PCA Conversations

You can click here for a description of the main event from Thursday at the General Assembly.

We want to know your reaction. How did you feel about the defeat of the minority report? What do you think it means for the PCA? (Please remember our guidelines for charitable speech on this forum.) If you were there, how would you describe the mood afterward? In what ways do you think this issue will continue in our denomination and be handled by us in the future?

Friends, would you consider e-mailing pcaconversations [at] gmail [dot] com to let us know what sort of topics you’d be interested in discussing together or hearing others address? We’re polling the people, in order to begin the work of getting some new and relevant content up over the summer. We’re interested in your interests. What do you think is of importance to the life of the PCA, or to you as a pastor or church planter, etc? Let us know and we’ll see what we can do.

Another discussion topic: partly because Spring seems to be a tough time to get pastors and church planters to write new material and partly because we sometimes like it better this way.

Many of you have no doubt been making preparations for the 2009 PCA G.A. in Disneyworld. (It’s true!) You’ve also been hearing about all the issues coming down the pike. Without necessarily devolving into the inevitable debate about the merits of whatever-current-controversy is storming toward us each year, we’d like to hear from you about your ideal G.A. That is, let’s get a little bit day-dreamy and imaginative here, perhaps even ‘unrealistic’. What different would have to happen at G.A. for you to come home refreshed, renewed, and grateful in a way and to a level you might not have experienced before? Would the G.A. speak to or rule on certain topics that don’t normally come before us? Would it be certain seminars or ministerial fellowships outside of official business? Particular resources provided for your ministry? Better whole-family involvement? An afternoon at the Holy Land Experience? Etc. Think outside the box and let us know what you’d like from G.A. if you could plan it. What would make for your ideal General Assembly?

by Josh Eby

All Christians desire to become more like Jesus.  All Christians long for our world to become more like heaven.  And all Christians struggle to figure out how to live out their faith in the midst of a changing and complex world.

On the one hand, we make the mistake of identifying Christianity with our world.  We tend to make very few distinctions between hopes, dreams and aims of the world and those of Christianity.  We compress Christianity and culture.  We see Jesus as a means to getting whatever it is we already want from this life.  This is the identification trap.

On the other hand, we isolate Christianity from our world.  We make Christianity completely at odds with our culture.  We don’t read secular books or watch secular movies or work out in secular gyms.  Instead we read Christian novels and watch Christian films and workout in the “Lord’s Gym.”  This is the isolation trap.

Christianity is not identification with the world or isolation from the world.  It is incarnation in the world.

The incarnation teaches us that Christians are both similar and distinct from our world.  Christians are similar because in the incarnation Christ took on real flesh.  His humanity is not an illusion.  He walked, talked, breathed and cried as a real person.  But Christians are distinct from our world because Christ lived completely different from everyone else.  He lived a selfless life.  He lived a sinless life.  He didn’t lie or cheat or hurt his fellow man.  Instead he gave himself fully and freely for others, culminating with his death on the cross.

As we seek to become more like Jesus, we must not isolate ourselves from others, but rather be in radical relationship with others.  We must relate to one another as real people with real hopes and dreams and fears. But the incarnation also means that we live, work and play differently. We don’t live out the same hopes and dreams as the world.  Instead, we live out the hope of the gospel.  We live out the reality of Christ’s resurrection.  We live out God’s peace, God’s Shalom in our families, workplaces and communities.  This is the calling of every Christian everywhere: to incarnate the life and love of Christ in and to God’s world.

—

Josh Eby is a PCA pastor serving with Peru Mission.

by Joshua Seth Anderson

I am a young preacher. Ordained in August of last year, I have proclaimed the word of God to the people of God as a minister of the gospel only about a dozen times. Add in my supply preaching as a seminary student and intern and my lifetime of sermons only totals about twice that number. So I am a young preacher, still unpracticed at the task to which I have been called.

Thus these notes are presented as thoughts gathered at the beginning of a journey that will hopefully result someday in a mature understanding and expression of the mystery and difficulty of confronting my congregation with the Person and Work of Jesus using nothing more than mere words.

