This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Christians & Their Vows” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, February 18, 1990.
About this sermon
In baptism we receive passively, and that stresses God’s grace toward us, while the Lord’s Table calls for active self-examination. The various views of the Supper, and the striking imagery of Psalm 74:12-14, fill out the contrast.
Sermon transcript
Our scripture reading this morning is from 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, beginning at verse 17. I will be reading from the New American Standard Bible this morning. Hear the word of God. But in giving this instruction, I do not praise you, because you come together not for the better, but for the worse. For in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that divisions exist among you, and in part I believe it. For there must also be factions among you, in order that those who are approved may become evident among you. Therefore, when you meet together, it is not to eat the Lord’s supper. For when you are eating, each one takes his own supper first, and one is hungry while another is drunk. What? Do you not have houses in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I will not praise you.
For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus, on the night in which He was betrayed, took bread. And when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.” And in the same way, He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. Therefore, whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. For this reason, many among you are weak and sick, and a number have fallen asleep.
But if we judge ourselves rightly, we shall not be judged. When we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we may not be condemned along with the world. Therefore, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, so that you may not come together for judgment. I will arrange the remaining matters when I come.
Henry Tavares, former pastor at the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Grove City, used to say, “Baptism is a passive sacrament, the Lord’s Supper is an active sacrament.”
You may not fully understand all that he means by this, and your mind may be considering the matters related to each sacrament. But hear it again: baptism is a passive sacrament. The Lord’s Supper is an active sacrament. Considering the differences between the two, baptism is the passive sacrament.
This is the prevailing mood. It is the prevailing mood of passivity that we find in the sacrament of baptism. Whether we are adults or children, we are in fact presented, in the passive voice, to receive baptism. The passive is emphasized. The sacrament itself is applied to us. It is administered to us, clearly and decisively. The water is placed upon us.
We are passive. We are receptive. We are not active in the sacrament. All of this together emphasizes grace—grace at the beginning of the Christian experience, grace multiplied, grace magnified. We being presented, the sacrament applied to us, we being receptive—this all emphasizes what is done to us and for us, not what we do.
I might also add that Henry Tavares, at this point, would argue for immediate baptism. Is it not then clear, in infant baptism, how passive and receptive the recipient is? The child does not come on his own, but is presented. The child is held, weak and vulnerable, incapable.
What a picture! What a picture! It is God’s activity, you see, and that underscores the beginning of Christian experience. But the lesson you see is not lost, even if it is an adult who is baptized. For you see, as passivity is emphasized, all come as the child. All come as the child. In baptism, we are all children. Helpfully presented. With the help of a good old thing. And the bar. What about the Lord’s Supper? And we call this the active part. The prevailing move now is not passivity, but activity. We are engaged.
There is the active engagement of our faith, for instance. A concentration with respect to it, something that is absolutely indispensable for a right reception of this sacrament. Think of it: how well that supper activates your faith, how much you are constrained in it to be active. Do not our standards teach us? Does not the reform they teach us that when we come to the supper of the Lord, our faith is so active that we are to see by faith Christ as literally present?
As those elements are themselves, as really present. As those elements are themselves. We are told that Christ is as really present to our faith as those elements are to our senses. So our faith is activated, energized in a unique and wonderful way with respect to the Lord. But think also about the language that is used by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 11. For not only is our faith activated and engaged, but our consciences as well. We are compelled in this sacrament to be active with regard to our conscience and to scrutinize ourselves. We are to make discernments, judgments with regard to ourselves, lest we be judged. But not.
The activity involved in regard to the elements that contrast them. Directly. Obviously. The fact that. You see, in order. Now to be a celebrant, a participant, you must reach out and take these elements, and you must place them in your mouth. There is the extension of the hand, the taking, the receiving, and the eating. The Lord’s Supper is the active sacrament. Now, we have been talking about vows and oaths that we take, and we have dealt with the whole matter of the relationship of our vows to the sacrament of baptism, but now we move on to consider our vows and our oaths with respect to the second sacrament, communion. Communion is specifically related to certain vows that we take. It may not be immediately obvious to you, for when we are taking the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, we are not again speaking out or taking over, but you see, the Lord becomes the extension of the compassion that we have received when we became a member.
