St. Boniface House

Today we heard Jesus teach about marriage, and as always we must understand that in the broader context of the relationship between Christ and the Church.  Today as we come to the Lord’s Table I want to talk about our worship as “Covenant Renewal”, so that we can taste the blessing that is this meal we eat with Jesus just a little bit better. 

To do that, though, I have to remind you that when we come together for Covenant Renewal Worship, we do so as the church.  The Lord’s Supper, the culmination of our liturgy, is a foretaste of the great “Wedding Supper of the Lamb”.  But it is the church who is the bride of Christ, and not any individuals.  Men, you are not married to Jesus.  The individualistic approach that marries men to Jesus ought to raise all sorts of flags for us—either you have a man marrying a man, or worse, you have to implicitly deny that Jesus is really a man.  The same thing goes for women—I’ve seen things advocating that Christian women treat Jesus as though he were their personal husband, which as far as I can tell just makes the Lord of Glory into an adulterer.  The bride of Christ is the church, and when we come for their restoration and wedding ceremony that is Covenant Renewal Worship, we come as the church.

So what happens in Covenant Renewal Worship?  It follows the flow of the three main offerings of the tabernacle.  The first is the purification or sin offering.  Because Jesus has died for us, we no longer offer animals, but are now free to offer ourselves, and in the Sin offering we come as an adulterous bride who needs to be forgiven by her faithful husband.  In the last week we have sinned.  And of course we have each individually confessed those sins as we’ve gone along, but today we come as the church and confess corporately.  And in his grace, the bridegroom forgives and restores the bride.  He then takes her up to heaven with him and transforms her from glory to glory.  This is the ascension offering, in which the sacrificial offering is cut into pieces and entirely burned, transformed into glorious smoke which ascends and mingles with the glory cloud.  We are transformed by the sword of God’s Word and we ascend in our prayers and songs and gifts through our union with Christ into the presence of God in the Heavenly Holy of Holies.  Finally, having been transformed and made into a beautiful bride, adorned with heavenly garments and fit for fellowship with the family of God, we sit at table with the Holy One of Israel and feast with him, and his presence with us there is his testimony that he is at peace with us.  This offering is called the Peace offering, or Fellowship offering, and in it we enjoy the rest of the new creation and look forward to the day when we will no longer have sins to confess to the Bridegroom, but in the meantime we are assured that he will continue to forgive our adulteries as we continue to repent of them.  So eat your bread and drink your wine.  The covenant is renewed, the bride is restored, and the Bridegroom delights to be with his beloved.
 
This is the Lord’s Table…