Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Oct/86

Contributor - Daniel Meeter

Title - The Overflowing Fountain of All Good

Topic - Lord's Table

What vessels sit on your Communion Table? Does your church still use an old Communion set of pitcher, plates and cup, or do these rest behind the glass of some display case? That big pitcher for the wine, that flagon made of silver or pewter, does your congregation still see it pouring out the wine in the Liturgy? That flagon has a lot to say! It speaks of God as "the overflowing fountain of all good" (Belgic Confession, Article 1).

You won't see any big flagon on a Roman or Anglican altar. You'll see one chalice, one paten and one small silver bowl holding wafers all carefully counted out. During the Liturgy, the priest has an assistant come up with two small cruets, one with wine and one with water. As if mixing medicine, the priest pours just so much of each into the chalice, true medicine for the soul.

But Calvinist Communion has no small cruets. It uses flagons. If Communion is only medicine, then we're in danger of an overdose. Dr. Norman Kansfield observed to me that the wine from one cruet would barely moisten the bottom of the flagon used by the First Reformed Church of Rochester, N.Y. The message of the flagon is size, abundance, extravagance. "You've got to have a good gallon!" he said. "I think it has to do with the eschatology of Calvinist Communion."

Eschatology is the doctrine of the last things, like the Day of Judgement Eternity, the end-time, Doomsday, he end of this world and the beginning of he new Heaven and Earth. Our Communion Liturgy is eschatological when it says:

"We come in hope, believing that this bread and this cup are a pledge and foretaste of that feast of love of which we shall partake when His kingdom has fully come, when with unveiled face we shall behold Him, made like unto Him in His glory.

In other words, Holy Communion not only looks back to the upper room of the night before Calvary, it also looks forward to the great feast of love at dinner time on Doomsday, the beginning of the new Heaven and new Earth that opens with a picnic. The new Creation will be an eternity of abundance and extravagance, an unending festival and a joyful celebration. Holy Communion is a dress rehearsal for the celestial banquet. So the flagon is so big to remind us of a bottomless barrel of life, like the 180 gallons of fresh new wine at the wedding in Cana.

Early in the Dutch Reformation, Pastor John a Lasco tried to express the idea of the celestial banquet in having the people receive Communion while seated at big tables. Instead of kneeling before the altar, or sitting in the pews as we do (like eating in an airplane), the people went forward to the avondmaalsruimte (Lord's Supper place) to sit down and commune. It makes me think of the big wooden tables set up for a Sunday school picnic. I understand that the First Church in Albany, N.Y. still sets up a wooden table down the centre aisle for Communion.

It was different in the Hungarian Reformed tradition. When the people all came forward, they didn't sit down at tables, they spread out through the sanctuary, standing shoulder to shoulder. That makes me think of peasants feasting in the fields of harvest sitting shoulder to shoulder, passing along their food and wine.

The Hungarian Communion tables were smaller, but the flagons were just as big. In fact the Hungarian Reformed Church of South River, N.J. had three big flagons. And as the members passed the choices to each other down the line, an elder followed each cup toting a flagon, constantly replenishing the wine as the people kept emptying it "drinking deeply".

You see the point. Communion is more than little doses of medicine for the soul, carefully mixed by the Rev. Pharmacist behind the Holy Counter; it is an extravagant fountain of new life and a celebration of the new Creation that flows with milk and honey. Indeed, it flows out of the very heart and personality of God, the source of life and well spring of the river flowing through the New Jerusalem.

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