Repitition, Anticipation, Laughter, and Worship

Diversity, variety, give me something new.  Something I’ve never seen before.  Why should I settle for the same old, same old?  Such is the spirit of the age today.  We are always looking for something new, something different.  Change is good, new is better.  Out with tradition!  We want something new.

But that’s a rather unnatural spirit to be sure.  A few minutes ago, I tickled my nephew Tristian.  The first time, he thought about it for a second or two and then gurgled into laughter.  The second time, he laughed immediately.  And the third time . . . he laughed before I’d even touched him.

The spirit of the time is pretty clear in how people look at various worship styles.  So many are looking for variety and newness of form and substance.  But constant change doesn’t allow you to adjust, to soak things in, or to really learn.

When we come to worship as a child, repetition and anticipation become the spirit with which we worship.  Instead of seeking something new, we should be seeking to hear the same thing over and over again.  Not only seeking, but expecting and anticipating it.  A good liturgy helps us in this.  When God tickles us the first time with the message of His grace and salvation, it takes a while for it to sink in.  We are a bit slow on the uptake, after all.  As we grow accustomed to how God meets us in worship we begin to receive the message quicker.  And as we learn the patterns and get the hang of things, we begin to anticipate the movements of worship.  When we confess our sin and hear the assurance of forgiveness, our hearts already begin to lift before the officiant even speaks the words: “Lift up your hearts!”

As God’s children, we ought to come to worship with a child-likeness that learns, takes delight, and laughs in anticipation of God coming to tickle us.

An Infant Theology

All of life is theological.  Every human experience, every part of human existence, relates to the true Trinitarian God in some way, because man is created in the image of God.  Our emotions, responses, even the most mundane things like eating and breathing have something to teach us about God and how he relates to his creation.

One thing that I’ve been thinking of is how attachment psychology relates to God’s dealings with us.  Particularly attachment in infants.  A lot of study on child psychology and development has taken place in recent years, leading to a resurgence in practices like co-sleeping, baby wearing, and even breast feeding.  One article I came across has a good overview of how parental practice affects attachment in infants and parents.

It’s interesting.  When a mother nurses her infant, the hormone oxytocin is produced both in the mother and the infant from the close physical contact.  Oxytocin is directly associated with attachment and bonding between people, whether between spouses or between a mother and her child.  Not only does the infant produce oxytocin, but it obtains a “double dose,” as it were through its mother’s milk.  Nursing is God’s designed way of bringing a mother and her infant into close fellowship, attaching them to one another, and providing a physiological foundation for the mother to joyfully and effectively raise her child.  This stage of attachment is particularly important for the healthy development of an infant.  You can’t wait a few years to bond and hope for the same effect.  An infant who does not attach may suffer severe consequences throughout life, well into adulthood.

It’s an amazing thing, God’s great design.  But the purpose of my posting this isn’t to argue the benefits of breast-feeding infants.  There are plenty of good articles that do that by much more qualified people.  I’m posting this to dig a little deeper.  Like so many aspects of humanity, nursing does not stand alone, and it’s not merely utilitarian.  A psychologist may be able to describe what is happening physiologically, but he cannot tell you why it is so in a deeper sense than that of natural cause and effect.

It’s no accident that feeding a child is directly associated with attachment in the design of this universe.  The one who feeds attaches.  In fact, God uses the imagery of nursing children and other images of feeding to describe  his love for his chosen people.  The passage comes first to mind is Isaiah 66:10-13.

“Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her,
all you who love her;
rejoice with her in joy,
all you who mourn over her;
that you may nurse and be satisfied
from her consoling breast;
that you may drink deeply with delight
from her glorious abundance.”

For thus says the LORD:
“Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river,
and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream;
and you shall nurse, you shall be carried upon her hip,
and bounced upon her knees.
As one whom his mother comforts,
so I will comfort you;
you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.

God promises his people that in the day that he extends peace to Jerusalem, he will feed them.  And not merely feed them, but nurse them.  They will be nourished and comforted.  And when did this happen?  When did God give Jerusalem peace, that his people might rejoice and be fed by her?

Of course, the final peace of the true Jerusalem, the Church, is found in Christ.  It’s interesting to note that it is specifically Jerusalem who feeds us in the prophecy.  Also striking is the imagery of Jerusalem’s citizens as nursing babes, all of them.  While it is Jerusalem who feeds, it is God who comforts in Jerusalem.  The juxtaposition of nursing with comforting is clear as well.  Long before our modern psychological studies, the prophets knew that nursing and comfort and attachment all to together.

And today in the Church age after the coming of Christ and the extending of God’s peace to us, Jerusalem does feed us, through the meal that Christ gave us in his Lord’s Supper.  Through the Supper we are continually spiritually joined to Christ and his body, the Church, the New Jerusalem.  It’s a vital part of our attachment to Mother Kirk.  Without its faithful partaking, as with the infant without a nursing mother, it is not impossible that we should grow in the Church, but it is against God’s design, and only makes things needlessly difficult.

Finally, I did mention that nursing is critical in infancy, because of that child’s development.  If the first months are neglected, all is not necessarily lost, but both infant and mother have been deprived of God’s designed way to facilitate a loving bond.  Neither mother nor child might even realize what has been missed.  Obviously, the infant has no conscious understanding of what is happening when it nurses.  But something has been lost, which cannot easily be recovered.

Likewise, if we neglect God’s designed way to nourish and strengthen the bond between the Church and her members, and if we say the Church should not feed her little ones, we shouldn’t be surprised if they do not attach, and later grow away from Mother Kirk.  As with an infant, it is not so much the understanding of being fed that is important.  It is the feeding itself.

