First Sunday of Advent: Expectancy

Jeremiah 29:11- For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.

Have you ever expected a surprise gift? You know that its coming but you do not know what it looks like or when its coming; but you have the faith that the gift is on its way. The ancient prophets have always declared that a deliverer was coming to save them from their oppression. The deliverer would be conquering King liberating the poor and squashing injustice. However, the royal Son came not wrapped in royal robes but in swaddling clothes of a baby born in a manger. Yet we know that the smallest gifts in life can be the most valuable. Who has not seen a small with a diamond ring wrapped in pretty papers? This gift is insignificant in its smallness, but when you unwrap the gift, there is a precious diamond ring that outshines the big flat screen T. V.
Oh, how many times the smallest gift given by the least such as a handmade gift from a child is worth more than the diamond ring. Advent teaches us about the nature of expectancy. The Jewish people expected a powerful Warrior to be their Messiah, and yet God’s Messiah was a helpless babe born to poor parents. He would defeat the oppressive systems of this world not by violence committed but by violence taken – taken upon Himself through the cross. The seal of this defeat was His resurrection from the dead.
The Lord has a plan for your life and a future for you even though the gift of the future may not be exactly how you planned it to be. Small packages contain explosive contents. Remember expect the unexpected and you will find that the biggest pleasure in life is in the small things.

The Emerging Church? The Universal Church?

I have a few questions about the Emerging Church and how it relates to minorities. Is it a WASP movement? Will minority churches go through the same steps as the white churches at arriving at an emerging state. Or in order to become emerging do we not need to invite all to the table and learn from each other. I will give my thoughts after I hear yours.

My View on the Eucharist

Yes, indeed I am a slacker, I have been lazy and undisciplined when it comes to my blog. This is not a good thing when one is in the process of becoming a priest. Yet perseverance is also a virtue and redemption is always part of the process. So now I will make my case that the nature of the Eucharist is Incarnational. What do I mean by this? The Eucharist is Bread and Wine and yet the Body and Blood. Sounds like Consubstantiation. Not quite! It is fully Bread and Wine and fully the Body and Blood. Just like Christ is fully God and fully Man. His Deity and Humanity are joined together in what we call the hypostatic union. The Body and Blood of Christ are joined and embodied in and with the Bread and Wine by the power of the Spirit (and the Words of Institution). There is a change in the elements, the Real Elements of Bread and Wine are joined with the Real Presence of Christ analogous to the Word becoming flesh, fully God and fully Human and just like the Incarnation we must receive this Mystery by faith. The Bread and Wine embodies the Body and Blood of Christ. Therefore after consecration His Presence remains in the elements. We in our society have pitted structure over substance not realizing that they are joined together, the substance is expressed and embodied through the structure without the structure being deconstructed. As Alexander Schmemann says the fathers could talk about the Eucharist being a Symbol without robbing it of its Presence because they understood Symbols as Embodying the Presence. Jesus being fully God and fully Man is the Archetypal Symbol of God because the Substance of God became or took on the Substance of Man therefore joining the two in hypostatic union. There are two natures joined in one person in Christ and there are two natures joined in one Eucharist. Therefore the Eucharist is Bread and Wine without ceasing to be so but also the Body of Blood with nothing diminished in both. Yet this is a mystery that cannot be explained but must be experienced.

Church's Views on Eucharist Part 6 Calvin Final Thoughts

Calvin is right on four points., the Holy Spirit manifests the Presence of Christ. Second, we are taken up in the heavenlies where Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father. Third there is a union with Christ and the Trinity through communion. There is a change in us. However, Calvin refuses to acknowledge a change in the elements because Christ is locally present at the right hand of the Father, so how can he be locally present at the altar. The Early Fathers would acknowledge this to be so, but they also acknowledge a change in the elements. Chrysostom talks about a change when the Holy Spirit comes upon the elements as well as Justin Martyr and others both East and West. There is a change in the element but also with Calvin a change in us. Calvin’s view is almost the same as Schillebeeckx.

My view on the Eucharist will be in the next post.

