Sunday School | Foundations - The Sacraments (Baptism and Communion)

Alright. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for coming. We are going to continue our conversation about the foundations that we've been doing for the last number of weeks for Sunday school, kind of as a special for those becoming new members of this church or staying as old members of this church. Let's all get on the same page about some things. Our curriculum has led us to the point where we want to talk about the sacraments. Sacraments are very interesting, they're very important, and there's a fair bit of controversy. What I want to try to do is lay out a basic framework and hopefully have some time for questions as we go.

So, what's a sacrament? Does anyone have a working definition in mind of what a sacrament even is? It's kind of a funny Christian-only sort of word.

A ceremony, okay. Sacraments are ceremonies—this is accurate. Sacrifice. So yes, hear that word "sacra." Is it sacrificial? Is it sacred? It's something like sacred in a lot of ways. God ordained. A divinely ordained ceremony. A sacred offering that shows your dedication. So that feels like it's something that we do for him or to him. I think there's something that's alternatively directional about that, so it's worth thinking about.

When we think about sacraments—we've heard the word a million times. A physical ceremonial representation of a spiritual truth. Okay, great. So I would say, maybe for our purposes this morning, that a sacrament is a ceremonial act that visibly and physically demonstrates God's grace to his people.

I think there are two of them. What would be our two sacraments? Baptism. Okay. Now, our Catholic friends think that there are more than that, but we're going to talk about the two: baptism and communion. We'll try to talk about both, and each one of these has all sorts of offshoots and different questions people ask. So let's do baptism first.

Baptism is a ceremony that has something to do with water. Already now we're at the controversial part. It has to do with water. Some would say water in which you are dunked, submerged. Others would say no, it could be poured over you. But either way, it has something to do with being a sign of our membership in the community of Christians. That's about as simple as we can make it before we really get into the substance of the controversy.

What Happens in Baptism?

Whether you're being dunked in the water or having water poured over you, what is it that happens? I think there are a couple of things that are actually important. First, there is a personal experience and a public demonstration that teaches about our union with Christ. This is a little bit easier to see in a baptism that is immersion.

The primary passage of scripture that talks about baptism and how it depicts our union with Christ—do you know where that is? It's Romans 6. If you go to Romans 6, Paul, in his broader argument about our relationship with sin, uses this language. This is, I think, the most important passage on baptism in the New Testament.

Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? — Romans 6:3-5

The word baptized literally means to dip. If you take a shirt and dip it into pigment or ink or whatever, and pull it back out, what you're doing is baptizing it into that. We're not just baptized into water according to Paul—we're baptized into Christ Jesus. And when we're baptized into Christ Jesus, we're baptized into his death.

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. And if we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. — Romans 6:3-5

So first and foremost, when we are baptized, it's a dramatic reenactment of the burial of Jesus. Though we don't do it in dirt, we don't do it in a tomb, the water is the grave. You go down into death, uniting yourself to Christ in his death. But just as he didn't remain in the tomb, you don't stay under the water. We bring you back up into newness of life.

So the first and I think the primary thing that baptism is picturing for us, giving us this experience of, is our union with Christ in his death and in his resurrection. Paul goes on to make the case that having been united with him in his death and having been raised to newness of life, our old relationship with sin has been broken. And we are no longer slaves to that sin.

Second thing, there's a personal experience and a public demonstration that teaches that in Christ we're cleansed from our sins. And that's maybe the most obvious, right? I mean, it's like you're taking a bath.

At one time, we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us not because of righteous things that we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. — Titus 3

There you get not only the sense of like, we go into the water in death and resurrection, but there's also a shower, right, where his cleansing is poured out over us. And so in this ceremony, we're having the opportunity to have a visible and physical experience that teaches us and proclaims to a watching world that we're united with Christ in his death and in his newness of life and we are cleansed from our sin. That's non-controversial.

Does Baptism Convey or Merely Depict?

The question where the controversy rises up is, well, does it do more than that? Does it convey those things or does it merely depict those things? And in particular, does it convey regeneration? Do you go into the water lost and come out saved? Or maybe more to the point, when you baptize your baby, do you go from having a sinful condemned lost baby to then having an unbelieving, but redeemed and saved baby?

My answer, the answer to this church is a very strong no. Baptism is not salvific. It teaches, it demonstrates, it reveals, but it does not convey. There's a doctrine known as baptismal regeneration, that you are born again in the water and I think that is absolutely false, completely unbiblical. We do not support that view.