I am increasingly convinced that what I am called to as a preacher is to bring God’s people (as well as any interested onlookers) into a confrontation with God as he is revealed in his word, and most especially as he is revealed in his Son, Jesus Christ. In other words I am called to alert them to the tension that exists already between their own lives and the reality of the biblical text—to somehow locate our communal lives in their proper context within the unfolding of God’s plan and force a confrontation of some kind between all of us and Jesus himself, both in the record of his historical actions as the incarnate Messiah and his present status as the glorified and living physical king of all things.

What I mean is that I’m learning that I shouldn’t care as much about how many of my non-alliterative points my congregants commit to memory, but rather what it is that actually happens in their hearts and minds in that half hour between nine-thirty and ten on a Sunday morning. That is the only moment that matters, because I am not a professor, or a motivational speaker. I am a preacher and there is no test for the subjects I discuss except the test that is the daily test of our lives.

This is a difficult and strange task, and I’m really only stammering at it when I find myself in the pulpit, praying that preaching is something like riding a bike or shooting a free throw—something I’ll get better at with more time and practice, and even if I never ride in the Tour de France, at least I can go for ride on a nice day without running into something.

I’m learning that the first corner to turn for a young preacher is the ability to resist becoming a neurotic mess every Saturday night, to begin to fight back some of the narcissism, insecurity and need for validation that is inherent in anything as public and vulnerable as addressing several hundred people for a half an hour straight (when else, outside of a college classroom or a presidential speech does such a thing occur any longer in our culture?).  I believe that one of the first lessons I’m learning as a young preacher is that the task is difficult, but for the task to become manageable, it must first become normal. To whatever extent that is proper or possible.

This past fall I realized that several of my sermons (including one or two I liked) had mistakenly not been recorded, and now had ceased to exist, except in my notes and my head and whatever memory of them was left in those who had listened (or only half-listened?). I was confronted in that moment with the tenuousness of preaching.  I was reminded that a sermon is, in the end, like life (according to Solomon)—only vapor, a moment in time that is past almost as soon as it has begun and its impact or memory cannot be controlled or measured or even perhaps understood.

After all, a sermon is really only just a string of words: a conversation between my congregation and myself that is not much unlike any other conversation.  Some things are remembered, but most is inevitably forgotten. And I cannot control any of it. Because of this, I’m learning to cast my bread on the waters when I preach and trust that whatever good comes of it is the Lord’s business, not mine. I say this, not because it is pious, but because it is only way that any of us (preachers or not) can really live with any sanity or hope.

Perhaps it is because the poetry student that I was eight years ago still lives inside me, but I’m also learning that preaching is, more than anything else, a craft. Whatever else they are, sermons at least should be artful and intentional, because their subject is the mystery of what it means to be human in God’s world, and their heart is the beauty of the story of God’s work in that world. Preaching is a conversation, but it is a conversation where words should not be wasted or misspoken or spent on insubstantial things. The stakes are too high.

One of the best guides in my first year of preaching as a vocation has been the Presbyterian pastor and preacher Fredrick Buechner. I consistently turn to Buechner’s sermons to remind myself of what it is that I should be doing, and even if I don’t do it half as well as he does, at least I remember something about the task.  In his book “Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale,” Frederick Buechner sums up, better than I know how, what it means to preach.

“So the sermon hymn comes to a close with a somewhat unsteady amen, and the organist gestures the choir to sit down. Fresh from breakfast with his wife and children and a quick runthrough of the Sunday papers, the preacher climbs the steps to the pulpit with his sermon in his hand. He hikes his black robe up at the knee so he will not trip over it on the way up. His mouth is a little dry. He has cut himself shaving. He feels as if he has swallowed an anchor. It if weren’t for the honor of the thing, he would just as soon be somewhere else…

“The preacher pulls the little cord that turns on the lectern light and deals out his note cards like a riverboat gambler. The stakes have never been higher. Two minutes from now he may have lost his listeners completely to their own thoughts, but at this minute he has them in the palm of his hand. The silence in the shabby church is deafening because everyone is listening to it. Everybody is listening including even himself. Everybody knows the kind of things he has told them before and not told them, but who knows what this time, out of the silence, he will tell them?…

So let [the preacher] use words, but, in addition to using them to explain, expound, exhort, let him use them to evoke, to set us dreaming as well as thinking, to use words as at their most prophetic and truthful, the prophets used them to stir in us memories and longings and intuitions that we starve for without knowing that we starve. Let him use words which do not only try to give answers to the questions that we ask or ought to ask but which help us to hear the questions that we do not have the words for asking and to hear the silence that those questions rise out of and the silence that is the answer to those questions. Drawing on nothing fancier than the poetry of his own life, let him use words and images that help make the surface of our lives transparent to the truth that lies deep within them, which is the wordless truth of who we are and who God is and the Gospel of our meeting.”

