If there is such an examination, it is usually about which church you belong to and whether or not that parish is, in fact, a part of or in fellowship with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. So what happens is somebody says "Pastor, I would like to commune. I am Missouri Synod, a member of St. Jehoshaphat by the Convenience Store, in Straight Arrow, Illinois." To which the pastor responds, "Well, sure, we would love to have you commune with us." And everyone goes back to their places. Yes, I have done this and I know of no real way around such perfunctory conversations rushed along as the organist begins the first hymn but I also know that this is not what kind of examination of faith is intended for those who desire to commune other than at their home altar.
If more is involved, it may lead to a series of questions, generally with rather short answers. Are you baptized? Have you been confirmed? Where are you a member? Do you confess the creed? Do you believe that Christ's flesh and blood are really present in and with the bread and wine? Do you repent of your sins and believe in Christ's atoning sacrifice and pray for the aid of the Spirit to amend your sinful life?" And the answer is generally, "Yup." Yes, I have done this and no of no real way around such a conversation which does not really answer anything and does not help us get to the crux of the matter nor is it the kind of examination of faith intended for those who desire to commune other than at their home altar.
In reality, communing is much more than simply what you believe and whether or not this faith is common to the altar where you desire to receive (or the other way around). Examination ordinarily has meant confession, private confession. In other words, it is not simply about whether or not you and your church are kosher but whether or not you have been examined, whether or not you confess your sins, and whether or not you are able to receive the Sacrament without impediment and for your benefit. But this is not how we think or what we do or even how we speak anymore.
Entrance to the Lord's Table should not simply be satisfied by a membership card nor should it be satisfied by the right answers to the right questions. It ought to be about more than this. But since private confession has waxed and waned and hardly anybody within our parishes practice it, we have conveniently forgotten that this really what the examination is all about.
For everyone to be admitted to the Lord’s Supper, without distinction or selection, is a sign of contempt that the Lord cannot endure. The Lord himself distributed the supper to his disciples only. Therefore anyone not instructed in the doctrine of the gospel ought not to approach what the Lord has instituted. No one should be distressed when his Christianity is examined even down to the finest point when he is to be admitted to the Lord’s Supper. It should be established as part of the total state and system of discipline that ought to flourish in the church that those who are judged unworthy should not be admitted. (John Calvin, “Letter on Various Subjects” in the book Calvin’s Ecclesiastical Advice)
Yes, I know it is strange that I am quoting Calvin, who was surely no Lutheran, but he gets it right here and I appreciate that the source is from a prime spiritual father of most of Protestantism (to one degree or another). The key here is the second in bold. It is not an offense to examine the faith of those who desire to commune... but it has surely become one. And this is the prime problem for close(d) communion. I should not have to prove my faith or answer any questions or do a darn thing for me to commune wherever I desire to commune. That is the attitude that has pervaded the church (not just Lutheran). My faith is personal and private and I don't have to answer to nobody but the Lord. Yes, there are those who say close(d) communion is not being hospitable and those who complain that it is messy and many folks are offended if you do not admit anyone and everyone but the point is that we are accountable and we ought to be offended when our faith is not examined -- both the folks who are faithfully members of the parish and the visitors who show up once. We ought to be prepared to give answer when questioned and we should not consider this an intrusion or offensive but that is the rub. We don't think it is anyone's business -- not even the pastor's -- and we presume that if we think we are fit and good to go, no one, not even God Himself, should intervene to prevent us from munching at the Lord's altar.
Yes, I know I am a hypocrite. I do not require folks to answer to me the way I am speaking of here in this post but I certainly do talk about this from pulpit and in classroom. It is a long and hard process of restoring what we have lost and it will not be quickly or easily repaired but that should not stop us from trying. Flashing a membership card may get you into Sam's Club but it is not what entrance to the Lord's Table is about. It is about repentance and faith, creed and confession, obedience and discipline -- all for our good and not to harm us. It will be a long time before the ordinary members of a Lutheran congregation begin to think this way and it will be even longer before a visitor will understand that this is for their own good. God help us keep on trying to teach it well and get it right.
14 comments:
I assume that you have corporate confession of sin and absolution prior to Holy Communion. Are you not in some way minimizing the virtue and efficacy of this in what you have written?
"Examination ordinarily has meant confession, private confession.... But since private confession has waxed and waned and hardly anybody within our parishes practice it, we have conveniently forgotten that this really what the examination is all about."