This water symbolizes baptism that now saves you. Baptism saves you. Not the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ who has gone into heaven and is at God's right hand with angels and authorities and powers in submission to him. — 1 Peter 3

If you were to press me on this and say, well are you sure it's not salvific? I would say, yes, I am sure it's not salvific. That it is just like circumcision. And in fact, it's like circumcision in a lot of ways. Circumcision was the sign of the old covenant. And for Jews being circumcised was a big deal. They had to be circumcised as an act of obedience. But that circumcision, which was the sign of the old covenant, has been replaced in the new covenant with baptism. The way the New Testament talks about circumcision makes it impossible to ignore that the ceremony of circumcision is just a ceremony. The reality is what lies behind it.

For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. — Galatians 5:6

It's not the external, it's the internal reality.

Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything. What counts is new creation. — Galatians 6

The external ceremony is not where the value lies. The internal reality to which it points is where the value lies.

Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law you become as though you had not been circumcised. And if those who are not circumcised keep the law's requirement, will they not be regarded as though they were circumcised? The one who is not circumcised physically, yet obeys the law will condemn you who even though you have the written code and circumcision are a law breaker. A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. — Romans 2

A man is a Jew if he is one inwardly and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the spirit not by the written code. Such a man's praise is not for men but God. And as in circumcision, so also in baptism, the value is not in the ceremony itself, but in the reality to which the ceremony points.

I'm hoping to blitz through all this. We'll have time for questions, but maybe hold a bookmark on that one if you want to talk more about it in a minute.

Who Is Baptism For?

Related to this is the question: who is baptism for? Every Orthodox Christian would affirm that baptism is for believers. If you become a follower of Christ, you should be baptized. Jesus says this in Matthew 28 in the Great Commission:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I've commanded you, and surely I'm with you always to the very end of the age. — Matthew 28

In the book of Acts, when the Ethiopian eunuch becomes a believer:

As they traveled along the road they came to some water and the eunuch said, "Look, here's water. Why shouldn't I be baptized?" And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away and the eunuch did not see him again but went on his way rejoicing. — Acts 8

No question, no controversy: the believer should be baptized. It doesn't save us; it's just an act of obedience as we make this public demonstration and have this visible physical experience of our union with Christ and our cleansing from sin.

Where it gets controversial is whether we should also baptize children, in particular the children of believers. My answer to that is yes. I think we have good warrant to baptize infants, not because it saves them—it doesn't, not any more than it saves adults—but because baptism is the sign of the New Covenant, just as circumcision was the sign of the Old Covenant. The old covenant sign of circumcision was applied to eight-day-old children. And in the same way that was applied not just to the head of the family but to the entire family, I think we have good grounding to do this.

But it is admittedly an argument that is not made explicit in the New Testament. You'll see people get baptized along with their entire family, but we don't get the ages of their family members. This is one of those things we talked about regarding concentric circles—undeniable truths and then disputable matters as we move out in theological questions.

You can believe that baptism is only for professing believers and I'm not going to get in a fight with you about that at all. I do think infant baptism is legitimate, but I will say, just in the interest of full disclosure: I was baptized as an infant and I think it counted. I've not been baptized since. But I did not baptize my babies because I wanted them to remember, I wanted them to have that experience. When they got older and they wanted to be baptized, they got baptized. So I'm like a weird mutt on this. I think it counts, I think it matters, I think there's something that's lost for a child that doesn't have the chance to experience that. I did not feel like my children were in some graver danger. I grew up, my children grew up in a PCA church where they had a high premium on baptizing infants and we just didn't.

So there's this little bit of a thing of: are my children part of the covenant family of believers because I didn't baptize them? Well, I don't know, but they're in my house, right, and they're hearing the Gospel every day. So yes, right. I'm all over the map on that. You can be too.

Here's how I'd put it: if you feel like the link between circumcision and baptism is tenuous, you might want to look at Colossians 2:9. I think that's a really helpful place that pulls it all together.

For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form. And you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. In him you were also circumcised in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men, but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God who raised him from the dead. — Colossians 2:9-12

Paul right there pulls everything together that I'm offering to you this morning.