Church's Views on the Eucharist Part 5 Calvin Continued

Beloved, by eating this bread in faith, we have communion with the real physical body of Christ, and by drinking this wine in faith, we have communion with the real physical blood of Christ. The communion is in proportion to our faith. If a person partakes with no faith, there is no communion. The message of the communion meal is that Jesus' sacrificial death is our spiritual life and nourishment. To the degree that the Holy Spirit uses that message to strengthen our faith in Jesus, to that degree we have a spiritual communion with the total person of Jesus. In this way, the Holy Spirit effects what the Lord's Supper symbolizes for those who believe. Our bodies are nourished through the earthly bread and wine, but our souls are nourished through the heavenly body and blood.
Here is another way to explain what happens at the communion service. The Holy Spirit uses the communion service to strengthen our faith and thus to strengthen our subjective experience of the mystical union with Christ. The mystical union enables us to commune with the humanity of Christ as bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh. Through the miracle and mystery of the incarnation, our communion with the humanity of Christ enables us to commune with the divinity of Christ. Through the mystery of the Trinity, our communion with the divinity of Christ enables us to commune with the Godhead. And the Godhead is the source of all our spiritual life and strength. (Four Views of the Lord's Supper" Matthew 26:26-28 by Grover Gunn pastor, Grace Presbyterian Church Jackson, Tennessee)

Church's Views on the Eucharist Part 4

Let us not forget Calvin. “According to this view, the bread and wine represent the body and blood of Jesus. They do not in any way become the literal body and blood themselves. We do not literally chew on Jesus' flesh with our teeth or literally drink Jesus' blood with our mouths. But when we partake of the Lord's Supper, the Holy Spirit uses the symbolic message that Jesus is our spiritual nourishment, to strengthen our faith in Jesus. And faith is the human experience of our mystical union with Christ. How can we have this mystical union with Jesus in His humanity if Jesus is now at the right hand of God and is not returning to earth bodily until the Second Coming? The Holy Spirit accomplishes this is a way beyond our understanding, not through Jesus' coming down to earth at this time, but through our mystically ascending to heaven. The Christian's identification with the risen Christ is so real and significant that there is a genuine sense in which the Christian is now where Christ is. The Christian is seated with Christ in the heavenlies (Ephesians 2:4-6). The Christian has come to the heavenly Jerusalem and to Jesus and His blood (Hebrews 12:22-24). We are where Jesus is through the mystical union effected by the Holy Spirit. Our subjective experience of the mystical union grows as our faith grows. The Holy Spirit uses the communion service to increase our faith, to strengthen our faith, to confirm our faith. Thus through the communion service, we can have communion with the total person of Christ, including His body which was broken and His blood which was shed for our salvation.

Church's View on the Eucharist Part 3

On the opposite side of Consubstantiation and Transubstantiation there is Zwingli, God bless Zwingli.. If any man’s view has permeated Evangelical Christianity it is his. His view on Communion unites Baptists and Pentecostals, non denominations and mainline Congregationalists. Zwingli said that the Eucharist is a memorial with no Real Presence, it is a pledge of God’s love to us, but nothing else. Zwingli’s heresy sounds like those who say that Jesus is not the God-Man but a good human who shows us what God is and died for us. Jesus is a token of God and so are the elements. There is no Real Presence but a Real Absence.

Church's View on the Eucharist Part 2

What about Consubstantiation? It would seem that Consubstantiation would be a good alternative since it too affirms the Real Presence of Communion without the baggage of Transubstantiation.
“Consubstantiation” is a term commonly applied to the Lutheran concept of the communion supper, though some modern Lutheran theologians reject the use of this term because of its ambiguity. The expression, however, is generally associated with Luther. The idea is that in the communion, the body and blood of Christ, and the bread and wine, coexist in union with each other. “Luther illustrated it by the analogy of the iron put into the fire whereby both fire and iron are united in the red-hot iron and yet each continues unchanged” (The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, F.L. Cross, Ed., London: Oxford, 1958, p. 337).
Consubstantiation sounds more like the heresy of Nestorianism. Nestoriansism states that Christ had two natures that were not united. They coexisted in Jesus. Therefore Mary could be called the mother of Jesus but not the mother of God. The theory of Consubstantiation as stated above that the body and blood of Christ are with, around, and by the bread and wine; yet are not joined to it. In some ways it stresses created elements as elements but it divides the substance. It is as though there are two natures on the altar.

Church's View on the Eucharist Part 1

And yet how many Evangelicals and Protestants idolize that Bible and worship it and not the God of the Bible. They are so busy proving the Bible to be true that they forget to worship the Reality of the Triune God which the written Word brings us into. My good Baptist friend asked me what I thought about Communion. He asked me do I believe in Transubstantiation. I said no. Why do I not believe in Transubstantiation is because Transubstantiation is almost akin to monphysiteism and docietism. The Monphysites believe that Christ had only one nature mainly his divine with a little bit of humanity. Docietism believes in the Divine nature with the mere appearance of a human nature. When I hear of accidents and substance; the accidents being the appearances of bread and wine and the substance being the Body, Blood, Soul, Divinity, etc of Christ under the appearance of bread and wine. I agree there is a change in the elements but the stress on the Transubstantiation is on the Divine totally disregarding the created elements of bread and wine.

