13 July 2024

At the time of the Reformation, there were seven Sacraments but the Reformers argued that only two had divine authority. It wasn’t the only radical change which they made. Instead of seeing the Sacrament as a sacrifice upon an altar, they restored its original setting as a meal around a table.

The kirk building was reordered and long tables purchased to be used in the Sacrament. We did this on Maundy Thursday in one of my parishes and the café style church which has been popular also brings people together around tables. It is intimate and conducive to a rich fellowship.

The food at this table has been proscribed by Jesus for he has associated his body with the bread and his blood with the wine.  The Scottish Reformers recognized that there were two ways of looking at these elements. The Roman Catholics believed that they became the actual flesh  and blood of Jesus.

Some Reformers took the opposite view that they remained bread and wine because they were just symbols. But the Church of Scotland took a totally different view from either of these  positions. They argued that the elements of bread and wine became what Jesus said they were through the action of the Holy Spirit.

In the ‘Scots Confession’,  which was passed by an act of the Scots Parliament in 1560, it says that the bread and the wine are not ‘naked and bare signs’ but through them, ‘Christ Jesus is so joined with us that he becomes the very nourishment and food of our souls’.

This is all done not by the minister but by the action of the Holy Spirit and through the Sacrament we ‘have such union with Christ Jesus as the natural man cannot apprehend’. By the action of the Spirit, the elements become what Jesus says they are and he is uniquely present with us and within us.

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