“The Lord’s Table is for dangerous people.”

If you are going to baptize infants, it makes sense that you would also allow them to take Communion. Baptism brings one into the priesthood (through the Laver) to the court of God, and Communion is fellowship in the priestly kingdom. To unite the two is consistent—as consistent as the two pillars flanking the threshold of Solomon’s Temple.

The inclusion of children in Israel’s religious meals is used to support the practice. Some of those against it have asserted that these meals, even perhaps the Passover, did not include the children. James Jordan has a fascinating chapter entitled “Children and the Religious Meals of the Old Creation” in The Case for Covenant Communion. Where many Reformed writers (including some other authors in this book) get tied up in knots by the Reformers and their own traditions, Jordan’s perspective is always fresh because he looks first to the Bible, not for proof texts but for principles.

Jordan makes a clear case for the inclusion of children in the religious meals of the “old creation.” He lists a number of age specifications for various Israelite offices, and notes that there is no age specified for participation in the Passover meal. He concludes that if God had wanted to, he certainly could have specified a minimum age for participation.

So, children were included in Israel’s religious meals, most notably in the Passover. Since Israel was the Covenant people, then the children in the Christian Church should participate in Communion. Or should they?

The Circumcision of Israel

This sounds logical, of course, but it is the same logic by which one would expect a bruised, bloodied Jesus to wake up in the tomb, crawl out and stagger around with His burial clothes hanging off Him. Paedocommunion doesn’t speak of resurrection so much as resuscitation. And despite the truth concerning the meals of the Old Creation, dragging them into the New Creation, as I have said before, is akin to heaving the bloody Bronze Altar with its flesh and ashes inside the tent. Paedobaptism and paedocommunion are a call for God to accept the flesh.

Appealing to the Old Testament to interpret New Testament events is extremely helpful, but what if the New Testament event is itself a deliberate reinterpretation? Jesus did this all the time, and one of the most important is what He did at His last Passover, or more correctly, what He did to the last Passover.

What was Passover about? Circumcision and Passover were about redeeming Israel’s males from the barrenness of the womb, and the barrenness of the Land, curses upon the Covenant Head which can be traced back to Genesis 3.

What did Jesus do to Passover? He ended it. He ate the Passover with His disciples, and then the meal which spoke of cutting off history (leaven speaks of historical continuity), was itself cut off. There would be no more Passovers because it was only a shadow, and the day was about to dawn. In Jesus, all Israel had been redeemed and grown up. It was time for something new.

During the Passover, Jesus instituted a new meal. A symbolic meal, a “taste,” of risen bread and shared wine was taken out of the old meal. A new Israel was being established out of the corpse of the old one, not spiritually, not socially, not physically, but all three together. The combination of the priestly and kingly pillars in Solomon’s Temple invite the third pillar, the prophetic Shekinah, to indwell. The table of God is a place reserved for prophets.

Now, I could argue that since there were no children present, children cannot participate in Communion. But there were no women present either, and we know that women have always been allowed to take Communion. So there must be something deeper going on here.

Feed My Lambs?

“Jesus’ commission to Peter after His resurrection was not to dole out bread and wine to infants. It was to fatten those who had taken up their crosses, to prepare them for the slaughter to come…”

Tim Gallant, who also contributed to the book mentioned above, authored another book entitled Feed My Lambs: Why the Lord’s Table Should Be Restored to Covenant Children. While I appreciate the pastoral heart behind the desires of these faithful men to see children raised in the knowledge of God, it seems to me they have missed the point of the Last Supper.

Firstly, the title of Tim’s book refers to Jesus’ threefold command to Peter after Peter’s threefold betrayal (John 21:15-17). But what was Jesus actually saying when He gave that commission to Peter? He was, as usual, taking Old Testament architecture and fulfilling it in the flesh as a human Tabernacle. From God’s Kitchen:

In Peter, Jesus takes the people of Israel from outside the tent of Moses to sit inside as priests and elders.

Peter warmed himself at a fire outside the house of the High Priest. Architecturally, he stood at the Bronze Altar. The Covenant Ethics are three tests, symbolized in the blood, the fire and the smoke—or flesh, eyes and life. When tested, Peter refused to identify himself with the Lamb.

