The nature of the love of the fellowship of the Table. . .

Justin Martyr, one of the most important of the earliest fathers of the Church, has given us one of the earliest descriptions of the Eucharist in his First Apology, written in the mid-150s AD.

And this food is called among us Eucharistia [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined.

For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.

—First Apology, 66

Inherent in his description is the practice of what has come to be called closed communion.  It is the act of love and the discipline of the Table of the Lord manifest in that this is a fellowship of faith not feeling, of truth and not opinion, and of unity and not diversity.  It has become even more offensive in our modern world in which diversity, acceptance, and affirmation are the bywords of our culture.  It is clear that the Sacrament is for those who have been washed (baptized), who confess our common faith, who are repentant, and who do not live in manifest and public sin.   The point of this is not to decide who is good or bad but to prevent those who might partake to their harm and to encourage all who receive to come to the Table of the Lord able to receive to their benefit all the blessings conveyed in this Holy Communion.

The discipline of the Lord's Table is neither new nor a novelty although the disregard for that discipline is new and is a novelty.  It represents not an action of love but indifference to those who approach the Lord's Supper.  Love does not sit idly by while someone may receive what was meant as a blessing to become a curse.  Love requires that exhort the communicants to receive with the faith and repentance that will make sure the blessing of that communion are just that -- blessings.

This has become much harder because we no longer understand love in this way and our culture has defined the essence of love to be acceptance, tolerance, affirmation, and support no matter what.  The sins that once were openly condemned as Scripture does are now accepted, tolerated, affirmed, and those who commit them supported.  The world has turned love upside down until it has become a weak and passive thing.  The same idea of love that insists you make life altering choices for your child when they appear to question or act differently than the typical behaviors of their gender now insists that to condemn any sin or call any sinner to accountability is hate speech.  It is no wonder that we have trouble within our own pews practicing what has always been the mark of our fellowship -- the discipline of the Lord's Table.

There was once also a salutary request that if you were late to the Divine Service and missed the Gospel, you should not commune.  While this is not a law, it is a good and beneficial reminder that the communion upon our Lord's Body and Blood lives within the fuller context of the liturgy of the Word as well as the liturgy of the Sacrament.  Even to the homebound the pastor expounds the Word and hears the confession and absolves the shut-in or hospitalized before communing them upon the Body and Blood of our Lord.  It is good pastoral practice and it is good practice of those who commune not to come late and leave early to receive the Sacrament but to be absent for the greater part of the liturgy.

Many good and common sense practices of our past have now become difficult for us because the world around us has taught us a different kind of love and made worship into a utilitarian means which we define and we decide is meaningful.  This is also true of the reverence of the Lord's House which too often has been rendered something casual and flip as if the Lord were there to make sure we were all having a good time.  It is one more way, along with the discipline of the Table, that we forget that our Lord's goal is not for us to be happy but for us to be holy.  

The only real justification for an open table is that nothing is there to receive, nothing that would either expect or require faith, and nothing to get wrong in any case.  If that is what your doctrine of the Lord's Supper is, open the table.  If it is not, then listen to the Scriptures, heed the practice of the early Church, and pay attention to the welfare of those communing.