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What Makes
Something a Sacrament?
Michael S. Horton
First published in Evangelium, Vol.
4, Issue 1 (Jan/Feb 2006)
Someone has invited you to a new,
cutting-edge worship service especially targeting the twenty-
and thirty-somethings. Identifying itself as part of the
“emergent” network, the group does not identify itself as a
church (too many bad associations). It doesn’t look like church
either, but more like a large living room, with different
stations for various spiritual activities. These stations
include perhaps a prayer labyrinth, incense, icons, and a cup
and bread set on an end table. Eventually, someone begins
speaking, as at least most of the folks find their way to
couches and chairs. This is not a sermon (too hierarchical), but
a heart-to-heart conversation, trying to “connect” with
Christians and non-Christians alike in a way that is
“vulnerable” and “authentic” in contrast to the canned
pragmatism and hype that they knew in the megachurches (or
wannabe megachurches) of their youth.
The setting I am describing can be found in literally
hundreds of gatherings each Sunday, many of them
non-denominational, but others at least informally connected
with just about any denomination you can think of. Burned out on
what they regard as inauthentic hype, many of these young people
are starved for mystery and transcendence. They want to actually
come into contact with God and not just their own “felt needs.”
Their Boomer parents liked stage lighting; these folks like
candles. The assumption today often is that because faith is a
direct, unmediated relationship with God within our spirit,
outward forms don’t really matter. Therefore, we can do whatever
we want in worship as long as the doctrine is right. In this
setting, we too easily pick and choose our own “means of grace.”
New Measures?
While we can affirm the struggles and many of the impulses of
this “emergent” generation, this movement risks becoming simply
another verse of the same tired hymn, which we might call “An
Ode to New Measures.” The nineteenth-century revivalist Charles
G. Finney, a Presbyterian who disliked just about everything
that defined Presbyterian faith and practice, sharply rejected
the Calvinist teaching that human beings were totally unable to
regenerate themselves. According to Finney, we are not saved
from God’s just wrath and ingrafted into Christ’s visible church
by a supernatural work of God’s Spirit working through the
ordinary means of grace, that is preaching the gospel and
administering the sacraments. Rather, since conversion is “not a
miracle or dependent on a miracle in any sense, but is the
philosophical result of the right use of means” (“new measures,”
as he identified them), it is the job of the successful
evangelist to find “excitement sufficient to induce repentance.”
If salvation is in the sinner’s hands, then the conversion of
sinners in the evangelist’s hands. (1)
America is a marketplace of desire, a super-store of consumer
craving, and its do-it-yourself religious life is as much a
testimony to that fact as any other aspect. In our culture,
shopping is therapy. We are not so much Pilgrim making his way
with the communion of saints to the Celestial City as individual
tourists bouncing from booth to booth at Vanity Fair. As much as
the “emergent” movement criticizes religious inauthenticity, it
exhibits more than it disproves that thesis. Its most visible
leader, Brian McLaren (named recently by TIME magazine among the
most significant evangelical leaders), in addition to redefining
or challenging core evangelical doctrines, says that he
appreciates the “sacramental” world-view of Roman Catholicism.
“Once we say there are seven sacraments, we can then begin to
see everything as a potential sacrament,” he writes. To be sure,
McLaren’s theology is different from Finney’s. Unlike the
celebrated revivalist of yesteryear, McLaren eschews “hell-fire
and brimstone.” Yet like Finney, he downplays the seriousness of
sin as a condition from which nothing short of a substitutionary,
vicarious sacrifice of Christ can alone redeem us. The theology
may be described as “Finney-lite.” And practice cannot be
separated from theory. Like Finney, McLaren and many in the
“emergent” movement seem to think that it is up to us to decide
what constitutes a “means of grace.”
Man’s Terms vs. God’s Terms
The Protestant Reformers recognized that if you start with a
human-centered “gospel,” you will need human-centered methods.
Even the ordained sacraments can become means not of divine
grace but of human striving. Just as Finney looked for
“excitements sufficient to induce repentance,” Rome offered
various strategies for obtaining remission of sins through
penance. The Reformers, by contrast, recognized the logic of
Paul in Romans, especially chapter 10. In that chapter, Paul
says that there are two answers to the question, How can I be
reconciled to God? One answer is “the righteousness which is by
works,” the other is “the righteousness that comes through faith
in Christ.” One is founded on our zeal for God, the other on
God’s zeal for us and for our salvation.
Paul recognized that the message creates its own methods, as
he unfolds the argument in that famous chapter.
Works-righteousness looks for ways of climbing up to pull Christ
down or descending into the depths to bring him up, while
faith-righteousness receives Christ as he has descended already
to us and where he promises to be present to us for our
salvation. For works-righteousness, faith comes by striving; for
gospel-righteousness, faith comes by hearing Christ preached.
One need not catch a plane for the latest “revival,” get caught
up in the latest crusade or spiritual fad, go on a pilgrimage,
fast and pray for it, walk through a labyrinth, bow before an
icon, or follow the most recent “principles for victory.” Christ
is never closer to us than when he is actually giving himself to
us in the preached Word, in baptism, and in the Lord’s Supper.
Imagine a wealthy benefactor promised you a million dollars for
a life-saving operation. He tells you to meet him at a certain
spot, where he’ll give you the check. Dropped off by a friend at
an inauspicious corner, in a derelict part of town, you locate
the appointed coffee shop. This can’t be the place, you think to
yourself, as the neon sign hangs precariously with letters
missing. Entering, you seat yourself in a rickety booth,
noticing that your cup is stained with coffee and smeared with
lipstick, the saucer chipped, and the service is appalling. You
look around and cannot imagine that anyone vaguely resembling a
millionaire might be among the patrons. Just as you are about to
leave, a man in shabby clothes saunters over to your table and
addresses you by name and as you acknowledge him, he slides in
the booth with you and joins you for a meal. Then and there he
hands you the check and you celebrate your new-found friendship.
