Wine at communion services
Posted Wednesday, March 30, 2005
As usual, the Biblically illiterate are at it again. The Bible does not denounce the use of wine or alcohol. The big issue in the Bible is drunkenness. Because of people’s lack of knowledge, it has long been a tradition to use grape juice at communion services.
Take the case of Hannah, who kept mumbling as she was walking around the house. Her husband said, “You had better stop drinking so much wine and beer, you are mumbling.” She told her husband she wasn’t mumbling (maybe speaking in tongues), that she was praying to the Lord what to do with her unborn child!
Their decision was that when the baby was 18-months-old, they would give the child to a priest named Eli. Now, Eli raised him up to be an upright righteous man. Guess what his name was? Samuel, the great prophet!
Also consider the communion service itself. One of the last things a pastor will say after issuing the order to drink the wine (paraphrase) is until we drink this (wine) anew in Heaven. So, if wine is allowed in heaven, what are all the people squabbling about?
C.B. Lindvall Litchfield, Minn.
A prayer of confession and repentance for the PCUSA
Posted Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Lord God, You and You alone are good and true.
You are constant and reliable in Your love for us, even as we tend to wander from our devotion to You and Your will.
We praise You above all else; You are the pearl of great price for which we would give everything we have, want, or expect to become or be. You are The Lord, and we submit to Your glory.
We confess that we have fallen short of what You want both from us and for us. We have taken pride in our own controls rather than trust and accept Your lordship. Forgive us.
Forgive us for setting our perceived needs ahead of the good of Your glory. For setting up missions and causes to the place of Your throne. For regarding the good ends that we can imagine as Your own. Forgive us.
For rallying others to action – even virtuous action – while neglecting Your praise and glory, we repent.
For taking Your grace and ever-constant love for granted, we are ashamed. Even as we trust that in Jesus Christ You have overcome the division of sin, our actions and good intentions yet merit only judgment. Lord, we are thankful; may that gratitude so increase that we never take Your mercies for granted.
In taking Your goodness for granted (You are the Lord; You did not have to be loving, gracious or merciful), we have re-imagined You as easy, soft and overindulgent of our sin. Forgive us for re-imagining You as anything other than You have already revealed through Your Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Forgive us for re-imagining truth and goodness as to serve our own wants and preferences: for debasing Your delight in marriage through easy divorces, for stealing its significance or sanctity and attempting to apply it where it does not belong.
For re-imagining a justice that only applies to our political opponents and not to ourselves, forgive us.
For imagining that life is ours to define – to give and to take at will – Lord forgive us and lead us.
For imagining that what is important to us is important toYou, Lord forgive us.
For missed opportunities to proclaim Your good news in the name of Jesus, Lord forgive us.
For ignoring the poor and the oppressed on our doorstep, or re-imagining their needs to fit our own conveniences, forgive us.
For thinking of all You have given us as our own, forgive us.
Forgive us for all our re-imaginings, which are our idolatries. Reform our hearts, minds, and actions into conformity with Your will, which is what we want more than anything else.
You are Lord to us and Lord of all. Shape our lives and destinies that we may increase our participation in the praise and glorification of Your name, living in humble union with one another as we serve Your will.
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Noel K. Anderson Executive Pastor
Questions about the New Wineskins Convocation
Posted Wednesday, March 30, 2005
I was surprised to read that three sessions have endorsed the draft documents developed by New Wineskins. First, because I find nothing on their web site that suggests that such an endorsement is either desired or expected. Second, because the documents are, in my view, still in need of perfecting. Part of the task of the convocation, as I originally understood it, was to do further work toward finalizing the documents.
I can affirm and support the general tenor and direction of New Wineskins’ Essential Tenets and Ethical Imperatives, but I – for one – am not ready to sign off on them. Chief among my personal objections to the documents is the fact that they are two. I do not live a bifurcated life of faith. I strive more and more, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to make my behavior and my speech consistent with my belief that Jesus Christ is the sole, singular Lord and Savior of my life and all life.