This is the task to which I have been ordained. I am inadequate. I am young. And I am learning what it means to pray using the ancient words: “O Lord open thou my lips. And my mouth shall show forth thy praise.”

—

Josh Anderson is the Assistant Pastor of Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, MO.

It’s been a while since we’ve solicited your help in a discussion topic. Let’s have another try.

What are the top 3 things you wish you would have learned in seminary?

Other ways to get at the same question: What did you learn/experience in your first few years of ministry that you were under-prepared for? If seminaries were able to address certain areas of life and ministry more fully, what would you suggest? If you had a parishioner heading off to seminary, what would you want to tell them to supplement their education with on their own? Etc.

Help us out with what you’ve learned…

by Craig Higgins

HOW CAN I (AND MY FAMILY) KEEP A HOLY LENT?
Traditionally, the Lenten season is observed in four Basic (and often overlapping) ways:

Self-examination- As we’ve discussed, this is central to the traditional Lenten observance. Use this time to ask yourself some hard questions about your spiritual life, your spiritual maturity. If you’re married, ask your spouse to give you his or her evaluation of your spiritual health. Many Christians have a Christian friend, or a small group of fellow believers, who have agreed to hold them accountable. If you don’t have an accountability group or partner, Lent might be a good time to initiate such a relationship. Parents—especially fathers—could use Lent as time to spend more time with their children individually, trying to understand their particular spiritual struggles and providing them encouragement.

With all this emphasis on self-examination, however, it is crucial to keep your focus on the gospel: All of us are more sinful and helpless than we would’ve ever dared admit, yet in Christ we are more accepted and forgiven than we would’ve ever dared hope. Be careful that your self examination is centered on this good news. There is always the danger of falling into morbid introspection, which can lead to despair over your own spiritual health and to a harsh legalism toward others.

Self-denial- The Lenten season traditionally is also a time for acts of self-discipline and self-denial, a time to remind ourselves that we do not live by bread alone. Self-denial helps us remember what is so beautifully signified in the Eucharist—that Jesus is the true bread of life, our only source of strength and sustenance.

The two major fast days of the traditional church year—Ash Wednesday and Good Friday—both occur during the Lenten season. Traditionally, the other days of Lent—except Sundays, of course—are marked by other acts of self-denial. Some common examples would be giving up one meal a day or giving up a particular food. Self-denial, however, doesn’t always involve what we eat; some people may work on other habits, seeking better to use their time. (I’ve known some people to fast from watching too much television!) For families in this dangerously frenetic culture, Lent would certainly be an appropriate time to cut back on the seemingly-endless flow of activities and spend time worshipping, praying, and learning together.

Since fasting is so unfamiliar to many in our culture, it is wise to consult with a pastor or other spiritual leader before making any decisions in this area. (Some people, of course—such as expectant or nursing mothers, the sick, and those on special diets—should not fast.) Before you begin fasting, I would recommend that you look at what the Scriptures say about the practice (see especially Matthew 6), and perhaps get some guidance from good books on the subject. And again, remember that there is nothing magic in these spiritual disciplines; they are tools to help you grow closer to Christ.

Acts of compassion- The Lenten season is a particularly appropriate time to ask God to fill you with compassion for the poor and oppressed and to put this into practice in concrete ways. This can take many practical forms. For example, there are Christians who give up one meal a day as a Lenten discipline, and then give the money they’ve saved by doing so to the poor. Many churches—including ours—have an Easter offering for ministries of mercy, so money saved during Lent could be given at that time. There are many ways in which families can practice compassion during Lent. In your neighborhood, there may be a poor family you could help (with or without drawing attention to yourselves). Or maybe you know an older person who lives alone who could use some help around the house—or would simply like having a friend. Some families save their loose change or forgo some simple expenditures, then give the money to the poor. Lent can be an excellent opportunity to teach our children the value of compassion.

