communion service. Or better yet, following the sure path of, "it is not about you," the little worker ants would excuse themselves from partaking of communion altogether, and they would join together in one giant dote fest upon the few unchurched there to lavish upon them all the attention, all the cute little cracker squares, and all the little juice jiggers.
----You know, I think I am ready to do it the scriptural way.
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