He's saying, by virtue of the fact that you were baptized, united to him in his life and his death, you also were circumcised. Not the one done by human beings, but the one done by Jesus Christ. He continues on and he says, when you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins having canceled the written code with its regulations that was against us and that stood opposed to us, he took it away nailing it to the cross. We are united to him and all that we have in him becomes ours. The ceremony is just a ceremony but it is a meaningful ceremony as we undergo this opportunity to see our union and our cleansing in him. That's what I have to say about baptism.

Communion

Communion is a sacrament—a visible physical manifestation. Communion is a meal of shared fellowship that is intended to demonstrate our connection to both Jesus and to those gathered.

When Jesus instituted it, it was not the invention of something new, it was the explanation of something old. It was a Passover meal being unpacked. And then having told us to do so, do it in remembrance of him, we have this institution that we would repeatedly undergo this meal. Once again, that's about where the agreement ends and there's all kinds of disagreement about this particular meal.

Maybe the first and the simplest question is how often should we do it? In the churches you grew up in, how often did you celebrate communion? Once a week, once every six months, annually, quarterly—it's all over the map. Well, truth is the Bible doesn't say, and so all of these answers I think are acceptable answers.

At the very least, I would say at the bare minimum it's annual because what Jesus was doing was he was taking an annual feast, the Passover meal, and saying, whenever you do this, do this in remembrance of me. It would be a little bit like if Jesus was explaining a Thanksgiving meal and saying, you just thought it was a turkey, but let me tell you what it really represented. And then he says, whenever you do this, do this in remembrance of me—you'd have to, like, every time we celebrate Thanksgiving annually, we should do this. Bare minimum, I think it's annual.

But what you see in the New Testament is almost immediately, it became a regular recurring feature. When the Book of Acts talks about the breaking of bread, you should think about that in terms of communion.

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer. — Acts 2:42

Every day they continued to meet in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. — Acts 2:46

It was a regular frequent occurrence. So we celebrate communion weekly. The Anglican church has not always celebrated communion weekly. Cranmer was much less often—it might have been annually, it was very infrequent. Over time, Anglicans have tended to do it more frequently, but we celebrate it frequently and I think that we will continue to do that probably forever.

But what happens in this meal? I would suggest there are two things. First, there is that, similar to baptism, a personal experience and a public demonstration that teaches that we are partakers of Christ—just that we have been united to him, his life is our life, so also we take him into ourselves.

He took bread, gave thanks, broke it and gave it to them saying, "Take, eat. This is my body given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." And in the same way after supper he took the cup saying, "Drink from it all of you. This cup is the new covenant in my blood which is poured out for you." — Matthew 26:26-28

He was telling us what he was about to do for us and inviting us to receive it into ourselves. I think it's crucial that as we gather, we realize every time we take that meal, what we're doing—the very act of eating is an act of accepting Christ into ourselves and saying, you are my food.

Now, when we looked at John 6 a few weeks ago, maybe four or five weeks ago, I told you that John 6, that passage is not about the communion meal, and that is true.

It's John—I don't think John six was Jesus wasn't talking about the elements, he was talking about the deeper reality that he is our food, not the wafer, but him, he is our food. And as we go through this ceremony together week after week, it's just an opportunity to remind ourselves that we are dependent on him in every way.

But there is a second personal experience, a second public demonstration and I kind of beat this drum a lot around here. And that is that this meal is designed to teach us that we are united to one another, not just to him. Right? It's less obvious to people, but in First Corinthians chapter 11, which is I think the New Testament's most vivid teaching on the meal. You can see it in Matthew, Mark, and Luke talk about communion, John doesn't have it. But First Corinthians 11 is pretty much the central text where the doctrine is kind of unpacked.

The Corinthians were screwing everything up and their failure to see the gathered body as they celebrated this meal was so grievous that Paul says, it's not even the Lord's Supper anymore. You have ruined it. You've destroyed the vertical by ignoring the horizontal. So look at this, verse 19. First Corinthians eleven nineteen, he says:

When you come together, it's not the Lord's Supper you eat. For as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk. Don't you have homes to eat and drink in or you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for that? Certainly not. — 1 Corinthians 11:19-22

And then he goes on to say in verse 29:

For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord, eats and drinks judgment on himself. — 1 Corinthians 11:29

I don't have time to prove it to you right now, but I could have had more time. The idea of recognizing the body is not saying don't recognize that the bread is flesh or that the bread represents Jesus. He's saying you're not mindful of the gathered community of believers. The communion is meant to be experienced both vertically and horizontally. And if you mess up one, you ruin the other.