Jesus Christ calls me to prove my love. Refusing to answer that call is a declaration of unbelief.
The Ethical Imperatives are as essential as any of the ten tenets of doctrine that New Wineskins has highlighted. I will strongly advocate that the two documents be integrated into a single statement of the Essential Tenets of our Christian Faith.
I am trying to resist the temptation to nit-pick my way through the New Wineskins Essential Tenets as they now stand. My reservations begin with the first five words of the number one Essential Tenet and grow from there. I believe that the compassionate and majestic God – revealed in creation, in the Scriptures, and in Christ Jesus – is the one and only God regardless of whether I choose to worship or to ignore God. Thus says the Lord: “I am God, there is no other” (Isaiah 45:22, 46:9). This simple truth should not be qualified and compromised with the phrase: “The God whom we worship.”
Jim Henkel Confessing Church Pastor
Ghost Ranch facing a sad ending
Posted Tuesday, March 29, 2005
What a sad ending to a camp that had great potential.
In 1955, I was attending a Presbyterian church in Tucson. A member of that church gave that parcel of land to the Presbyterian Church to be used as a camp for Christian purposes similar to the Young Life camps. Unfortunately, the camp fell into the hands of the wrong people. The pastor of that church was so proud of the influence he had on that gentleman.
John Vosbigian
Silence from the PCUSA on Terri Schiavo case
Posted Tuesday, March 29, 2005
“Ours is a nation where a judge may not sentence Beltway sniper Lee Malvo to death because he is too young to die, but can sentence Terri Schiavo to death because she is too severely handicapped to live. Schiavo continues the process of dying by starvation and dehydration, a method of capital punishment most would consider criminal if done to a pet.”
The above quote from Pat Buchanan also mentions that Hitler’s doctors may prove to have been the medical pioneers of the 21st century.
I have not heard or seen in print the PCUSA’s (leadership) – outrage of the murdering of Terri Schaivo, but consistently no outrage of the murdering of the innocent (babies). The leadership of the PCUSA is more interested in ordaining gays of all stripes, having a church of what’s happening now, rather than being obedient to the Lordship of Christ.
Holy Scripture is correct, as always, that in these last days we will witness what happened to the generation of Noah. 2 Tim. 3:1 reads, “In the last days, perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasting, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying the power of it; from such turn away.”
The Lord God in Christ will have the last say, the Body of Christ must oppose this genocide in the making, otherwise, the Body of Christ will be at the mercy of a Hitler.
Lou. S. Nowasielski Wilmington, Del.
Grape juice should be used at communion
Posted Tuesday, March 29, 2005
I disagree with this article strongly, if its message is that only wine should be used at communion. As our pastor once explained, we use grape juice in our church because of our concern for people with alcoholism; even a sip of wine can be a real concern for someone who is trying to recover from a drinking problem.
We are all “recovering sinners” in church; different people just have different temptations. Using grape juice at communion is heeding the words of the Apostle Paul not to do anything that could cause your brother or sister to stumble:
“All food is clean, but it is wrong for a man to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother to fall” (Romans 14:20-21).
As a former Episcopalian, I knew of priests with drinking problems, and I suspect Catholics (I don’t know about Lutherans) might tell you likewise. For priests, the potential problem is the worst. They themselves must consume any wine that remains at the end of the communion service in order to make sure that the consecrated element is not treated disrespectfully or used for improper purposes.
James K. Mee Honolulu, Hawaii
Terri Schiavo still clings to life
Posted Tuesday, March 29, 2005
At the moment I write this, Theresa Maria Schindler Schiavo still clings to life – despite being deprived of food and water. I am saddened that the Roman Catholic Church issued an opinion on this, while the Presbyterian Church (USA) did not.
I have avoided this issue because I know that nothing I might think or say hasn’t already been considered and scrutinized by everyone. I also find the situation intensely troubling. I do not know what Terri would have wished to be done. I do not know her medical condition. I do not know the motivations of the parties involved, whether family, spouse, legislators, doctors, nurses, lawyers or judges. All of these have been scrutinized at length, most often with the observer willfully seeing whatever he or she wants to see. And we’ve all been told now, ad nauseum, to prepare our own advanced directives.
