Episode 529 - Will Willimon on The Lord’s Supper and Advent

Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Make sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. By the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head.

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James, and I'm so glad to have all of you with with us here again today. My guest today, once again on Voices in My Head, is William Willimon. Will is a preacher and a teacher of preachers. He is a United Methodist bishop, retired, and serves as professor of the practice of Christian ministry and director of the Doctor of Ministry program at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. For 20 years, he was dean of the chapel at Duke University A 1996 Baylor University study named him among the 12 most effective preachers in the English-speaking world. The Pew Research Center found that Will was one of the most widely read authors among Protestant clergy in 2005. His quarterly pulpit resource is used by thousands of pastors throughout North America, Canada, and Australia. And in 2021, he gave the prestigious Lyman Beecher Lectures on preaching at Yale Divinity School. Those lectures became the book Preachers Dare: Speaking for God, which is the inspiration for his 90th book, Listeners Dare: Hearing God in the Sermon. And today we're going to be talking about a couple of different things. So just so listeners will know, here on the podcast today I am in a class on liturgy and the sacraments, and Will has been kind enough to come on today in the first part of our show to answer 3 questions that I wanted to ask him about the sacraments. And then we're going to get into Will's new book, which is just about to come out called Heaven and Earth: Advent and the Incarnation, which I'm really excited about, this new Advent book. So all of that preamble is to say, Will Willimon, welcome back to Voices in My Head.

Hey, thank you, Rick.

So good to be with you today. Congratulations on another book. Before we get to, uh, to that though, I really appreciate you taking some time today just to talk with me and our listeners to help us think through some things about the sacraments today and Specifically, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions, 3 actually, about the Eucharist and just to get your thoughts here. So I wonder if you could tell us, because you are a person who has thought a lot about the Eucharist over the years, and books like Worship as Pastoral Care is one of my favorite resources where I sometimes will go to. And so a question I had for you as someone in the Wesleyan tradition, What is one thing that makes Wesley's view of the Eucharist unique among other traditions?

Well, John Wesley was a great ecclesiastical innovator, but particularly in the area of church organization, mission deployment, etc. But he boasted and tried real hard never to be an innovator as far as theologically, uh, and he affirmed all the articles of religion of the Anglican Church and said that he was practicing historic faith. But, and so there's a sense in which Wesley would probably take umbrage at the notion that he innovated in the Eucharist or had a stance that was peculiar. However, looking at Wesley from our standpoint, we note a number of things. One is he, he preaches a sermon on the duty of constant communion. He— it was his practice to take communion every day, and, uh, he certainly knew enough about the history of the church to know that down through the ages, most Christians have celebrated the Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper was sort of the Protestant favorite way of talking about the Kurikon Dieipnon coming from Saint Paul, talk about the Eucharist. But he knew that most Christians celebrate the Eucharist every Sunday. That's the center of Christian worship. It's what it's all about. And he adhered to that. And he, uh, therefore, uh, extolled the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist, as that center of Christian worship, and felt that it should be done every Sunday, and lamented those Protestant bodies that appeared to be drifting away from regular celebration of the Lord's Supper. But also, and maybe this is what you had in mind. Um, Wesley spoke of the Lord's Supper as a sanctifying ordinance, that is, as something that builds Christians up, something that makes us holier by participating in it regularly, by habit. Uh, but he also speaks of it as a justifying ordinance. There were those Protestant communions I think about often from Baptist Puritan roots who said, you know, the Lord's Supper is a supper for the saints. It is just for those who have been thoroughly initiated, converted into the Christian faith. Wesley believed that it was also not only a sanctifying ordinance but a justifying ordinance. That is, it people get changed in celebrating the Lord's Supper. They come closer to Christ. Therefore, he took very seriously that Anglican— got it out of Anglican liturgy— the invitation to the Lord's Supper. Uh, ye that earnestly desire, uh, ye that want to be closer to Christ, come forward. Not Ye that are certifiably already tight with Christ, this is just for you. So that is, and that's one reason that like contemporary Methodists have generally practiced what we've called the open table, and that is when the invitation is given, most Methodist ministers will say things like, hey, this isn't our table, it's the Lord's table. And he invites all to come, uh, as opposed to those churches which say, uh, hey, this, this table is just for the members of this congregation or those who are certifiably born-again Christian. So that, that maybe is a unique, uh, particular emphasis of, of Wesley.

Very good. Well, thank you. That, that was a great answer and just what I was looking for. Well, that leads me to my second question. What is one misunderstanding that you wish lay people understood about the Lord's Supper?

