Holiness Without Sacraments?

I am in mourning. I am mourning over the loss of sacramental living and worship in the Church of the Nazarene. Doctrinally, the C.O.T.N. does not believe in sacraments, we believe in ordinances. What does that mean? It means that our tradition, like many Holiness and Evangelical traditions birthed over the last 200 years, believe that the Eucharist and Baptism are merely symbolic gestures. They are outward signs, rememberances, traditions in the church to help us mark the life of Christ and our own faith. We do not believe that there is any presence or power of Christ, in any direct way, in participation with these elements.

The question is why? Unquestionably the majority of Christians who have ever lived have believed that God is present in the celebration of the Eucharist and works in the life of the believer through baptism. So why have the Nazarenes, like so many other evangelicals abandoned the theology of sacraments? I believe that our theology is rooted in fear in many ways. While the church has believed in God's work and presence in the sacraments, what it believes about the sacraments have long been debated. Is Christ literally in the eucharist? Does it become his blood and body? Are sins really forgiven through baptism? Many have rejected sacraments because of some church teachings that have led to a belief that salvation in its entirety can be found in the participation of the sacraments.

It is good that we reject this idea that salvation requires only baptism or taking communion, what is bad is that we have thrown out the baby with the bath water. Our desire to avoid this theology and to distance ourselves from those who hold to it has cost us deeply. We are now a people who strongly believe in God's previent grace and strive for holiness and have lost one of the basic elements of our faith for both. In our stories of salvation we talk about individual conversion, a crisis moment, a personal decision for Christ. The entire way we view and talk about our salvation is rooted in an American Individualist Modern philosophy that we can't even recognize because we are so firmly entrenched in it. Our salvation is not just about us or some moment and place. Our salvation takes us from being an individual and makes us part of a people, God's people, the body of Christ. The church is together one living breathing organism, not a group of individuals. Our salvation is not just about a moment in time, it is about the constant work of God's grace seeking, restoring, and transforming us. There may be a moment when we are understand what God has been trying to do in our life and we understand his grace, but that does not mean that is the moment it first came upon us. It may well be the moment of or forgiveness, but not the first time God has sought us out or tried to bestow his grace upon us.

This brings us back to the sacraments. The sacraments serve as a basis for our proper understanding of our salvation and an important vehicle for God's grace to be at work in our souls. Through baptism we are buried and raised with Christ and participate in his death and resurrection. In some mysterious way, as we are baptized, Christ is working in us and through us and among us and making us into his people. It is our initiation into the body of Christ. When we say it is merely some outward symbol, we strip it of its place of prominence in our salvation story. I have known Nazarenes who have refused to be baptized, great men and women of God, because they seemed to almost want to prove they could be saved without it. We have sinned as a church when we have led someone to the point of salvation, at least done our part in God's work, and have not then taken them through baptism into union with Christ. Baptism does not save us, but it is clear from Jesus' teachings, and the practices of the early church, that it is intended to be part of our story of salvation.

The Eucharist, like wise, becomes a place where we are reminded of our story, our calling, and filled with the presence of God. I don't believe in transsubstantiation, that is the belief that the bread and cup become literally the body and blood of Christ. But, I do believe that there in the cup and bread, the grace of God, the power of God, and the presence of Christ meet us in some mysterious way. As we join as a people together at the table to feast we reaffirm our connection to one another through the blood of Christ and participate together in the mercy of his sacrifice for us.

So this is a call, a desparate cry, for us to recapture sacramental theology and living as the people of God. We are only depriving ourselves and hurting our churches when we dismiss these elements as "merely symbols". We must relearn what it means to be Wesleyan and find an appreciation for the sacraments. In doing so we will find new calling and understanding of what it means to be a people of holiness.

Blessings-
Greg Arthur