Using the means of grace- Finally, the Lenten season is a time for renewing our focus on the means of grace—a focus that all-too-easily fades when not given adequate attention. Historically, the church has said there are three means of grace—three instruments through which God helps us grow to be more and more like Christ: the Scriptures, prayer, and the sacraments (such as the Eucharist.) If regular times of prayer and Bible study have never been a part of your life (or if they once were but have become less so), then Lent is a wonderful opportunity to begin these life-changing practices. There are scores of lectionaries and Bible-reading plans out there; talk with a pastor or mature Christian to help you find one right for you; there are also many helpful aids for developing a consistent life of prayer. The Lenten season would also be a good time to get involved in a small group—a practice that generations of Christians have commended as key to their spiritual growth. And if your family doesn’t have a time of worship together, Lent is a great time to start—and then keep going the rest of the year!

In our individualistic culture, it is all too easy to lose sight of the fact that Christianity is a communal faith, that the center of Christian life is not private religious devotion but corporate worship, gathering with fellow believers to sing, pray, and receive Holy Communion. There are many today who identify themselves as Christians but for whom the church is peripheral and tangential. If this sounds like you, then use this Lenten season to commit yourself to the community of God’s people. If you are a follower of Christ and yet have never been baptized, then make every effort to be baptized as soon as possible. If you have been baptized, remember that in baptism you were incorporated into a community, the family of God, and that you are to join in the family meal, the Eucharist. And parents, the Lenten season is a wonderful time to help your children realize that the church is their family, that worship is their first duty and greatest joy. And if your children understand the gospel, then this season could be a wonderful time to take the steps toward having them admitted to the Lord’s Table.

During Lent this year, my prayer for you is that this would be a truly blessed season, a time of genuine and significant spiritual growth for you and for your family. May God grant you a truly holy Lent.

—

Craig Higgins is the planter and pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Rye, New York.

by Craig Higgins

People from different religious backgrounds have very different reactions to the season of Lent. Some grow up in churches where Lent is observed, but with little to no real explanation. Whether observed as a time of strict austerity or merely as a time of forgoing a few simple pleasures, Lent may seem like an empty, meaningless ritual in such cases. On the other hand, some grow up in church traditions where Lent is not observed at all. These folks may think of Lenten observance as, at best, a hollow custom, or, at worst, quite foreign to authentic Christianity. As a matter of fact, many who grew up in church have the same question as those who didn’t: “What is Lent, anyway?”

THE MEANING OF LENT
Lent’s origin is hidden in the early centuries of church history, but we do know that it originated as a time of preparation for Easter. From the church’s earliest days, the resurrection of Christ was celebrated not only each week (on Sunday, the Lord’s Day), but also in a special festival of the resurrection. This festival we call Easter Day, and it is celebrated as the Sunday of Sundays! Lent, as a season of preparation, is traditionally focused on repentance. Speaking biblically, to repent means to make a change in our attitudes, words, and lifestyles. As 16th-century reformer Martin Luther taught, the Christian life in its totality is a life of repentance. Beginning when we first commit our lives to Christ, and continuing throughout our lives, we are more and more turning away from sin and self-centeredness and more and more turning to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Even though a repentant spirit should mark all we do, it is still appropriate that certain times be set aside for a particular focus on repentance. The church has traditionally done this at the Lenten season (and, to a lesser extent, in the pre-Christmas season of Advent).

Lent, therefore, is a time for focusing on the heart, a time for asking questions about our spiritual health:
·  What are my characteristic sins, and how can I work and pray for change?
·  What idols have captured my imagination so that my love for the living God has grown cold?
·  In what ways is my devotion to Christ and his church less than wholehearted?
The Lenten season is the spiritual equivalent of an annual physical exam; it’s a time to take stock of our lives, our hearts.

Keeping Lent, however, is potentially dangerous, precisely because of this focus on the heart. After all, it is much easier to read a book on prayer than to spend time leisurely speaking with our heavenly Father. It is much easier to fast from certain foods than it is to turn from idols of the heart. It is much easier to write a check than to spend time in ministries of mercy. Consequently, Lent is easily trivialized. The point of Lent is not to give up chocolate; it’s to give up sin! Even with this warning, however, we need to beware of going from one extreme to the other.

