Blueprints
Bound up in this question of the sacramental cup is the nature of the relationship between the physical world and the spiritual realm. Does the wine “do something” for us spiritually that grape juice does not, other than allow a more snuggly biblical literalism? Is there any meaningful thread that ties the spiritual and physical together, such that the misreading of one affects the function of the other, like the relationship between a blueprint and a house?
One of the counterpoints to a wine-based communion addressed in Part 3 was that the substance in the cup does not matter as much as the meaning attached to that substance. This is true, and always is, concerning the relationship between a symbol and what it symbolizes. Wedding rings are not as important as the marriages they signify, and the content of the sacramental cup is not more important than the New Covenant.
This greater-lesser relationship between the substance and symbol can introduce a laxity where the symbol can be abstracted so long as the meaning is nominally preserved. If we were to take Rembrandt’s self-portrait, with his crips lines and soft light, and give it a chunky Van Goghian makeover, you might still have the general impression of the original; have Picasso take a stab at it, and Rembrandt’s face would be abstracted into dismemberment, twisted and unrecognizable, colored with the emotional palate of the artist’s choice. The further one moves from the original, the more the picture is disrupted, and the less the artist’s intent is apprehended, even if the subsequent abstractions nominally say they are being true to the spirit of Rembrandt’s original.
Is swapping wine for grape juice painting abstractly? Is it copying the oil-painted image, stroke for stroke, with acrylics? Does it matter?
One way we can get a second opinion, so to speak, is to see if there are other examples in the Bible where God provides symbols with tight parameters that we can use to enlighten our quest and perhaps unbend that question mark into an exclamation of certainty. Is He cool with abstraction in other places?
After the Israelite exodus, God gave Moses instructions on the construction of the Tabernacle. Dimensions, materials, furnishings, décor, lighting, timing, personnel – the entire structure and functions were described by God in detail. I can imagine God starting to rattle off this novella-length architectural and design instructions and Moses standing there listening, nodding. You’re gonna want something to write on, Mose. A quarter of Exodus is dedicated to the description and erection of this construction project. One gets the impression that either Yahweh was a serious type A, or that the Tabernacle’s specific construction had some greater significance that Moses and his posse were not yet privy to.
The latter was exactly the case. Hebrews illuminates the reason for the specificity.
They [the high priests] serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: “See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.”
Hebrews 8:4-5
Apparently, there is a sanctuary in heaven, and God’s instructions for the earthly Tabernacle were based on its floor plans. Catch that? Take a second and let this chestnut simmer. Chew the cud for a while on this revelation. God is giving us a glimpse of some heavenly real estate, and not just any old celestial acre, but perhaps the holiest place in the heavenlies. And in this holiest heavenly place, the sentinel event of the created time-space continuum will occur- Jesus, the great High Priest, will carry in his own blood and clench salvation for the penitent. We ought to be suspicious that He is up to something by allowing us this little peek over heaven’s rim.
The Tabernacle’s construction was not a fun weekend project for Israel to while away the 40-year time out before they could get a do-over Canaanite conquest. In order for Moses, the Israelites, and us, to understand the holiness of God, the heinousness of sin, and the heart of mercy towards sinners, Moses was given a model kit to build, staged with props, and cast with actors, to dramatize both the Old and New Covenants between God and man.
But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.
Hebrews 9:11-12, ESV
Drawn into the blueprints of the model was the foreshadowing work of the great High Priest. The author of Hebrews pulled together heaven and earth and laid one atop the other so we could see the metaphor. God chose specific earthly materials and arranged them just so to make this invisible reality apprehendable to us, to speak with symbols that we could understand. Heaven shines through the thin spots of earth; the Tabernacle is particularly threadbare.
