Another Tragedy Within Our Fractured Christianity
Another Tragedy Of Our Fractured Christianity:
Churches Where It Is Easy To Be A Functional Unbeliever With Access To His Eucharist
AND
Churches Full Of Functional Believers With NO Access To His Eucharist!
This morning, I was able to take a break from being my wife’s sort of “nurse’s aide” after her hip replacement surgery and attend the Holy Communion Service at an “Anglican Church.” For those who do not know, that is the name that is used by those who used to be Episcopalians but broke away from them because of their open apostasy from Biblical authority. One of the very important life-changing experiences of my life was when I was led by them to see how His Lord’s Supper / Eucharist / Holy Communion was one of the most wonderful ways by which Jesus fulfills His promises: “We will come to him and make Our home with him” and “abide [live, remain] with us” and “I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you” or “He who has My commandments and keeps them … will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”
The deeply moving Eucharistic prayer of the Anglican Eucharist has such prayers as:
“And we most humbly beseech you, O merciful Father, to hear us; and, of your almighty goodness, vouchsafe to bless and sanctify, with your Word and Holy Spirit, these your gifts and creatures of bread and wine; that we, receiving them according to your Son our Savior Jesus Christ’s holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion, may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood.”
“And here we offer and present unto you, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto you; humbly beseeching you that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of your Son Jesus Christ, be filled with your grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him.”
“We do not presume to come to this your Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your Table. But you are the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen”
“The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for you, preserve your body and soul unto everlasting life. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on him in your heart by faith, with thanksgiving. … The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for you, preserve your body and soul unto everlasting life. Drink this in remembrance that Christ’s Blood was shed for you and be thankful.”
“Almighty and everliving God, we most heartily thank you for that you feed us, in these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; and assure us thereby of your favor and goodness towards us; and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of your Son, the blessed company of all faithful people; and are also heirs, through hope, of your everlasting kingdom.”
The deacon this morning preached a deeply thoughtful sermon that any true Baptist, Anabaptist, or Evangelical Protestant would love to hear. And, as I think about it, so probably would most Roman Catholics and Orthodox. It was an eloquent appeal to repent from known sin and from any attitude that is not befitting our majestic and passionately serious Savior God.
But, as much as I love for my “eyes of faith” to be able to both recognize and feed upon the literal Presence of my risen and glorified Savior in His Eucharistic communion, I also felt sad about the tragedy within that same Anglican tradition that had opened this divine mystery to me. So, I wrote the following letter to a good friend and fellow participant in this morning’s Holy Communion.
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Hi friend,
I complimented him on his preaching this morning, saying something like, “That was fine BAPTIST preaching, this morning – and I mean that as a compliment!” His face lit up with the biggest smile I have ever seen on him – neat!
But as excellent as his sermon was, there is a built in problem with virtually all sermons I have heard in churches that are like Anglicans, Lutherans, Roman Catholics and Orthodox – churches that teach correctly with Peter, that “baptism saves you” BUT who also apply that promise to the infants that they allow to be “baptized” (as happened to me), infants who CAN NOT fulfill making Peter’s “… appeal of a good conscience to God.” As a rule, those churches’ leaders do not insist upon the same decision from people that Jesus did, who made it very clear that, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is ‘BORN AGAIN,’ he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Those churches, rather, cause the people who grow up within their traditions to ASSUME that being “born again” has already been taken care of because of an erroneous application of that baptismal promise to those not personally desiring or even able to make that promise – and among them the subject about the critical need to be personally and experientially “born again” is rarely brought up, because of that erroneous assumption. Instead, any pastoral exhortations are typically received by the listener into an experiential context in which the message is simply perceived by them to be an exhortation to “do better” or “get deeper with God,” or similar messages. Logically, that has as much of an effect as exhorting a Chinese citizen to be a “better American”!
But if JESUS does not consider us to be “born again” or (more likely) “born from above” because of actual and personal DECISIONS that we have made to become His disciples (as HE defines an unconditionally surrendered “disciple”) – unless HE considers us to be experientially “regenerate” and “saved” and “a believer” who is personally committed to obey all that He has commanded as seen within His gospel teachings, commands, and promises, then sermons like that of today CANNOT be received and responded to properly: all because so many of them have never seriously considered that they have not YET decided to personally abandon Satan’s domain and surrender to the authority and identity of Jesus and ALL that He taught, commanded, and promised.
The wonderful and deep teachings and promises that are within the Eucharistic prayers bear their intended lovely fruit IF you are already personally “born again” – in the way that you and I have so often described about ourselves. But typically, if someone within those above-mentioned traditions has truly believed and surrendered to the identity and authority of Jesus it has happened IN SPITE OF the influence of those forms of church culture and messages rather than BECAUSE OF THEM.
