A Celebration Feast of Forgiveness

Confession is the first step in establishing a new beginning in our fellowship with God.

It is a crucial principle of our existence that each of us needs support from others. Indeed, it could be argued that this is the major driving force behind the notion of the Christian community found in Scripture—we need each other and we belong to each other. While the principle can be applied in many different directions, we will focus here on sin and forgiveness.

Individually, we are misled at times by our own ideas and understandings; we may be especially disturbed by our own failures as followers of Christ. As a result, we pay a heavy price in terms of unrest and anxiety, which are displeasing to the Lord. Those of us in the Protestant tradition are especially vulnerable to this sort of suffering. We exult in our doctrine of “the priesthood of the believer”—and rightly so. It is almost incredible that individually we have direct access to God without need of any intermediary other than Christ himself. We can therefore approach God alone, and we can accept his forgiveness alone.

At times, though, I find that the memory of past sin refuses to go away. It continues to haunt me, even after I have confessed it to God. I know I have sinned; I know I have confessed the sin to God; I know God has forgiven me and restored me to full fellowship with himself through Christ. But because I carry out the confession transaction alone, I continue to suffer feelings of guilt as if I had never confessed. At such times, to have acted alone in a vacuum is simply not enough for me, and I need desperately to hear from someone else that I have been forgiven, that God has heard me. The fact of the matter is, Satan can all too easily bring past sin to mind, questioning my repentance, or even whether I confessed “properly,” thus stealing my joy and hindering me in the exercise of the spiritual gifts God has given me.

This does not appear to me to be the case in the Roman Catholic tradition. Catholicism has a formal means of confession wherein the confessor is told directly where forgiveness lies, and that forgiveness has specifically taken place. Neither was this a problem historically in Judaism. On the Day of Atonement the priest declared publicly that the whole community participating in the sacrifice had been forgiven.

We Protestants adamantly insist that no one has more right to God than we do, and we refuse to grant anyone else the right to declare us to be forgiven. But while this is a glorious fact, we must face a potential problem inherent in it. We can solve that problem, however, without losing our Protestant distinctive.

In my experience, few Christian people show less of the joy of what Christ does for us than Protestants who have just taken Communion. Have you noticed the long faces, the sad eyes, the drawn mouths? Have you felt the depression yourself? Is this what “remembering the Lord” does for us? If the joy of the Lord is our strength at such times, we are in real trouble.

But please note that I do not belittle the magnitude of all that Christ suffered for us, nor our utter unworthiness. Knowing the truth of both, we are deeply humbled and shamed. Neither do I mean to detract from the seriousness of the command that we examine ourselves. Partaking of Communion is serious business, and there is no place for superficiality (Paul suggests in 1 Cor. 11:30 that a flippant attitude can cause sickness or even death). Clearly God takes it seriously, and so should we. But it should also be a celebration, each time a glorious event of festival and renewal.

Undoubtedly the first Communion was a gloomy time as the disciples realized (finally) that Jesus was to die. They seemed to have nothing to celebrate. But that is not our situation, for we know much more than they did. For us it should be anything but a gloomy time. Jesus has risen, and lives on! That first Communion was not the end at all; Jesus has conquered Satan, including the effects of Satan’s actions in our own lives.

Jesus lives!

For all of us who are Christians, Communion forms an ideal opportunity to affirm and proclaim powerfully that reality of all realities of Christianity—the hope of still another new beginning. Communion can be for us a time of declaration that we have confessed our sin, and that God has forgiven us.

A common pattern for Communion includes thanksgiving to God for sacrificing his Son for us; confession of sins, individually and corporately; examination of ourselves; partaking of the elements; and renewed dedication to God.

While this is all good, it seems to me that it lacks one crucial element to make it really complete: an explicit declaration on the basis of the Scriptures that because of Christ’s death, sin is forgiven, and because the participants have confessed their sins, they have a new beginning, and their fellowship with God is fully and totally restored.

This would really be nothing new; the facts are still the same, even if nothing is said. But the explicit statement of those facts could make a big difference in the joy we experience, both together and individually. We rightly become sad thinking of the pain and disgrace that Christ suffered, especially since we know he did it for us individually—and would have done so even if we had been the only ones on earth. Such was his love. And we rightly become afraid when we examine ourselves, lest somehow we fail to partake properly and thus “profane the body and blood of the Lord.” No one wants to be responsible for that. But to stop there is to tell only part of the story. The fact is, because Christ died, we are forgiven.

God does not call us to sadness, but to joy. Our fellowship with him is restored, and it is at his initiative. He is not sad, why should we be? We have a new beginning. An explicit statement of such facts should be part of Communion. The leader could handle this easily, simply reminding the congregation of the truth of such passages as 1 John 1:8–9 and then declaring explicitly and publicly on file basis of the Scriptures (not his own authority) that God has forgiven them; their fellowship is now totally restored.

There is an account in Nehemiah 8:1–12 that is particularly instructive in this regard. In this historical narrative the people have returned from exile, and at their request, Ezra has read the Law to them. They had the same reaction we commonly have to Communion: they cried—probably because of the requirements of the Law, and specifically because they knew they had failed to obey God. Sound familiar?

Ezra’s response to their crying is striking. The day was a holy day, he said, totally unfit for crying. Rather, on such a day feasting and partying are in order. Talk about celebration!

We are often surprised to find holiness and fun juxtaposed that way. It makes us uncomfortable—maybe because we expect sadness to be the correct response to holiness, even if only because it points out our own sinfulness. At such times we somehow feel that God is more pleased with sadness than fun.

We are tempted, therefore, to feel that way each time we take Communion. Holiness is there, certainly; we are dealing with great truths, and they are not to be taken lightly. Christ’s suffering for us was real, and our sin is clear to us all.

But Christ did not die to make us sad, but to heal us and forgive us. Communion is intended to be a time when we remember that this is the case. Once confession has been made, sin no longer stands between us and God, and we have a new beginning. And just as confession is a natural part of Communion, so too should be the declaration of forgiveness on the basis of Scripture. It is a holy time; it is a time for festivity.

Let’s celebrate the Lord’s Supper!

Donald A. Burquest is assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Texas at Arlington.

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