Corrective love. . .

We don't hear much about tough love anymore.  As far as it goes, tough love was not an apt description of the discipline of the Lord's Table anyhow.  Lutherans are not alone in this problem.  Rome is fighting even now over what it means to commune those who hold positions antithetical to official church teaching.  But for Lutherans the issue has generally been less about the Lutherans communing than others who wish to commune at Lutheran altars.  

It was never an easy sell but given the shape of our new culture and its equation of love with approval and acceptance of anything and everything, the discipline of the Table has become even more difficult.  Plus the fact that many folks don't take the faith seriously -- much less who communes -- and you have a recipe for a bitter taste that will not go away.  Pastors feel guilty for communing those who they know should not be communed and they feel they are in a no win situation if they refuse one who should not commune.  

Book after book has been written to explain what is hard to explain and even harder to accept.  The love that manifests itself in the discipline of the Table is a corrective love that few welcome. Even more distressing is that the entrance to the altar rail has become a perfunctory function of membership -- holding out the magic card that says you are good to go.  If you are a member of the right club, you have an in.  Except that this is never what Lutherans have understood to be the discipline of the Table.  In our Confessions we insist that we commune only those who have been examined and absolved.  We say nothing about membership in the great club.  Yet this is precisely the problem.  We do not practice examination and absolution like we ought and so in the absence of this aspect of pastoral care, we are left with an outstretched hand and a membership card.

In his book on the discipline of the Lord's Table, Thomas Oden reflects upon Corrective Love:

“Protestants at one time were confident that their free form of confession was a vast improvement upon Catholic private confession to a priest because it is voluntary, demystified, and not routinized. But amid the acids of modernity it has volunteered itself right out of existence. Demystification has dwindled into desacralization. The escape from routinization has become a convenient cover for the demise of repentance. The postmodern pastor is trying to learn anew to listen to the deeper range of feelings of others, without forgetfulness of the Word of God.”  

That is the problem.  We have volunteered it right out of existence but we are still left with the burden of who communes and no mechanism left but the gold card.  In this case, we have jettisoned the corrective with the love and are left with only feelings.  It is no wonder our people have no real idea why anyone and everyone is not welcome to join us at the altar rail.  There is no rationale for communion discipline absent the means by which this corrective love is applied.  Our Confessions got it exactly right.  What makes us worthy is not simply belonging to an organization or having a name on a membership list but what Augsburg XXV says:  Confession in the churches is not abolished among us; for it is not usual to give the body of the Lord, except to them that have been previously examined and absolved. 

But, of course, we do.  It has become usual to give the body of the Lord not simply to those we do not know, much less have examined and absolved, but since the practice of confession and absolution have become so rare, those who regularly are part of our Divine Service have come to expect that the normal or routine way to approach the Lord's Table is to do so having handled this on your own -- and the pastor is a bystander to the process and not a part of it.  It is no wonder, then, that the corrective discipline of love has left the altar rail to stand or fall on its own -- without the structural support Augustana XXV supports.  The pastor is then placed in the terrible position of being a gate keeper when the Confession see him as being a pastor, a shepherd, and a father in Christ to God's people.

Who communes has come down to whether or not one is a member of a fellowship in good standing (whatever that might mean) and no longer has all that much to do with the pastoral relationship that communicant has with that altar and the pastor who stands in persona Christi there.  I fear that the genie is out of the bottle and it may be impossible to recover what we have lost.  Will we content ourselves to be bouncers checking IDs at the rail?   That is not simply a question for Lutherans but for all sacramental Christians who believe that there is something there in the Sacrament which may not only be taken to your benefit but also your harm.