Luke records that Jesus “looked” at Peter. Whenever Jesus “looks intently” in the Gospels, He is the Lampstand, the Law, the eyes of God, the watchman lifted up over Israel as sun, moon and stars. The lunar feasts were fast fading as the sun of righteousness arose. And the rooster heralded the dawn.

John records the dawning of a better day. This time the fire is not on the Land but by the Sea. The focus has shifted from the center of Israel to her borders with the wild nations. The resurrected Jesus invites Peter not to offer himself to death but to dine with One who has conquered death on his behalf. Architecturally, Peter has passed through the Laver—from death to life—to join Christ as an elder at the Altar of Incense.

Again, Peter is tested three times. Instead of Altar; Fire; Altar, it is Feed; Tend; Feed. In this way, Jesus deals compassionately with past failure and calls Peter to a better future (as He does with us every week at the Lord’s Table). But in Peter’s recommission, and in ours, there is a call to sacrificial life. There is a transfixing redness to the New Covenant dawn.

The “official” death-and-resurrection of Peter would be repeated in the Firstfruits Church. When Jesus told Peter to feed His sheep, they both knew those sheep, like Peter, were being fattened for the altar.

Animal sacrifices were no longer acceptable now that Jesus had died and risen again.

But in Jesus, human ones were.

For whoever would save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake
and the gospel’s will save it. 
(Mark 8:35)

The reason there were only men at the Last Supper is because a new lamb was being selected for sacrifice: not only a head, but also a body. Following the Ascension Offering in Leviticus 1, the head would be offered first, and then the body would be washed and offered. Sharing in this feast with Jesus made these men members of the sacrificial lamb, that is, parts of its body. Jesus was the first human sacrifice which was acceptable to God. Because the Father accepted Him, as firstfruits, the full harvest, the body, was made acceptable also.

What I am saying here is that the disciples, through transformation into apostles, were human sacrifices. Just as Jesus’ death dealt with the serpent (the counterfeit head), their deaths dealt with the brood of vipers, the fiery serpents ruling Jerusalem (the counterfeit body). This is why there were not women and children present. Corporately speaking, the disciples were the “bones” of the Passover lamb which were not to be broken. They would form the structure of a new house, a new Tabernacle which was made entirely out of lambs. This was about the end of circumcision, which was not about children but about males.

After the resurrection, women are in the picture again, and in a big way. They are the first “witnesses” because the role of the Woman is the sacrifice of praise. After the serpent is felled, she sings and calls down the Covenant curses upon it. But once again, where are the children? Are they absent? No. But it is clear that the New Covenant is not about Jew and Gentile but about a new priesthood for all people. It is not about the cutting of flesh but about witness, about testimony, about telling what you have seen now that you have tasted death under the Law and your eyes have been opened. Having tasted death, as Jesus did for all men, innoculates one against death. It loses its sting. Baptism is for those who confess with their mouths that they are willing to lose their lives for Jesus’ sake and the Gospel’s. Baptism is an act of courage.

So Jesus’ commission to Peter after His resurrection was not to dole out bread and wine to infants. It was to fatten those who had taken up their crosses, to prepare them for the slaughter to come, through which they would bring down Jerusalem and then Rome—”every high thing which exalts itself against the knowledge of God.”

In the Law, a lamb does not speak of a young child but of a blameless son, like Jesus at His baptism. He was vindicated before His earthly father at age twelve and vindicated before His heavenly Father at age 30, ready for holy war. Baptism is not for babies or infants but for holy warriors, and there were no baby Nazirites (but there were women!). To make it so is to miss the point of union with Christ altogether, and make the New Covenant into something social, something carnal, a community according to the flesh. Paedobaptism is poison to the heart of the New Covenant.

To open baptism and Communion to infants is to take the Church back to the Old Covenant, the time of dark sayings and shadows. It is to say that Christ has not come in the flesh, and Christ is not risen from the dead, and this was exactly the motive behind the Herods’ years of glorious Passovers leading up to the destruction of their serpentine rulers, their women, and their children—the entire congregation was “circumcised.”

