Liturgy & Sacrament
Music.
I'm Pastor Luke. I'm Pastor Cameron. And this is the Uncut Podcast where we talk about church, life, ministry, all the things
in between and in an uncut and honest manner.
So today, the day that we're recording this podcast is Holy Week.
It's Maundy Thursday. Maundy Thursday, however you want to say that.
That's a hard... Monday, Thursday, however you want to say that. That's a hard couple of words to say together.
Not Monday, Thursday. Not Monday, Thursday. Mondy. Mondy. Thursday.
M-A-U-N-D-Y.
Yes. Thursday.
What is Mondy Thursday, Pastor Luke?
Well, it's, I don't know, actually know what the word Monday means. Do you off top your head?
Well, I do, but do you know what it means? No, I don't. I know what it signifies.
I'm not going to tell you if you don't.
Oh. Actually, I don't know either. That's what I'm not gonna say.
Well, it's... I know someone who does know, though. Oh, okay.
Dr. Google will tell us.
Dr. Google will tell us, but I will tell us what the night at least commemorates. I don't know what
the specific origin of the name is, but it does commemorate the last supper that Jesus had with
his disciples before he is later arrested that night and then put on trial and executed the
next day on Good Friday. So it's part of the sequence in days of events leading up to his
crucifixion and resurrection. So what does Google say?
Oh, this is interesting. I didn't, I would not have guessed this. I would have guessed
that it would have had something to do with like the Passover meal or something. But Maundy,
actually is a word for foot washing.
Oh, interesting. Yeah. So it's a mandi or washing of the saints feet.
Okay. Or washing of the feet or,
pedlavium. Which is a... And foot, okay, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, lavium or I'm assuming is like leve or lavar which is to wash and in other romance languages,
is a religious right observed various Christian denominations.
So are we having a foot washing service tonight? I do not plan to have a foot washing service tonight. But yeah, honestly, like John.
I think one of the more significant accounts of Maundy Thursday or the foot washing is in John
John chapter 13, which is one of, I don't want to say it is, but it's, it ranks up there
for me at least as like one of my favorite passages in the gospel, in the gospels.
Just because I think it's really rich with theological stuff.
Like there's, you know, there's a high Christology there where in the first part of John chapter
to 13, John is recording the sovereignty and supremacy,
and authority of Jesus, but then it's just like the whole thing flips, and he was like,
because Jesus, everything was under Jesus's feet, and because he was, he had all authority,
he got up from the table, took off his outer clothes, got down on his feet, or got down on his knees
and washed his disciples' feet.
And there was one, I think there's one phrase in there that John uses is that he was now going to show them
the extent of his love.
I think some people are like, I know that some people have tried to make that
to mean that it was a precursor to the crucifixion,
like that the crucifixion was gonna show the full extent of his love, which is not wrong, obviously.
Right, that's a true statement. Yeah.
But the context there is that, no, it was like in Jesus's serving in a really demonstrable way.
That was the demonstration of his love for them.
And then all the other themes involved, like the fact that he washed Judas's feet,
of the fact that he told his disciples,
the things that you have seen me done now, go and do likewise.
And so, what kind of commission does that lead for us as Christians in general,
but as Christian leaders specifically in...
You know, taking on not just a posture and attitude of humility, but an actual practice
of humility and service to those that we are serving.
But anyway, I mean, John chapter 13. Yeah.
Well, that starting there and then all the way up, like you have, that's just like, John,
all the gospels probably slows down the most when it comes to that night before Christ's arrest.
Yeah. Right? And it slows down even during Holy Week. I think the majority of John's gospel, I think,
covers most of the... I don't think this is wrong. I think most of the text of John is the Holy Week
in crucifixion. It spends a whole lot of time or percentage or portion of its time on that.
And then it goes up to the high priestly prayer and all of that text. And it's just a very dense
section right there. Yeah. I think it'd be like, you know, almost, almost 50% of John's gospel is
is pretty close to 50% of John's gospel is that last few days of Jesus' life.
Whereas you take like Matthew, most of it is his teaching and his miracles in Matthew.
So really interesting to talk about and to think about why the different gospel writers.
Why they approached the story of Jesus differently.
What their purpose and roles were and everything. They're gonna be teaching a class on the Gospels
here in a couple months.
Yeah, maybe not quite two months, two months. And be talking a lot about that.
Like, well, what are the significant or not so significant, I guess?
Why do we have four Gospels? What's the difference? Why do we even need them or whatever?
But I'm excited for that class. We were just talking about that before the cameras were rolling.
But so yeah, today's Maundy Thursday. Tomorrow is Good Friday.
Yep. So, you know, and I've been thinking about this and I think sometimes, you know, You know in our.
