The church has messed up a lot of people and a lot of things, but perhaps the thing it has messed up the most is The Lord’s Table. Sadly, the Church has used the Lord’s Table to mess up people even as it has tried to “make people better.”
John Calvin,
just one of many table destroyers, felt that participation in the Lord’s Supper signified the confession of a good life. Those who claimed to be living a Christian life, but did not actually live it, were to be kept from the table. The Church’s duty, according to Calvin, was to protect the sacrament and awaken sinners from their slumber.
Here’s my view. It’s the Lord’s table. The Lord invites everybody to his table. Repentance and/or a good Christian life is not a precondition for being at the table. The hope is being at the table will help us live the lives God would have us live and the lives the world needs us to live. Or put another way, the Lord’s Table is transformative. Keep people from it and you do great harm to them.
“Exactly where unit ought to have been most visible, a division arose.” Exactly where healing ought to have occurred, damage was inflicted.
(Herman J. Selderhuis, John Calvin: A Pilgrim’s Life)
One of the most amazing things about Wedgewood is that EVERYONE is welcome to the Lord’s table. It is the only church I have ever attended where every individual was welcomed without restriction or reservation. I attended a Catholic funeral service recently and the Priest flat out stated that the only people who could recieve communion where those in “good” standing with the RCC. How sad is that?