communion

The Tar is Gone

by Ben Zornes · Feb 1, 2022

Sin brings shame. Sin defiles. Sin makes you dirty. Sin weighs you down. Sin clouds your judgement. Sin invites more sin. Sin brings condemnation. Sin makes you fearful. Sin is misery.

In Eden, man was stained by sin. Since then, we’ve tried every avenue imaginable to wash away that sin, cover that sin, or just ignore that sin. Your garments are tarred by it, and earthly solutions are like using more tar to get the old tar out. You’ll only succeed in spreading it around, making a worse mess than you started with. Some, thinking they’re clever, have concocted elaborate explanations as to why those stains aren’t actually stains but are symbols of our diversity and human flourishing to be celebrated. And so we heap shame on our shame.

But ball up all the shame, guilt, fear, and condemnation of your sin and look here. Look at this bread, it is broken for you. Look at this wine, it was poured for you. Look here, look through these signs, and see the Son of God and Son of Man pinned to the cursed tree so that you could get off, scot-free.

Not because God decided to not care about your sin, but because God determined to die for your sin. Your sin isn’t set aside because God decided to take it easy on you, but because He determined that the greatest glory would shine through the blackest, most foul crime imaginable: the murder of the holy Son of God.

The shed blood washes white as snow. The gunk is purged away. Your hands, once bloody, stained, & raw with the scrubbing of self-righteousness, are healed and made holy. Remember here what was done for you. God sent His Son to die for you. You are made clean by the blood of the Lamb.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

We Are The Reforming

by Ben Zornes · Jan 25, 2022

We have a tendency to settle and sag in our piety; we begin with zeal, and then eventually grow dull & weary of our Christian duties. The danger with calling ourselves Reformed is that we can tend to think the project is done and dusted. But as the Reformers of the 16th & 17th centuries themselves pointed out, we should refer to ourselves as “the Reforming” not “the Reformed.”

The danger of receiving a rich theological heritage––and we have through such Protestant greats as Luther, Calvin, Knox, and later evangelical voices like Edwards, Spurgeon, and Kuyper––is viewing it as our birthright, rather than as it is: God’s grace. This is a profound legacy which we’ve received, but it is entirely possible to squander it. There are many ways of squandering an inheritance. Some obvious, like blatant compromise with worldliness. Others less obvious, like slowly putting our precious doctrines behind a glass case, thinking that we’re preserving the Reformation’s legacy.

The Lord’s Supper reminds us that we partake of the Risen and Reigning Christ. He is head of His church, not a museum’s prized display. Through our union with Christ, and by His Spirit, we’re regularly renewed in His work of Reforming His church, His bride, according to His Word. We are being transformed from one degree of glory to another. God has renewed His church in ages past, and we should be eager for Him, by the Word and Sacraments, to do so once more in our day.

So, just as in your individual sanctification you know that the Spirit is continuing His work of renewing you and conforming you to His image, so to, He continues the work of Reforming His body. As we partake in Christ’s body and blood, we are made “the Reforming” not just “the Reformed.”

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

Leave Your Sin There

by Ben Zornes · Jan 18, 2022

The Gospel humbles the proud, and exalts the humble. Nowhere is that more evident than when we come to the Lord’s Supper. The pride of man thinks that the more you earn, the greater your fame, the more talented you are, the better your spot at the table and the better portions you should receive.

The table of the haughty insists that you must earn a spot at the table. The fellowship of the self-righteous is tenuous, however. They must continually adjust for popular opinions about what constitutes moral behavior. They fence the table by conforming to the fads of the time. The haughty heart wants its sins overlooked, while others, whose sins just recently became detestable according to public opinion, must be left out.

But this table, where the signs of our Lord’s humilition are brought to view, rebukes everyone’s sins. Petty and trite sins to criminal and deranged sins. Murder and envy, lust and sodomy, lying and defrauding, laziness and bank heists. Christ died not so that we could smuggle our sins into His banqueting hall and hide them under the table. He died so that we need carry our sin and our guilt no more.

The humble have had their eyes opened by grace to see the horrendous grotesqueness of their sin and the holy glory of Christ’s sacrifice for that sin. The humble say, “Amen,” to the evil of their sin, and say another “Amen,” twice as loud, to the forgiveness and eternal life offered them in the Gospel.

So, to all the world, to sinners of all stripes, to the child who tells habitual lies, to the businessman who rages at his employees, to the cross-dresser, the stripper, and the self-righteous Pharisees, the Word of the Gospel is this: come. Come here, and leave your sin there.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

Breadhouse

by Ben Zornes · Dec 17, 2021

It isn’t just a happy accident that Christ was born in a town named Bethlehem, which means house of bread. If a movie studio got this script they’d likely pass on it for being to “on the nose”. They might offer constructive criticism to the aspiring screenwriter, “You’ve got talent kid, just learn to be more subtle.”

But this story, told by the supreme Storyteller, simultaneously confounds the wise while being gloriously clear for even the most simple amongst us. Our father Adam’s sin was eating from the tree he was forbidden to eat from. As a result, God cut us off from the tree of life. From then on, mankind hungered for life, but no matter where he looked or how hard he labored this bread of life eluded him.