So if you are wondering what you should be thinking about when you are taking the Lord’s Supper, I understand that this is a difficulty. Some of you have spoken to me about this challenge. What am I supposed to be thinking about? One thing that you most certainly can be thinking about is the vows that you took when you became a communicant member.
Baptism itself is not an end in itself. Baptism is unto the profession of faith and full participation in the fellowship of Christ’s Church. It is unto the second sacrament of communion. Your confession of faith is not an end in and of itself. It is unto full participation with the body of Christ. That is why Calvin was able to say, unless you persevere in the Church, you do not persevere at all, friend. You deceive yourself. That is the hallmark. Unless you persevere with the body of Christ, you do not persevere with Christ.
So our intent here is to eventually take up the whole matter of our membership vows, by which we became committed members of the Church of Christ. But that is next week. This week is to set the stage a little better as we think more concretely about the meaning of the Lord’s Supper.
What do you think about this? There have definitely been varied opinions on this subject. In fact, entire churches and entire denominations are built around the doctrine they embrace with respect to the Lord. Let us think about this a little this morning as we move in the direction of considering our community membership vows next week. Let us consider various perspectives on the Lord’s Supper. Is the Lord’s Supper a memorial? Is it a remembrance?
Well, absolutely, we have Christ’s word on it. Do this in remembrance of me. It is a memorial, it is a remembrance. We are told that, as Christ speaks to his disciples, as it is recounted by Paul in First Corinthians, chapter eleven, verses twenty-four and twenty-five. It is also remembrance in the sense that it is something we call to mind now and proclaim. We proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes, as stated in verse twenty-six. But is it only a memorial and a remembrance? Here is where we part company.
But we say no, it is not merely a recollecting of a past event. It is a meal in the present tense, a supper in the present tense. And as a meal and a supper, it is a fellowship. People sitting down at a table, as it were, for the sake of fellowshipping, yes, with one another, as they are the body of Christ, demonstrating the fact that they are part of the community of Christ, but also having fellowship with Christ himself. We, following Calvin, then move on from here in memorial to affirm that the Lord’s Supper is a meal, a meal proper, in which there is fellowship, contemporary fellowship, for the saints and with Christ.
There is something taking place here. We might paraphrase Calvin’s saying: there is something definitely taking place here. Yes, by us, but also by God. A grace conferred, a grace bestowed, comparable to that grace that is bestowed when the word is preached, when the means of grace are entered into generally. So then, the Lord’s Supper is a memorial, yes, but more, a meal. But is it more than a memorial and a meal? Calvin goes further and deeper. It is not merely a memorial, not merely a meal, it is communion. More than fellowship, it is communion.
It is a common union, yes, as we are members of one body, but also as we have been united to Christ, and that union with Christ standing out in His sacrament, wonderfully, gloriously. So when we come to this point, what Calvin wants us to see as he reflects upon the Lord’s Supper is this vital union that exists between the people and Christ.
So real and so true. This fact and reality in Calvin’s mind is such that nothing will suffice but a tightening of the language as respects the meal, so that that language now begins to sound like the very language that Christ uses with respect to his body and his blood. You must eat his flesh and drink his blood. Now Calvin is not a Roman Catholic. He does not believe that there is a real sacrifice taking place, as the Catholics have contended with respect to the mass.
But he sees in the Spirit a vital connection between those elements that are present and the presence of Christ. There is a communion effective now through the sacrament with Christ himself, so that there is a partaking of him in a very real sense. Indeed, as food and drink are indispensable for life and nourishment, so Christ’s body and blood as food and drink are indispensable for our life and nourishment.
