“Churches have sanctuaries and pulpits to keep the language of preaching front and center.”

–Eugene Peterson, Practice Resurrection

I’m loving every page of this book.  In fact, you’ll be seeing more here from Peterson in the days ahead.  No one seems to have a clearer sense of Church and of the dignity inherent in pastoring than he does.  However–this sentence of his calls to mind one of my issues with the Church these days (and well, for the last few centuries for that matter!).  The actual, literal, physical center of worship since the Reformation has shifted from the altar to the pulpit, from the Presence of God in Christ’s eucharistic sacrifice to the Presence of God in and through the preaching of His Word.  More often than not, this draws the focus of worship to the preacher and to his or her effectiveness and creativity, however genuinely spiritually gifted that preacher may be.

Eventually though, if we’re not careful, we may soon descend from a sense of the Word as the very presence of Christ into a perception of the word devoid of the divine, Spirit-infused power to transform lives.  Instead, we substitute a wispy fleeting “inspiration” that imparts the illusion of transformation until our feelings begin to wane.  Then, what we thought was transformation reveals itself to have been merely a mood.

For the early Church the focal point of worship was the Communion Table.  I need to brush up on my Church history here, but my recollection is that the Reformers didn’t supplant the Table right from the outset.  The Table had, however, become an act, a ritual, a symbol–even an empty act, ritual, symbol.  It had lost its sacramental aspect:  People had lost the mystery inherent in the Eucharist, the simultaneous reality of God’s presence with us in and through material things.  This is holy mystery. The Reformers’ legitimate rejection of empty ritual, of empty symbol, was never intended to jettison one of the genuine, right-from-day-one sacraments of the Church.  The jettisoning of empty symbol became the rejection of any and every symbol.

And to fill the void left by the departure of this sacramental understanding, the Word, which had been re-discovered as living, vital, sharper-than-any-two-edged-sword, was elevated.  But the ultimate rejection of symbol meant that the Word, too, soon came to be seen as a literal word, rather than the sacramental presence, will, purpose, and direction of Christ, who is Himself the living, active, creative Word of God.

Table and Word are, of course, necessary and essential elements of corporate Christian worship.  The center around which all holds together is the sacrifice of Jesus.  We are confronted head on with this audacious sacrifice; it is, as we say, in our face.  The preaching of the Word establishes the Story and its context and presents us with the challenge of either responding to it or retreating from it, dodging it, keeping it at arm’s length and visible only out of the corner of our eye.  Table and Word are partners in the Dance, but the Table leads.  And it’s difficult to dance with your partner at arm’s length and only visible out of the corner of your eye.