You cannot sodomize a Sacrament and expect God to say, ‘Well done.

Luther and Calvin believed that both the Roman church on the right and the Zwinglian and Anabaptist churches on the left made the Lord’s Supper too much a place WHERE BELIEVERS DID THINGS FOR GOD...

This insistence on a degree of faith in the communicant is also illustrative of Wesley’s belief in the necessity for the co-operation of an active faith in man with the gift of God’s grace to...

For if we see that the sun, in sending forth its rays upon the earth, to generate, cherish, and invigorate its offspring, in a manner transfuses its substance into it, why should the radiance of...

Very occasionally, a simplified form of communion and of adult baptism for new members of the church would be enacted but no Separatist was ever married in church, because there is no hint of a...

Beginning in 1519 and continuing until the end of his life, Luther expounded a theme that the Sacrament brings and means a fellowship of love and mercy: “This fellowship sonsists in this, that all the...

When exactly did this all change, and what were the social and theological factors that led to the change? The answer seems to be in the second century and: (1) because of the consolidation of...

In the Eucharist we can find all the dimensions of communion: God communicates himself to us, we enter into communion with him, the participants of the sacrament enter into communion with one another, and creation...

Is the Lord’s Supper only for Christians? Whenever I ask this question I immediately remember the character of those that partook of the Last Supper with Jesus. They were certainly Jews, some better Jews than...

Hot dogs and Communion at the Hope Rescue Mission. I will always think of the body of Christ now with this scene in mind. Doctors and housewives and professors in nice shoes and brightly colored...

You’re a mystery the way a sacrament is a mystery.

Beauty, then, is not mere decoration, but rather an essential element of the liturgical action, since it is an attribute of God himself and his revelation. These considerations should make us realize the care which...

The liturgy of the Eucharist is best understood as a journey or procession. It is the journey of the Church into the dimension of the Kingdom. We use the word ‘dimension’ because it seems the...

Has Christ provided such a blessed banquet for us? He does not nurse us abroad—but feeds us with His own breast—nay, with His own blood! Let us, then, study to respond to this great love...

A marriage which does not constantly crucify its own selfishness and self-sufficiency, which does not ‘die to itself’ that it may point beyond itself, is not a Christian marriage. The real sin of marriage today...

Surely we can only come to understand each other’s beliefs by means of direct encounter and open, honest discussion. In the meantime, many free churches invite all believers in Jesus Christ to the Table for...

Centuries of secularism have failed to transform eating into something strictly utilitarian. Food is still treated with reverence…To eat is still something more than to maintain bodily functions. People may not understand what that ‘something...

To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it...