Please read my comments In Praise of Jensen.
The Dean, who is seeking to reform St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney, commented that they have put wheels (very discreetly) on the Communion table and every Tom, Dick and Harry is up in arms about it.
He said the table is very heavy and the wheels, which can't normally be seen, are a kindness to the Cathedral staff.
For myself, however, I would much rather not have wheels on the Lord's Table. And I wouldn't have it shifted around.
The Lord's Table should be the biggest, best, gradest, finest, most lavishly spread, welcoming table of all. There should be inexhaustable food for all the nations, for all the people of the king to eat with him, for many companions. There should always be a table spread with gifts of broken bread and poured out wine at the heart of the meeting of the family of God, just as there are daily communal meals in a family and just as the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ is ever at the centre of his people's gathering.
The immovable table of the Lord is a great cultural fixed point: an outpost of heaven, a present taste of cross and eschaton. It should be the most stable thing in the world, not wheeled off to one side for convenience's sake.
When I grow up, I hope to have a dinning room and a nice big dinning table. I could use it to feed the cats and dogs, rest my feet and play ping pong. I could set it up in my bathroom or put it in the garage when I want to use the dinning room to for some bicycle maintainance, but I'd rather not. How much more, then, would I rather not move around the Lord's table. I reckon he might not like it as he established a table at the heart of his house and commanded that we do this in memorialisation of him.
Evangelicals might get a sense of what its like to have the Lord's Table on wheels by thinking about what they would make of the symbolic significance of putting the pulpit on wheels and shifting it when there wasn't preaching. Or using a Bible as fire kindling.
Which brings us back to the old point of the Reformers that spoken and edible Word go together and are of the essence of the Lord's Day service of covenant renewal.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
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10 comments:
Marc,
You destroyed your almost brilliant argument with your exampe about the pulpit. I'm quite happy to have a lecturen on wheels if it is that big and heavy! I'm not a all hung up on having a blessed snactuary and so I want the equipment in it to be as flexible and usable as possible. If I need to move chairs, tables, pulpits around so we can use the building differently one week -so be it! Fortunately our lecturn at church is light enough to carry so when I want to speak without a lecturn I can do. Unfortunately the chairs are a bit awkward for when I want to say "Get into small groups and discuss."
Marc,
You destroyed your almost brilliant argument with your exampe about the pulpit. I'm quite happy to have a lecturen on wheels if it is that big and heavy! I'm not a all hung up on having a blessed snactuary and so I want the equipment in it to be as flexible and usable as possible. If I need to move chairs, tables, pulpits around so we can use the building differently one week -so be it! Fortunately our lecturn at church is light enough to carry so when I want to speak without a lecturn I can do. Unfortunately the chairs are a bit awkward for when I want to say "Get into small groups and discuss."
Dave, thanks, yes.
I'm not sure I'm "hung up on having a blessed sanctuary" but other things being equal I think I'd like to have a lovely specially designed dedicated space for church, just like I aspire to a dinning room.
I can see the practical imperatives but I'm concerned about the symbolic / cultural nature of it all and what we teach by what we do.
Its almost as if some people think its better to have the table on wheels to make the point that its not really that central or indispensible, maybe?
Marc, when you say: "Its almost as if some people think its better to have the table on wheels to make the point that its not really that central or indispensible, maybe?" isn't that unfair? You're attributing motives to people which are completely different to their own expressed motives, and making them guilty of something by virtue of your own extended implication from that. Offside!
Thank you, annonymous.
Would you care to reveal your identity?
Perhaps you're right. I did say "maybe"!
I guess the communion table on wheels is propbably tied up with a trend not to have the Lord's Supper in every Lord's Day Service of covenant renewal, in which case I think my point would stand. The word is central and essential. The bread is not, this view would suggest.
If not, then it may just be a practical desire to use the Cathedral building, which is treated as a glorious rain shelter (Jensen's phrase) for other purposes. Obviously this is (principled) pragmatics: use the building for God honouring Bible ministry, which I'm totally behind.
But I think it does miss out on the culture building point that the church building is FOR the Lord's Day assembly of covenant renewal. It is special. Cf, the OT people of God did not (rightly!) use the Tent of Meeting to buy and sell cattle though it would have been convenient so to do.
Marc,
1. Who says that the Church building has to be for the Lord's day meeting. I'm a bit nervous about what appears to be an equation of the church building with the Tent of Meeting rather than the church itself!
2. I'm pleased to have been involved in Churches that have been "open all hours" all my life
2. The Brethren probably show a lot of us up when it comes to weekly observance of the supper (for all their faults) but it is because they bring the table down into the middle of the hall for communion so it is central (see Pete Matthews on a previous VP's views on similar) that the table has to be mobile
Dave,
Ta.
1. What I mean is that its fitting if the church building is for doing church and esp its archetypal activity of Lord's Day covenant renewal. I didnt so much mean to equate the tent and the church building - only compare them.
2. Yep. I can see the sense of that. And I guess it does send a good message about, say, the gospel relating to all of life.
3. Now that is interesting. My not leave the table in th middle all the time?
And it was I, Pete Jackson, not Pete Matthew, to whom DW was referring I believe. Nevermind, common mistake (though Matthew is far far older than me of course!)
I blogged after reading Alan Stibbe on the Supper a while ago, though I think Ros had some excellent rebuttalks to some of Stibbe's points, especially regarding the significance of the explanatory words.
On a related to this discussion note - can we/should we say that the supper is as important as the word? There is a world of difference between saying that it is very important and saying that it is as important as the word. I'm not sure I'd be willing to go that far, for to my mind at least there is a logical, scriptural and practical priority of the word (which of course should never be used to downplay the enormous significance of the supper). Or am I wrong here? Maybe the very discussion of relative importance is a no-brainer.
should say *rebuttals, and not rebuttalks.
Pete,
Thanks.
I think it is an odd way to put the question: what's more important in a marriage, eating together or having sex? Maybe the sex is more essential.
I would say that about the word (and baptism, by the way): the gospel creates the church. It is the "without-which-there-is-not".
But the Supper is of the essence too and necessary. It re-froms the church around the gospel.
The Word tells us about the Supper but the Supper existed before our Bible.
The issues are complicated, I think, and there are asymettaries. I hope to solve all the problems and give definitive statements in my PhD on Supper as Word and Word as Food. Ha Ha.
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