Again, I don’t go browsing, surfing, or shopping the web for Communion Statements. Something else brought me to St. Paul Lutheran Church & Early Childhood Ministry, Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, Columbus, IN. Once there I checkd out their Sunday bulletin, and you won’t believe what I found…
My apologies for using clickbait. In retirement, I once a day consult Google or AP news, and even their headlines have this pandering. And this is spot-on to this post. Here’s their Communion statement from July 21, 2024:
Our Communion Practice: We invite and encourage those who have been instructed, confirmed, and confess the faith of this congregation and other congregations of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod to receive the Sacrament. Communicants at this altar acknowledge their sins, believe that the body and blood of Christ are truly present in the bread and wine for the forgiveness of sins, and desire the Spirit’s help to turn from their sins.
Those who are not communing are invited to come forward and receive a blessing by placing their arms across their chest.
If you have questions regarding our Communion teaching and practice, please speak to a pastor.
Kudo’s for this statement being publicly posted on https://www.stpaulcolumbus.org/ and so readily found. This implies that one ought not to come if one does not confess the faith of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, if one does not acknowledge one’s sins, does not believe the body and blood of Christ are truly present for the forgiveness of sins, and one does desire the Spirit’s help to turn from one’s sins. But it tells no one “No”. This statement was the open Communion statement of the liberals 40 years ago. Now they drop all pretense and just say, “Y’all are welcomed.”
Back to my main point, after 40 years-plus practicing closed Communion my experience has been it all goes tickety-boo until you say, “No.” Then the feathers fly. Then I’ve been called Satan, told that I have a black heart, am killing the church, been refused a handshake at the door, and been told the 2,000 check in her pocket would go to a Missouri Synod church who would.
Is it enough to imply but not say, “No”? The Iowa East district of the LCMS, Rev. Dr. Brian Saunders said at a 2012 Association of Confessing Evangelical Lutheran Congregations that when a pastor is asked by someone if he can commune the first word out of his mouth should be, “yes”.
That’s not how it works at your pharmacist, is it? He’s going to ask you if you have a prescription, and if you say you don’t, he’ll say, “No.” Same goes if you call up the VA saying, “I’m not a veteran, can I get a color guard at my funeral?” Ask to be sat without a reservation at some trendy eatery, and you’re going to be told that same curt, “No.”
But the pharmacists is dispensing potentially deadly medicine; the VA is protecting a merited honor, and the eatery the specialness of the food served. Do I even need to say why stewards of the mysteries have the above reasons in spades to say “No.”? But only the Church suffers from the tyranny of the ogre “Be Nice”. Only the Church must pray as I saw in a cartoon tacked to Concordia, Ft. Wayne’s bulletin board in 1979 titled, “Deliver us from ugliness”. It depicts a robed pastor standing before an altar with a sheet painted with flowers covering the crucifix behind it. Perhaps American churches have what Graham Greene refers to as “that sense of pity which is more promiscuous than lust” (The Ministry of Fear, 32).
“In 1534, Luther gave Melanchthon instructions concerning ongoing negotiations with the Zwinglians after the Marburg Colloquy: ‘Our opinion is that the body is in such a way with or in the bread that it is truly received with the bread. Whatever the bread suffers or does is also true of the body. Thus, it is rightly said of the body of Christ that it is carried, given, received, eaten, when the bread is carried, given, received, eaten. That is the meaning of ‘This is my body.’ If this is our faith, will we not bow down before the consecrated bread and wine? If whatever happens to the bread happens to the body of Christ, if whatever the bread receives the body receives, is it not proper then to honor Christ in the Sacrament by adoring him?”
The above is what I quoted and wrote in the Epiphany/January 1995 issue of Logia on page 28. If we imply the “yes” or “no” of communing at our altar ultimately belongs to the communicant rather than to Christ’s steward, then we imply it’s okay for those living in sins, in unbelief, or in the misbelief of their own pious or impious faith to commune if they decide to.
Sasse said in the 20th century that the offense that once was upon the cross of Christ now was on His altar. In the 21st century that fact has some major implications. Those only implying closed Communion, let alone those practicing open Communion, are doing the equivalent of putting up a flower print sheet in front of the crucifix.