Yes, it is possible so completely to externalize your Lenten observance that you end up trivializing it. Yet we need to remember that we are not purely spiritual beings. God created humans as physical beings; we are psychosomatic creatures, a “nexus of body and soul,” as Jack Collins puts it.

What we do physically has an effect on us spiritually—and we neglect this principle to our peril. For example, it is unquestionably true that my attitude in prayer is more important that my posture in prayer. However, sometimes being in a physical posture of humility— kneeling in prayer—helps me get in the right frame of mind. It shouldn’t surprise us in the least that there is a connection between the physical and spiritual; it simply reflects how God created us. That’s why, at the center of Christian worship, God gave us the sacraments, baptism and the Eucharist (the Lord’s Supper)—simple physical rites involving water, bread, and wine, but rites that communicate to us the most profound of spiritual realities. That’s also why, in the pages of Holy Scripture and throughout the history of the church, we find many physical acts and postures designed to help us worship, to help us pray, to help us in our spiritual growth.

Recognizing this God-created link between the physical and the spiritual, the Lenten season has historically included a physical element, specifically fasting and other acts of self-denial. We’ll deal with these more fully in the next post.

SHOULD WE OBSERVE LENT?
I am sometimes asked why churches should observe Lent at all. Well, I certainly agree that of all the seasons of the church year Lent is the most-often trivialized. Consequently, many churches (including some Presbyterian churches) do not observe the season. There are, however, two good reasons for keeping this tradition: First, this is a wise tradition. Realizing that repentance should characterize the totality of the Christian life, we should see the practical wisdom in setting aside time especially for this purpose. Just as a baseball player may work at staying in shape year round but still give special attention to conditioning before the start of spring training, so we may find great spiritual benefits in setting aside a few weeks to give special attention to the state of our souls.

Second, it is right that we honor the traditional wisdom of the church, and Lent is a tradition that the church has observed for centuries. Inasmuch as the Holy Spirit has been present throughout church history, guiding God’s people into an ever-increasing awareness of biblical truth, we believe that it is foolhardy to disregard history and constantly to try to “reinvent the wheel.” We dishonor our spiritual ancestors when we casually disregard their wisdom. Are Christians required to observe Lent? Strictly speaking, no; Presbyterians have long emphasized that our consciences are bound to Scripture alone, and there is no biblical mandate to celebrate Lent. But countless generations of Christians have found this a helpful tool.

WHEN IS LENT?
The Lenten season begins on Ash Wednesday and lasts until Holy Saturday, the Saturday before Easter Day. The last week of Lent is called Holy Week, which includes both Maundy Thursday (commemorating the institution of the Eucharist) and Good Friday (commemorating the crucifixion of our Lord). Reminiscent of Jesus’ fasting for forty days in the wilderness, the Lenten season, not counting Sundays, lasts forty days. Sundays are not included because the Lord’s Day, according to church tradition, is never a fast day but always a feast day—a celebration of the resurrection! Therefore, during Lent the Lord’s Days are listed as Sundays in Lent, not Sundays of Lent.

—

Craig Higgins is the planter and pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Rye, New York.

by Mike Farley

The Eucharist contributes to spiritual formation not only by nurturing the growth of virtues but also by embodying practices that train us in the ways of Christ and conform us to His image.  It is ritualized practice of life in the kingdom of God.

In their works on spiritual disciplines, Dallas Willard and Richard Foster include the practice of celebration.  It is surprising to some readers to think of celebration as a discipline, and it is probably doubly surprising to think of the Lord’s Supper as a celebration given the funereal way that many evangelicals observe the Supper: with an eyes-closed, head-down posture for the purpose of repentance, mourning, and grief over sin (either in total silence or accompanied by songs about the death of Christ played quietly in a minor key).  However, the Lord’s Supper in fact is (or ought to be) a prime example of the discipline of celebration.  The fact that the Eucharist “proclaims the Lord’s death” (1 Cor. 11:26) does not entail a tone of sadness but rather supreme joy for, as Philip Pfatteicher rightly notes, “we can proclaim his death only if we know the rest of the story, the resurrection.  No one would ‘proclaim’ the death of a friend or hero; but Christ’s death was not the end of his story, and so it is proclaimed boldly and gladly by the church as the victory over all the forces arrayed against God” (emphasis mine).