Come to find out, this gentleman has frequented this coffee shop
for years—it’s his favorite spot. Like the idolatrous nations,
we look for “god” at all the high places but the true God
inhabits the low places, when and where he has promised to be
present to dispense his gifts over a conversation and a meal. We
find this God-for-Us at the cross, bleeding and dying for
sinners—hardly the sort of “coronation” that the disciples were
looking for in Jerusalem. Furthermore, this same God shows up
precisely where we would not expect to find him in our lives
here and now. If we’re going to fly up to heaven to bring God
down to us, it will require some pretty powerful means, but God
comes down to us in weakness. We look for the clever route, the
path that makes the most sense—“excitements sufficient to induce
repentance,” but God refuses to be found by us on our terms. He
finds us on his.
The Sacraments
The Corinthian church was immature, always on the lookout for a
slick “super-apostle” to deliver something more spectacular than
the inauspicious ministry of this weak Apostle to the Gentiles.
Yet, Paul demands, “What do you have that you did not receive?
Now if you did indeed receive it, why do you boast as if you had
not received it?” (1 Cor 4:7). In his second letter he writes,
“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the
excellence of the power may be of God and not of us” (2 Cor
4:7). Like the benefactor in my illustration, the power lies in
God’s promise to deliver his gifts when and where he pleases.
Not because of any inherent power or cleverness, sacraments
are means of grace—and not of grace in general, but of redeeming
grace. Reformed theology has long encouraged us to see the whole
world as a theater of God’s goodness and providence. A
magnificent sunset, a beautiful concert, the smile of a child, a
wonderful meal with friends and the marital embrace are signs of
God’s general care for all that he has made. Yet this care
extends equally to believers and unbelievers alike (Mt 5:45).
While general revelation reminds us of God’s power and majesty,
the preached gospel communicates God’s saving grace. God is
present everywhere, in all that he has made, yet he is only
present to save where he has promised to meet us. While the
Grand Canyon may fill us with awe, the preaching of Christ fills
us with faith. Answering the question, “Where does this faith
come from?”, the Heidelberg Catechism (Q. 65) answers, “The Holy
Spirit produces it in our hearts by the preaching of the holy
gospel, and confirms it through our use of the holy sacraments.”
While God can create and confirm faith whenever and however
he chooses, he has only promised to do so through the means he
has appointed. In the sacraments, God unites the signs (water,
bread and wine) to the things signified (regeneration, the body
and blood of Christ), in order to deliver to us that same gospel
promise announced to us through his Word, so that we both hear
and see that God is good! God himself condescends to our
weakness, attaching the royal seal of his covenant of grace. As
Edmund Clowney wrote, Spreading the
sacramental over the whole creation dilutes its force. If
everything is sacramental, then bread and wine are already
sacraments before their consecration, and the mystery of the
Eucharist differs only in degree from the sacramentality of an
incarnate creation….The revelation of God in nature does display
God’s ‘eternal power and divine nature’ (Rom. 1:20), making all
humankind accountable to him, but God’s special revelation in
word and deed provides the signs of his redeeming power (The
Church, 270-271). So should we try to be wiser than God? Do we
know better how to receive Christ and all his benefits? When we
do set out to scale heaven’s heights, to possess God as he is in
all of his majesty rather than simply receive him as he
condescends to us, we usually make golden calves. But this is to
worship God on our terms rather than on his, to create an
“experience” with God that we can manage and control through our
own spiritual technology rather than to humbly accept the gift
that he promises to give us.
Whatever feeds us with God’s Word and guides us by his law is
profitable. Yet these are not, strictly speaking, the means of
grace. Many things are required as duties in the Christian life,
and many other things not required by God may be useful. Yet
these are not, strictly speaking, means of grace but means of
discipleship. In other words, they are appropriate means of
responding to God, while preaching and sacraments are God’s
means of reaching us. The Heidelberg Catechism calls prayer, for
example, “the most important part of the thankfulness God
requires of us” (Q 116). It is indispensable to the Christian
life, just as communication is for a fruitful marriage.
Nevertheless, prayer is the response of faith, while preaching
and sacrament create and confirm faith. As means of grace,
sacraments communicate something from God to us, while in all
exercises of Christian gratitude and obedience we respond in
love to God and neighbor.
Conclusion
While there are many things for a Christian to do, nothing that
we do can communicate grace to ourselves. There are, of course,
many things that we must do in order to receive God’s Word and
sacraments: getting dressed, going to church, spending the day
in meditation on God’s riches in Christ. But the communication
of these riches is itself entirely God’s act, not ours. The good
news is that God has not only found his way to us in the life,
death, and resurrection of Christ, but in the weekly Sabbath he
has carved out of this passing age time for his meeting with us.
Indeed, the medium is the message. “Therefore, since we are
receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by
which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and awe. For
our God is a consuming fire” (Heb 13:28-29).
Footnotes
For Evangelium articles, the reproduced copy must contain:
"First published in Evangelium, Vol. 2, Issue 1 (Jan/Feb 2004)." |
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S. M. Baugh
R. Scott Clark
Iain M. Duguid
Bryan D. Estelle
W. Robert Godfrey
Michael S. Horton
Dennis E. Johnson
Hywel R. Jones
Peter R. Jones
Joel E. Kim
Julius J. Kim
George C. Scipione
Robert B. Strimple
David M. VanDrunen
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