Re Responding to Webber, January
In discussing the issue of who should be allowed to serve the Lord’s Supper, C. Joyce and Ray Hodgson argue that the Presbyterian Church in Canada occupies a “wide middle road” between churches of more extreme positions in one direction or the other. While I appreciate the idea of occupying the middle ground, I do find their arguments quite ironic for several reasons.
First, they claim to be defending the wide middle road position when their position seems neither wide nor middle. They argue that only those ordained to the ministry of Word and Sacrament should be able to serve the Lord’s Supper and they base it on the principle of apostolic succession, a view traditionally held by churches with bishops. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Presbyterian defend apostolic succession before.
Second, I must admit to feeling a little uncomfortable with their argument when the one we claim as Lord urged us to follow the narrow road and warned us against the wide one (Matthew 7:13-14). While I agree that Jesus was perhaps speaking to a different situation, and while I appreciate their efforts to encourage some openness, Jesus’ warning still makes me nervous about defending wide road arguments too vigorously.
Third, it seems strange that even though the Jewish Passover was and still is led in Jewish homes by the head of the Jewish household, and even though the Lord’s Supper grew out of the Jewish Passover, we continue to insist that the Lord’s Supper must be served by an ordained minister and most often in a church building.
Fourth, while it appears that our Reformed theology does put us on a middle road between, say, the high church road of the Roman Catholics and the low church road of the Anabaptists, it’s strange that both of those other groups have found ways of allowing others to serve the Lord’s Supper. The Roman Catholics do it through commissioned eucharistic readers and many Anabaptists allow it because of a different theological approach. In the meantime, those of us on the middle road have not made such allowances. Don’t ironies like these tell us we need to scratch our heads a little more, think and pray a little more and carefully consider some changes?