The proper metaphor is not funeral but feast, and the Lord’s Supper is the feast that gives true meaning to all feasts.  In the Bible, eating with God is always a joyful affair, and God commands that those meals be joyful (e.g., the sacrificial meals at the tabernacle [Deut. 12, 14], Jesus’ own table fellowship, or the eschatological visions of feasting in the fullness of the kingdom come [Is. 25; Rev. 19]).  At the Lord’s Table we are not re-creating the Last Supper but rather looking at the Lord’s cross from this side of the resurrection, and from this vantage point we now see that the cross was the victory of God.  Jesus is present in communion not merely as a crucified memory from the past but rather as the resurrected, glorified, and exalted King seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.  At the king’s victory feast, what can we do but rejoice?  Thus, Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann rightly says that “For the Church both the source and the fulfillment of joy, the very sacrament of joy” is the Eucharist.   And “the Eucharist is the entrance of the Church into the joy of its Lord.  And to enter into that joy, so as to be a witness to it in the world, is indeed the very calling of the Church, its essential leitourgia, the sacrament by which it ‘becomes what it is.’”   By observing the Supper in a joyful manner, perhaps with vigorous & triumphant music & singing, we are trained in the discipline of celebration, which strengthens us to walk by faith and to fear no evil when God prepares a table before us even in the midst of our enemies in the valley of the shadow of death.

In addition to joyful singing, the joy of the Eucharist ought to be expressed in exuberant thanksgiving.  Though it is often neglected in evangelical practice, the practice of a “great” thanksgiving before communion has been at the heart of the church’s celebration of the Lord’s Supper since the earliest centuries.   That the sacrament came to be called “Eucharist,” signifies the centrality of the prayer of thanks offered over the bread and wine, a practice which follows the example of Jesus at the Last Supper where the Eucharist was established.  We need this as a corporate and individual discipline because, according to Paul in Romans 1:18ff., ingratitude is a fundamental sin from which follows a sad descent into idolatry and moral license.  The whole Christian life is to be one of “giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 5:20), and giving thanks at the Lord’s table is a discipline that models and trains us for a Eucharistic life.  When giving thanks at communion, man is restored to his unique role as the priest of creation called to lead the creation in blessing and thanking God for the blessings of life received from God’s hand.  As Alexander Schmemann explains, “Eucharist (thanksgiving) is the state of perfect man.  Eucharist is the life of paradise.  Eucharist is the only full and real response of man to God’s creation, redemption and gift of heaven….For Eucharist—thanksgiving and praise—is the very form and content of the new life that God granted us when in Christ He reconciled us with Himself.” Thus the Eucharist trains us to adopt the posture of gratitude as a renewed kingdom of priests in union with our great High Priest.

While the Supper is a grateful celebration of triumph, it is simultaneously a direct challenge to all pieties, eschatologies, and agendas for cultural transformation that minimize or ignore the role of suffering service.  Although the Eucharist is fundamentally a celebration of resurrection, it simultaneously reveals that there is no resurrection without the cross first.  By feeding us with the Lord’s broken body and shed blood, the Lord’s Supper ought to shape a cruciform vision of our vocation in the world.  This is simply a continuation of our baptismal vocation.  Having been baptized into Christ’s death, we take up our own cross to follow Christ.  When we partake of the Lord’s Supper, we identify ourselves afresh with his death, receiving into us his sacrifice so that we in turn might offer ourselves to serve the world in union with Christ.  Don Saliers observes, in his Worship and Spirituality, that in the Supper, “the ordinary means of receiving God’s offer of love is thus itself to be the pattern of our own lives together with God and with neighbor: offered, made holy, broken open, and lavished upon a hungry world….The [Eucharistic] pattern is far more than empty ritual.  The pattern gives us the very shape of the life God calls us to live responsibly in this world.” For the Christian, the shape of that life is a cruciform one.