That said, I do know a couple of things. The first is that this is a pitiable situation for all involved. The second is that we often are asking the wrong question – specifically, “Would I want to live like that?” And I know that question frames their whole view of the situation for many people. I would submit to you, however, that, aside from being intensely narcissistic, it also is not possible to answer with any degree of certainty.
There is something here no one wants to talk about. When we are in tolerable health, we recoil from sickness and infirmity. We might intend to have sympathy; at the same time, we are filled with horror at the prospect that something of this kind could happen to us. You can deny this, but I have seen it in others and I have felt it in myself. I would not want to live like Terri has been living. But I would also not want to live the way Christopher Reeve lived for many years, nor would I want to live the way Stephen Hawking is living. I watched my father die of liver cancer, and I wouldn’t want to live through that.
However, I also know that I would not want to die of a combination of starvation and dehydration. I know I would not want a person making this decision to be someone who had moved on, had children with another partner, and who had everything to gain from my death.
The weakness of this thinking is that what we want from a position of relative health is not what we want in illness. Until we’re in the situation, we cannot know with certainty. People tend to cling to life; life is an absolute good. I noticed this while listening to my father’s death rattle – breathing through fluid, he fought to breathe – to have just a few moments more. There are some who believe they are spiritual, who think that they would let go, that they would practice contentment. But I submit to you that these do not understand their attachment to life.
As Christians, we observed the Last Supper and the Crucifixion in the past week. If we think life is so easily thrown away, how do we account for Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane? Or are we saying that his death on the cross was no great sacrifice? Many of us will take communion this week, and I cannot help but wonder if we will think of this woman who cannot eat the bread or drink the wine. I wonder if the elements will catch in our throat as we reflect that we have allowed execution by starvation and dehydration to occur, not as some gruesome Roman practice almost 2,000 years ago, but as a part of our “civilized” culture. I wonder if we will think as we eat and drink of the one who said, “I was an hungered and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me nothing to drink . . . depart from me, ye cursed …?”
As of this moment, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to involve itself, perhaps following the example we have set.
Will Spotts North East, Md.
Here’s an idea
Posted Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Publish a list of the 50 largest Confessing Churches and compare it to the 50 largest non-Confessing Churches. I think you would find it very revealing.
Richard Carlson Topsfield, Mass.
Wine rejected not because of ‘sin tag’ but safety reasons
Posted Thursday, March 24, 2005
Thank you for the balanced article on wine. I have always rejected the sinful tag on wine while also rejecting wine for myself as a matter of safety and out of fear of dependency.
James H. Logan Sr. McHenry, Md.
Pastor advocates juice for communion after discussion with alcoholic
Posted Thursday, March 24, 2005
Brought up and confirmed in the Lutheran Church, I was surprised at first when served juice in a Presbyterian Church communion. At seminary, communion in the chapel offered what seemed to me a reasonable alternative, wine in the outer ring, juice in the inner ring. That is, until a classmate of mine confided in me his struggle with alcoholism. “Just the smell of the wine,” he told me, “as the tray is passed is a temptation and can trigger a relapse.” That was enough for me. I think Jesus is not limited by our conformity to such a law as mandating real fermented wine for communion. In fact, I think Jesus is more concerned – and expects me to be also – about the weaknesses and struggles of our brothers and sisters. I’ve been an advocate for juice at communion ever since that conversation with my classmate.
Ron Holmes, pastor Shepherd of the Hills Presbyterian Church , Lakewood, Colo.
As we see the face of Terry Schiavo are we looking into the eyes of Jesus?