Perhaps you meant to include public and private confession in your first sentence, because otherwise the claim that examination is limited to private confession is outside of what Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions state.
There was no general confession and general absolution until more modern times. In Luther's day private confession was robust and common. Inserted in the mass was often an exhortation to communicants which was far blunter and pointed than what usually passes for any public address on the topic of repentance today.
In his Holy Communion: Vanishing Mark of the Church (Mark V Publications, Dearborn, MI, 2010) Rev. Joel R. Baseley states:
In generations past, "examination tables" (for example of this see the URL referenced in endnote 10) or lists of self-examination questions based upon the 10 Commandments were prepared. The faithful used them to examine their sinful ways to see their own specific need for grace as they struggled against sins they'd been committing against God and man. Past generations observed a requirement to attend a "confessional Service" before receiving Communion. Their pastor would remind them of their sin, their need for the Supper, and its rightful use. Individual confession and absolution, giving way to "announcing for Communion," has been expressions in the church's past practice to assure that the Bible's requisite state of repentance, of active repentant faith, for worthily receiving the Sacrament, was manifest in all communing....
Many voices in Lutheranism today plead for more frequent Communion. No real objection, but Communion frequency is NOT a mark of the church. The right use of Communion for the faithful, self examination and approval, fulfilling this requirement for proper use of the Sacrament, -are- marks of the church unto sanctification.
Endnote 10. P. Brand. "Pruefungstaffel fuer Kommunicanten" trans. Joel R. Baseley. 7th Printing, Pittsburgh, Pa. 1914. P.5 - available at ---http://www.markvpublications.com/documents/examtable.html
"Now, forasmuch as the Mass is such a giving of the Sacrament, we hold one communion every holy-day, and, if any desire the Sacrament, also on other days, when it is given to such as ask for it. "
Augsburg would seem to indicate frequent observance was regular practice.
Anonymous is not quite correct when he asserts, "There was no general confession and general absolution until more modern times." Already in Chemnitz' Church Order (recently published in English by CPH), the general confession and absolution was included immediately following the sermon, even as private confession was still strongly encouraged. The form of the Absolution, however, was much more pointed than the form we use today:
The Almighty God has had mercy on you and by the merit of the most holy suffering, death, and resurrection of His beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, forgives you all your sins; and I, as an ordained minister of the Christian Church, announce to all who truly repent and who, by faith, place all their trust in the sole merit of Jesus Christ and who intend to conform their lives according to the command and will of God the forgiveness of all your sins, in the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. But to all who are impenitent and unbelieving, I say, on the basis of God's Word and in the name of Jesus Christ, that God has retained their sins and will certainly punish them. (p. 85)
Also, while David Gray is right when he says that "frequent observance [of the Lord's Supper] was regular practice", it is important to note that the phenomenon of all communicant members present receiving the Sacrament every time it is offered is a very recent one—in most places, it didn't begin until the mid-20th century. So while the Lord's Supper was offered more frequently, the average communicant would have received the Sacrament much less often.
ngb: "it is important to note that the phenomenon of all communicant members present receiving the Sacrament every time it is offered is a very recent one—in most places, it didn't begin until the mid-20th century."
In the more rural Missouri Synod churches, it was even later. In the 50s and 60s, in a church in Missouri, those who had announced for communion during the previous week sat in the right pews, while those not taking communion sat on the left. Occasionally there were some on the left taking communion. Extra ushers worked the back pews where families with young children sat, so that the spouses could alternate taking communion, if no older sibling was available (children did not accompany their parents to communion back then).
Just as the unbelief of the recipient cannot nullify the sacramental character of baptism, neither can the unbeliever nullify the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Lord's supper. The body and blood are present, not because of the faith of the communicant, but because of the work of God. No one's lack of faith could undo Jesus' specific words and God's work in the supper. This is not to say that the unbeliever will receive a blessing in the Lord's supper. On the contrary, he may drink damnation upon himself. The eating outside of faith is "actually pernicious and damning." MARTIN LUTHER'S THEOLOGY OF THE SACRAMENTS KENNETH R. CRAYCRAFT, JR.