Church tradition, like of being kind of non-denom, broadly evangelical, like Easter does kind of get
truncated a little bit. Like, I think, like, I remember when I was younger. Again, this is my
experience. I don't know if this is everybody's experience or not. But there was in my experience,
I remember celebrating Easter. I never remember celebrating Good Friday. And it wasn't until I was
in high school, I think, and it kind of became a bit of a trendy thing to have a Good Friday service.
Again, like if you're coming from a more high church background, you'd be like,
huh? Because you would just be saying, like, we always do Good Friday, right? Like,
the church calendar has always been very much honored. But at least in my background, very
non-denom, very low liturgy and low, like, never even really mentioning the words church calendar.
I remember there was a point at which I was like, oh, this is new, like Good Friday and,
Ash Wednesday and Maundy Thursday and like all of these kind of, in thinking more about Holy Week
more than just Easter, right, was a new experience for me. And I don't know if that's just,
was unique to me or if that was a broader trend across non-denominational churches or not.
Yeah, I don't know. I guess, so this is actually the first non-denominational church that I've ever,
gone to or attended. Well, I mean, besides like where I went in college. Like I was.
No one really counts the church they go to in college. You just don't, right? It's like,
this isn't my real church, this is my church away from home. But I remember growing up and going to
United Methodist Church and then being a Methodist pastor where we were rocking the bulletins.
We had bulletins. And it was the same order of worship every week. So you knew the progression
of the liturgy, meaning like there was a greeting, a pastoral greeting and prayer and a call and
response and the Lord's Prayer and then the Gospel reading and then the hymn and then the Old
Testament reading and then a hymn and then the sermon and you go through it. But at the top of
the bulletin or the top of the order of worship every week, it was like, you know, fifth Sunday in
in Lent or Advent or Pentecost or whatever the case may be.
Ordinary time. And then, right. And then there was like a third Sunday or 56th day of ordinary time,
which seems really strange for people who don't have maybe a more liturgical background.
Not even liturgical background, but just like a church who has, maybe is a little bit more actively aware
of the church calendar and uses it to guide worship.
Yeah.
But you talked a little bit about it in your sermon last week.
And it, you know, like, I don't know what it is, is, you know, I don't know if it's that I'm getting older and if just all old
people like liturgy?
You know, or don't write me an email about that. All right, no texts about that.
I'm not being pejorative.
But like, I'm more and more, I'm developing,
I always did have an appreciation for it, but developing more and more of like a, I miss that. I miss liturgy.
I miss the more guided and.
Yeah, more guided church calendar and celebration.
I don't know if it comes from the standpoint of now, like essentially leading worship services
for the last 19, almost 20 years now.
And I'm maybe a little bit tired or worn out on trying to plan something.
Where like the history of the Christian church has always been like.
What's the lectionary say? Right.
Like in a lot of ways, the church has already, the big C church throughout history has already,
taken that task and like made it easy by developing orders of worship. Yeah.
So that, you know, okay, pastor.
Put your time and your effort into reading the Word and praying and being with your people,
and then prepare, you know, whatever, prepare the message that the Lord has given to your heart,
and then bring it on a Sunday, rather than like this element, that element, and then put this
element in and take that element out or whatever. So yeah, and if you're not if you're totally
confused and lost as to what we're talking about. There's different traditions of different books or
lectionaries. There's broad similarities between them.
Well, I think the lectionary itself is the same across denominationalism. So like,
if you just type in lectionary, there's not like a Methodist or Presbyterian or Catholic lectionary. Yeah.
The lectionary is ecumenical in that sense. And but then you've got different,
they've got different hymns, worship books that kind of like,
and there's, is it a four year cycle or three year cycle?
Three year cycle. It's a three year cycle of like Old Testament,
New Testament passages, Psalms, all kind of intermixed so that you cover essentially the whole Bible,
in the course of like three years.
Three years, for the most part, yeah. For the most part, you know,
the lectionary is a tool that church leaders can use.
To give over the course of three years a really comprehensive survey of both Christian New Testament
and Hebrew Old Testament scriptures.
And it's not like every single verse,
every single chapter is covered, but I mean, you're hitting the prophets
and the apocalyptic literature and the gospels
and the epistles and the letters and the historical books and the wisdom literature
and everything like that.
And in fact, I think it can be a really valuable tool. In fact, one of my earliest,
I don't know if I've mentioned this here before, I know I've mentioned it somewhere before,
but one of my earliest mentors in ministry,
told me when I first became a pastor, he was like, my recommendation for you
is that for the first six years of your ministry, so essentially two rotations through the lectionary
that you use and preach the lectionary.
And I was a little confused about that. I was like, well, I don't wanna do that.
I can do whatever, you know, like I'll just. I'm a pastor.
Right, I'll just. And he was like, no, the reason is that it forces you as a pastor to deal with or wrestle with,
or whatever, however you want, Um...
Scripture references and scripture, different scriptures that you may choose to avoid because they're difficult.