I do not know whether you noticed it as you were reading or singing through Psalm 74 this morning, but you may want to note that this psalm is a glorious psalm. The middle verses are especially magnificent, verses 12 through 17. Those of you who are poets and who love poetry could examine those lines and have a great time analyzing them and understanding all that is expressed and implied. But there is one verse I want you to consider carefully, and that is verse 14. After the psalmist has told us that God is my King from of old, verse 12, who works deeds of deliverance in the midst of the earth:
Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength. This brings to mind various images, does it not? The division of the waters of creation and also the dividing of the waters at the Red Sea when God delivered his people. Thou didst drape the head of the sea monsters in the water. He goes on to say, as if there were enemies, forces that opposed God, that God had to subdue, that he had to overcome, that he had to triumph over in order to accomplish his purpose.
And He does that in creation and in redemption. Then He goes on to say, “Thou didst crush the head of Leviathan.” Why, Leviathan, that serpent of old, that multi-headed serpent. It is mentioned again in the book of Revelation, and in the apocalyptic literature of the Old Testament—Daniel, Ezekiel, Leviathan—the force that opposes God. You crushed his head. Have you heard about the crushing of the head of the serpent? It is written that You have given him as food for the people in the wilderness.
That is the King James translation. The metrical version we sang this morning spoke of beasts in the wilderness. It can be translated either way, but the idea is nearly the same. Those who are in the wastelands are fed by the spoils of God’s victory.
They are nourished by the supply that comes from His great, powerful, redemptive act. Now, how do we understand this in New Testament terms? It is not only Satan who has been crushed, but Christ who has been crushed for us. Now His body is given to His people who are in the wilderness, for their life and their nourishment. This is what takes place in the Lord’s Supper. You are being given life and nourishment from the body of Christ, who has undergone judgment, so that you may be sustained and saved.
Glory. Glory. This is why the Lord’s Supper is a communion in which Christ is present, extending to us life and nourishment, and we are being nourished and satisfied by Him. There is real grace. So when you come to the table, you must come with gratitude, with thanksgiving, with praise.
You are about to be fed by Christ. These are signs and seals of the union that exists between you and Him. He is communicating to you His very life and sustenance, so that you may endure while living in this world. But equally, the sacrament is a celebration of gratitude, and it is also a new call requiring an indispensable supply. You see why the apostle is so outraged by the behavior of those who partake. They are anything but sober. In fact, some of them are literally drunk, out of control when they partake.
But if it is Christ that you are partaking of in the sacrament, how can you then partake in an undisciplined manner, out of control, and not realize that it is the body of Christ that you are? Do you know that this blood that you are drinking? If you see it, it will sober you, just as that person was shocked into sobriety. Just like that. If you see it, we are shocked. Perhaps it is in the supply.
And with what attitude, then, must you come? All of this, then, strengthens, secures, and underscores for you not only the seriousness of the sacrament, not only the call made to you through it for gratitude, but also the opportunity to renew yourself, re-consecrate yourself, and re-dedicate yourself to this One who has given Himself for you. Have we not been told? The evangelical wind has swept through the entirety of Western Christianity. They have said to us that the act of rededication is raising your hand at a meeting, going forward, or lighting a candle. This is nonsense. Nonsense.
God’s appointed means of rededication is the Lord’s Supper, the sacrament which He has established. This prepares us to consider, now and in the coming week, the vows we have made in order to participate in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Help us, Lord, as we reflect on the nature of the sacraments You have given. Surely in each of them, in ways unique to each, You have magnified Your grace, deepened our devotion, and built in us, Lord, a growing gratitude. May we be a thankful people, truly, and a people who are sober in our appreciation of Your great gift to us. Bless this church, Lord.
Bless us, Lord, with respect to our vows and promises. Bless us, Lord, to the full measure of our awareness and understanding as we participate in the life of the congregation, and encourage us, Lord, with ready devotion. And Father, if we lack faith, we pray that faith may be given to us. If our faith is weak, may it be strengthened. And if we do have, by Your grace, strong faith, may we be kind to all who are around us, that they may be strengthened, and even surpass us in the quality of their faith.
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