For those who are interested in 16th-Century Lutheran views, practices, and controversies about the "sacramental status" of "Holy Absolution" (and about whether public/corporate confession-and-absolution was "the real thing" alongside private confession), see:
http://www.amazon.com/Reformation-Keys-Confession-Conscience-Sixteenth-Century/dp/0674011767/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1452215526&sr=1-1&keywords=rittgers
The SELK have a youtube video of a confession service with the interesting twist that the confession is general, but the absolution is individual at the altar rail with the pastor's hands on the head of each "Beichtkind."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFW9_jaF73Q
For an examination of confession through the example of JS Bach in the 1st half of the 18th Century see: Johann Sebastian Bach and Liturgical Life in Leipzig, by Guenther Stiller, 1984 (CPH translation). We have the records of St. Thomas Church that show who were Bach's Beichtvaters, and an indirect indication of how often he went to confession.
Anon, we have a similar practice in my congregation on Ash Wednesday, and I know it is done elsewhere in the LCMS. Not sure how common though.
Anonymous is generally correct. General confession and absolution were not universally a part of Lutheran practice in the setting of the Divine Service and only after the Common Service did the absolution replace a declaration of grace. Even where it was included, it was not considered equal to or in place of the private confession and absolution still strongly encouraged.
Strickert is surely not commending LCMS practice of the 1940s and 1950s in which the Sacrament was offered quarterly and some did not even commune then. Do we want to go back to the time when people left after the offering because they either did not desire to commune or missed the Confessional Service? I recall that era vividly! While the use of the Confessional Service (TLH p. 46) is certainly useful and good practice the abyssmal infrequency of the Sacrament that characterized much of Lutheranism in the 19th and early to mid-20 centuries a stain upon the good tradition of Augustana. What we need is not choice but overall renewal of private confession (perhaps with corporate confessional services) within the context of a catechetical rebirth and more frequent attendance at the Divine Service.
If the individual conscience determines worthy communion, then what basis do we have for holding onto closed communion? If the individual can examine themselves and avail themselves to the general confession and absolution without ever utilizing private confession, why do we keep the form at all (except as an historical reminder of what once was)? If we are thoroughly comfortable with the individual judging his or her own conscience as the norm and private confession the exception, then perhaps we only need part-time pastors for Sunday morning and occasional emergencies. Pastoral care for Lutherans always began not over coffee but with private confession and absolution and has only in the last two centuries departed from this practice until we have borrowed from the Reformed to try and figure out what a pastor should do between Sundays without filling his time with the pastoral care of the confessional.
My point was not to compare where we are today with the 19th century or even the 20th century but to compare the robust pastoral care of the first two centuries of Lutheranism which was centered around private confession and absolution. This is what closed communion is about and not some denominational identity card or the right answers to three or four rushed questions. It was life lived around the Word and Altar, regular private confession, and a rich catechetical life (even more so that general Bible study -- the pattern of which is reversed today).
"Strickert is surely not commending LCMS practice of the 1940s and 1950s in which the Sacrament was offered quarterly and some did not even commune then."
Made even more sure by the fact that my reference was to the 50s and 60s and had no mention of any "quarterly" frequency, which was not the case in my example of the Missouri church.
"Do we want to go back to the time when people left after the offering because they either did not desire to commune or missed the Confessional Service?"
According to Werner Elert's Eucharist and Church Fellowship in the First Four Centuries, noncommunicant Christians and others were separated prior to Communion:
"Following the service of the Word came the celebration of the Eucharist. This was at least so from the middle of the second century (Justin). Before the Eucharist began, however, the 'hearers' had to leave the assembly, and not only they but also the catechumens, even though they were already being solidly instructed toward reception. During the Euchrist the doors were guarded by deacons and subdeacons. Tertullian severely rebukes the contrary way of doing things among the heretics, who did not maintain the distinction between catechumens and believers.
"The gathering for worship in the early church was not a public but a closed assembly, while the celebration of the Eucharist was reserved for the saints with utmost strictness. Why?...
"The partakers become 'one body and one spirit.' Therefore there may be nothing separating or dividing them, for that which divides would do injury to the koinonia and so to the unity of the body of Christ. Such division is a constant danger even among the baptized. Even though a man must first be baptized before he may partake of the Holy Communion, this does not mean that all the baptized may without distinction partake of the Eucharist together.
"Divisions can be of various kinds. In the case of heresy it is a confessional division. The extending or refusing of Eucharistic fellowship is then always a confessional act of the whole congregation. In the case of personal divisions there would also be injury of the integrity of the koinonia.
"If reconciliation is not achieved, then there is to be no partaking of Holy Communion."
Cooling for the burning heart.
http://www.monumente-online.de/de/ausgaben/2012/4/kuehlung-fuer-das-brennende-herz.php#.VpBzE3nnZWE
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