The Nature of the Sacraments

So both of these sacraments, both baptism and communion, are meant to be experienced. They're visible, they're physical, they're tangible, they're sensory. Right? Our faith is not just some intellectual exercise, but it's something that we do. And God, in his mercy and kindness, has extended to us the grace of these ceremonies into which we can participate, that we can partake in. They are a form of experiential learning. They're a form of experiential reminding and they are profoundly meaningful demonstrations of our union to him, our cleansing through Christ, and our connection to others.

But they don't save us. Jesus saves us by grace as we trust in him.

Q&A: Can You Be Baptized Twice?

Alright, that's the basic corpus. Now you can interrogate me all you want. Gary, you get to go first.

I was baptized when I was six weeks old, and obviously had no choice in the matter, didn't know what was happening to me. When I became a Christian, a real believer at age 30, I felt strongly that I needed to get baptized as a public demonstration of my commitment. My parents, though, when I talked to them about it, they said, oh, you don't need to do that. You were baptized when you were six weeks old.

So did I do the wrong thing by being baptized twice?

Yeah. You are now un-baptized and we need to do it. But we can do a third one and straighten it all out. It'll be fine.

So this is one of those things, Gary. Gary was baptized as a child, then you were baptized when you were 30 despite your parents objections. And he's just saying like, can we be baptized multiple times? How does that all work? Right? And people answer that question a lot of different ways. The Bible doesn't really speak to it.

So if you're in a Baptist context, you have to be right? They would be like, well, that was nothing, whatever they did to you then. And you've got to be baptized by immersion as a believer and they'd be altogether too happy to baptize you again. Other denominations, including the Anglican church, would generally say we don't do re-baptisms because we believe in the efficacy of the first one. And we don't want to create the impression that one didn't count and you've got to do it again.

But the truth is, Gary, this is one of those things about which there's disagreement and about which there can be very agreeable disagreement.

So then, how does an Anglican say teenager publicly get to demonstrate their commitment when they've already been baptized at a month or... That is a great question. Bob right now is like licking his chops.

Because the answer to that is what an Anglican church and other churches that have a similar view on baptism that we do will tend to offer is a confirmation. A confirmation is when you—now, we don't merely confirm people that were baptized as an infant and want to go through the ceremony, but it's a very useful opportunity in your exact situation.

We end up doing confirmation every eighteen months or so—I don't know if it's supposed to be annual, Bob, but we can finally schedule it. We've had it three years in a row now, and I think we're setting up to do a fourth year. So it's been annual for the last three years. We had gone about five years without it for a while, and that's why the first class was so big.

A confirmation is a Christian ceremony in which someone who has become a believer and wants to—it's not the same as church membership. It's a little bit like this, Gary: it's not so much like membership in the church of the Holy Spirit, it's more like membership in the church. It's an opportunity to say, "I think it took. I think it's real. You know, I may have made a profession of faith when I was six or sixteen or twenty-six, but as I stand before you, he is my life, he is my joy. And I want to come to the front of this church and I want to be with the people of God and I want them to say, 'Hey, if anybody doesn't know it, I'm in him and he is in me.'"

It's an opportunity, among other things, for what you're describing—to say as an adult, "I would like to seal it up and make it obvious." Now, you're not becoming saved in your confirmation, but I want a public demonstration of it. That'd be another opportunity for that.

---

Well, I had a different experience in the old Episcopal Church. My parents forgot to baptize me when I was an infant because I was the fourth of four, and I guess they were too busy. So I was baptized at seven, but I didn't really know what was going on or what was the significance. But I went through the confirmation class with all my peers at age thirteen and began in service in the service. And then I didn't really get saved till I was almost twenty-five.

And later, after my kids were born and they were young, I felt strongly in my heart that it was time for me to make proof of an adult decision of that outward and visible sign of the inward and invisible grace because the stuff that happened to me earlier helped me be quite religious, but it didn't change my heart. So I'll stop there and just say, what do you make of that?

