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John Calvin is representative of a significant Reformation tradition that
places Word and Sacrament at the heart of the church's life: "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" (Institutes, 4.1.9). Calvin's marks of the church center on lived
faith within congregations. He does not speak in the first instance about a church's
orthodox doctrine or its sacramental theology, but about the faithfulness of proclamation
and reception and about the faithfulness of broad sacramental practice within local
Christian communities. Calvin's marks point us to congregations not academies,
to churches not libraries. Word and Sacrament are matters of fundamental ecclesial
faithfulness that allow the gospel to be received, believed, and lived.
Approaching ecclesiology from the perspective of Word and Sacrament is not
mere nostalgia for Reformation clarity. Word and Sacrament provide the church
and its ministers with foundational signs of ecclesial faithfulness, for the question
to be asked of any congregation, seminary or judicatory, is whether Word and
Sacrament are found at the heart of common life. Proclamation in Word and Sacrament
is not the only thing churches do, of course. However, designating Word and Sacrament
as marks of the church means that other church activities must not bury Word and
Sacrament or push them to the periphery of church life. Furthermore, the whole
range of church programs must remain subject to authentication by Word and Sacrament,
for these crucial realities are the embodiment of the gospel in the life of Christ's
women and men.
Presbyterian churches have sometimes added church discipline or order as a
third mark of the church. All Reformed churches recognize the importance of discipline
— ordered personal and corporate practices that ensure free space for Word
and Sacrament to flourish. This traditional emphasis on discipline supports the
centrality of Word and Sacrament in the lives of all Christians.
Word and Sacrament continue to be appropriate marks of the church, yet both
are disordered. Baptism remains an isolated liturgical moment, with no connection
to deepened discipleship, to grace-filled vocation and cruciform church life.
The Lord's Supper remains a narrowly liturgical event, restricting its capacity
to shape grace-filled service to the world and hope-filled church life. Neglect
of sacramental life is coupled with an odd North American scarcity of the Word.
In far too many congregations the scriptures have become strangers to church members,
encouraging preaching that spotlights the congregation or promotes the church
rather than proclaiming the One who is the head of the body. Furthermore, ordered
practices, so recently recovered in the church, are in danger of becoming a disconnected
collection of admirable activities with only tenuous connections to the gospel
and little enduring capacity to transform congregational life.
In all of this, the church's pastors (formally termed "Ministers of the
Word and Sacrament"!) are left in congregational isolation. The basic, fundamental
practices of Word and Sacrament are separated from one another, detached from
personal and corporate disciplines, remote from ordered church life. Pastors remain
isolated from seminary faculty and church officials who, in turn, are only dimly
aware of pastoral struggles. Word and Sacrament, broadly understood, are indispensable
pastoral practices that provide a common entry into pressing ecclesiological issues.
When pastors, professors, and church officials join in shared theological exploration
of these matters, the pastoral-ecclesial culture can be transformed in ways that
sustain pastoral excellence — not of the few, but of the many. |