The high-points of the OT all resemble each other, in that God comes down to some undeserving but chosen servant to renew a covenant of grace. These moments are always punctuated by some covenant meal. Noah offers up a sacrifice after the flood; Abraham witnesses the glory of God pass through the parted meat of the covenantal sacrifice, Moses leads Israel to partake of a passover meal on the eve of their exodus, and during their wilderness wanderings God sent down bread from heaven. Indeed, this thread of God calling out to mankind through these covenant renewals with His chosen saints and then feeding them in a covenantal meal is one of the main threads.

It shouldn’t shock us that God, in bringing about the salvation for all the world, selects the little town of Bethlehem, the bread-house, in which to place the bread of life. He even went so far as to ensure that the virgin placed Him in a feeding trough. The point is unmistakeable. You are empty. He came to fill you up. You are hungry. He came to feed you. The bread of life has come down…

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

Forgive, Forget, then Feast

by Ben Zornes · Nov 10, 2021

We’re fast approaching the season where we gather with friends and family for much holiday feasting. The all-too-typical disposition in our society towards these gatherings is a sort of foreboding dread that so-and-so might bring up such-and-such. The American way, in this regard, is to have our holiday feasts with side dishes of resentments, offenses, rivalries, and envies hidden in plain sight.

Instead of dealing with root matters, we dance around delicate topics like expert break dancers. Avoid that topic of conversation. Don’t irritate Aunt Clarice. For pity’s sake, don’t mention that political issue.

God’s feast stands in stark contrast. This board sets the model for how we should arrange our feasting boards. God invites us here, despite the fact that He knows what you did last week. He knows all your grumbles, all your sneaking sins, all the worst things about you that nobody else knows.

He knows it all, and forgets it all.

But it gets even better. As one Catechism reminds us, He forgets our sin and our sinful nature: “I believe that God, because of Christ’s satisfaction, will no more remember my sins, nor my sinful nature.” It isn’t merely that he invites murderers, adulterers, liars, thieves, and blasphemers to His feast. We can wrap our heads around God forgiving those sins, even the fact that He won’t remember them against us. What’s staggering is that He views you not as a criminal whose crimes have been pardoned by the court (so keep an eye on the silverware); rather, He brings you in as His own child. He sees you as you are in fact: righteous. No spot. No stain. No crimes or criminal record to speak of.

This is a feast of God’s forgetfulness. So arrange your holiday feasts in imitation of His forgiveness towards you. Forgive and forget and then fellowship.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

Mystery All Round

by Ben Zornes · Oct 26, 2021

This is a great mystery. By these earthly signs, the Father, by the Spirit’s power, ministers Christ unto us. But though this is a mystery, that doesn’t mean we are unable to understand anything about what takes place at this table. We see glimmers of this mystery all around us, because the Lord has filled this world with such mysteries.

Like how a father’s proud presence on the sidelines mysteriously emboldens his son to tackle the oncoming RB who outweighs him by 40lbs. Like a wife rests at ease due to her husband’s faithful words of kind affection and diligent work to put a roof over the family. Like a flock loses their jitters when their shepherd is watching them. Like a nation is filled with rejoicing when the righteous are in power. Notice how the covenantal relationship which joins two entities becomes the channel whereby one party imparts seemingly intangible virtue to the other.

The father’s presence imparts courage to his son. The husband’s presence imparts confidence to his wife. A shepherd’s presence imparts peace to his flock. A king’s presence imparts joy to his people. The covenantal relationship is the guarantee that covenantal virtue will be given by the head and received by the body.

Christ is present here, and by the mystery of our covenantal union with Him we receive a Niagara Falls of virtues from Him. He is here, and so we can bravely face our foes. He is here, so we can rest at ease, even in the storms that surround us. He is here, so we need not fear or flee. He is here, and our temptations find no welcome. It is a great mystery, but it’s a mystery which God has willed to be revealed through these signs of bread and wine.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

This is Christ’s Body

by Ben Zornes · Oct 19, 2021

Jesus gave us the description of what we are about to eat. We’ve heard it read each Sunday, perhaps we’ve read books discussing the various interpretations of Christ’s description of what this meal is. Despite all of that, we must not miss the straightforwardness of the statement He made regarding what his disciples were eating as they took the bread He’d broken in their sight: “This is my body.”

When we eat these tangible signs of bread and wine we are partaking of Christ. This meal is a meal of Christ. We receive Christ in this bread, by faith.

The Christ whom God promised our first parents would crush the dragon’s head with a deadly blow. The Christ of whom Abraham was told would be a blessing to all nations. The Christ whose presence was a flame by night & a cloud by day for the motley band of Hebrew slaves who were brought out of Egypt by Moses. The Christ who was promised to David would one day sit forever upon his throne. The Christ who was born to a Nazareth virgin by the power of the Holy Ghost. The Christ who healed men covered by the festering wounds of leprosy. The Christ who made lame legs, blind eyes, deaf ears, and dead corpses whole again. The Christ who preached against the religious hypocrites and political tyrants. The Christ who gave Himself up for the sins of the world, and not one of those sins were His own. The Christ who was buried for three days, and rose by the power of God. The Christ who is now seated on heaven’s throne, and every jurisdiction, all power, the totality of authority is indisputably His alone, forever and ever. This is His body. The body of Christ Almighty. So take and eat.

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…

« Previous Page