Oh wow, I got a long list. Uh, and, um, when I came to Duke first time from a Methodist parish, my first academic job was to be professor of liturgy and worship. And I took as my task, since Duke then was a predominantly Methodist seminary. I took it as my task to really renew the Eucharist. It's sort of a strange historical anomaly that Methodist— whereas for John Wesley and for the founders of the Methodist movement, the Eucharist was at the center of what they believed and their piety. We drifted away from it for a number of, you know, historical reasons, and so we did not practice frequent communion. We practiced infrequent communion, like typical of Methodist churches was like 4 times a year. When I came to Duke Chapel, we had— they had celebrated communion once that year on Maundy Thursday, Uh, so, but I would say one— I guess I would overall just say that a realization that the Eucharist is at the center of the Christian life. For lo these many years, it has always been at the center of Christian worship. That's clear when Paul talks about Christian worship in 1 Corinthians, uh, that He was known to us in the breaking of the bread, in the sharing of the cup. And, um, therefore, when we act as if the Eucharist is something, quote, special, something unusual— no, it's the ordinary food and drink of Christians. It's the ordinary thing for Christians to do. Typically, in a lot of churches in my tribe, um, they'll say things like, well, if we do it more often, it'll probably mean less. Well, we now have like 1,000 years of evidence to show no, doesn't work that way. Churches that do it more often value it more. Secondly, it's not meant to be unusual and special it's meant to be wonderfully incarnational and ordinary. And it's, um, and, and when people say, how often should we celebrate the Lord's Supper in a church, the question is, well, how often do you want to be intimate with Jesus? How often do you want to be close to the Holy Mystery of Christ with us? Uh, Well, Christians would want to have that to be a normal everyday part of our lives. So that's— I guess I would tag that. And therefore I say to pastors, uh, you do— I say to Methodist pastors, uh, you do whatever is necessary to celebrate the Lord's Supper more often. You find out why is it that attendance goes down when the Lord's Supper is celebrated. By the way, I noted very early on in African-American United Methodist churches, uh, in those churches, uh, those congregations, when they celebrate the Lord's Supper— in, in my part of the world, it's often like on the first Sunday of the month or something— attendance goes up. It's just in churches that look like me that attendance goes down. Well, why? Uh, one, they may need teaching about it. One, uh, they'll say things like, uh, well, the service always goes on too long, you know, when you got to commune everybody. Well, fix that. Make it so that the service doesn't go on, uh, too long. Also, the pastor's attitude toward it I know I remember as a child the pastor coming out and saying, okay, okay, today is Communion Sunday, so we got to go through all this stuff in the hymnal, the liturgy, and I'm gonna try to get through it quickly now, and, and I'm— my sermon's going to be shorter. It won't really be a sermon, it'll be a homily. Uh, and well, you know, that conveys to the congregation this thing is a chore. This thing is weird and unusual. No, do whatever you can to make it. And I remember I felt like I could sing my new hymn and say I had succeeded when at a former congregation I preached and we had service. We didn't have the Lord's Supper, and a layman came out and said, gosh, that was a good sermon, that was so good. I was just so disappointed we didn't follow that sermon by coming to the Lord's table and communion. Well, that's exactly the way you should be feeling.

Yeah. Oh, that's, that's so good. You know, some of this, it's like you've been reading my notes I was writing for my paper on this. So wonderful. Thank you for affirming some of that for me today. Well, you know, one more question, uh, based on, on this this Eucharist conversation, the Lord's Supper. And you, you already alluded a little bit to this, and I don't know that there's one reason for it, but do you have any thoughts on why so many churches that are part of the Wesleyan tradition receive the Lord's Table so infrequently? I, I know I'm a part of the Church of the Nazarene. Sometimes our churches, as you said, we receive it maybe 4 times a year, sometimes I think less than that. I, I have theories about it. I've wondered sometimes if it's, if it's not sort of a fear factor that when you see, you know, Paul writing about eating and drinking judgment on yourself and misunderstanding passages, but I'd love to know if you have any thoughts on the matter as to why we do it so infrequently.

Well, fewer and fewer Methodists even know about that passage in 1 Corinthians. But I think if that's a factor, more people need some Bible study. Paul Paul says to the church at Corinth, when you eat and drink the Kurikon Dieipnon, the Lord's Supper, unworthily, you're not drinking, you're not eating and drinking the Lord's Supper, you're eating and drinking the Idion Dieipnon, the idiot meal, your own meal. You ain't drinking. Well, wow, that's a pretty severe thing to say. Why does Paul say it? Well, look in that passage, and he says when you come together as a church, it's not for the better, it's for the worse. Because some of you, the richer ones among you, probably, uh, you get off work earlier than poor people, uh, you get there and you start eating and drinking, and you eat up all the food, and by the time the other members get there, by the time they get off work at 6 or 7 o'clock in the evening and they get there, all the food is gone and you're drunk. Well, obviously we're talking about a church where the Lord's Supper is still an honest-to-goodness meal and all. And he said, you need to discern the Lord's body, uh, you need to see the body of Christ. You're eating and drinking your own damnation. Well, what does body of Christ mean? I think a sad turn was in the Middle Ages when the church interpreted the body of Christ to mean, in that instance, the bread on the altar. Uh, Paul uses the term body of Christ to refer to the church.

