There are those of us who quite enjoy the experience of doing church online. It’s convenient, you can wear your ugg boots and trackies for example. I’ll be honest. I’m not one of them. I’m learning to make the most of it, and there are things we do as a family to make it work for us. I’d love to hear how you are making it work.
One of my bugbears with streamed services is the lack of participation. As an aside, this is something I and the staff team are wanting to lift where we can (through things like psalms of call and response, times of reflection and prayer in households etc).
Some people are really not comfortable sharing the Lord’s Supper online, and I get that. One of the most convincing reasons not to do it is that in the New Testament, the Lord’s Supper is instructed for churches when they gather. You can see this in 1 Corinthians 11.17-34 where Paul uses the phrase ‘when you gather’ five times.
However to use this as a reason not to share the Lord’s Supper online, seems to me, an argument from silence. Paul is not addressing a situation when Christian's are unable to gather because of illness, or persecution….or a pandemic. He is simply stating what any of us would - when you gather for worship and share the Lord’s Supper do it this way…
I have found that those who tend to hold this view also hold a view that the Lord’s Supper is not an essential element of Christian worship.
For me, it comes down to two convictions.
First, the Lord’s Supper is an important element of our worship.
One of Jesus’ last acts before his crucifixion was to gather his disciples and institute this meal.
‘On the first day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb, Jesus’ disciples asked him, “Where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to eat the Passover?” So he sent two of his disciples, telling them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. Say to the owner of the house he enters, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there.” The disciples left, went into the city and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover….
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take it; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it. “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,” he said to them. “Truly I tell you, I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.
Mark 14.12-16, 22-26
That the early church understood this as an institution from Jesus is seen, I think, in how Paul quotes Jesus’s words here in 1 Corinthians 11. And what is fascinating here is that Paul’s letter was probably written before the gospels. This means that there was an oral tradition of Jesus’ words (later recorded in the gospels as the generation of eyewitnesses neared death) that Paul and the early church knew and practiced when they gathered.
Our reformed, evangelical, Anglican tradition has, for the most part, understood that the Lord’s Supper is an ordinarily essential element of corporate worship.
John Calvin put it like this:
Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to Christ’s institution, there, it is not to be doubted, a church of God exists
This is important, because for Calvin, and the reformers of the church, what they thought about Lord’s Supper was connected to the question ‘where is the church?’
The reformers were trying to answer the question: ‘where is a true church?’ And their answer was: where the word of God is preached and the sacraments (baptism and the Lord’s Supper) are duly administered.
This is reflected in Article 19 of the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion:
‘The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful people, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered.’
Second, even when we’re not physically present we are still the church of God at St Paul’s Canterbury.
We are the people of God, and we are his people gathered in Christ at St Paul’s. There is something spiritually significant about walking into the church hall on a Sunday and worshipping God together. Gathering together online just simply isn’t the same.
But it's not just that we meet in a hall together that makes us a church family.
God has bound us together in Christ and when you chose to make St Paul’s your home you chose to be one with his people here. While we don’t have a formal membership course at St Paul’s like some churches do, if St Paul’s is your church home you are spiritually bound with his people here. The fact that we can’t meet as one family in person doesn’t change your oneness with Jesus’ people here.
Sharing the Lord’s Supper (even from our homes) is one way we express that.
Like I said at the beginning, I really don’t like doing church online….and I’m learning to make the most of it. Whatever ways I can suck some joy and authenticity out of this I will. Last year when we shared the Lord’s Supper while in lockdown was one small, but spiritually significant way I could participate in the service and remember that I’m one with Jesus and one with his people.