You know, maybe you don't fully understand the theological message or it's a applicability
for your people or it's historical contextual relevance or whatever and so you skip over them.
And we rob our people of the whole counsel of God by saying, no, I'm just gonna stay in the Gospels
all the time because that's where Jesus is.
And that's what, no one's saying don't preach in the Gospels, but what we're saying is that,
the Lord does speak in the Old Testament. The Lord does speak in the letters and in the prophets.
So that there is wisdom there for our people. Or if you do only kind of like topical chunks,
Like you set a theme or a question for a series, and then you kind of pick and pull from the Bible.
You won't ever get a full...
It doesn't force us as preachers to go through passages. It also just relies on even our own resources.
And understanding of the Bible. We might omit passages simply because
we're just unaware of them or something like that,
in that type of survey.
So I think that's a, which is part of the reason I think, at least one of the reasons why we tend to do chunks.
Not every sermon series is a chunk of scripture. No. But we try and mix in a good mix.
All those different types of preaching serve good purposes.
It's funny, or go ahead. I was gonna ask, so how, I was gonna say,
so how does a pastor who doesn't use the lectionary, how do they plan their preaching calendar?
Excellent question, Cameron. Well, like with prayer, I think usually with prayer, and then we usually, we have some
discussion over like what seems to be the state of our church.
What are maybe the, are there any pastoral themes that seem to be coming up, maybe a
lack of understanding in this, or maybe a refresher in this, or need to hear this type
of comforting or this type of challenging message during this season, we kind of look
backwards, see what have we been talking about.
We've been doing a lot of Gospels, and we've been doing a lot of letters, and we've been
doing a lot of Old Testament, and try and say, okay, well, we haven't done an Old Testament
narrative, or we haven't done an Old Testament prophet in a while.
Let's do that, right? last summer we did,
the Minor Prophets, right? We did a survey of the Minor Prophets.
Love it. It was amazing.
It was a really good series. It was a really dense series to try and cover a single Minor
Prophet in a Sunday sometimes, but it was a good challenge to talk about books of the Bible that
often are just never talked about or never even read sometimes.
Right.
So that's one, that's at least how we've kind of done it. Right. Yeah, because there's kind of this, I don't know, I guess I don't know what most people think
about how pastors prepare their preaching calendar. Like we, I will say for us here, we are.
We try to plan a year out. Right.
So in January, I know what I'm going to be preaching in the fall. Yes.
One of the reasons that we do that is so that we can prepare and we can plan and we can make,
we can make plans that aren't just associated with the text of the sermon that week, but like that
we can do holistic church-wide planning around themes and...
Yep. We've like made little study booklets and things like that ahead of time. And also like...
It helps us think. Yeah. Well, like that's the thing is like, well, if you're, if we've got like a four-week,
week, five week sermon series on whatever.
And we're working each week to preach those sermons, and we don't know what the next sermon series is.
We also need to be thinking on like, what's the next sermon series going to be?
And like, do we need to be doing any...
That doesn't provide any level of prayerfulness going into it or planning it.
And so it's just like that.
And it keeps us, especially if we're just going from sermon series to sermon series,
I think the temptation would be to lean more into our natural inclinations rather than being... Yeah.
Because it's the same thing, like, all right, you put on... You sit down at night to watch
whatever show you're gonna watch on Netflix or whatever, and you're like,
let's try and find something new hour and a half later. Let's just watch the film.
Watch The Office. Watch the office, watch friends, right? Like just go back to what's comfortable. Like,
oh, let's just watch this again, because I'm tired of trying to find something to watch.
Similar thing, if we're having to run at a pace of like always planning what's next,
we're going to default to things and not do a good job of that. So I guess all that to say that,
devoid being a church that doesn't use the lectionary the way that many churches and
and pastors have done, we do still try.
We're not just throwing darts at a dartboard. Like my, there's a, there is a really healthy balance
between prayer and practicality.
Yeah. Like I think maybe some people would assume that like we pray and then God downloads specific,
like series or texts into our spirit.
Yeah. Like, and then we know, we just know that we know that we know and that it's fully from God.
And like, okay, like are there times and are there series or are there texts
that I know that the spirit of the Lord is like, we need to bring this this week
or in this season or whatever?
Absolutely, absolutely. But there's also like, I think, a lot to say about,
like you spend time in prayer, you spend time listening to the Lord,
you spend time knowing your people, incredibly important to know your church, to know your people.
And then in a similar way to what you already said, like, okay, now how do we approach?
But the task of preaching, the calling to preach in a way that is comprehensive and
doesn't abandon certain parts of scripture.
So like in my own planning, I try to do at least one series in the Gospels a year.
I want to do at least one series in a letter or an epistle. So like for this, as for example this year,
we're gonna be doing a series on the gospel of Mark.
