Partaking of the Table

[TLFisher]

I have a question regarding the table. Is partaking of the table a privilege or a right?
Whatever the response may be, please indicate why.

Terry

[OBW]

Interesting question. And my response is an unequivocal "yes."

It is a privilege allowed to us because of our acceptance of the sacrifice that caused there to be a Lord's table.

But it should be a right for any true Christian to partake unless there is the kind of sin that would cause the church to have excluded the person/Christian. Like the sin described by Paul in 1 Cor. Excluding for lesser reasons is sectarian and casts a shadow over the very observance.

These are, of course, opinions.

And the second causes no small amount of grief because there are some Christian sects that do not allow participation except by known members or at least regular attenders. If their concern is to avoid somehow allowing the unsaved to participate, I do understand. But I believe those that err on the open side do not risk the status of their table if an unsaved one should participate. The error is on the one who participates, not on the church.

[YP0534]

I think my response will be an unequivocal "no."

Both concepts are matters of law and eating is a matter of life.

Having said that, I also readily admit that I have never touched the reality of the breadbreaking meeting. So, it's entirely possible that I have no idea what I'm talking about whatsoever.

Grace to you today!

[OBW]

Originally Posted by YP0534

Both concepts are matters of law and eating is a matter of life.

I understand your answer within the context in which you placed it. As Jesus "ordained" the observance the believer is merely to do it — no right or privilege.

But in terms of the "society" of Christians, where we find that there is a consideration of who should or should not partake, then there is some slight restriction because its only descriptions (and not prescriptions) are of a communal partaking. And while not matters of "law" per se, the very limited restriction that the "society" should place on the observance conveys a sense that in legal terms looks like a right or a privilege. Yet at the personal level, there is a further restriction concerning the attitude of the individual toward the body (that Christian "society") in general that should be discerned, causing the possibility of self-restriction.

Your answer is correct in that the terms "privilege" and "right" have such significant meaning in American jurisprudence and its constitution that cannot be conferred upon the Christian life and experience in the precise same way. But simply saying that it is a matter of life does not answer the heart of the question posed.

As described in scripture, there is this practice of the Lord's table. What are the causes given for inclusion or exclusion from the observance? How does, or should, that play out in real life? Should I, a Christian of "good standing" who rightly regards the "body" be able to partake of the table with an assembly that is not usually my own?

So I would read the question a little more broadly than stated to instead be asking on what basis should a person be restricted from participation, whether by the assembly or by the person them self. Saying that it is a matter of life is like suggesting that the answer is in a common dictionary rather than a legal dictionary.

I do not suppose that we will discover "the" answer or answers, but a sense of the actual answers should be discoverable. We should be able, like the counsel in Jerusalem, to come to some understanding of how we should include or exclude ourselves or others from participation.

Now, is that what we want to do? That is another question.

[TLFisher]

Bear with my analogy. Which is a drivers license.

Having a drivers license is not a right as voting, or US citizenship is , but a privilege. It's earned by passing the written and driving tests. Likewise through our salvation and baptism we earn the right & privilege to partake of the table. The right to drive can be taken away by blindness or by an offense. Likewise the right to take the table can be taken away because of a kind of sin as Mike had noted in 1 Corinthians.

The right to drive cannot be taken away because I don't like the way you drive. As for taking the table, Mike had noted "Excluding for lesser reasons is sectarian and casts a shadow over the very observance."

In regard to taking the table, our birthright has fulfilled the qualification by our salvation and baptism through Jesus Christ. Providing sin is not prohibitive, taking the table is a right and a privilege.

Terry

[YP0534]

Originally Posted by OBW

As described in scripture, there is this practice of the Lord's table. What are the causes given for inclusion or exclusion from the observance?

Mike, I understood your first response to be that the primary concern is our own discernment of our condition before the Lord.

Did I mistake your answer?

And I guess if we really want to take it in the direction you now seem to favor, I think we need to just get a list of all the verses and tack it up on the wall in the form of a couple of tablets. At least it's fair if everybody knows the rules.

But let me reiterate what I felt to be my bigger point:

I've seen God moving in the meetings of the believers.

I touched something extremely real and solid in my baptism.

But every time I have been involved in bread breaking it has been a religious ceremony that I don't even understand or really relate to despite having made a study of it a few times over the years.

Some were less religious than others but all of them had enough character of unreality that I was aware that the most essential part of the thing had been excluded somehow.

And let me confess as a caveat that perhaps the unreality is really all my own having been raised a devout Roman Catholic. It's not transubstantiation so, what exactly is it? That might just be my problem rather than anyone else's. But I really feel with a good degree of certainty that the problem has to do with the Spirit and life rather than additional study of the verses.

Perhaps this matter of asserting rights and enforcing exclusions is an entirely different problem that doesn't have anything to do essentially with the Spirit and life.

I really suspect that it does, but I can be mistaken many times.

[OBW]

My experience with the Lord's table, both in LC days all the way up to this last Sunday has been varied, but usually rich and meaningful. At some level, there has always been a sense of ritual that is not so clearly meaningful. But the environment has also been significant. Although that has been as varied as a lengthy LC "Table meeting" to the very contemplative time that we now enjoy when we have the Table in our assembly, it is a time in which we stop to actually consider the most significant act of Jesus during his brief time on earth.

As for having a list of things to tack on a wall, notice that in my account, there is almost nothing to put there. Personally, I should have some sense of my own present condition and attitude with respect to the body. There is nothing to put on the wall for that. In fact, it almost makes partaking of the Lord's table a right conferred upon salvation, therefore almost no reason for exclusion. Any discussion of why someone should be excluded is almost only needed for those who might have responsibility for maintaining the integrity of the table (whatever that is).

I think that, while the RCC's transubstantiation is wacko heresy, there is something to meaningful ritual. You spend a few minutes focused on the truth of something you do not want to take for granted or let fade in your mind. And in a period in time in which there was a significant illiteracy rate, things like reciting creeds was an important way to make your core belief stick. The table shows us (among other things) the spilled blood of the crucifixion and the one source from which many grains of wheat have sprung.

And yes, it is easy to turn ritual into a mindless thing that is done as a salve for the conscience. That fact is not a slam on the ritual, but on the participant.

[YP0534]

Originally Posted by OBW

My experience with the Lord's table, both in LC days all the way up to this last Sunday has been varied, but usually rich and meaningful.

I will accept your word that it is so for you but it has never been so for me.

In that rather familiar Local Church way, I have previously tried to convince myself that it was great and all but at the end of the day and being really honest with myself before the Lord, it's just a stack of doctrines and some formalities to me even still.

Assuming that touching the reality of the cup means that there is a testimony in the symbol to our daily experience of the blood, I confess that I may have had the faintest glimmering of that reality from time to time.

But as for the whole "many grains" thing? It's still a mystery most profound.

And the complicated Local Church protocols concerning hymn choice and timing of certain types of prayers? I'm inclined to completely reject that sort of structure outright but I can say that I have difficulty believing there's any reality hidden up in all of that.

Perhaps it is the main residue of my upbringing that I have such a strong aversion to all ritual. Another friend of mine has on a different occasion attempted to persuade me in this vein. It's not an intellectual issue but something quite visceral. I'm not remotely interested in asking anyone to divest of their ritual, but it will take true revelation for me to ever become comfortable performing one.

Though I sincerely do appreciate your commendation, it'll have to come direct from the Lord to do the trick for me...