So, what about our children? We are holy members of the Lamb, bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh, but also Spirit of His Spirit. The Lord’s table is not for “feeding” infants the Gospel. Look at the picture above. It is a group of subversives planning to change the world by laying down their lives. The Lord’s Table is for dangerous people, and partaking in the Table is itself a public testimony. It is for living sacrifices, and our physical children, as with all those who hear and have not yet repented, feed upon us. We are the cut up, washed “members” of the lamb on the Altar. We mediate Jesus to them. Only the Gospel transforms the sons of men into the sons of God, and all the sons of God are sacrificial lambs who have willingly taken up the cross. The New Covenant body is a human sacrifice.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. (1 Corinthians 12:27)

“Matthew understands Jesus to be the rightful heir of the chieftaincy who instead volunteers to become the Victim at the tribe’s feast. But by being the voluntary victim, he becomes the first victim in the world who can speak.”

An excerpt from Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy’s “Fruit of Lips”:

“…as oral as Peter the fisherman must have been and as much as he probably detested ink, Matthew certainly was familiar with paper work and written records, only too well. Since we do not expect him to be employed inside his old activities, where he had used writing for superficial purposes to say the least, we may expect him to fight elsewhere…”

Now, we read that he was not received in good society. And on the other hand, he begins with Jesus’ place in the social register of Israel. He stresses this fact that his master belonged in the very best society, as the son of kings. And he goes on to show that there were privileges connected with this social place which Jesus abandoned. “The son of kings should be scotfree” (Mt. 17.26). He should not pay customs duty nor any tax, be it capitation tax or the half shekel tax, as Jesus smilingly says (Mt. 17.27). But, Matthew goes on to say, the reverse happens.
He expresses the whole meaning of Jesus’ life in terms of an account, and I am sorry to grate the refined feelings of the suburban reader, but he does say: He gave his life as the price for buying back many (Mt. 20. 28).

This is not a figure of speech with Matthew. Matthew understands Jesus to be the rightful heir of the chieftaincy who instead volunteers to become the Victim at the tribe’s feast. But by being the voluntary victim, he becomes the first victim in the world who can speak. Nobody had ever spoken in this role. But victims, though mute, were essential. The association between the ancestors and the living was based on the common meal at which the dead partook as though alive, and the whole burial and funeral rite was based on this association between the dead and the living. The spirits of the dead asked for food, and these ghosts were bloodthirsty if they were not fed, according to the faith or superstition of all tribes. We accomplish the same by high entrance fees into clubs or fraternities. In this manner, we become members. Sacrifices were the core of ritual since they alone incorporated the group and gave it a legal status as a public corporation, beyond the grave, beyond the accidents of birth and death. Sacrifice, then, was the only means of establishing order and of creating legal persons.

“The price of a good dinner party is the complete silence kept by those who serve and by the food which is served.”

And to speak the proper names, to make the proper movements at these sacrifices was essential. They were that which we hold essential as table manners. To how many people of our own time table manners are the yardstick of promotion, membership, fellowship! The table manners of antiquity were equally strict. With us, a waiter at table is not expected to join the conversation of his own accord. Even less do we expect the roast-beef and the fish to talk. The price of a good dinner party is the complete silence kept by those who serve and by the food which is served. And my whole paragraph will be condemned by any reader of good taste because I mention the remote possibility that the roast-beef might speak. And this is Matthew’s whole point. The verdict ‘bad taste’ – how often had he heard it turned against himself and his bad company – he knew to be more murderous for a man than any other crime.

Society expects us to play the rules of the game. It is inexorable if we break this etiquette. And yet, I had to commit this breach of etiquette myself if I wished to introduce Matthew at all. For herein lies his real achievement. He is the only Evangelist who tells of Jesus’ escape to Egypt when Herod murdered the children of Bethlehem. The whole point of Matthew is that though Herod could not murder him, he was murdered by good society for his breach of etiquette because he insisted on giving or lending speech to the victims of society. That Jesus spoke as the victim, made him impossible. Matthew scandalized the Jews. After all, they had nothing but burnt offerings since Abraham did not slaughter Isaac. They were highly civilized. In Sweden it could still happen a thousand years later that a king butchered six of his sons to placate the spirits. When he turned to his seventh son, the people saved the child, became Christians and gave up human sacrifices.

