"And when he was at table..." (again)

-- I've been talking abut the appearance of Communion tables in churches during Sunday worship.  This all began with my post dated July 14 of this year. -- 

The other stuff on the table, is it “proper?”  Nope.  I would grudgingly give in to the placement of a cross on the table, but if and only if there was no other visible cross in the chancel area of the sanctuary.  If there is a large cross on the wall (or suspended from the ceiling) or even a processional cross up front, the table cross becomes redundant.  And I can tell you from experience that celebrating communion while working around a table cross is somewhere in between inconvenient and impossible.
 
Sometimes we treat the table as an “altar.”  Altar is a terribly misunderstood word in many of our churches.  We sometimes use it to refer to the kneeler or kneeling rail at the front of the chancel.  Some label the Communion table as altar.  Truth be known, many in the church use the term “altar” without clarity or understanding.  A church that has a true altar has a furnishing, usually a solid block without legs that the church situates against the wall at the back of the chancel area.  There it houses Communion elements but nothing else.  If we look at the biblical description of an altar, it is a place where animals are killed and then set on fire as an offering to God.  I honestly can't remember the last time I saw this in a Christian church.
 
This is not a place for full – or empty – offering plates.  The table is not a resting place for stuff when we have no idea what to do with it.  

Again, as I worshipped in a particular church several years ago, the preacher would come out of the pulpit (for whatever reason) and prop his computer tablet on the table and refer to his sermon notes while he stood alongside the table.
 
The way a portion of the church treats the Communion table causes the table to lose its sense of the holy.  It is as if the body and blood of Christ have equal standing with flowers and offering plates.  It causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble…
 
Dr. James F. White was one of the giants of the liturgical movement in The United Methodist Church and beyond a few years ago.  He made an observation that has always stayed with me.  He said, “Show me a church that has an open Bible on the table, and I’ll show you a church that doesn’t use either one.”
 

“Ah, Rick!  All of a sudden in retirement you’ve got too much time on your hands and now you are becoming a curmudgeon!”  Maybe.  But when the church ceases to treat sacred things as holy and everything becomes plain vanilla then we lose an appreciation of the divine.  Please, please, don’t stand for that.  Don’t let it happen. 
 
Lord, have mercy!
Christ, have mercy!
Lord, have mercy!