Re Responding to Webber, January
Our new form of the old Sacramentarian controversy must not become divisive. If our polity can accommodate Presbyterian bishops, lay moderators, deaconesses and erstwhile catechists, we should acknowledge the need to appoint suitable laity to celebrate the sacraments.
Some years ago I was responsible for worship services for Anglican and United Church students. The former did not want a eucharist, the latter did. My colleague solved the dilemma: let’s have an agape (the “love-feast” shared in a house church) — the Anglicans know it isn’t a sacrament and the others think it is. So both were happy.
I’ve studied sacramental theology for a lifetime, and had two “high church” teachers, David Hay at Knox College, Toronto, and Tom Torrance in Edinburgh. But I prefer Karl Barth’s simpler take on the New Testament, “I have had to abandon the ‘sacramental’ understanding of baptism.” So also with the Lord’s Supper — less a traditional “sacrament” but more than a sign. This relates to the view of ministry as less priestly and more prophetic. Is not a Presbyterian minister essentially a teaching elder, a congregational rabbi? Sacraments are visible words, a form of proclamation, as scripture is the written word and preaching the oral. The simple New Testament rite developed into the Roman baroque ritual, causing much grief to our 16th-century reformers as to how much ceremony to retain. Their responses ranged from one extreme to the other, but the Zurich-Geneva axis (Heinrich Bullinger and John Calvin) settled for a simple rite not necessarily tied to the ordained priest.
After all, the very definition of sacrament (“visible sign of invisible grace”) is too broad, the practice wildly various, the biblical warrant silent as to who may preside — maybe we should settle for an agape; it seems closest to the New Testament practice.