---

Okay. So Tim is just making the observation that he grew up in a church tradition where they did confirmation for thirteen-year-olds. And from Tim's experience, I think like many people's experiences, you're confirming all these thirteen-year-old non-Christians, right? You can be a Christian thirteen-year-old, to be clear. But would anything that is like, "Hey, welcome to your graduation, we're confirming all the thirteen-year-olds"—what are the chances that all the thirteen-year-olds are genuinely submitted to Christ? And in fact, very often it's kind of like the deal with a kid: you have to go to church until you're confirmed and then you're free and you don't have to come anymore, right?

And so that sort of approach—I mean, I'm sure there's well-meaning things in there, but I'm not a big fan of confirming all the thirteen-year-olds, never mind all the thirty-eight-year-olds. I wouldn't be in favor of that either. But I would say, Tim, your own experience probably mirrors many of ours: you may have grown up and you heard the gospel, maybe you were in some sense imitating faith at some point, but eventually your life circumstances got to the point that you're like, "But actually I'm convinced that this is true. And I recognize my deep need for it and I want it."

And whether you're baptized, confirmed, circumcised—all that stuff—what matters is when you actually believe. That's when you're saved. It is when we actually surrender to Christ where the Spirit of God comes in to live in us. That's the inner reality that all these external ceremonies are imperfectly attempting to recognize and affirm, right? But the reality is the reality, and ceremonies don't change what's fundamentally true.

I know that when we were in Israel at the Jordan River, the pastor said, "If anyone wants to recommit themselves—if they didn't understand when they were baptized and it's long ago and they don't remember—here's your opportunity for us to recommit you in the Jordan River." And it was beautiful and lovely.

Yeah, and I'm sure—Dana is saying that in the Jordan River, a lot of people get baptized, kind of for obvious reasons. It's good enough for Jesus, so it's good enough for me.

And so, anyone doing baptisms in the Jordan is going to be very comfortable re-baptizing people, right? Because there's a beauty, there's a meaning, there's an observation to it. Some would say that's a bad idea because you don't need to be baptized again. But I would say—and this is probably contrary to official Anglicanism—it's not clear to me why that would be a harmful thing to do. Just being honest.

My question is going to be more experiential versus theological. I grew up in the Methodist Church and was infant baptized, then confirmed at age 12. Then I went to church camp about three months later and really did have a salvation experience. And then, you know, my whole life has been disobedient, back obedient. But what I observe and what I think I've experienced, and I hope this is true, is that when parents take their child to church and have them baptized and are faithful, there's this generational thing where the Holy Spirit maybe works through these things even though I had no idea as an infant. Was there not a spiritual thing going on? The Lord was so faithful to me. It was his work as I went through these ceremonial steps, maybe not completely understanding, but I feel like there was a spiritual thing that was going on that was mysterious that I can't understand.

Yes. I think you're exactly right. Everyone in this room has their own story of their journey—either to when you actually became a Christian or maybe you're still on that journey, maybe that lies yet in the future. We all have these different moments and experiences. Some of you, it might have been Young Life camp. It might be that you were baptized or confirmed at age 12 or 13. But either way, one thing I can say without fear of contradiction is the pattern of your life has looked like this: sin and repentance, sin and repentance, sin and repentance. Anyone want to try to jump that? That's your story. Your life has been one of sin and repentance.

Some of those moments of repentance perhaps preceded your conversion. Many of those moments are post-conversion. And every one of these experiences—whether it's a Methodist camp or a Young Life camp, whether it's a baptism or a Bible study at which you're really moved, maybe you went to a Billy Graham crusade back when those were a thing—for each one of those, there's something where some part of your heart was being freshly surrendered. Maybe as much of your heart as you actually had access to. But over time, there comes some point where we all cry uncle. Some of you know that moment. I don't. When did I become a Christian? I honestly don't know. I might have been a Christian when I was in high school, but if so, I wasn't a particularly godly high school student. I'm pretty sure by my sophomore year in college I had really surrendered my life to Christ. But in my experience, it was a process, not an event. For some—it's always a process, not an event—but for some of you, the event is a starker moment. For me, it's like somewhere in this three-year period. How many of you would say, yeah, it was in this chunk of time? And how many would be like, it was 2:30 on a Thursday afternoon? There's a whole lot of both.

It's a different story. But yes, I would bet that all of those moments had the possibility of meaning, and it's even possible that some of you had some sort of experience that you think was actually a setback. Because that ceremony was communicated to you as, "Now it counts," because what really counts isn't genuine faith but some kind of ceremonialism. For some of you, there was an overlay of ceremonialism that blocked you from seeing that it's really about the heart.

