introspection

When we partake of the Supper we should pay close attention to the obvious. Stick with me here, this is a table with a meal spread upon it. There’s a tendency in our evangelical piety to, in practice, completely overlook this glaringly obvious aspect of what we do.

Amongst our Evangelical ranks there are some who––in an effort to obey the call to “examine yourself” & to “worthily take the Supper”––have done some renovations to the furniture of this sacrament. They put the command to examine oneself into practice by acting as if the Lord’s Supper is like a crust of bread being slid under the cell door to a prisoner in solitary confinement. Instead of a table around which God’s elect children gather to commune with Him and each other, they turn this into an icy corridor of 6×6 cells of introspective piety.

The Lord summons us here to a joyful feast with more than plenty for all who He calls. He doesn’t send us to our rooms to think long & hard about how badly we’ve behaved and only get dinner if we are able to attain the properly morose disposition. Our Father wants us to pull in our seats around this table, facing Him and each other, to enjoy the manifold ways He has brought us, saved us, sustained us, and nourished us.

With beaming faces we fellowship around this table, reflecting Christ’s light back to Him in praise and towards each other in faithful encouragement. Introspection, however, thinks that the proper thing to look at during the Lord’s Supper is the blank cement of the walls of our atrophied pietism.

In faith, we look at Christ as we look at this bread & wine. In faith, we look at each other and see Christ’s bride.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

Jesus has three instructions for this meal. Take it. Eat it. Do it in remembrance of Him. But notice the gracious simplicity in what Jesus commands. He commands you to receive the bread and wine that is handed to you from Him through His ministers, and passed to you by your fellow saints. He commands you to eat (and drink) it. That is something that even the youngest saint can do quite capably. He commands you to take, to eat and drink, and to do it in remembrance.

Paul exhorts us to not partake of this meal in an unworthy manner. But notice the wise simplicity of where Paul tells us the field of play is: seeing Jesus in this family Supper (1 Cor. 11:26-29). Whose family is this? It’s our Father’s family, purchased by our older brother’s blood. Our babies sit at our supper tables, untroubled by wondering whether they belong there. All they’ve known is that these are their people, this is their table, they are in.

It’s when someone eats this meal with self-centered introspection––waving the wand of the piety-meter to ensure the holy feels are measuring high enough––that they’re failing to discern Christ’s body, and forget Him in the partaking. Soul-searching tunnel vision blinds you to beholding Christ in these gathered believers. You’re eating and drinking damnation when you eat this meal selfishly, with arrogant disregard for Christ Himself and His precious bride which surrounds you.

But you are eating it obediently––whether you’re a saint with nothing but white hair, or a saint without any hair yet––when you take it and eat it, together with this family of blood-bought saints; and in so doing, we together make a memorial of Jesus, Who is in it all, and through it all. And thus we do it in remembrance of Him.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus…

A Table not a Cell

Tunnel Vision Not Allowed