An Answer to the Reasons Why Not
Over the last several years, there have been many articles written about the benefits of offering the Lord’s Supper weekly. A book has even been written about it (pictured above)! In the encouragement to practice the Sacrament often, as our Lord commands, the authors or bloggers will often provide reasons why many don’t offer the Sacrament weekly and how to work through them. As you know by now, the reasons for not celebrating Holy Communion certainly exist. They range from the Divine Service taking too long to not having enough people on the Altar Guild. The reasons also include the myth that the Sacrament won’t be as special if you offer it more frequently. The question is asked: “What will we do with visitors, especially if we have a school? How will we maintain the unity of the Supper on Lutheran Schools Sunday? It’s better if we just skip celebrating that day. We’ll get forgiveness in the Absolution anyway, right?” And, of course, there will always be that one person who comes along and pokes the “that’s too Catholic” nest.
The point is that we’ve all seen the lists. We’ve all heard the reasons. Some of you might be reading this and hold to some of them. No matter the reason given for “why not,” they all grow from decades of a lack of teaching and preaching about the importance of the Sacrament and what’s happening there. Why should we expect people to desire something they’ve not had emphasized as central to the life of a Christian and the culmination of our gathering together in the Divine Service?
I have been amazed at the number of people who say, “You sure do talk about Communion a lot.” It caught me off guard for a while until I actually went back and read sermons from the 1930s through the 1980s. I flipped through old volumes of the Concordia Pulpit. I didn’t read with anything in mind other than seeing how a certain Gospel text was preached during the times of World War 2 and Korea and then kept reading. In the sermons, there is a lot of talk about grace, faith, and hope, but there is little to no mention of the Sacrament of the Altar. It’s not that grace, faith, and hope are bad things. They by no means are! But they are abstract things. The Sacrament of the Altar puts visible, tangible elements to those abstract things and says, “Here is grace and faith and hope for you.”
Throughout those days of theological liberalism leading to the church growth movement, the emphasis was turned from people coming to receive what God had to give onto an individualistic “me and my faith” ideal. The purpose for gathering was no longer to receive but to be challenged with weekly evangelism tasks. This fit the individualistic model well because people got to go out and show what “good Christians” they were by giving their “witness.” Once every three years or so, these movements flare up within the LCMS, too. (OK, boomer.) When the primary function of the Divine Service is no longer Christians coming to receive but to send people out, the need for the Sacrament dwindles. It becomes an “added extra” for special occasions (and only when it’s convenient).
The lack of preaching and teaching about the Sacrament has caused the list of reasons “why not” that we see today. What we have heard so often in the Bible has happened now to us. A generation arose who did not know the importance of the Sacrament (cf. Exodus 1:8; Judges 2:10). The response of pastors and parishioners should not be primarily to go through the list of reasons why not one by one and debunk them. Pastors, instead, should be ready to faithfully preach and teach. Parishioners, likewise, should be ready to “hold up the prophet’s hands.” When we hear what the Sacrament is and what is being done for us there, the reasons why not simply become excuses why not.
So can you argue that I’m targeting previous generations of pastors for being unfaithful in their ministry? That’s not my intention. My goal is to drive to a humble recognition that we can always do better. We have a great treasure that God has given to us: the very body and blood of Jesus Christ, given and shed for the forgiveness of sins. May you who practice weekly Communion not take it for granted, and may you who strive for it do so with patience that through teaching and preaching, the body might be strengthened and ultimately nourished in body and soul to life everlasting.