Posted Thursday, March 24, 2005
Terry Schiavo – I feel like I am witnessing a present-day crucifixion, like I am one of those in the crowd that stood by and didn’t do anything as Jesus was innocently killed. Father, please forgive me. Jesus reminds us in the Great Judgment in the book of Matthew that whatever we do or not do to the least of these, we do or not do to him. “I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink.” As we see the face of Terry Schiavo plastered on every news story, aren’t we, in fact, looking into the eyes of Jesus? It is not just a coincidence that we find ourselves in Holy Week, and the anticipated crucifixion of Jesus just three days away. Pray for her life and that God will send some resolution for life for her different than what his Son had to endure. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Amen.
Jennifer Kirkbride, elder Wellsburg, W.Va.
Thanks for the scholarly and complete picture of the death of Jesus
Posted Thursday, March 24, 2005
Thank you for providing me with the most scholarly and complete picture of the death of our Lord. How much he went through for us and how little credence we give to the “Suffering Servant.” Thank God for the gift of his Son!
John Linsley Sr. Colorado Springs, Colo.
Grape juice for communion: It’s cheaper
Posted Thursday, March 24, 2005
Having read the article, “No Juice Served At First Communion,” I would agree that drinking wine is not prima facie sinful; there is no Biblical prohibition against moderate wine consumption (unless you’re a Nazirite). However, there is one very practical reason for serving grape juice for communion: It’s cheaper. One might also point out that when Paul said to Timothy, “Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses (1 Tim. 5:23),” there were no water treatment plants around.
Rev. Dr. Larry Brown African Bible College, Lilongwe, Malawi
Interfaith Listening Project is not considered disaster assistance
Posted Thursday, March 24, 2005
Many Presbyterians – individuals and congregations – withhold their per-capita gifts so that they will not be supporters of things that violate their consciences. Many of these same Presbyterians give freely to offerings that support humanitarian and compassionate causes. One popular example of this is the One Great Hour of Sharing campaign. In theory this is a good approach; one can support what is clearly Christian, while resisting some of the more creative political activism of the national denomination. However, for such a thing to work, there must be truth in labeling – there must be a level of trust between those who give, and those who administer these gifts.
It was for this reason I was discouraged to read The Layman’s article on Muslim-Christian presentations. OGHS gifts are divided between the Presbyterian Hunger Program (36 percent), the Self-Development of People (32 percent) and Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (32 percent). That’s all well and good, except that PDA paid most of the expense for the Interfaith Listening Project. That project may be a great idea, it may be a good thing, but it is not, and no reasonable person would consider it to be disaster assistance. If someone gives money for disaster assistance, they’re not giving money for the Interfaith Listening Project.
Similarly, The Layman reported that PDA recommended that 20 percent of their funds be used for administrative purposes. Concurrently, the Presbyterian Hunger Program seeks to partner with the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance. One who gives money to either of these expects less than 20 percent overhead, on the one hand, and to actually be working to feed the hungry, as opposed to political advocacy on the other. I’m less concerned whether any of these ideas make sense or are good projects as I am that they are presented, and even named as being one thing, while gifts given them are spent on others. Why does it seem that honesty is such a difficult thing these days?
Will Spotts North East, Md.
How can starving a person to death be considered an act of mercy?
Posted Tuesday, March 22, 2005
I am absolutely baffled at the “logic” of some Layman readers! I don’t understand how allowing a person starve to death can be considered an act of mercy.
Let’s take the Schaivo travesty one step further to its equally absurd yet logical conclusion. Wouldn’t it be even more merciful simply to give Terri Schiavo a lethal injection? Stop her heart and end her suffering immediately! This way, whatever pain she feels as she starves and dehydrates to death is no longer an issue. Given this scenario of course, someone could be held accountable; by simply pulling a feeding tube, all the parties involved have “clean hands.”
Or better yet, show death row inmates the same mercy as we are showing Terri Schaivo and stop feeding them immediately. It’s humane, after all. (The ACLU might not agree with me, but heck … we’re setting precedent here!)
I am sick that we are required by law to show more mercy to dogs than we do to people! Additionally, I wonder on which side of the line the PCUSA falls on this life and death issue. Don’t bother looking at www.pcusa.org; both the denomination and the Washington Office are unusually silent on this one!
David Morrison Pittsburgh, Pa.