The Body of Christ is not a Snack

I will never be a very good Protestant. Or maybe the better way to put it is that I’ll always be a little bit Catholic. Namely in the way of sacraments. Especially in the way of communion.

After my first Protestant communion experience, I watched in horror as college kids tossed the bread around the sanctuary and then made plans to go home and make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches out of it. Since then, I’ve had a few positive communion experiences, but I’ve also had to bear witness to Protestants holding hands, text messaging and talking while they waited to receive communion.

Anyway, Protestant communion has left a very bad taste in my mouth and even though I am preparing to be an ordained Protestant minister, I avoid non-Catholic communion whenever possible. This avoidance includes the weekly communion service at my seminary every Friday.

Today I was finally able to tangibly show people why I am so uncomfortable with/annoyed by the way so many Protestants handle the Lord’s Supper.

After chapel everyone gathers for coffee, bagels and other snackish things for purchase. Much to my horror, a shallow dish containing the left over communion was sitting on the same table as the bagels, coffee and cream cheese. Seriously, the pieces of unleavened bread could have been Doritos.

Come on people. Would you use Doritos to serve communion? Well, then what on earth makes you think it is appropriate to treat the communion as if it were Doritos?

I know that the Roman Catholic church has a much different sacramental theology than any Protestant denomination. As does the Orthodox church. And there are even lots of differences in the Protestant world. But in what I believe to be both legitimate Reformed and Catholic theology, the sacraments are an outward sign of inward grace, a means of experiencing God’s graces and a mark of the covenant God has drawn us into. Whether the bread and wine become literally Christ’s body and blood is a mystery I feel no need to analyze, agree or disagree with. The whole point, transubstantiation aside, is that the elements bear God’s grace, grace given to us to satisfy and sanctify. And God’s grace is not snack food, bird food or any other kind of food.

Even if I were to follow a more Baptist route and say that the sacraments are meant to convey our faith in God and to remember what Christ has done , I think I would still say that communion is a special, sacred thing. They may not carry grace, but that hardly suggests the elements should be treated the way you would treat anything you make breakfast out of or that is flavored with nacho cheese.

Population Control

With the earth’s population spinning out of control, maybe we should stop having sex and just masturbate.

That’s the wise cynical comment one of my favorite professors made during my 8:00 class this morning. We were talking about family, Old Testament family values and seed spilling.

Gomer, sweet Gomer

I thought marriage and family week in ethics was last week, but apparently it’s this week too. Our prof was going over various places in scripture where marital faithfulness is discussed when one student raised his hand and said, “You mean the women Hosea married wasn’t from a place call Whoredom? She was actually a whore?” He was serious. I died of laughter on the inside. Where do you suppose he thought Whoredom was?

and preaching update…it went very well. I got a lot of positive feedback from a variety of folks. I did succeed at calming my busy hands down. Only to develop some random leg kick thing. My sister said I didn’t look like a bad karate movie anymore, but I did look an awful lot like a Rockette.

Exegetical Extravaganza

I just turned in my final Greek exegetical project - 9 minutes before the deadline.  It was 18 pages long.  How could there be so much to say about 10 verses?  Writing this thing has left me feeling like I’ve been driving for hours on end.  My butt hurts.  I have calluses on my wrists.  It’s Tulip Festival so there were marching bands going buy for an hour or two earlier.  Then the girls across the street set up their lemonade stand for the 5th straight day and have been shouting “LEMON-AY- ADE, TWINNY FI SINS!!”  I want to shake them.  Did I mention it’s been going on for 5 days?  They haven’t sold any lemonade yet.  You’d think they’d give up and go back in the house.

The last several hours have really added to the car-like analogy b/c I tried to shut the windows to drown out the band and the kids, but I got so blasted hot with the sun shining directly at me that I feel car sick.  I didn’t have enough time to spare to get up and open the window again.

I didn’t even really do any citations.  The new Microsoft Word does them for you…kind of.  It’ll take care of in-text stuff but you have to do your own footnotes.  I was getting so close to the buzzer that I just skipped out on the footnotes, put in Word’s automatic in-text citations, generated the automatic bibliography and moved on. 

I seriously feel like I’m coming off of something.  Can you get a hangover from First Peter?  This is out of control.  Well, I’m going to go drink a lot of water and go walk around the block a few times.  Thanks for celebrating/being slightly concerned/commiserating with me.