The blueprint was not arbitrary; the symbol was not senseless; it was a 4th-dimensional Rubik’s cube of meaning. Moses was warned (warned!) to “make everything according to the pattern.” No quarter was given for deviation; no audibles could be called, no artists license to abstract the original. Change the model and the glory of the Original is missed. Biblical symbols are tumbler combinations that unlock the eternal and invisible Real. Misturning the dial can leave treasures unopened.
Plump Presumptions
The Bible also gives us cautionary tales of presuming upon God. Quite a few, actually. And in some of these stories, the infraction of the offense is judged with a harshness seemingly out of proportion. Moses struck the rock instead of speaking to it and was banned from the Promised Land; Uzzah valiantly jumped to save the ark from tumbling off the oxcart and died instantly; King Josiah, the great reformer of Israel, meddled in afffars that were none of his beeswax, and took an arrow to the chest.
One story where the presumption is called out for the sin it is found in the crib of Israel’s kingdom, just a few years after Saul’s coronation as her first king.
King Saul always seemed oafish to me. Maybe I am reading that into the text. We know he was a head taller than the rest and good with a spear, but the text doesn’t give the impression that he was the brightest wick on the Menorah. I imagine him with beefy arms and the kind of sausage-fingered hands that could pet a bunny to death. Never met a jaw of pickles he couldn’t open, but had all the finesse of a silverback at catillion. I would wager some serious shekel on Saul’s chest-bumping his soldiers after an Ammonite routing.
But he had a hard go. God fired him only two years after his kingly appointment, yet officially he stayed in office for another 38 miserable years.
The story of King Saul’s fall gives us another example of the importance of following God’s instructions. After several stellar victories against the Ammonites and Philistines, he was ordered to wipe out a nagging giant issue among the Amalekites. And when God said wipe out, He meant it. Unlike other Canaanite tribes where war spoils were permitted to be taken, this was a full-scale slaughter – men, women, children, animals, structures – all devoted to destruction. Take nothing; slaughter everything.
On his victorious return home, Saul boasted to Samuel that he followed God’s instructions to the letter. Samuel asks, if Saul’s obedience was so pristine, what’s with all the sheep’s bleating and cow’s mooing and camels making whatever sound camels make?
And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, “Blessed be you to the LORD. I have performed the commandment of the LORD.” And Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear?” Saul said, “They have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice to the LORD your God, and the rest we have devoted to destruction.
1 Samuel 15:13-15, ESV
Not only did Saul presume to amend God’s instruction with the animals, but he also took home as prisoner Agag, the king of the Amalekites, as a trophy of war. Saul thought he had him a better idea than God. All these nice, juicy oxen would be better used on the sacrificial altar. Seems a waste to slaughter such plump ewes. If God had known how many sacrifices He could have received from all these fine cows, He never would have called for their destruction. It was a good thing Saul was there to call an audible based on new information on the ground.
This was ridiculous, of course. God knew about the animal plumpness. Plumpness was no mystery. It never is for God. He did not need boots on the ground feeding him new intel. He did not want more beeves or a giant-king war trophy. He wanted obedience.
Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,
as in obeying the voice of the LORD?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
and to listen than the fat of rams.
For rebellion is as the sin of divination,
and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the LORD,
he has also rejected you from being king.”1 Samuel 15:22-23 ESV
Consequently, Saul was dethroned as king, though remained on the throne for quite some time, with an evil spirit addling his brain intermittently.
One lesson to learn from this is to take caution with presuming a laxity with God’s instruction. This does not mean we can’t debate or ponder what God might have meant when He says or does certain things. But when it comes to clear commands and instructions, there is no room for lateral movement, and it is a matter of faith on our part to trust He has reasons. Reasoning that God doesn’t care about us obeying specifics in the Bible so much as the feelings we fondle in our hearts, is a feature of the watery soup of evangelical spirituality.
Paul, epidemiologist
We have talked about the importance of the material world to signify the spiritual reality and the danger that presuming to change the instructions on the ground can cause. The epistles give us another example that combines the danger of presumption and the misuse of the symbol, and it is over the matter of the Lord’s Supper specifically. What are the odds?
