All Things Seen & Unseen

On another blog I have been dealing with the Lord's Supper and its meaning within the Anglican Church. I'm fully aware that not all Anglicans understand the Supper alike but I fully embrace Article XXVIII of the Articles of Religion (1562) Of The Lord's Supper which rules out transubstantiation, 'reserving' of the sacrament, lifting it up, carrying it about, or worshipping it. The Article says clearly among other things that: 'The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean [sic] whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is Faith.' This last sentence is one of the planks of John Calvin's view of the Supper (as opposed to Rome and to Luther) for it is affirming that the bread and wine do not act upon us because of their inherent sacredness (or divinity as in Catholicism). They convey grace only in the presence of faith in Christ. This point about fait...

The priest breaks the bread and says, We who are many are one body, (1 Cor 12.27) for we all share in the one bread.  (P rayer Book has various options.)  Come let us take this holy sacrament  of the body and blood of Christ in remembrance that he died for us, and feed on him in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving. The sacrament is given to individuals with the following words,   The body of Christ keep you in eternal life. The blood of Christ keep you in eternal life.   and the communicant replies, AMEN. The Anglican Church typically uses a common cup but provide s an alternative if that is required . (Some dip their wafer into the communion cup rather than drinking from it directly.) What does it all mean?   Anglicanism is influenced by Martin Luther and by John Calvin without being fully Lutheran or Calvinian. Both regarded the Communion as a sacrament but there the unity ends.   Calling it a sacrament emphasises the work God is doing; calli...

For All Your Blessings, O Lord The Great Thanksgiving is preceded by the sharing of peace and the bringing of the gifts of the people to the Lord's Table at the front of the church building. The offering reminds us that we are one body who are called to be a forgiving body of Christ-believers and in the offering, the onus is on any who are out of fellowship with another in the congregation to make peace before taking Holy Communion (see Matt 5.23). The present 1995, Prayer Book ( A Prayer Book for Australia -APBA) has five different forms of The Great Thanksgiving. Some priests use them by rotation each week, using the fifth one when there are five Sundays in a particular month; others use Thanksgiving 1 predominantly which is the one with which I am most familiar; however, each one of the different forms brings out a different emphasis found in the Scriptures. Again what is noticeable is the call-response structure of this Thanksgiving and the number of allusions to or direct qu...

I don't know how many times I've seen 1Cor 2.9 misused to mean something it doesn't signify.* The text says, 'But as it is written:  "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him" ' (NKJV). This seems to be a composite quote or allusion to Isaiah 64.4; 65.17; 52.15 (as we have no direct OT quote according to Robertson . It may also be that Paul alludes to the rendering of the Septuagint, a translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek.)  Verse 9 is often quoted with the speaker finishing at the end of verse 9. The problem with this 'ending' is that it gives us a reading that distorts verse 9 because both the larger and immediate contexts are ignored.

I was raised in a Pentecostal Church (AoG) where we used to practise (sometimes with American preachers) the 'turn around and tell at least five people that God loves them!' ritual with variations. (I never much liked this 'carry on' but then I was socially introverted so that may account for my attitude.) However, one good thing about the Pentecostal American ritual was that it was limited to five or so people. Anglicans who are usually conservative in their approaches to other things seem to go overboard at the Greeting of Peace for some reason. Unfortunately, the Greeting has degenerated into a 'hello' session in services when it was never intended to be so. Some congregants seem to think that it's the right thing to try and shake hands with as many people as possible. Others while doing this don't even look at the people they are shaking hands with! Still others are a delight to receive the Peace from because they do it with a focussed joy. Because t...

To introduce this topic I mention again that idolatry is part of every person's life, every community's life and every nation's life. In fact, the whole human race is involved in a struggle between worship of the living God and worship of dead idols. Worship is natural to the human condition. In the beginning man turned his worship away from God to a god-substitute by changing the truth about God into a lie and resorting to the worship of the creaturely.  Christians cannot imagine that they are exempt from the ravages of idolatry (see 1 Cor 7.14; Col 3.5; 1 John 5.21).  Idolatry involves putting our TRUST in something that is created which can never bear the load of our full trust.  Only the Creator of all things seen and unseen is worthy of our trust.

The Lord challenged me recently about my idolatry with regard to money. A word about Martin Luther (see The Melbourne Anglican ) about money and how we so easily make it an idol was the stimulus for this challenge. What stabbed me in the heart was a reference in the article to the issue of trust. Why do we find it hard to trust our Lord Jesus? The answer to that question is easy but the remedy is not. The answer is that our hearts are conflicted by the competition among good things that have become our IDOLS. If you ever want to know what God thinks about idols read the devastating attack on God's people found in the first 35 chapters of the prophet Ezekiel . No one can come from that book with anything but a clear picture of why God was angry and ashamed of his people who had forsaken him for idols and detestable practices that went with idol worship.