Yeah.

And therefore what Paul is saying is not you come to the Lord's Supper with a bad conscience, or you come to the Lord's Supper, uh, with, uh, impure thoughts in your brain, he's saying you don't discern the Lord's body in your brothers and sisters around the table. You selfishly eat and drink. It is the violation of the Lord's Supper. So examine yourselves. And, and maybe Paul would say to us 'Uh, when you come together, you don't even celebrate the Lord's Supper. Uh, you, you, you deny people access to the table. You literally excommunicate them. How dare you? You need to discern the body of Christ.' Uh, you ask why? Well, as I said, I think the reasons are multiple. One thing is, I think pietism such as is practiced in the Church of the Nazarene or United Methodist Church A Pietism in America has, uh, has fallen face down in good old American individualism, and we've made the Christian faith a kind of exchange between me and Jesus, something I do in my heart. Well, the Lord's Supper is a protest against all that. The Lord's Supper is saying, no, it's communal. Jesus doesn't gather isolated individuals. He gathers a group that when he— at the end of his ministry, when he says, hey people, this is what it's all about. What is it? It's a meal. Here, take some wine, have some bread. So I think our individualism, our me and Jesus piety, uh, mitigates against the Lord's Supper. Uh, I also think we have maybe turned the Christian faith into something spiritual, some kind of fluffy, ethereal, indistinct spirituality. No, it's incarnational. It's about bodies. It's about bread. It's about wine. It's about taste, hunger, uh, all of that. And, and the Lord's Supper keeps bringing us back to those material realities through which God gets to us. I love— John Calvin says, uh, God never forgets that we're animals, and therefore he deals with us in ways that animals can comprehend— bread, wine, water. So, um, I think those, those are reasons. And then probably added to that is, uh, people have been malformed into the faith. They've, they've been, they've been raised for generations now thinking that it's possible for the church to gather and not gather around the Lord's table and not hold out empty hands to receive a gift. And, uh, every time I put bread into somebody's hands, every time I give them the cup to drink from, I'm sort of saying, hey, by the way, Jesus doesn't just want your soul. He doesn't want your spirit. He wants all of you, body and soul. Uh, your human hungers, uh, matter to Jesus. He's there. Well, I could go on.

I understand. Well, that, that's a great answer. I want to thank you so much for, uh, just giving us, uh, your input on the Lord's Supper. That's very meaningful and very helpful. With that being said, I, I'd love to transition as we're talking today into your newest book, which is an Advent book, which I'm really excited about because Advent is, is just around the corner. It's amazing, we're already in September right now, and it just seems like time is, is— the older I get, the faster it goes. I don't know if it feels that way to you sometimes.

Absolutely.

Yeah, but you have this great new book coming out, and I wonder if you could start, just tell us a little bit about it. It's called Heaven and Earth: Advent and the Incarnation. What inspired you to write it, and how does it relate to, to the, the concept of, of God's presence being among us?

Well, I, I guess I wrote it— I was asked to write it, uh, by Abingdon Press, and as a resource for pastors and congregations thinking about a subject that I guess the longer I live, the more I think is really a central scandal and a central joyful good news of the Christian faith, and that is the Incarnation. And the title is Heaven and Earth: Incarnation and Advent. And I basically take the assigned gospels for Advent for this year in the Common Lectionary and go and use them, uh, as a springboard to reflect on the mystery of, of the God who becomes human, the enfleshment of God, and otherwise known as incarnation. And so that's what I try to do with the book, and I hope it's an opening up of, of one of the great riches of the faith, but also an affirmation that the Christian faith is not common sense. It is not what 9 out of 10 Americans believe about God. It is a central but also kind of outrageous by the world standards affirmation that God is not just love, but that God is love incarnate. God comes to us. God not only comes to us but becomes one of us. John 1. And so that, that's what I tried to do in the book.

Wow.

