I am prompted to write something on this topic by a heartbreaking incident that has recently occurred in a small vacant mission congregation in Ontario under my pastoral care.  A couple who had been regularly attending the Divine Service chose to stop coming to the confessional church of which they were members in order to participate in the online Bible classes and “attend” the Divine Services of an AALC church in Minnesota.   When I raised the concern about how they were going to receive the Sacrament of the Altar, I was informed that the AALC Pastor communed people over Zoom. Sadly, even after being counselled not to, the couple has now asked to be released from the congregation so that they may become online members of this church in Minnesota.

 I will advise the mission congregation to grant the requested release, but will do so with a heavy heart, as I fail to see how the couple will be able receive proper pastoral care and attend church in another country, several provinces and states away.  While you can hear the Word online and benefit from preaching and teaching, I fail to see how the Church can gather and assemble online.  In an age where so many people work and play online, and even couples believe that they can be sexually intimate online, perhaps it should not be surprising that people believe that they can gather online, but in general to gather or assemble has always meant to be physically in the same place at the same time - especially in the case of the Church.  Just because the prevailing culture says that you can do everything online - including assembling or gathering - does not make it true for the Church.  The church that marries the prevailing culture can only do so by divorcing her Bridegroom. Getting with the times requires her to leave the Timeless One behind.  

From its roots in the synagogue and temple services into its post-Pentecost days the Christian Divine Service has always involved the bodily gathering of the saints as the body of Christ - as an outflow of and manifestation of the truth of the Incarnation.  The Church gathers in the flesh, because the Son of God was made flesh, and so she lives out her life as His body in the flesh.  To assert that she can live out her life as His body without being bodily together is in contradiction to the truth of the Incarnation and a gnostic spiritualization of the body of Christ.  Pondering St. Paul’s analogy of the human body for the Church in 1 Corinthians 12 raises the question of how the body can live its life with its members cut off and physically separated from one another.  What can a hand do for the body when it is not physically connected to the arm?  I shudder to think what the state of a body whose unpresentable parts were located in another country would be.  A dismembered body cannot live and function as a living healthy body, which is why the writer to the Hebrews counsels them not to neglect to meet together (10:25). 

 Asserting that joining a service through zoom is going to church or attending that service is akin to saying that a family who all take their plate of food and go and sit in their own rooms to eat it are sharing a meal together.  Clearly they are not, as they certainly would not be if, rather than having a plate of food they all sat in their own rooms looking at food on their computer screen or handheld devices.  They could not be said to be having a family meal together, even if they were texting one another or even facetiming each other while they looked at the virtual food or nibbled from their own plate in their own separate rooms.  What is apart simply cannot be called assembled or gathered, because what is apart, by its very nature, is not together.  During the recent Covid 19 pandemic, people resorted to such virtual “gatherings” at Thanksgiving or Christmas, by each eating their own food in their own homes while all on Zoom, but they were not gathered or assembled because the whole point was that they could not be, so the best that could be said is that they were eating their own food at the same time.  The joy, therefore, was almost universal when the pandemic finally abated and the last of its major waves receded and families could once more sit around the same table and take food from the same bowls while enjoying each other’s real-life presence.

 All of the above leads into the question of online communion.  I was encouraged to see that the Missouri Synod’s CTCR has counselled and advised their Synod against the practice of online communion.  I was also heartened to hear that the International Lutheran Council (of which the AALC is a member) unanimously adopted a statement rejecting the practice of internet communion at their world conference in Kenya in 2022.  This is good, right and salutary, because based on Formula of Concord SD VII, I do not see how online communion can be considered within the right use of the Sacrament and so in the words of the Confessors - “There is no sacrament.”  In the first place as already demonstrated you do not have the required coming together (1 Corinthians 11:33) of the body of Christ for whom the bread and wine can be consecrated and to whom they can be given.  While the Pastor’s voice may speak the Word of Christ in real time over the internet, it is not his voice’s recitation of the words alone that make the Sacrament, like some magical incantation, but rather when the Pastor speaks the Words of Christ within the whole “This do” institution of it.