We're gonna be doing a series on the letter to the Romans. So those are two examples.
Okay, now what topical things, what are things that are like topically speaking
we wanna, I think we need to talk about this year,
but there's not necessarily like a part of scripture that you go to to learn about this specific thing.
So two of those topics this year for us are gonna be prayer,
which is the next series after the Lenten series.
And then we're gonna do a series in the late summer, early fall on money.
So giving, tithing, generosity, sacrifice, money, resources, all that.
And so there, and then we try to do an Old Testament, in the Old Testament, like at least one, like.
Series or survey or topical thing out of the Old Testament.
I had a friend of mine, who's a pastor down in Erie, actually their church just did a series that I'm like,
oh, I am stealing that series for sure.
Maybe next year. And they preached a series through the five covenants.
So like the- covenant theologian. Yes, like the covenant with Noah and covenant with Abraham
and covenant with Moses, right?
And like, so I think, you know, that like, I mean, that's a great, great, great idea because then we have,
we come into the New Testament and we have, we are a covenant people. Right.
Christians are a covenant people. The covenant that we have is the covenant
of the blood of Jesus, right?
And this is the new covenant. This is the new covenant, right?
And so, yeah, so it's stuff like that.
Like, oh my gosh, that is just rich in theological depth and speaks to the heart of God
and answers a lot of questions that people have.
Like, okay, is the God of the Old Testament the same as the God of the New Testament?
It's like, what is the relation there?
It's like, was God always trying to do the same thing from the moment that Adam and Eve sinned
to the completion of it in Jesus Christ? was like he always moving his people towards redemption.
And how was he doing that through covenant?
And how was he doing that through law giving?
And how was he doing that through calling people back to repentance through the prophets?
And then it's fulfillment in Jesus is like you, it's just, I think it's a really rich sermon,
so, or a certain series.
Anyway, um...
So yeah, it is intentional, even though it might not be based off of a three-year cycle,
right, like we have an electionary. Yeah. I find it really funny that you were saying.
That, like, as you're getting older, and like old people, like the liturgy and stuff like that,
my experience and exposure to it, and again, like, my experience, not everybody's experience, but,
the Bible college I went to being broadly evangelical and non-denominational, it was like
the hip and trendy thing for like, to do liturgy. Yeah. Like the Baptist kid and the non-denom kid
all became Anglican, like, and you could spot them too on campus.
The emerging church.
Yeah. You could like, it's like, oh, I know what church you go to because of the way you're
dressing. Like, that was an interesting, like, you could kind of pick them out and like people who,
which professors they were drinking the juice from and like, were really jiving with. And that was
even a little bit of my experiences. Just like I grew up not at all in a liturgical church,
and I'm like, Oh my gosh, there's so much richness and deepness. And now I have a significant
appreciation for liturgy. And I've used the lectionary in my own daily devotionals during
different seasons of my life using doing the quote unquote, daily office, which is just the old
version of quiet times and daily devotionals kind of divided up over amongst different,
times of the day and different scriptures set out for each day of the week.
So, yeah. I think there's a significant portion of that. We use the term deconstruction a lot.
People who deconstruct their faith, like they were maybe brought up in a certain stream of faith.
They get into a position in their lives where they're beginning to question all the things
that they believed some of the assumptions some of the assumptions that were presuppositions that
were usually I think it's foisted they would describe as being foisted upon them right,
and now they're kind of deconstructing the religious or spiritual narrative that they
had been living under and like kind of sorting out what is true for them or what is important
or what is unimportant or whatever.
I think that there is a healthy way, there is a healthy version of deconstruction.
And in some ways I think those moody students,
or whoever, we had them at Roberts too, and they exist still now,
and maybe it's a little bit of even what I'm experiencing now in my own spiritual life is kind of deconstructing
deconstructing the non-denominational.
Like church culture that reacts against traditionalism or denominationalism, yeah,
deconstructing that the spirit of that and falling back into like I know there is actually a,
Richness to the liturgy. Mm-hmm. Yeah liturgy does not have to be,
The way the high high church and liturgy was always the belief I inherited was that if you're doing something.
Because the lectionary tells you to do it, you're doing it out of dead works.
You're just, you're doing a ritual that's religion, that's not a relationship,
you're just kind of like going through the motions. Whereas if you're more spontaneous, right?
That that's somehow more in line with God's spirit and the way God would have us worship Him.
Funny enough is that even churches who say that they operate on a completely Holy Spirit
spontaneous type of like just do whatever, usually like you know what to...
You know when to stand up and when to sit down still, you maybe don't have kneelers.
You know what time it's gonna start, you know what time it's gonna end.
You know what elements are coming when, you know, it's not actually spontaneous,
it's just like a new form of liturgy.
Like everyone would say, well, I love conduit because there's no like structure or function
or like there's no liturgy.