But Israel, after all, was the nation of Abraham and Moses. To this day, all Jews think that the Gospel is in bad taste. We read the word “scandal” in our texts, but “bad taste” would really convey better the whining under the Gospel. The ritual of any society – and I am afraid, we lose sight of this more readily than of anything else – protects itself by this violent recoiling. It does so at all times and in all places. Matthew: “Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the Elders by not washing their hands before meals?” the Scribes asked. “Why do you,” Jesus retorted, “transgress God’s command and deny your own parents something they need because it is ‘consecrated’?” “You have made futile God’s words for the sake of your table manners.” (Mt. 15. 2-6). “Eating with unwashed hands does not make unclean.”

Against the taboo of table manners, Matthew “sins” and Jesus “sins.” For, Matthew shows Jesus as the speaking victim, as the meat and wine who begin to speak, in the midst of dinner. The shock administered by Matthew is wonderfully formulated by a modern critic:

“The reference to eating Christ’s flesh and drinking his blood is impossible in an Aramaic Gospel in Jerusalem in the first century; nothing could be more repugnant to Jewish ways and feelings. Words such as these would horrify Jewish residents of Jerusalem, then or now. The Jews were and still are, utterly opposed to the drinking of blood which the Law repeatedly forbade. It would be difficult to imagine a sentence less likely to have been written in a Jewish Christian circle anywhere at any time. No Jewish evangelist could have recorded it.”

This is an eloquent paragraph and the feeling of vomiting is probably well nigh aroused in many a reader. The humor of this passage lies in two facts: first, that the critic deals with John who in this matter simply affirms Matthew. The critic tries to refute the Jewish origin of John. And he ignores the case of Matthew, who obviously wrote for Hebrews. The second humorous fact is the modern assumption that every scandal can be avoided. The Jews stoned Stephen, killed James, jailed Peter because they were furious. The lamb, the blood, the bread, all these terms, of course, were blasphemies. But the whole history of the Church was based on this fury. Paul in Athens when he for once tried to be adaptable, was a complete failure. Matthew was abhorred and the Gospel was abhorred and, be honest, is abhorred by all men of good taste today.

“Matthew knew that the pudenda of life were real. That it was less bad taste to speak as the victim, as bread and wine, than to do the act of Condemning the Just.”

The price of all ritual is sacrifice. When we bind ourselves to a ghost of the past, to a piece of paper, to a house, to a grave, we are apt to spill somebody else’s blood for the purpose. And so it is to this day. This is all right if it is in our consciousness which price we pay. But Jesus created a brotherhood where before the victims had been drafted. But the Eucharist is still a scandal to a Jew. It makes him vomit, quite literally, as it would any man of etiquette. Matthew knew that the pudenda of life were real. That it was less bad taste to speak as the victim, as bread and wine, than to do the act of Condemning the Just. He [Matthew] was immune against the mortal disease of good society. He knew that everything has its price. And that nothing is more expensive than freedom from the taboos of good society. And so he ceased to call the first man who had spoken for the victims and as a victim, by his name in society, son of David, Son of Abraham, as he had begun in Chapter One. This taboo was broken, Matthew, in his last chapter found himself in the infinitely more exciting society of sinners who no longer were bound together by high entrance fees but by the name of the first victim who had spoken out loud.

It is not impossible, by the way, that Matthew went to Ethiopia. Now, the point of this mission would be that the Ethiopians, to this day, observe the whole Jewish ceremonial as well as the New Testament liturgy. They circumcise and baptize; they observe the Sabbath as well as the Sunday. One cannot tell; but it would be in accordance with the Word of the Gospel if this duplication happened because of Matthew. Because the only disease which he fought was the superstition of ritual. Manners must be; but manners are not more than manners.

