The 217th General Assembly (2006) agreed with the Sacraments Study Group that the church needs to enter a period of deeper practice, study and reflection, and so commended Invitation to Christ to our congregations. Included in this resource are descriptions of the practices, a series of theological reflections related to them and questions to enable discussion of these practices. This action-reflection model encourages congregations to live into a deeper experience of the sacraments and then discover together what Christ is doing in their midst.
It may help keep us on the right path if we will remember that the invitation the sacraments extends is an invitation, not just to water, not just to bread and wine, but to Christ himself who is represented in these elements. In baptism and in the Lord’s Supper, as in the Word of God written and proclaimed, it is nothing short of encounter with the living Christ that is promised and offered. That we may meet Christ, in water and Word, wine and bread, in washing and eating in community— this is an extraordinary promise we have from God! And the promise bears with it an extraordinary responsibility: that the church, to whom God has entrusted the gifts of Word and Sacrament, use those gifts rightly, fully, and well.
If we invite all those who wish to come eat and drink at the Lord’s Table, do we risk trivializing the Lord’s Supper, or making baptism irrelevant, or rendering the sacramental patterns of the whole church incoherent? Do we even risk ignoring the real hunger that brings people to the table in the first place, the hunger for more than bread and wine, more than community — the hunger to know Jesus Christ and to learn how to live life as one who belongs to him? On the other hand, if we withhold the bread and wine from some of those who come to the Lord’s Table, do we act inhospitably, appearing more concerned with rules than with persons? Do we even risk turning away from Jesus Christ those who are hungry to know him?
Surely one of the responses we need to make to the challenges before us is enhanced sensitivity to the variety of circumstances from which people come to the church and its worship in Word and sacrament. When persons who have not been baptized present themselves at the Lord’s Table to be fed, we would be ungracious to respond with rules and regulations and send them packing on the spot. But at the same time, we would be unwise to act as if there was nothing further to discuss. We would be insensitive not to hear, in their coming to the table, the unspoken request for deeper union with Christ. We would be failing both them and the church, if we did not extend to them, in the appropriate time and manner, an invitation to baptism.
Admittedly, this question of who is served when they come to the Lord’s Table is different from the question of who is invited to the table. The latter question is the one that the recent overtures have raised and that has been the focus of this report. Still, the former question arises often enough in the life of the church that it is important to address: As we serve the bread and wine to those who come to the Lord’s Table, we need to look for ways to invite to baptism those who are newly responding to Christ.