I'm like, well, we do this pretty much the same thing. We just don't have it written down.
Yeah, you don't have a bulletin that you're following.
I can tell you exactly kind of like the flow. It's very simple.
And if you were going to go to any other church in our kind of stream of church practice,
it would look almost exactly the same.
Right. So I think that there's a difference between like, letting the liturgy be the thing that's worshipped.
Yes. Letting the like the order be the thing that's worshipped versus letting it guide us into a spirit of worship of you know.
Worshiping God I think that's where the danger becomes where we become so,
attached to the.
Program or style or flow of worship that we miss the person or the object of our worship
And you could say that for Anglican churches or Catholic churches or Methodist churches
or non-denominational churches or whatever, all those things in between, whether they
have strict liturgy that you can define every week or they don't.
That is a universal human sin problem of worshiping things not the Creator rather than it being
a particular denominational versus non-denominational problem.
Yeah. Well, once we get out of a black and white space of, like, this one bad, this one
good, right? And we begin to say, okay, well, what are the benefits of the different styles
of worship and what do they have? So my reflection is that our stream of worship, right? Like,
Welcome to the three songs.
A host of announcements, sermon, closing amount of songs, maybe communion kind of put in there at
the end, right? That type of service, right, has some real great benefits, right? There's plenty
of space for personal reflection, kind of lingering in worship, a little bit musical worship, and
for a bit and kind of letting some of that, it really highlights and gives lots of space and
room for the word of God preached to kind of do work, kind of works on that kind of,
you can kind of think of it kind of as a crescendo to that and kind of out of that.
But that order of service is, but if you go to a more liturgical order of service,
there's more room for prayer, right? Different types of prayers. There's more room for,
communal response, communal responses, right?
Back and forth call and response type prayers. There's usually, if you're going to a church like
that, communion is offered at a higher frequency. Communion is more central and rather than the.
It's not the period at the end of the sentence, it's kind of like it's the central proclamation
of the gospel in the middle of the service. Right. Every service is always building to communion.
And so there's other benefits there, right?
And so each of those have, there's reasons why people do those
and those have different services and stuff
if we kind of break out of a black and white kind of space.
Agreed. Yeah, we talked about this conduit this past week on Palm Sunday when we were,
We served communion on Palm Sunday.
And it had become, or is become.
I had a sense, I don't know if you had ever had this sense, I guess we didn't really talk about it,
beforehand, but I had this sense that our practice of sacrament of communion was
was maybe not as clear or as precise or as central as it both could be and probably should be.
And a lot of that I think was revolved around the way in which I personally led through it.
And so my desire was to develop or to not even develop because I can't even say it's
It's particular, anything that I did was particularly novel to us, but to utilize or reintroduce
in our practice of communion some aspects of liturgy that would help to make the sacrament,
a more central proclamation of the gospel and actual practice of the community of faith
rather than something I did to them.
And so Conduit being a fairly non-high liturgical church.
And knowing that it is a feature that some people really like and have come here for.
Thought it may be from a pastoral leadership standpoint was wise that we kind of slowly
walk into that more liturgical space. And so introduced some aspects of liturgy this past week
back into the communion service. On Good Friday tomorrow, I do have a full communion liturgy
planned. Still, I'm still honestly unsure if I'll use the whole thing or not. But it's there.
And then just moving forward into that.
It's interesting because after this past Sunday, when we introduced a very abbreviated form of liturgy
for communion, I got two people talk to me after service service. And then one person called me later in the week and was like, that is what we were missing.
Like in terms of it's like the practice of the sacraments in at conduit, at least it's like,
that is, that's it right there. Like he was like, I don't know.
No, it's not something that he had ever talked to me about before.
It's not something that like, I didn't check in with him to see if,
hey, is that what you wanted type of thing? Like, no, it was like, he independently was like,
that felt so, for lack of a better term.
Correct in regards to what this community needs needs in the moment.
I was encouraged by that and I'm excited about that moving forward.
Although I think it does represent.
An opportunity for us to do some teaching around liturgy and the church calendar and all that?
Well, you know, I think like, let's kind of get into it a little bit of like, all right, Cameron,
why? What's the benefit? Why? Why? Like, what I'm gonna play devil's advocate interlocutor a little
bit. Why is it better to have a written out sort of formulaic way of doing things rather than just
being spirit led and spontaneous? Yeah. So a few things I would say in response to that. One,
is that I think that we actually do a disservice to the work of the Holy Spirit when we assume
that the Holy Spirit only works in extemporaneous, spontaneous fashion.
Yeah. Where like the Holy Spirit doesn't want me to prepare anything.
I think is a pastorally irresponsible method.
Like it's just a false belief. I think for some reason we have bought into wholesale.
Right. Right. Like, okay, so the Holy Spirit can't work in the midst of my preparation.