And so the Church must feed its children, especially the little ones.  Because it makes the faith of the Church the faith of the child.  A son of the Church will grow with and into the conscious understanding that it is not his parents who ultimately give true spiritual food, it is Jesus Christ Himself, working through his Bride and Body the Church.  The daughter of the Church will know from experience that it was not her own understanding that saved her, but only Christ who set her apart at birth and fed her from the day she could handle solid food.

Eating Things Has Consequences

When God commanded Adam not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and simultaneously provided a Tree of Life for their proper food, he was placing a covenantal meaning onto physical objects. The warning was that in the day they ate of the wrong tree, they would surely die. Did God follow up on his promise of consequence in a real way? Certainly. The day that Adam and Eve ate of the Tree, they died spiritually and became subject to physical death.

So in what way did the fruit of the Tree convey death to Adam and to the human race after him? Was the fruit toxic? Did it carry in it a hereditary disease? Not at all. The fruit itself was good for eating, for God created all things good. It was covenant commandment that was attached to the fruit that conveyed with it consequences. Adam brought death to himself and to his race by eating the fruit, but it was not the fruit that killed him. It was the covenant sanctions attached to disobedience that brought death.

Today, the Church also has a covenant food. A meal with blessings and curses attached to it. It has become common among even Reformed Christians to say that in the Lord’s Supper, nothing actually happens. The bread and wine do not physically become the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and therefore it would be superstitious to think that the bread and wine are anything special or that eating them might actually do anything to or for you, right? After all they are only useful as means to help us to remember Christ’s sacrifice.

But that is not how covenant food works. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians that those who eat and drink unworthily eat and drink judgment to themselves. The reciprocal is also true. When we eat and drink rightly, we have true fellowship with Jesus Christ. Is it anything inherent in the bread and wine that brings this about? Not at all. But that does not diminish the use of bread and wine, for they are covenant symbols (there is nothing “mere” about a symbol) of what they represent, namely the body and blood of Jesus Christ. To dishonor the elements or to use them lightly is to dishonor Christ himself. Not because the elements have been mystically changed, but because they represent him as their covenant function.

A good analog might be the Reformed doctrine of imputation. When God justifies and declares us righteous, he does so on account of Jesus’ righteousness, in commendation of a righteousness we do not have in ourselves.  Even so, the covenant food is imputed or reckoned to be to us Christ’s body and blood.  It is the God the Holy Spirit who applies the reality of the sign so that it is as if you had eaten his flesh and drank his blood, as he says we must do in John 6.

Just as it is the Spirit that applies the reality of the sign, it is the Spirit that judges the use of the sign.  When Adam misused covenant food it was not the food that judged him, but God himself.  So also if we misuse our covenant food it is God who judges, not the food. There is no active causality in the food, but there is direct correlation.

But the Table of the Lord is intended for life. God has given us an easy enough guideline to follow for worthy partaking that even a child can do it. One who eats of the Church’s covenant food need not be sinless or especially knowledgeable. They must simply eat in faith and in fellowship, waiting for and upon one another in love. This is no forbidden fruit to bring us death. The covenant food is intended to bring life to those who eat it in covenant.  It must be taken in faith, yes, but also God strengthens faith through it.  Surely even faith so small as a mustard seed.

“In Remembrance of Me”

We often take these words for granted when we hear them spoken at each communion.  But it is always good to think about what exactly we are to be remembering.  When Jesus broke bread with his disciples at the last supper, he commanded them to do likewise in remembrance of him. ¹

Many times we simply assume that this means in remembrance of Jesus’ death on the cross.  After all, that commandment was given “on the night on which he was betrayed,” the evening before he went to the cross.  But at the same time, we should not turn the Lord’s Table into the commemoration of an event, for it is given to us to be the remembrance of a person.

Communion is given to us to remember Christ and all that he is.  Of course this includes remembering his primary earthly mission to die on the cross for the atonement of sin.  But in remembering the event we must not lose sight of the whole person.  There is a historical and eschatological aspect to what we do at the Table.  We must remember Jesus Christ—who he was, what he became, what he did, who he is and what he is doing now, and what he has yet promised to do.  Every time we eat and drink, we declare (in the present) Christ’s death (in the past) until he comes (in the future).  What Paul says here has a scope as broad as all of history, which requires the remembering of Christ’s whole person and work.

Therefore, we should not have an unhealthy preoccupation with Jesus’ suffering when we approach the table.  Yes, we remember it as an essential part of who he is and what he did on our behalf.  But that is not all he is.  When we remember Jesus, let us remember him as very God the Son, sent from the Father, who took on our human nature, who was sinless, who died for sin and rose again, who ascended to the right hand of the Father, who makes intercession, who meets with us in worship, who will come again to judge the living and the dead, and who will claim his bride, the Church, to close the final chapter of history.  If we neglect any of these things in communion and instead turn the Table into the memorial of a single event, then I think we do not properly remember Jesus Christ, the person.

Historically, the Eucharistic prayer has been specifically worded to remember Christ in this way.  In a full prayer, rather than reducing the remembrance only to Jesus’ betrayal and death, we remember Jesus the person and all he has done, is doing and will yet do.  This is not to say that we must have a written prayer that follows a strict wording preapproved by some hierarchical oversight (not to say there is anything inherently wrong with precomposed prayers either).  Justin Martyr describes the early Eucharistic prayers as extemporaneous.  But whether extemporaneous or precomposed, the prayer should be framed to deliberately remember and offer thanksgiving for and to Jesus Christ the person.