The Corinthian church had suffered a rash of odd illnesses. Healthy members of the local church body were dying and in abnormally large numbers. Had this happened in the twenty-first century, the WHO would have sent out a pair of spectacled epidemiologists in hazmat suits to test the water, interview the locals, and autopsy the deceased to find the source of the pathology.
Paul traces the disease back to another vector. Among some very heinous sins the church battled was the corruption of the Supper. The sacrament had turned into something of a middle school cafeteria. The cool kids had their tables and the nerds were consigned to the corners. Some used the free wine to get wasted and glutted themselves on the bread. Wine stickied the floor, food was flung, and lampshades were placed on heads. The rich, who didn’t work, gobbled up the sacraments, while the poor just getting off work were left with crumbs and dregs. Paul censures them harshly, then solves the mystery of the suspicious deaths and illnesses among them.
Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.
1 Corinthians 11:27-30 ESV
Before we get carried away with what this may mean, let me first say I am not equating grape juice communion and physical illness. Just because we tippled a bit of Welch’s for communion doesn’t mean we are going to die of syphilis or anything. That’s not what I’m saying.
I only want to observe that, in this case, there is a tangible and measurable physical effect to a spiritual decision that is unexplainable by normal cause-and-effect relationships. If you read a hundred commentaries on this passage, a fair number will chalk up the odd health issues and deaths to the normal physiological sequelae of drinking too much. Excessive alcohol consumption pickled their livers, and all that gluten made them feel super bloated. Nope. Paul is not giving us a divinely inspired D.A.R.E. talk. The Holy Spirit isn’t illuminating the reason they have hangovers. He is solving the mystery of the illness and deaths in their community and identifies the pathogen as a spiritual flippancy.
They had failed to “discern the body”, and this failure of judgment resulted in a miraculous (ie: supernatural) physical response. Twenty-first-century materialists like us feel very uncomfortable around miracles. We like our lives to be like our weather: predictable and mostly sunny. Miracles give us heartburn. Even as Christians, we are cool when God decided to override the normal course of disease process and heal suddenly. Faith healing is a thing, to a certain degree, and amen to that. But what we have here is the opposite – it was an unbelief sickening.
Again, to be clear, I am not drawing a line of causation between our decisions – or even overt sin – and miraculous physical enfeeblement. Certainly, there are cause-and-effect relationships between bad decisions (excessive drinking) and physical pathology (liver cirrhosis), which everybody knows. And Jesus told us that physical disability is not always the result of sin (John 9). Yet at the same time, such a connection was evident in Corinth. The only observation I am interested in here is the interpenetration of the spiritual and physical realms. They are not disjointed. The spiritual realm is not an astranged and unsearchable land like the old gnostic and young Cartesian dualists
Had Moses taken the liberty to amend God’s blueprint for the Tabernacle, if such a ridiculous thought experiment had been attempted, the prophetic and salvific mystery of the gospel would have been shrouded. Because he was careful to follow God’s instructions to the tiddle, the story of the New Covenant was foretold in four-dimensional symbolism.
Saul, bless him, gives us a cautionary tale of taking liberty with God’s instructions and ought to make us weigh carefully changing instructions God commands. And we have a case in point from the Lord’s Supper itself of the frighteningly close relationship between the spiritual and physical worlds, and how handling unworthily the symbols of the sacrament caused hit-point damage to Corinthian bodies.
It is through, and only through, the symbolic that we apprehend invisible realities; if we want to see clearly what God means for us to see, we must understand and use the symbols he gives the way they were meant to be given. Spiritual realities are not merely translated into the symbolic as two-dimensional scrawlings – merely mental exercises. They interact. It is a two-way street. Heavenly wind brushes our hair. Pulling a symbol’s string rings heavenly bells. It is the symbolic – the mysterious and magical world of names – that will be the focus of our next inquiry.
Thought Butter 