Did you just say God couldn't do something, Cameron? Right. Yeah.
Like it just is a, it's just a really false premise. Yeah.
So in fact, what I find is that the more... There are moments in ministry, of course,
where maybe I do something that is not necessarily planned or that I hadn't prepared to say,
but that obviously the Holy Spirit works in the moment
to do something with it.
I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that that doesn't happen.
That happens all the time. Every week, I would say. Every week.
But what I'm also saying is that there are significant times where in my lack of preparation,
I am unable to be sufficiently clear
and precise.
Because I'm caught up in the moment, and so now I'm acting out of emotion,
or I'm acting out of like distraction, or I'm acting out of like who's in the room,
how are they responding, what are they thinking,
rather than, for instance, with the communion liturgy being like, there's not like,
that this is the proclamation of the gospel.
Communal injury is the proclamation of the gospel. Yes, in physical form, in practice,
tangible elements right before us, the body of Christ and the blood of Jesus Christ
for the forgiveness of our sins,
expressed to us on the cross.
Like that is, you don't get any more central to gospel.
And it's not like in the moments where clear communication.
Of the gospel is at stake, it's not time to get cute.
Yeah. Like get over yourself, Cameron. You are not going to describe it extemporaneously
or in a like spontaneously in a more significant
or precise or rich manner than millions of Christians have done throughout the course of human history.
You are not special, Cameron.
Proclaim it simply and clearly and allow the spirit of God to work through the proclamation and through the practice,
in order to bring people to faith, repentance, and new life in Jesus.
So I believe that the message that the communion service seeks to proclaim is too important.
To leave up to just, hey, whatever I feel like saying in the moments that I'm... Right before
service closes, I'll just say it, I'll just kind of feel how it's going. It's too important for
that. Well, there's so many... There's a convergence of so much theology, not just...
Like there's the convergence of the gospel and its narrative and its story and its implications
for salvation. There's the convergence of the underlying theology of what we feel like and
think is happening at the table. There's the theology of who is the table for?
There's the theology and just even the practicality of I need to sanitize my hands. I
need to break the bread, hold the cup. I need to tell people to come down the line, rip and dip,
like all of the logistics of it. That there's just, there's so many things to talk about,
and you just might skip one of them, right? And then someone's confused or uncertain.
And there's so many things that are kind of wrapped up into it. And there's this weight
in doing communion that I feel that I'm just like, huh, I get more nervous doing communion
than just about anything else. Right? Because I'm just like, am I going to say the right thing?
And it's, it's, I don't know, it's important.
And I, I remember we were.
We were I was kind of tangentially involved with this church and we were attending there for a while.
Part of like a church plant and something but it wasn't like a Describing the relationship with this church was complicated
but anyways attending this church service and the way that they Did communion is they did it in such a way as to kind of communicate that?
That the way they introduced it, everyone felt a pressure to participate.
And the way that it just functionally happened, every single person in the room had to participate.
And I was there one Sunday morning, and I was talking with this person who came in the church,
and he was just like, I've never been to church. I grew up in an atheist family.
I don't know what I think about God. I don't really believe in Jesus.
I'm like, just here because I feel like maybe I should check this out.
And he did not get up to participate in communion. And afterwards he was like, he came up and talked to me
because we'd kind of established rapport prior to service.
And he's like, did I do the right thing by not getting up and taking communion?
I didn't want to disrespect you guys and like take communion because I don't believe in it.
And I was like, no, no, no, no, like you did the right thing
because you don't believe in what's happening.
You're not a follower of Jesus. You don't believe in God.
Like you should not feel guilty for having not taken communion.
Like that's a failing somehow on how it was presented today that made you feel uncertain as to where you kind of sat.
Sure.
And so like there's all of like, There that guy did we did end up baptizing him and praise the Lord
So that was a it's a really fun story That's great.
But...
Yeah, there's all of that complexity. And to think that we're gonna come up
and just say it off the top of her head is.
I'm too much of an idiot. I'm serious. I'm too much of an idiot to get it right on my own.
Like, and I don't like, and I can hear the responses.
Well, you just let the Holy Spirit lead you. Yes, I get that.
And do I think that I'm gonna get up to heaven and Jesus is gonna be like,
you didn't do the communion liturgy right.
You didn't do the communion liturgy right. No, I don't think that.
I don't think that communion is functional for our salvation.
Like I don't think that if I don't do communion, if I don't take communion,
then I'm gonna miss out on salvation somehow. the same way I think about baptism.
Right. We have to have a theology that fits the thief on the cross. Right. But.
And so, but that doesn't mean that I have a low view of communion or a low view of baptism.
I have a very high view of both of them, but they need to be put into context of their
salvific importance. Yes.
And so I just know that I want to... to, and why wouldn't, I guess I don't know why every person coming to a church or calling
me their pastor would want something other than me thinking through super clearly and
super intentionally something as important as communion so that I am measuring every.
