We’ve talked about how the bread and the wine are necessary. They each play a role in helping us to see in a visible way the death of Jesus Christ and through that sign to more deeply be encouraged in the gift. One by a faith revealed, and the other by a faith disclosed. The spiritual is where in some sense the action happens in Communion. It is by the union we have through the Holy Spirit where the connections take place through faith and the spiritual nourishment is applied when we rightly and properly partake of the outward elements.

Words like mystical, supernatural, enchanted, etc… sound like they belong more at home in a fantasy novel than they do being associated with a Presbyterian church. However, we would do well to remember that we should be comfortable with such terms, especially when our minds turn towards the sacraments of the Church. We confess our thoroughgoing skepticism no more than when we get uncomfortable with the stuff that happens outside our brain. Yet, our fathers in the faith in Scotland and elsewhere worried not about such modern hang-ups. It would be quite beneficial to us to re-embrace the weird in the Christian faith.

What does all that then have to do with the Lord’s Supper? In no other place in our religious life do we need to think outside the confines of what we can perceive with our senses than when it comes to what happens when we partake of the bread and the cup at Christ’s table. For our Q/A today we will read more on what the Westminster Divines understood about these truths.

Here are the two for today:

Q. 170. How do they that worthily communicate in the Lord’s supper feed upon the body and blood of Christ therein?

A. As the body and blood of Christ are not corporally or carnally present in, with, or under the bread and wine in the Lord’s supper, and yet are spiritually present to the faith of the receiver, no less truly and really than the elements themselves are to their outward senses; so they that worthily communicate in the sacrament of the Lord’s supper do therein feed upon the body and blood of Christ, not after a corporal and carnal, but in a spiritual manner; yet truly and really, while by faith they receive and apply unto themselves Christ crucified, and all the benefits of his death.

Q. 171. How are they that receive the sacrament of the Lord’s supper to prepare themselves before they come unto it?

A. They that receive the sacrament of the Lord’s supper are, before they come, to prepare themselves thereunto, by examining themselves of their being in Christ, of their sins and wants; of the truth and measure of their knowledge, faith, repentance; love of God and the brethren, charity to all men, forgiving those that have done them wrong; of their desires after Christ, and of their new obedience; and by renewing the exercise of these graces, by serious meditation, and fervent prayer.

In God’s way of doing things the body and the soul are meant to work together for the betterment of the individual believer. We confess that the human being is both physical and spiritual. How that works exactly is above our paygrade. What we do comprehend is that both are creations of the Lord and they both inhabit our identity. They are not to be understood as either fighting against one another (like a cartoon where each have a different voice) or that one is more important to God than the other. They are equal in power and glory.

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