Over at his blog, Mike Bird offers his thoughts on the Lord’s Supper. Here’s a snippet:
Francis Chan recently preached a sermon where he said that we’ve replaced the Lord’s Supper with “one guy and his pulpit” and he also decried the mere memorialism of such evangelical practice of the Lord’s Supper and the marginalization of the Lord’s Supper to elevate the role of preaching…
…As you can imagine, this led to an avalanche of criticism against Chan on social media; mainly concern that he was turning Catholic or else diminishing the importance of preaching.
Well my sympathies are with Chan and I’ve been tweeting about it. But let me explain why I believe in Jesus’s presence at the Supper and why we should have a high view of the Supper.
A colleague once related to me that a particular chapel he frequented had a communion table with a stained-glass window above it depicting the scene from the Gospels where the women visited the empty tomb. The words of the angel to the women, “He is not here!” were inscribed underneath the window. So, ironically, whenever you looked at the communion table, you could see the words “He is not here!” That sums up how many people feel about the Lord’s Supper (or Communion or Eucharist). Jesus is remembered, but he is not present! But that is a deficient view of the Supper; Jesus’s presence is the whole point!
Read the rest here.