Part of this suffering involves a holy discontent that becomes more acute in light of the promise and foretaste of future grace embodied in the Supper.  This discontent arises because “authentic worship trains us for the reign of God yet to come in a society of justice and peace” (Saliers).  Yet, “this symbol is given in the midst of suffering and injustice.”   Therefore, “our foretaste of what God intends for the whole creation is also a recognition that the Kingdom has not yet come in fullness….so baptism and eucharist point toward that which we must live toward.”  Although “Jesus is already present in our prayer and our service, making God known through the Holy Spirit in which we dwell,” still “at the same time he is absent: absent in the way we all know in our suffering.  In this way all Christian praying,…all celebrations of Word and the Lord’s Supper tell us about the future.  The discontent is not a failure of faith but a sign of it!  Even more, authentic faith already anticipates God’s future by living in the tension of relating to God and neighbor in a world not yet ready.  We live in a world still fully bent on its own deathly kingdoms” (quotes from Saliers).

It is possible to endure the discontent and tension of the eschatological “not yet” because we walk the journey toward the future of the kingdom in fellowship with the people of God.  The Eucharist is an intrinsically corporate reality, a meal not simply for individuals but for the gathered community of the church, and thus the practice of the Lord’s Supper links our Christian identity and vocation to our membership in this community.  Because we all eat the one loaf, we are one body joined not only to Christ the head but also to one another as mutual members (1 Cor. 10:17).  This identity calls us to a life of suffering service within this body, a life of sacrificial love in which we use our gifts to build and promote the shalom of this community.

A eucharistic ecclesiology emphasizes especially the importance of peace-making.  In the Supper, we eat and drink together, and all division and mutual hostility must cease, lest the very integrity of the Supper be forfeited.  Paul claims that the Corinthians were not really receiving the Lord’s Supper precisely because their manner of eating and drinking did not promote the peace and unity of the body but rather perpetuated the social division and conflict of their culture (1 Cor. 11:20-22).  Thus, the early church insisted that reconciliation was a necessary pre-requisite for worthy participation in this meal: “On the Lord’s own day, gather together and break bread and give thanks,….But let no one who has a quarrel with a companion join you until they have been reconciled, so that your sacrifice may be pure.”

The concrete expression of a life of sacrifice and peace-making is hospitality.  One of the most basic acts of hospitality is the serving and sharing a common meal, and in the Lord’s Supper, God models hospitality for us by inviting us to His house for dinner.  In the Old Testament, this was clearly seen in the very architecture and furniture of the tabernacle and temple.  In that sanctuary of the old covenant, God pitched his tent (or built his house) in the midst of His people, and at the center of the ministry of tabernacle and temple was the altar, which was a table where God offered and shared a sacrificial meal with His people (Lev. 7).  To go to the tabernacle or temple to sacrifice was to become a guest in God’s home and a recipient of divine hospitality.  The church is the house of God (Eph. 2:19-22, 1 Peter 2:5), and that same hospitality is demonstrated when God spreads his Eucharistic table before us and invites us to eat and drink with Him.  If the Christian life is becoming like God, then the only reasonable response to receiving God’s hospitality at His table is to imitate this practice in our lives outside the liturgy, welcoming others generously and gladly to our own tables in our own homes.

The ethical implications of the Lord’s Supper also extend beyond the boundaries of the church community.  The Eucharist not only embodies right covenantal relationships with other people but also a right covenantal relationship to the rest of the created order.  Inherent in the practice of the Lord’s Supper is a call to man’s stewardship & dominion over creation.

The very elements used in communion affirm the goodness of human culture.  Bread and wine are not merely products of nature that humans harvest; rather, they require human cultivation and technology to produce.  Leon Kass describes the cultural conditions that bread-making presupposes:

Man must be willing to settle down and remain attached to a particular place, and an open and exposed place at that.  Their natural indolence and their desire for prompt satisfaction of need must be overcome.  Men must be able to plan for and anticipate the future, and be willing to defer gratification, in order to accept as a regular way of life laboring today for a goal far in the future….With agriculture a new human relationship to nature and to fellow man emerges….There is the nascent idea of ownership, of property in nature, perhaps tied to the admixture of one’s own labor, first to the agricultural produce and then to the soil. The idea of appropriation eventually makes necessary rules of justice, governing what is mine and thine, and points to new and more complex social arrangements…A transformer of nature, a practitioner of art, a restrainer of his own appetites, a settled social creature soon with laws and rules of justice, poised proudly yet apprehensively between the earth and the cosmic powers—man becomes human with the eating of bread.