 The Pastor online cannot in the stead and by the command of Christ take the bread or take the cup and give them, as the Lord has mandated him to do.  Without question it is the Lord who makes His body and blood present in the bread and the wine, but He does so through the one whom He has called to stand in His stead as he does what He has commanded him to do.  When He takes the bread and the cup and speaks the Lord’s word in the stead and by the command of the Lord, the Lord does not make all bread nor that bread His body, as He does not make all wine nor that wine His blood, but He makes this bread and this cup His body and blood.  This is not to say something extreme, like the pastor must touch every piece of bread for it to be the Lord’s body, but if he does not take it and give it, then He is not doing what the Lord did and so the bread and wine remain outside the Lord’s institution - where they alone become the body and blood of Christ.  What is not physically before the Pastor is neither this bread nor this cup and so they cannot be consecrated or distributed through him to God’s people as Christ’s body and blood.  

 Asserting that Christ makes Himself present in His body and blood through the Pastor’s recitation of the words of institution from hundreds or thousands of miles away over the internet is anti-incarnational and a gnostic spiritualization of what our Lord in His mercy made concrete and tangible for our poor weak flesh.  As Lutherans our certainty that the bread and wine truly are the body and blood of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar is founded on the clear words of our Lord Jesus Christ on the night when He was betrayed and on His institution of this Sacrament with His gracious divine mandate - This do.  Failing to say that there is no Sacrament when we do not follow the “This do”, cannot help but put into question whether there is a Sacrament when we do follow it.   If not doing what Christ told us to do makes no difference with regard to Christ’s real presence in the Sacrament, then how can we know that doing what He told us to do does?  For the sake of the precious Sacrament given to nourish and comfort Christ’s people, I must, therefore confess, that with online communion - There is no Sacrament.  Just as I must in love call the however well- intentioned brother pastor and congregation involved to repent of their misguided and unscriptural practice, lest their blood be required at my hand (Ezekiel 33)

 And so, it will be with a heavy heart indeed that I will advise the congregation to grant the release to this couple, who have chosen to leave their local real incarnate communion to become online members of this church in a foreign land.  If online church membership and online communion are the real deal then perhaps they are the answer for all our struggling congregations and our clergy shortage.  We could close all our lowly little churches and form mega online communities or even just one online community served by our brightest and most gifted Pastors or Pastor, but somehow that does not look like the way of the cross.  The danger of such a Church model, and perhaps the reason why our Lord did not give it, is that of the Church degenerating into a personality cult around particularly popular or entertaining preachers, or even particularly faithful or effective ones.  It not only has been tried and failed with the great TV evangelists, it misses the point that the Lord chooses the weak and despised things of the world, including both poor lowly struggling pastors as well as poor lowly struggling congregations, to shame the strong and the wise.  Long before the internet, God was able to communicate directly with people the world over, as He did with the prophets, but in the fullness of time, in these last days, He sent His Son in the flesh to speak to us in the flesh.

An Online Shepherd serving online sheep, hardly has the character of “he who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives the One who sent me. (Matt 10:40)” 

 Having someone pour water over their own head, while a pastor from a distant land on a handheld screen says the baptismal formula, somehow doesn’t seem to fit the bill of “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19).  Individual Christians sitting in their own homes receiving the Lord’s Supper are hardly positioned to proclaim the Lord’s death (1 Cor 11:26) to their fellow communicants or to the communities in which they live.  A virtual pastoral visit over Zoom at a hospital  bedside seems a bit incongruous with “I was sick and you visited me” (Matt 25:36). A pastor marrying a couple on their cellphones while they hold hands hardly has the character of our Lord’s presence at the wedding feast in Cana (John 2:2). Placing a cellphone in the hand of a dying Christian so that a pastor online can commend them to the Lord in their final hours seems far from the comfort and truth of “Behold, I am with you always” (Matt 28:20).  A disembodied pastor on a screen set up beside a casket in the funeral home hardly seems the right way to confess and proclaim the resurrection of the body and live out the comforting presence of Christ with His people in their grief (John 11:35).  As much as a pastor may be heard and even seen in all of these ways - there is nothing of “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14) about them. 

 Besides the fact that the image of the poor sheep of Christ huddled alone with their hunk of bread and cup of wine lit by the eerie glow of their computer screens depresses the he** out of me, what prevents me from telling the rest of the vacant little mission congregation under my care to forget about struggling along and simply all go home and become online members of Kongsvinger Lutheran Church in Minnesota is that it’s serial killers who dismember bodies not Servants of Christ, who are rather called to build them up..