Word as best as I'm able.
Do your best.
Do my best. Right, why would you not do your best? Why would I not do my best?
And why would anyone want me to not do my best?
And just like off the cuff do it. I don't know.
I think that there's a really, not necessarily in the same stream of thought here, but there's
a really interesting conversation that I think that we can have.
I don't know, maybe we expand this conversation because we were kind of talking about sacraments
today, but we're also kind of just talking about the church in general.
There's a question I have about the other main sacrament that we practice here at Conduit, which is baptism.
And maybe we can just put a pin in this question and come back to it when we have more time
to talk about baptism in particular.
But the question about baptism or that sacrament would be, is baptism the mark of justifying,
faith or sanctifying faith?
Meaning at what point in someone's relationship with Jesus do we baptize them? Yeah.
You know? That's... Can we put a pin in that? Yeah, we can put a pin in that.
Put a pin in that one? Put a pin in it.
But I do think that there's an underlying presupposition that you're holding that I
think is super important that I don't wanna leave on the cutting room table for this conversation.
So this is, again, I'm speaking out of my experience and what I've observed from the
churches that I've attended and believers I've known. In churches that are low liturgy, low
church, have maybe kind of, or when you start talking about Christ being present in the communion,
if you get a little bit uncomfortable, churches where that's like, where we're just like,
there's maybe this overemphasis on, this is just a sign, this is just a symbol, right? This is
just a thing that it's a metaphor, right? That kind of language when we're talking about
communion and baptism, this is a metaphor, this is a symbol. And kind of a less extreme fear that
there would be a confusion over communion and baptism being a thing that saves you, right?
Which we just clearly said is not. Correct. Right. So if you're in that stream of churches where.
That's where you're kind of coming away from, and you're coming into the space of like,
these are symbols, they don't save me, but they're a thing we're supposed to do.
What I have noticed is that with communion and with baptism, both of them, is that there becomes
a, because we kind of leave behind some of the meaning and the theology of the other high
churches, we end up bringing a meaning and an importance and a significance to communion and
baptism that rests upon what we do. So you might, if you're listening, you might be like,
what in the world is Luke talking about? I'm talking about if you've ever been in a church
service and you do communion, and a significant portion of the communion is like, get yourself
right with the Lord right now before you come up here to take communion. You need to... This is a
time of repentance for your sin. This is like, you need to get yourself right. Don't take the
communion if you don't feel like you're worthy to do it this week, or if you've got an argument
unleft, huge emphasis on that portion. Or I've talked with people who go to church every week,
take communion, love the Lord, and then they're not baptized. And I ask them,
and why are you not baptized?" well.
I'm not ready to be that kind of Christian. I'm not ready to be that level of disciple.
All my sin is not done away with.
All my sin is not done away... If I get baptized, that means I'm serious. And the thing is.
There's a whole bunch of stuff there, but the primary thing that I think is wrong
in all of those situations is that it's an emphasis on what we do, and not an emphasis
on what Christ has done for us. Communion is primarily about what Christ does for us.
Baptism is primarily about what Christ does for us. Whether or not it's salvific,
or not salvific, but it's part of justification or sanctification, both of those things still,
rest upon it being about what Christ is doing, not about what we're doing.
Right. Have you kind of seen that in... Yes, 100%. And even the moment of baptism becomes about, this is a proclamation that I am making.
Yes, yeah.
And that's a little bit... I think it's kind of an anachronistic look at church history and the way
that baptism has kind of morphed in church history, throughout the history of the church.
But I kind of think that the biblical witness of baptism is what the Holy Spirit does on us.
Right. Right. It becomes the mark, the deposit. The question, the main question that I had really was like, you kind of alluded to it,
was basically like, well, do we baptize people,
Do we baptize people who are in active sin?
Because they're not, you know, like they're obviously not, they have not fully come,
Take her right to Christ, right?
So like where we baptizing people that we know are in active sin. Are we withholding?
We're touching a whole bunch of theology,
Right where where does, is the church, the guardian of the sacraments.
So that we can withhold the sacraments from people whom we deem are not in spiritual condition to receive them.
Way super dangerous, I believe, if we believe that the main force moving through
the sacraments is the Holy Spirit of God.
Yeah.
But, you know, like does our withholding of the sacraments until a person is ready to receive them?
What does it say about our theology of the sacraments?
Our own ecclesiastical structures? Yeah.
Because the question that brought this whole thing to my mind, and I wanna talk more about baptism next time
because I think that there's, I got a lot of thoughts on it, is do we say.
Either actually physically, practically say, or is it just an assumed behavior,
an assumed theology that we have that only those who have already expressed faith
in Jesus Christ can come up to receive communion?
Well, I mean, that goes back into the theology of who's a Christian.
