“For Use In Worship”

The Christian Reformed World Relief organization in promoting its new “World Hunger Program” recently sent Christian Reformed ministers several sheets of “Litanies/Prayers/Selected Scripture Passages for Use in Worship.” The third page of this material under the heading “3. BODY AND BREAD” had the “Leader” quote the texts “I am the Bread of Life, says the Lord. The one who comes to Me shall not hunger.” (John 6:35) and “This is My Body, says the Lord, broken for you.” (1 Corinthians 11:24). They were followed by these responsive readings:

PEOPLE: His Body is Bread, broken for me.

LEADER: You are the Body of Christ.

PEOPLE: We are His Body.

LEADER: His Body is Bread.

PEOPLE: We are Bread.

LEADER: His Body is Broken.

PEOPLE: We are Broken.

LEADER: His Body is the Bread which He gives for the life of the world. (John 6:51)

PEOPLE: We are His Body. We are Broken. We are Bread for t he world.

ALL: ALLELUIA!

What the Texts Really Say

Even the most casual reading of these scripture passages in their Biblical setting makes unmistakably plain that the Lord was calling attention to Himself as the unique Son of God who by His one sacrifice of Himself would give those who believed in Him eternal life so that they “shall live forever” (John 6:58). In saying “This is my body, broken for you” as he instituted the Lord’s Supper He again called attention to His unique atoning sacrifice. The New Testament again and again stresses that unique character of Christ and His saving work, notably in such places as Heb. 9:25–10:18 and in 1 Peter 3:18, “Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God.”

Perverting Bible Doctrine

Now this suggested liturgy by identifying the church’s giving to the world’s poor with this sacrifice of Christ, not only grossly perverts these Scriptures and the Lord’s Supper, but also implicitly denies Christ’s unique atonement. It teaches the people to see in Christ’s giving of Himself as our Savior nothing more than we ourselves are encouraged to do in giving to help other people. The treatment of these Scriptures in effect reduces God’s Gospel of the giving of His Son to nothing more than a Humanist benevolence program. And notice also that the very texts with which Our Lord in John 6 warned against a movement that would pervert His work into merely providing food that perishes instead of the eternal life He promised, are in this liturgy twisted into supporting such a program to merely feed the physically hungry and to obscure the Word of eternal life.

Someone might object to this criticism that the gospel demands that we show that we receive the love of Christ by loving our fellow Christians and our neighbors. It is true that the gospel insists on such a response. John wrote “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loves us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:10, 11). And this love must be shown in actions such as relieving the poor (1 John 3:16–18). But this is completely different from making our response to Christ’s sacrifice the same thing as or even the substitute for that sacrifice, as the proposed liturgy in effect does.

An Old Liberal Practice

The perversion of the gospel which confronts us in this liturgy, although it is relatively new among us, is old in the history of the liberal ecumenical movement. Eight years ago Peter Beyerhaus published a little book, Missions: Which Way? Humanization or Redemption, which documented the way in which the World Council of Churches leadership had been perverting the Christian missionary program from bringing the gospel, to materialistic social service and even political revolution. As he stated, “The understanding of mission emerging from the theology of secularization does not really want nor even attempt to ground itself biblically. References to the Bible are sporadic and arbitrary. The original meaning of Scripture is distorted” (p. 77). At this point a footnote quoted a sermon of Canon D. Webster, “We are now witnessing a spate of literature on mission which, even if quoting from the Bible, has either reversed or ignored at least some of the biblical perspectives and priorities. The world’s agenda is being allowed to take precedence over the Bible’s message, and what the world says of itself is not being supplemented by what the Bible says of the world.”

This liturgical material to promote the new world hunger program which our denomination’s committee suggests our churches use in their worship is a striking example of just such distortion of “the meaning of Scripture,” of reversing or ignoring “biblical perspectives and priorities” as Peter Bayerhaus deplored. It distorts or displaces not some important secondary doctrine, but the central doctrine of Christ’s atonement. Such “promotion” as this forecasts no good either for the church itself or for its program of helping the poor.