Well, that sounds great. And I love the coming into this season again, which really, when I think of Advent, I think of waiting and watching and almost, you know, standing on tiptoes, uh, looking for the one who is coming. Yeah. And, and so the idea that, um, that we have not only, you know, the celebration of the first coming of Jesus, but we can also view the second coming in, in that same sort of light, I think, whenever we talk about God coming to be with us and, and God returning. And it's a great big beautiful way to kind of tell the story on both ends, I think, you know, the coming of Jesus and then the coming again of Jesus. And, and I, I just, I love that. And, um, and I'm looking forward to, to this release especially because it seems like you've really made an effort to make it accessible in a number of studies to congregations. And my understanding is that there's even a video series that—

oh yeah, there's a, there's a great learning guide, study guide done by a pastor scholar and not me, and it's wonderful to see his insights and leadership. But also, first time I've done this in an official way, there's a video that has a an introduction to every chapter for use. I think the, the word is a teaser subject matter, and, um, that, that was fun to do, to like a 10-minute introduction that groups can use, groups or individuals, as a way of, of getting into the subject matter. And, uh, Advent is a surprisingly fruitful time. It's also Advent is a where we prepare ourselves, and we also experience the wonder of the Incarnation. It's a, it's a time that really challenges a lot of our misconceptions. You mentioned the second coming of Christ. Well, generally in mainline liberal Protestant Christianity, the notion that Christ has come and Christ will come again is an embarrassment, and we have psychologized that away, etc. Um, well, Advent asserts that and says God is not done with us, even in the incarnation of Christ, that the God who came to us in Jesus Christ comes to us in our present time shall come in fullness and completeness in the future. And that's an Advent affirmation. It's also an Advent— well, Rick, you're a musician and have quite a ministry in song. Uh, well, the book ends by noting that the Incarnation may be a Christian doctrine that's better sung than said. Why is it that people who may not know much about the Christian faith and may know very little about Christian hymnody, they know all the songs at Christmas? Uh, and why is it that maybe the Incarnation the wonder that God became one of us and stood beside us and suffered for us and because of us and then rose in spite of us, uh, maybe that's a truth that's not primarily meant to be preached, certainly not meant to be explained. Approved, but a truth to be sung. And I note that in the Christmas— in the lessons, uh, we move from Advent to Christmas, and then maybe the main thing to do when we gather on the Feast of the Nativity is to sing, and that these hymns say better than I know how to do. And I note the curiosity that, like, Luke talks about the birth of Jesus with Mary singing, Elizabeth singing, the angels singing, uh, Zechariah singing, everybody singing. Well, maybe that's right to the point of how to think about the Incarnation.

That's a, that's a beautiful thought. I love that. And, you know, I've had conversations—

I thought you would as a musician.

I think so. I've had conversations with, with other musicians before, and something— sometimes people who are a part of music and worship services, we, we kind of say teasingly to the pastor, you know, they, they left humming our song today. I don't think they left humming the sermon, uh, you know, which, which is, uh, you know, it's so true. Yeah, but, but it— there is some truth to it, and, and which actually Concerns me a bit too, because there's been some, some recent studies that have come out about the, the mass majority of churches in evangelicalism who are getting all of their songs from 4 megachurches around the country. And said about, yeah, about 30 to 40% of what makes up the CCLI charts are coming from these 4 megachurches, which frankly have questionable theology sometimes.

And so I think that's deeply concerning. Yeah, so, and I, uh, I'm, I'm in church sometimes, in churches as a visitor, and they say they, they're singing contemporary Christian music, and I note, well, the music you're singing is 20 years old. I guess that's contemporary. But, uh, I sit there and think You know, I believe Charles Wesley on a bad day could beat this hymn. Yeah, what you're singing here. And, um, uh, we need to pay attention to what we're saying. And there's a lot of— for instance, speaking of Advent Christmas, you know, there's a lot of sentimental, uh, even silly, Christmas songs, carols that do not adequately talk about the Incarnation. But when you've got Charles Wesley with Hark the Herald Angels Sing, uh, you— when you've got that, that, uh, Benedictine chant, of the Father's love begotten, uh, and all Wow. Uh, yeah. And as a Methodist, it's been said Methodists don't have any theology, any doctrine, except in the hymnal. And yet the hymnals are disappearing. Wow. And so, yeah, that's a cause of grave concern because we are— I think we believe whatever we sing.

I think you're right. Or The rule of prayer is the rule of faith, as it says, and sometimes songs are the prayers that we sing.

Absolutely.

So, well, well, well, this has been really wonderful getting to talk to you again. And I want to let all of our listeners know that there will be links in the notes of the show. So if the technology works the way it's supposed to, they should be able to, from whatever platform they're listening to this podcast right now, you should be able to click on the link and it would take you right to your new book. So hopefully Hopefully it'll be an easy way for people to access it and, and be able to get it in time for Advent and to be able to do some groups and some studies at their church. So, uh, thank you again, as always, for, um, the way that you have served the church so faithfully over the years. And, and so many books that I'm— I've got a couple of them on my table here right now off-site from the camera that I'm using for some research for class. And, um, I just want to thank you for the resource that you have been and the faithfulness of your ministry over the years. And it's always just much fun to get to talk to you, and I always appreciate when you have new material, uh, to share with us. So thank you for that.

Well, thank you, Rick. Great to be with you again.

You as well. Well, Wil Willemann, thank you for being one of the Voices in My Head this week.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com, where you can find out more more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or a speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.