Matthew, by illuminating the breaking of table manners, went over primeval ground. In primeval days, table manners had. been the creative elements from which the body politic sprang. Instead of snatching food from each other – in our C.C.C. (Civilian Conservation Corps) camps of the unemployed this beastly snatching was not rare and always indicated the loss of camp morale – like the animals, the introduction of common meals created a new peace of mind. Around the meal for the dead, or perhaps more exactly, with their dead, the new incorporation took place. Food was placed between the living and the dead, and both partook of it, in one spirit and in one name. Hence, sacrificial meals were the first constitutions of mankind. Here it was that the community was enacted because the stomach’s enlightened “self”-interest was forgotten when the best pieces were reserved for the dead and later, the gods. Permanency eclipsed the interests of the living generation. The accidents of birth and of being alive were overshadowed by the eternity of the dead.

In the cooling shadow of this permanency and eternal order, peaceful arrangements were made between friend and foe; hospitality, the right of the enemy to eat with us, was introduced and became possible because ritual showed man his place in the succession of endless times. Here, people did not eat like the animals but they toasted each other by their full name. The salutation at meals is primeval. Men greeted each other and thought of each other at meals as “convivials,” id est, as co-livers, as now the other fellow’s life counted more in one’s own eyes, than the “self.”

To these primeval foundations of society Matthew takes us back. John spoke to peoples who knew the arts and sciences. Luke spoke to the greatest religionists and puritans of the ancient world. Mark spoke to the civilized inhabitants of the temple state. But Matthew penetrated, by his “bad taste,” to the most archaic layer of all society, to the tribal layer of ritual. Hence, Matthew gave a version of the Gospel which had to become the most universal and the most fundamental feature of the new Way of Life. The Mass and the Eucharist, the inner core of all divine services is written up in Matthew.

Since he made it clear that Christ bought, by his sacrifice, the salvation of the sacrificers, it was now written that the victim of every meal, that [namely] bread and wine, spoke to the dining communion and invited them to shift with their master to the other side of the counter, so to speak, to the side of the victim. In the Mass, every member is invited to be sacrificed or to be ready to be sacrificed for the salvation and the renovation of the world. In the Mass, the first victim invites the others, the partakers, to a service in which they themselves are the offerings. In the dullness of the average mind, this fact rarely makes a dent. People have degraded the divine service to a church parade or a social gathering. But the Church was built on the faith that from now on, no divine service was permitted unless the people considered themselves as the sacrifice offered. The whole expression of a Body of Christ, with the head in Heaven, meant exactly this, that we who would crucify the Lord every day, in our rage and envy and indifference, now, with our eyes opened once for what we have done and are doing, declare solemnly: We now, together with our Head, step on the side of the silent victims and offer ourselves to our Maker so that he can remake the sacrifice as he pleases. How else could ever a new inspiration befall us as a people unless we offer ourselves as the body for this inspiration? Time and again, man has to be ripped open by the ploughshare of suffering and open himself like a dry and desiccated earth to dew and rain. And ever since one men did this manifestly all alone and by himself, his congregations relieve the members of the total pressure of absolute loneliness. In every generation, the group which may be remodeled, may increase, until the whole of markind will be allowed to fall silent and to cleanse themselves from the chatter and clatter of the day, and to listen to the Spirit, simultaneously…

“The minds which scorn the sacraments as myth or obsolete, never fail to frighten me by their childishness.”

Matthew, the most drastic, the least mannered, also is the most elementary evangelist. Through him, we have received the ritual in writing. Our era would otherwise have been without any dress for its nakedness. It is very nice to leave obsolete clothing behind you, but our era needed dress, some dress, just the same. Now we received the power of ritual free from superstition or myth or magic. Everybody can understand Matthew — child and genius, warrior and farmer — unless his heart is alien to self-sacrifice. The minds which scorn the sacraments as myth or obsolete, never fail to frighten me by their childishness. What an ignorant and uneducated heart they must have; how the gristmill of their brain must have crushed all serious experience of life and of their own deepest hopes! Usually, these same people expect to be adored by their family, read by the public, paid by their endowed institution. How can they expect it unless man’s nature is fulfilled by his entering the ranks of the offerings? It is our highest nature that we should be offerings. “Liturgy is only another name for Almighty God’s table manners.”