An Apology

For those who read the log on the Church's Views on the Eucharist part I and found the profanities, I appologise, someone hacked into my blog.

The Nature of the Eucharist

I am fascinated by the Holy Eucharist. My step-grandfather was a Roman Catholic, and he would take his Southern Pentecostal nephew to church with him. When it was time for the Eucharist he would sneak me a piece of the Body of Christ. There is something about the Mystery of Bread and Wine becoming The Body and Blood of Christ. I was asked by a good Baptist friend how does this happen. I said it happens by the invocation of the Holy Spirit. It is a Mystery! I said. He said that appealing to the Mystery of the Sacrament was dodging the issue of how it happens. He says you actually believe that God works through juice and crackers, and I replied do you actually think that God works through paper, ink, and leather. He told me I had a good point. Why is it that Protestants can believe whole heartedly that the Bible is the God-Breathed Word of God and yet not affirm that the Eucharist by the Holy Spirit and the Words of institution are the Body and Blood of Christ. Yet even Luther would say that the Bread and Wine are the Body and Blood because the Word confirms it. God created the World by the Word and the Spirit, The Spirit who proceeds from the Father hovered over the womb of the Virgin Mary and conceived the begotten Word in the New Creation of redemption. The Spirit breathes on the personalites of men and produce the written Word of God. Yet this Incarnational principle cannot be applied to the Eucharist because that is idolatry….. More in the next Entry

More on the Trinity

Yes, I know t hat this question was a general question. Sometimes when I am busy being a worship and spirituality consultant at a church, I do not want to talk about worship or spirituality when I come home; but alas it is like a fire shut up in my bones and so I must speak. My problem is that worship is not Trinitarian. I do not care if a church confesses a Trinitarian doctrine or not. Listen to how they pray. It is Jesus this and Jesus that as though Jesus is the only person in the Triune Godhead. Even when prayers are addressed to the Father, "Father is a name for Jesus. The Holy Spirit is reduced to the essence of Jesus's Presence and not a full hypostasis. Do not get me wrong I love Jesus. I believe he is the God-Man, but we fail to realize the implication of the Incarnation for our present situation when we fail to realize what Christ did for us. It was by his Incarnation that we now sit at the right hand of the Father! Heresy, you say. Not at all. Philippians 2: 5-11 breaks it down for us. Christ who was in the form of God (form meaning structure and substance; while we Westerners tend to pit structure against substance) took on the form of a slave i.e. fallen human nature so that when became obedient to death- the death of the Cross so that at his resurrection and ascension God gave him a name full of grace that at the name of Jesus everyknee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Lord. Therefore if I am joint heirs with Jesus and sit in heavenly places with him as Paul says in Romans and Ephesians with similar statements in Colossians, then as a son I am seated with Jesus by virtue of Baptism at the right hand of the Father. I am in the position of victory over sin, death, evil, etc. However, how many of us know that we ain't thinking about any of this in our daily lives because we are trying to survive. It is a process to posses your position. This is what working out one's salvation means. We are to press on to the upward calling in Christ because he has already grasped us, but in a fallen world it is hard to realize this. This is why it says in Ephesians that by one Spirit we have access to the Father through Christ. It is the Spirit who helps us in our infirmities and weaknesses and remind us who we are as sons so we cry out Abba in our time of need. Therefore Salvation and the process of Conversion is a Trinitarian event, should not our worship be the same? How in the name of heaven are we suppose to bring people to remember who they are when our worship does not reflect the reality in which we profess. The reality of who we are in Christ and what the Triune God has done for us must be re-enacted in our worship so that we can remember. Our Liturgy must be truly Divine, so that the Spirit can dare I say rapture us up into the heavenlies where He, the Father and the Son are worshipped and glorified One God forever. Yet how we pray and worship is what we believe. Unfortunately our evangelical worship has emphasized a Unitarian emphasis on the second Person of the Trinity (to quote Martin Marty) that this the only reality people have and it is distorted. In liturgical churches the Trinity is a formula, a relic from an ancient creed that is confessed by lived. In the Pentecostal/Charismatic Churches, the Spirit is seen as an it, a gift, or a tongue, and yet Father and Son are seen as the Person like evangelical churches. My question is how in all churches and worship experiences invoke this Sacred Reality, and how can the Trinity become the Living God again in our worship where our lives are transformed and transfigured by the grace of the Spirit.