Right? Like... I think that's part of the question. I think that's part of the conversation, certainly.
What does it mean to be Christian?
Right. Does that mean that like... Is it to be a follower of Christ, does that mean that you need to be perfect?
Yeah. But I think that even that leading with that question is, again, it's a little bit anthropocentric.
And I think the thing needs, we need to start with the,
with like, what is the sacrament?
What is communion? Right. You know. It's not something, it's more what Christ does
than it is what we do.
Right. So if we start from a place of like, can a non-Christian person take communion,
where I think we need to start with the question, what do we believe is the theological central belief.
About what the sacrament is, about what the bread and the cup is,
about what is happening in the moment, right?
If we were to say that like the bread and the cup are representative of,
or are the actual presence of Christ offered to us,
then I would lean towards the side of being like,
well, while I was still a sinner, Christ died for me. So while I was still in my sin,
the thing that we're celebrating, the death of Christ, the breaking of his body, the shedding of his blood
of the forgiveness of sins, right?
I'm still in my sin.
The gift of God through Jesus Christ is offered to me. Right?
How many times, I don't know, did the grace of God, was the grace of God moving in my heart,
before I surrendered to it and said, yes, Lord, I do desire to follow Jesus.
I trust in him for my salvation, right?
There was certainly.
Pre-conversion extensions of God's grace through Jesus Christ to me that I rebuffed for whatever reason.
But that does not, that didn't negate those, the extension of God's grace through his spirit to me.
So if we're saying in the elements that it is the proclamation of the invitation to,
invitation to the extension of from God to sinful humanity.
To receive by faith Jesus, the breaking of his body, the shedding of his blood.
Then I think it like, I have a real question about like, I almost think that the sacraments in some ways
are just as appropriate for those who are pre-Christ and they're used as a manner of gospel proclamation.
To draw them into Christ. Just as much as they are a celebration,
a remembrance, a act of worship for you and I to come before the table and receive once again.
The gift of God through Jesus Christ and forgiveness.
Yeah, well certainly if the sacrament of communion is that inexorably tied to the gospel, almost
so as to be not the same but parallel, then yeah.
I'll be honest, that's different. I noticed that when I came on staff here.
That is a different theology of communion in practice than I've had in any prior church
that I've participated or belonged to.
And I think it's a really beautiful theological understanding of communion, just one that
is a newer aspect to me.
One of the things that I'm really disappointed with in the church, the Christian church in
general, is the overemphasis on the Corinthians passage of taking of the Lord's prayer in
or the Lord's supper in a wrongful manner.
Right. Yeah. Right, like, and it's always used, it's always used to communicate
that if you're not a Christian, taking communion is proclaiming judgment upon you.
Yeah.
Right. And I'm just like, how did a whole, how did a whole generation of the church,
just refuse to read the context of Corinthians?
Paul's not addressing non-Christians at all. He's actually saying that it's, it's those who
have already expressed faith in Jesus Christ that eat it in an unworthy manner.
When they hustle to the altar and consume all the elements, literally consume all the elements.
At the, at the behest of those who are essentially especially behind them in the line, that they rob the rest of the community of the opportunity,
especially the poor, of the ability to or the opportunity to take the elements.
If you just approach that passage in Corinthians from a, like just reading it for what it is,
it in context, it becomes perfectly clear that Paul is not making this grand, throughout
the course of historical timeline, proclamation that anyone who receives the Lord's Supper
who is not a Christian is taking it in an unworthy manner and is therefore proclaiming
judgment upon their head.
It's like I don't have any idea where in the heck pastors have gotten off or gotten away
with that without someone saying like, that is not what Paul was saying at all.
And if we take the Gospels seriously, and the way in which...
Jesus, like in that moment, John chapter 13, come back to John chapter 13,
practiced the last supper, broke up the bread and gave it to his, it's inexorably tied
to the offer of himself in salvation.
So. I have, man, I'm like, we're like a little bit over time.
We'll do a part two on this. We'll do a part two on this. Cause I'm ready to rip right now.
I like. Let's go. Cause like I have, like, I want to mention,
I wanna talk about like the Didache.
Have you ever read like their communion practice in the Didache?
I don't know that I have. Like, maybe we'll talk about that next time.
Let's make sure you post that somewhere, put a notion around, like send it to me
so we can read it, but.
Yeah, because I would be interested to hear your response to that.
And I don't wanna misquote it, so.
If anyone's listening and you're like, what in the world did Luke say, the didache?
D-I-D-A-C-H-E. Google it. Yeah. It's old. It's like the first manual of how to do church.
Yes. Kind of. That's the best way I can kind of describe it. It's a really old document.
So, but anyways, but yeah, we'll pick this up as a part two, I think, kind of. Yeah,
we're getting into it. And I think there's definitely more stuff to talk about here. Yeah. Lots more.
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