Edible Words

© Horton, M, Signs and Seals of the Covenant (chapter 9 abridged) from God of Promise: Introducing Covenant Theology, (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2006) Used by permission of Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group, copyright © 2006. All rights to this material are reserved. Materials are not to be distributed to other web locations for retrieval, published in other media, or mirrored at other sites without written permission from Baker Publishing Group. Buy this book on amazon.co.uk or on amazon.com.

Signs and Seals of the Covenant

As the Spirit of Promise, the third person of the Trinity brings to fruition Christ's "new creation." The Father speaks, the Son is spoken, and the Spirit brings about in history the effect and perfection of that speech. But how does the Spirit accomplish this? According to scripture, it is by the gift of faith. But where does this faith come from? It is created by the preaching of the gospel and confirmed by the sacraments as signs and seals of God's covenant promises.

God's Presence as Treaty (Word) and Ratification (Sacrament)

...In biblical faith, the point of it all is to be summoned and addressed by the Covenant Lord. It is no wonder that the Word takes pride of place.

Repeatedly we encounter this emphasis on the word that is heard corresponding to the order of promise in a covenant of grace, in contrast to a vision that is seen corresponding to an order of consummation. ...

All of these terms we have encountered above: the name (calling on the name, being given the name), word, proclamation, promise, presence, the divine witnessing involved in God's countenance, etc., are part of the vocabulary of covenant rather than metaphysics. They belong to history rather than eternal forms and are drawn analogically from the world of ancient Near Eastern international diplomacy. In the Word of command and promise we discover who we are: the law tells us that we are "under sin" by nature; the gospel tells us that we are "in Christ" through faith. This is the Word of the Covenant, but in both Old and New Testaments we learn also of the signs and seals of the covenant that ratify the treaty of peace.

Passover and the Lord's Supper: The Covenant Meal

In all of this, therefore, two extremes are avoided: the sacerdotal error, which fails to distinguish the sign from the thing signified, and the memorialist error, which fails to recognize the union of the sign and signified. For the former, no real sacrament actually exists: baptism is regeneration and the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The sign is swallowed by the signified: it no longer exists, despite appearances to the contrary. For the latter also, there can really be no sacrament, since all is left is the bare sign itself. Baptism and the Supper may be occasions for a spiritual event by encouraging the participant's powers of reflection, self-examination, and pious memory, but they are not themselves regarded as the occasions of God's powerful witness and work.

The Lord's Supper, then, is a covenant meal. That means while it is first of all a ratification of God's pledge to us, it also ratifies our pledge to God and to each other. It has both vertical and horizontal dimensions. In it we receive the body and blood of Christ and are knit together as the body of Christ. As we receive our Living Head by his Spirit, we are made one people. As the bread and wine are a participation (koinonia) in Christ, they further bind us in a koinonia with each other. One cannot treat the Supper in an individualistic manner, but only as a covenant meal. Here, the hierarchical divisions between poor and rich, slave and free, Jew and gentile, male and female, [young and old?] are suspended as the rules of "this present age" are overpowered by the melodious strains of "the age to come."

This has tremendous practical implications, as the reformers realized. In fact, Martin Bucer (the Strasbourg reformer) wrote extensively on the relationship between the Supper and the communal obligations of rich and poor...Bucer was right: How would our conduct toward each other be improved if we were a eucharistically-oriented people? Could there be churches just on either sides of the tracks which took no account of each other, being baptized into capitalism instead of Christ? A political party instead of Christ? Racism instead of Christ? Culture-Christianity instead of Christ? In many respects, the churches in America today are as divided along socio-economic, racial, political and generational lines as the church of Corinth. By being first and foremost the objective place where God meets and blesses his people, the Supper becomes also the place where a heavenly society on earth, a colony of Christ's kingdom, refuses to suspend its ever-widening encroachment on the kingdom of sin and death. The Word, Baptism, and the Supper form a single island of divinely-created unity out of the world's divisive rivalries. Here is the one place where "all are one in Christ." It's not the musical style that unites them, the socio-economic or racial complexion of the community, the age or political orientation. Here, in the pew, at the font, and at the table, only one division really matters: Christ and idols.

The problem with the pietistic version of the Supper, therefore, is that in its obsession with the individual's inner piety, it loses much of the import of the feast as a sacred meal that actually binds us to Christ and to each other. Instead of viewing it as first of all God's saving action toward us and then as our fellowship with each other in Christ, we come to see it as just another opportunity to be threatened with the law. Instead of celebrating the foretaste of the marriage supper of the Lamb on Mount Zion, we are still trembling at the foot of Mount Sinai. It is no wonder, then, that there is a diminished interest in frequent Communion.

There are many things in the Christian life that are useful and assist us in our walk. Disciplines of prayer, Bible reading, fellowship with believers, evangelism and social concern are habits that the individual and the church cannot live without. Yet the Word and the sacraments are distinguished from all else as means of grace. While prayer is, as the Heidelberg Catechism puts it, "the chief part of gratitude," it is something that moves from us to God, while in the preached Word and the sacraments, the movement is from God to us.