the sacraments on Understanding

Almighty God–Father, Son and Holy Spirit: You tell us to pray with thanksgiving...and we do; giving thanks for Your daily provision and care, for the birth of a child, for new jobs and new friends, fo...

Ancient Lens What's the historical context? A Hard Saying The difficulty of this saying was used by opponents of the early Christians to justify persecution, yet the early church still rallie...

Ancient Lens What's the historical context? A Hard Saying The difficulty of this saying was used by opponents of the early Christians to justify persecution, yet the early church still rallie...

Ask most any Protestant about the meaning of the Supper, and you will hear the word remembrance. The problem is that a too-simplistic understanding of the Lord’s command has limited the meaning of the...

To speak of life as “sacramental” means that everything visible in some way points to the invisible—in Christian understanding, the constant, upholding reality of eternal grace. The sacramental life s...

Context The feeding of the 5,000 in Matthew occurs within a section where questions of Jesus’ identity are heightened. Two incorrect answers of who Jesus truly is are given in 13:55 (“isn’t this the...

This guide has been updated and expanded. Our Maundy Thursday guide for 2026 on John 13 incorporates this material along with additional commentary, illustrations, and discussion questions. Check ...

Preaching Commentary Context The feeding of the 5,000 in Matthew occurs within a section where questions of Jesus’ identity are heightened. Two incorrect answers of who Jesus truly is are given in...

John's Account of the Last Supper This passage is most often preached on on Maundy Thursday (or Holy Thursday). By our modern measure, “Thursday” would also include Gethsemane and other events of...

Preaching Commentary Ecumenical Note I celebrate the many flavors of Christianity which gather within The Pastor’s Workshop. As such, I recognize and respect the different names we use to refer to...

One of humanity’s problems is forgetfulness. Forgetfulness can happen at multiple levels, from a simple problem of recall to a posture of hard-heartedness and disobedience toward the command-giver. Wh...

If you receive this well, you are what you receive … for the loaf that contains Christ is made up of many individual kernels of grain, but these kernels must, to become the loaf containing Christ, fir...

“Act” is a good word. Baptism and Communion are like mini-dramas. And we are not just in the audience; we are part of the cast. We do not look on from afar, merely learning information. We participate...

Ecumenical Note I celebrate the many flavors of Christianity which gather within The Pastor’s Workshop. As such, I recognize and respect the different names we use to refer to the meal we share as J...

Go online and find a picture of a cute-looking kitten. Apparently, half the Internet is made up of cat photos, so this shouldn’t be too hard. Print it out and then pin it on a dart board. You can prob...

Christianity . . . sees the necessity for man to have spiritual values and it shows him how to get at those through physical sacraments.

"I sometimes forgot about how spiritual Henry was. I had been raised as a Methodist where the highest sacrament was the bake sale."

Pious souls can derive great confidence and delight from this sacrament, as being a testimony that they form one body with Christ, so that everything which is his they may call their own. Hence it fol...

The liturgy of the Eucharist is best understood as a journey or procession. It is the journey of the Church into the dimension of the Kingdom. We use the word 'dimension' because it seems the ...

The Eucharist is the very heart of Christian worship because it is so rich and far-reaching in its significance; because it eludes thought, eludes emotion, relies on simple contact, humble and childli...

We have seen some gatekeeping or fencing-the-table language already beginning to rear its head in this context. One needed to be baptized to take the meal; one needed to repent to take the meal; one n...

April 2020 is an interesting time to write a book review on the sacraments (or anything, for that matter). As Tim Chester, author of the book, Truth We Can Touch , points out, You can read you...

We do not get a different or a better Christ in the sacraments than we do in the Word…But we may get the same Christ better, with a firmer grasp of his grace through seeing, touching, feeling, and tas...

Even in another life, as St. John sees it in his vision, we do not rise to God, but he descends to us, and dwells humanly among human creatures, in the glorious man, Jesus Christ. And that will be his...

In the introduction to Tim Chester’s Book Truth We Can Touch , Sinclair Ferguson shares a conversation he had with a doctoral student from the Far East: I knew him as “Timothy.” But one day, when...

For Christians, to share in the Eucharist, the Holy Communion, means to live as people who know that they are always guests – that they have been welcomed and that they are wanted. It is, perhaps, the...

Recognize in this bread what hung on the cross, and in this chalice what flowed from His side... whatever was in many and varied ways announced beforehand in the sacrifices of the Old Testament pertai...

To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, dest...

Like the sacramental use of water and bread and wine, friendship takes what's common in human experience and turns it into something holy.

Thou hast taken me into covenant with thee, for I am a baptized Christian, set apart for thee and sealed to be thine; thou hast laid me, and I have also laid myself, under all possible obligations to ...