Part III: Sacrament vs. Ordinance: Guest Blogger, Tripp Hudgins (AngloBaptist). Check out Part I & Part II.
Alan generously asked me to participate in this blog series on Baptist sacramentality and immediately I said yes. I wanted to chime in. But it took me a while to figure out how I could share my thoughts. As a baptist, I think the testimony might be the best mode of communication in this instance. I hope you will all bear with me.
I was in seminary listening to a lecture on the Eucharistic Prayer, that traditional prayer that many denominations use when celebrating the Lord’s Supper. We were walking through some of the history, form, and theological function of the prayer and when we got to the epiclesis I had an epiphany. Really, one hopes for an epiphany at the epiclesis, but how often does that happen? And yet, there it was. Whammo!
The epiclesis is the part of the longer Eucharistic Prayer (aka anaphora) where the presider (priest or pastor, typically) prays for the Holy Spirit to be present in the elements at the table. I was listening with Baptist ears on as my Episcopal professor explained the historical use of this prayer. I was on the lookout for magical thinking, or mechanistic ballyhoo. None. Zilch. Nada. Then…Then it hit me.
Hold on! What are all the elements present at the table for communion? Bread, wine (or juice), a presider of some sort, and, well…the people. The gathered faithful, The Body of Christ, are present at the table of the Lord! Don’t baptists believe that the Holy Spirit transforms us? Don’t we believe that we are somehow renewed by the power of the Holy Spirit? Don’t we pray that God would be present in our hearts? Isn’t this the same thing? Is this baptist sacramentality?