The victim made eloquent, the world heart crested by responses, the No of God turned into an intermediary medicine of suffering on the road to a new incarnation, the human soul God’s newest poem — these were the four glad tidings. The blind alleys of ritual, temple cult, Israel, Greece opened up to each other. And these four men succeeded because they were immune to the specific disease of speech which their tidings deluged. This is the reason why it is faulty to call John Hellenistic, Mark Egyptian, Matthew Judaizing, Luke Pauline. The restoration of free speech by the Gospels proceeded by a matching of opposites. Neither does the prophetioal John write for the Jews, nor does the learned Luke write for the Greeks. The fisherman Peter writes for the scientific world. And it is not a man of good taste and good standing who by his first Gospel matches the Old Testament, but the in-no-way venerable publican.

(Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Fruit of Lips, pp. 66-74.)

I’m banging the drum again. Under the title Constant Conversion, Doug Wilson writes:

The true Christian life is a life of true conversion. The Latin is the word for turning around, turning from one direction to go in another.

This is something that has to be initially done at the very beginning of the Christian walk, and it is something that all of us must do daily, throughout the course of our Christian walk. And this is why gospel preaching is always preaching for true conversions.
It is wrong-headed to gather up the saints of God every week, and declare to them how to become the saints of God. But it is equally wrong-headed to act as though every baptized member is “in good” so long as they got their papers stamped by some ecclesiastical functionary. You must be born again, and when we say this, we are not talking the biblical symbols of it, like baptism, and we are not talking about our cultural symbols for it, like signing the back of a Bible, or going forward at a revival. We are talking about life.

When we are converted, we are turning away from death, and turning to life. When someone is first converted, they are turning from the state of death to the state of life. When someone has been long converted (in this world), there are always the remainders of death around us that we must turn from in our walk, in order to advance further across the threshold of life. We have crossed over into the precincts of Heaven, that is true, but how can we be satisfied with just a taste of that life?

Further up and further in.

These words really are words of life, and the sacraments were given to us to: 1) hammer home this truth, and 2) keep nailing it in.

Thanks to the Federal Vision gents, I can see this ongoing life and death choice in every Communion. But surely we must see that first life-and-death decision in every baptism?

They have remarried baptism and table, the first conversion and the ongoing conversion, which is only logical. But in doing so, they have divorced both of them from the new birth.

This means they are preaching two gospels. The first one says you are a Christian because you are merely hearing the gospel, and called upon to make that initial life-and-death choice. This puts the sacraments in the place of the gospel. In doing this, they have turned them into another gospel, a temporary rival. [1]

If this doesn’t cause too much confusion in the saints, it’s because they preach the true gospel very clearly, in fact, more clearly than just about any baptist I can think of. But their sacraments send a mixed message to the world: “Join our genealogy.”

Is their church community a communion or a commune? If the latter, their unconverted Old Covenant “genealogical” rites will hamstring their postmillennial expectations. Israel shows us that a genealogical gospel was never intended to conquer the world. In a recent (and otherwise excellent) sermon, Pastor Wilson commented that “Salvation extends to the world by generational blessing and promise.” Wrong. Salvation was extended to the world in that way. But no longer. B.C. was the age of progeny, “seed.” A.D. is the age of recruitment, “harvest.” Communists, gays and Muslims get it. Paedobaptists, somehow, don’t. This harvest must include but must extend beyond the repentance and conversion of our physical offspring.The Christian walk is just that: a walk.

In summary, God intends that both sacraments communicate this process of repentance: baptism for (among other things) the beginning of repentance, and communion for (among other things) continuing repentance. But in their sincere desire to communicate truth to their children, by allowing unregenerate children to participate in the sacraments, the Federal Vision pastors are actually contradicting the very truths these sacraments represent.

________________________________
[1] I have discussed this here and here.

or Feeding the Correct Dog

THIS POST HAS BEEN REMIXED AND INCLUDED IN GOD’S KITCHEN: THEOLOGY YOU CAN EAT AND DRINK

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