Therefore, Leithart concludes:

Mankind is given the creation not only to use its products in their natural state but also to transform them for the enrichment of human life; he is not only guardian of what is but is creator of what is not yet; mankind is not only to eat but to bake.  The breadmaker is the creature who builds cities, sends probes to the edges of the galaxy, transforms sand into silicon chips.  Bread-making [and wine-making] humanity is scientific and technological humanity….  If Jesus made use of the product of these [cultural] structures, then He can hardly have rejected them in principle.

Far from rejecting them, the Eucharist involves an offering of human cultural labor to God and the grateful recognition that God graciously uses and transforms this labor into a means by which we know communion with Him.

Thus, an examination of the Eucharist with a view toward its role in spiritual formation reveals numerous ways that Eucharistic liturgy establishes normative patterns of Christian discipleship.   The practice of the Lord’s Supper embodies important virtues and practices that train us for a life of godliness in the kingdom.  A truly evangelical, gospel-centered spirituality, therefore, must be a liturgical spirituality that has the Eucharist at its heart.

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Mike Farley is an adjunct professor of theological studies at Saint Louis University. He is a member of Crossroads Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, Missouri, where he has formerly served as worship director. 

Last February we packed 12 large suitcases, 6 backpacks, 6 people, 1 sheepdog and 1 extra large dog crate into a minivan.  We then drove from Knoxville, TN to Miami, Fl en route to Lima, Peru.  In Miami we got lost dropping off the dog for his flight, broke his crate at customs, bought a new one, missed our flight, forfeited our tickets and got stuck in Miami for a week.  Needless to say, we had a rough transition to Peru.

Thankfully times have improved and God has used that experience to prepare us for things like squeezing seven people into a tiny tico taxi, sweating non-stop on a ten hour bus ride with no air-conditioning that was supposed to be six with air, or waiting for hours and hours to pick up a care package at the post office.  

To say that Peru is a developing country is an understatement.  It’s developing politically as it’s traded communism for democracy; economically as it changes from a cash based system of bartering to a credit based one with fixed prices; educationally as it moves from modern forms and practices for more postmodern ones and spiritually as it goes from a religion of mysticism, syncretism and animism to a decidedly materialistic one. The modern Western world is materialistic seeking to become spiritualistic while Peru is spiritualistic seeking to become materialistic.   

Their ancient ancestors, the Inkans, Spaniards and Communists have failed Peruvians religiously, politically and economically.  So, they’ve turned their backs on all of them and have embraced global capitalism.  Every Pizza Hut, KFC, McDonald’s, Papa John’s, and Starbucks that opens offers more than poorly processed food at high prices. They offer fruitfulness, fullness and life.  They offer community, acceptance, beauty, peace and prosperity.  Or, so they want to believe.  

We’re in Peru working to expose the bankruptcy of both materialism and mysticism in light of the gospel.  We’ve joined a team seeking to live out the beauty and power of Christ’s life, death and resurrection in word and deed to the cities of northern Peru.  We’re partnering with the Iglesia Presbyteriana Evangelica del Peru in order to assist them in church planting, leadership training, theological education, community renewal and economic development.

Parish defines our philosophy of ministry.  This means that we incarnate ourselves by planting churches and beginning transformational ministries like medical clinics for specific neighborhoods.  We want our communities to rejoice that there are people playing, working, dreaming, hoping and praying among them that are living out the values of another world- the heavenly world of love, joy, justice, forgiveness and peace- here on earth.  

Poverty defines our context.  This means that we believe poverty is an enemy of Christ as it leads to men cheating, women lying, children stealing and neighbors fighting.  A band-aid approach to these issues won’t fix anything. Only as we address them systemically- spiritually, economically and relationally- will we see real renewal and change. 

Partnership defines our need.  This means that we covet your prayers, appreciate your generosity, expect your visit and anticipate your move.  If you’d like to learn more about the ministries of Peru Mission and how you can be involved, please visit our website at perumission.org or e-mail meat j.eby@perumission.org.  

Finally, Pascua defines our outlook.  This means that Christ’s resurrection is the main thing that encourages, strengthens, motivates, sustains and propels our work.  As Jaroslov Pelikan has said, “If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen— nothing else matters.”  But Christ is risen indeed and his Spirit is a work in Peru.  For this, we are very grateful.