That's the reason Paul wrote what he wrote to the Jews in Romans 2—they were so wrapped around the fact that they're circumcised. He's basically saying, "Big deal. Who cares? Circumcision is circumcision of the heart."

Circumcision is circumcision of the heart. — Romans 2 (paraphrased)

So I would just invite you to filter through your experiences. Were those experiences from people with goodwill and wisdom, helping you realize the reality that we are saved by grace through faith and giving you experiences that would help underscore that? Or were they just religious peddlers pretending that ceremonies save? In which case, you might want to reinterpret those stories. There's a range.

Baptism and Communion Requirements

So, with all those things being said, in our bulletin and all our rites, we say baptized believers may participate in communion. Some people are baptized and probably don't know the Lord, and some people know the Lord and haven't been baptized yet. Like, why do we say baptized believers may be?

Yeah. So I would say that the heart of it is the believer part. That's the heart of it—not the baptized part but the believer part. But we would say that if you are a believer, you should be baptized. The very core, the fundamental line where Jesus describes the work of believers to spread the gospel is baptize them. So if you are a believer, if you've been a believer for the last ten years but you just don't really feel like you need to get baptized—we would challenge that and say, well, why not? Why not, in obedience to what the Lord has said, enter into this experience, make a public proclamation, declare that you are in him.

So that's really it. What we care about is that you're a believer, but what you should care about as a believer is that you're going to be obedient to the Lord who's called us to do this. That make sense?

The Nature of Communion: Not Transubstantiation

Do this in remembrance of me—with the sacrament versus the sacrament actually being the blood and body of Christ. Okay. So I am not, and we are not, anything close to transubstantiationists. The Catholic church teaches that when the priest consecrates the elements, there is a change of state. That the bread turns to human flesh, that the wine turns to blood. I think that is false, dangerously false, obviously false. And it's why it was an altar too—they're re-sacrificing Christ, right?

So like official Anglicanism calls that, and I quote, repugnant to the Word of God. We do not believe in transubstantiation. And there are large numbers of implications that flow from that. I think it's a grave error.

Jesus uses clearly metaphorical language repeatedly in the Gospels. He does say, "This is my body broken for you." A Catholic perspective will say, well, you're arguing with Jesus. I would say that's honestly silly. Jesus also said, "I'm the vine and you are the branches." Nobody says, "I think he's quasi swamp thingish," right? Nobody thinks that, because it's obvious that he's using metaphorical language.

I think it is just as obvious, and I think there are a lot of significant theological implications that flow from the idea that he is being sacrificed again. So when we say in the words of institution that he was sacrificed—what's the next line?

Once for all.

That is specifically a repudiation of the claim that he's being sacrificed every time we institute the meal. That's super, super important.

A Spectrum of Communion Views

You could take people's views on communion on a continuum. At one end you have transubstantiation, which is a more Roman Catholic take. You come down one click and you're at consubstantiation. The bread doesn't turn into blood and flesh, but the blood and flesh are with it—not trans sub, but consub. That's a more Lutheran view.

You come down another click and you get to what we call real presence. There's nothing physical that is happening, but it is spiritually present. You come down one more click and you're at more of a Baptist kind of remembrance—it is merely that we're remembering him.

Now Anglicanism tends to be big tent, right. Anglicanism is probably centered around real presence and a little bit towards remembrance. It's generally the way people take it. And Anglicanism allows for a fair bit of framing on that. So it's hard to say what Anglicans teach.

I can tell you what I believe is that Jesus is present at the meal, but he is not present in the meal. He is among his gathered people as we come to this. So I would say, is he really present? Absolutely. He is promised when two or three are gathered, he is there in the midst of us. But I don't think he's on the table. I think he's at the table and among his gathered people.

Now, I'm not sure that Dave would state it exactly that way. I'm not sure that Brian would state it exactly that way. And there is some kind of a range on this. I think it's meaningful, I think it's significant. I think that we are to understand that as we partake of this meal that represents him, he is here with us.

The Anglican church has moved away from Cranmer. Cranmer's view is representative of my view, right? But there are others that are present day Anglicans that would deviate from both me and Cranmer and move closer towards a more mystical supernatural material presence—more than I would affirm. But there's a range of views.

And with that, and probably the ending of my career here, we will be done. Thank you for coming. We'll do it again next week.