Date: 04/20/2022
Questions
A couple questions inspired by the sermon on communion:
- I know some churches take communion every week or every first Sunday of the month, is there a reason why Gateway doesn’t? Is there a sort of schedule that Gateway has for communion (like once every 3 months, once a quarter, etc) or is it more of a sporadic thing?
- History of weekly, monthly, quarterly (Calvin and Geneva)
- Gateway’s current practice (what we’ve done in the past)
- Why don’t we do it weekly (mainly logistics).
Is it theologically ok for a Christian to take communion by themselves? By themselves meaning without a pastor/elder/deacon to give it to them?
- Communion is something done when the church is gathered together. Not for individual Christians.
- “What about Life Groups or other groups of Christians” is the usual follow up. I don’t want to be overly legalistic, but our Life Groups or another type of gathering of a group of Christians isn’t the church. Are you having a sermon preached? Are you practicing church discipline? Etc…usually communion and baptism are separated from the local church gathering but these other marks of the church aren’t (at least church discipline isn’t). What makes the church unique? What do we do as a church? I’d caution us from taking something the church does together and start doing when the church isn’t together.
At different youth groups/Bible studies I’ve attended over the years (non-Gateway ones), we’ve taken communion with crackers or chips and water- is that theologically ok? Does it always have to be bread and grape juice?
- Historically, it’s been bread and wine. But there’s no rule saying it must be a certain kind of bread or grape juice. We do this because of what we observe in Scripture (it’s described) not because it’s commanded (or prescribed) to be done with bread versus crackers and so on.
Is there a specific way communion is prepared at Gateway? Like, does it have to be consecrated before it’s passed to the congregation?
- Nothing special is done as we don’t believe that physically anything happens to the bread and cup.
- Do we make sure hands are washed and the juice isn’t out of date? Sure! But nothing like you would find done in a Catholic church.
What would you say is a good age for someone to start taking communion? Or should it be for all ages? My parents didn’t let me take communion until I was a teenager and there didn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to it — I think they wanted us to wait until we understood the importance of communion but honestly, I don’t think I truly understood the importance of it until a few years ago.
- There’s not a certain age. The point is that the Lord’s Supper is for baptized believers. It’s not something we should allow a child to do because they’ve nagged us, or they’re upset that their older sibling gets to participate. It’s a meal for believers in the church.
- So, if someone is baptized as an infant, we look for their profession of faith. If someone wasn’t baptized as an infant, we look for their profession of faith followed by their baptism.
- This is why during our evening communion service, in the fall, we usually do baptisms first and communion later in the service. It gives those just baptized the opportunity to then take communion with the church.
In Life Group we were talking about why the disciples might have thought it was hard to do what Jesus asked as it pertained to the donkey. Scripture doesn’t say they stopped and held a meeting to vote on if they should do what he asked. I would like to think since they’ve already seen all the miracles Jesus had done, they would have just done it. It is strange he would ask for a colt, but he was fulfilling scripture. I’m not sure if they doubted or debated. Maybe they were faithful, which I pray I can be.
- Since we’re finishing up Mark’s gospel — and we recently saw something similar asked of the disciples — in finding the room where they would eat the Passover meal — it seems like now’s a good time to respond to this question.
- I want to address the “after having seen all of the miracles, the disciples would’ve simply done what Jesus asked them to do” statement made in this question. The implication being that “seeing Jesus do miracles” would’ve eliminated any doubt or uncertainty in the disciples. That witnessing the miracles would be enough to inspire them to be faithful. That’s the gist of what’s being stated in the question.
- What about the obvious examples of unfaithfulness and doubt the disciples show after going to get the donkey in Mark’s gospel? If all it took was them seeing Jesus do miracles and their default position was now that of being faithful — no longer confused by or doubting of what Jesus tells them to do — then there’s a lot of things I have questions about. For example…and all of these come after Mark chapter 11 and Jesus telling them to go get the donkey.
- Why were they confused about Jesus’ teaching on the temple being destroyed?
- Why did they get upset when Mary was being faithful in anointing Jesus for his burial?
- Judas saw Jesus do the miracles yet his story doesn’t end as an example of faithfulness.
- In fact, all of the disciples wonder if they might be the one to betray Jesus.
- Peter rebukes Jesus when Jesus tells him that he’ll deny knowing Jesus three times.
- They fall asleep three times when Jesus asks them to be faithful and pray for him.
- When Jesus is arrested they all run away.
- Peter does deny Jesus three times.
- None of the disciples come to his defense.
- And not one of the disciples helps to bury his body.
- Here’s the point: Being a witness to the miraculous means nothing in regards to a person’s faithfulness. The disciples all do show faithfulness after Jesus’ resurrection — but even then their track record has ups and downs (For example, Paul rebukes Peter for showing prejudice in Galatians).
- So the good news is that — like the questioner states — “maybe they were faithful, which I pray I can be.” They were faithful and we can be faithful too. But being faithful and being faithful all the time — meaning never having doubts, questions, even acts of unfaithfulness — these are two very different things. We can all be in the first category — through faith in Christ we can all “be faithful.” Yet none of us can live up to the second category — being faithful all the time.