This problem creates congregations in which people who are ACTUALLY merely content to be in a vaguely religious atmosphere that is connected with “GOD” and “Jesus” can easily outnumber those whom JESUS considers to be His actually “born again” disciples. And that ecclesiastical environment makes it possible – even inevitable – that they are not even AWARE of the problem, because no one is telling them that they have a problem!
What those people need to hear is a message that makes their need and their decisions to be made as clear and simple as Jesus had made them – something to the effect that, “until you become His disciple in the same decision-making way that you see being made by those who are named as “His disciples” in the Gospels, then you are NOT YET “born again;” and you are still considered by the Son of God as being on the “broad way” “that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is narrow and the way is difficult that leads to life, and there are FEW who find it.” But a tragic portion of Christendom consists of churches designed for the “many” rather than for His “few”! Compared to the churches of the first centuries who were able to withstand both the brutality AND the allure of the world around them, most of later “mainline Christianity” is the evolutionary product that is somewhat as if the U.S. Marine Corps and their boot camps, went into some time tunnel, and came out the other end as the U.S. Boy Scouts and their Scout meetings! One, a costly and intense movement designed to radically modify even our basic “fight or flight” survival instincts; the other, a movement that that largely produces merely relatively better trained and helpful citizens that any nation would be proud of!
Perhaps the biggest tragedy that Satan has been able to bring about within God’s Church has been to inspire its leaders to reconstitute itself from a movement of serious and costly decision-makers who have PERSONALLY left “this world,” into a movement that can theoretically be embraced by an entire nation, empire, or culture of human beings, people who can be UNregenerate without even knowing it! The movement that was brought into being by Jesus and His apostles, was lead and mostly populated by people who accepted being part of a movement that could never “fit in” or be accepted by the majority of their secular culture because their piety, world view, lifestyles, and acceptable personal bonds were SO different from what Jesus had called “the Kingdom of God.” After the leadership accepted Constantine’s undoubtedly well-meaning offer of official alliance and “state chaplaincy,” the leaders of God’s movement found themselves willing to surrender much of that which was both specific and essential to Jesus, but which was now out of place for a State-church scenario. And Anglican’s even outdid those of Constantine’s era, by officially accepting their supposedly “Christian King” as the official HEAD of the Church of England! Proponents of this alliance focus upon the civilizing benefits that this partnership has upon the empires and nations within the alliance (like the abolishment of bloody gladiatorial combats), but somehow they cannot see the detriments that it has had upon the integrity of the Church to fulfill the mission for which we were created and commissioned! Alliance always requires the compromise of both parties!
I was one among the MANY victims (and later propagators) of such a compromised ecclesiastical culture, whether as an original Lutheran child, a Methodist teenager, or an Episcopalian young adult and priest! My original self-proclaimed identity about being a “Christian” had left out SO much of what Jesus and His original “Catholic” churches had considered essential for being acceptable to God as being “regenerated” or “born again” or a “disciple” of Jesus! I was so serious about being a “Christian” that I spent a lot of time considering becoming a MONK, and yet I did not even KNOW that I was in that compromised condition! Those who have decided to become followers of Jesus are not supposed to have to “figure it all out” for themselves – Jesus created His version of what He called “MY church” to accomplish that!
As a result of our numerous churches’ evolving into different directions away from the original foundation, the many Christian “denominations” have resolved themselves into two tragic ecclesiastical “buckets”: one ecclesiastical “bucket” containing those who have a Eucharist that was designed by Jesus to be only for those who have personally been drawn to embrace an intimate life of surrendered obedience to Him (yet who have actually largely never had to make that decision, apart from an anemic adolescent “decision” made at a “Confirmation” ritual); and second ecclesiastical “bucket” containing those groups that DO teach and require some actual decision and open confession that they are surrendering to the authority and identity of Jesus (yet without actually embracing some of His most costly demands, like “do NOT resist him who is evil…”), but who have NO Eucharistic relationship and promises because of a 500 year-old over-reaction to previous medieval corruptions! And each bucket’s members consider the other bucket to be constitutionally “deviant,” even “heretical” (as if God might not consider BOTH “buckets” to be examples of “the pot calling the kettle black”)!
And the only winner of this tragedy is the one who got a man and a woman to turn on each other in the Garden, when each chose not to trust and obey the clear commands and intentions of their Creator!
Reed
[ANY feedback that you have to offer is gladly appreciated, whether suggestions, challenges, or corrections!]
