Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and
from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (1
Corinthians 11:23-32)
This is
my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
Prayer: May
the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your
sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
There is no such thing as a Lutheran doctrine. Either we
confess the doctrine of the Holy Scriptures or we are wrong. And when we are
wrong, then we need to repent.
Often people say, “Why does every church think that they
are right?” Well, first of all, every church has to believe that what it
teaches is right and what it teaches is the truth, otherwise that church has no
right to exist. As Jesus says: “God is spirit, and those who worship him must
worship in spirit and truth.”
And this is especially so when it comes to the Lord’s
Supper. Either we confess the truth about the Lord’s Supper, or we confess a
lie about the Lord’s Supper. There is no in-between.
So how do we know what the truth is? Well, first of all,
we are given the Holy Scriptures. And we read in Psalm 119: “Your word is a
lamp to my feet and light to my path.” The Scripture does not need to be
interpreted. It does not need someone to come and make it clear for us. The
Scripture does not need so-called bible scholars to tell simple people what it
really says, although sometimes we need to check the translations and consult
the original languages. The Scripture does not need the authority of a pope to
make it clear.
Pastors are not called to interpret the Scripture. They
are simply called to proclaim it and confess it. As Luther says in the Small
Catechism: “God’s name is hallowed when the Word of God is taught in its truth
and purity and we as the children of God live holy lives according to it. Help
us to do this, dear Father in heaven!”
Our epistle reading tonight speaks about the Lord’s
Supper. And in 1 Corinthians 11:20, a few verses before our reading begins, St
Paul calls it the Lord’s Supper. It
is the supper that belongs to our Lord. It doesn’t belong to us, it doesn’t
belong to pastors, it doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to Jesus Christ our
Lord—he is the one who has invented it, he is the one who has come up with the
idea, he is the one who comes each time Christians come together to prepare it
for us, he is the one who consecrates it and sets it apart as a holy thing, he
is the one who distributes it, and he is in fact the food itself. We should
give a priority to the name “the Lord’s Supper” because this is what the bible
actually calls it. It’s good for us to call the Lord’s Supper what the
Scripture actually calls it.
+++
Our reading tonight has two parts. In the first part, St
Paul describes the Lord’s Supper itself,
with those familiar words which the pastor recites every Sunday. We call these
words the “Words of Institution” or particularly when they are used in the
Divine Service, we call them the “Words of Consecration.”
And in the second part of our reading, St Paul teaches
about how we should receive the Lord’s
Supper.
+++
The first part of our reading reads like this:
For I received from the
Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night he was
betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This
is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way
also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my
blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often
as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he
comes.
This passage has a very interesting context. Just before
these words, which are so familiar to us, St Paul criticises the Corinthians
very harshly about the way in which they are practising the Lord’s Supper, and
preaches against their sin.
This highlights something very significant to us. Many
people are looking for the key to church renewal today. We see that there is
declining church attendance all throughout our country and throughout the
affluent western world. And we want people to come to our churches, and such
like. And sometimes this desire to have an increase in numbers in the church
has become such an idol, that it has become the most important thing. Of
course, we want to evangelise and encourage people to come to church. But people
sometimes think that one church is better than another simply because it has a
lot of people coming to it. Some of the largest churches, like the
mega-churches in the big cities, preach absolute lies to encourage people to
give the church more money so that they can receive material benefits from God
in return. “If you give so much of your income, God will give you a
Mercedes-Benz!” This stuff has been preached for years by all the Pentecostal
mega-churches. Their big numbers say nothing about whether they are “healthy”,
“flourishing”, or a faithful church. We little flocks need to remember that
today.
So St Paul shows to the Corinthians that even though there
were plenty of people coming to church, St Paul says, I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the
better but for the worse. For, in the first place, when you come together as a
church, I hear that there are divisions among you.
On one hand, an unfaithful practice of the Lord’s Supper
does damage to the church. And on the other hand, the renewal of the church
goes hand-in-hand with a faithful practice of the Lord’s Supper. The Supper
belongs to the Lord, and it needs to be practised faithfully, or it shouldn’t
be practised at all.
First of all, St Paul speaks about disunity in the church.
I hear that there are divisions among you,
he says. There isn’t such thing as a church with factions. Either people are
following the clear words of Jesus or they are not. And every issue which has
to do with church unity comes together in the Lord’s Supper. Every false
expression of church unity destroys and weakens our practice of the Lord’s
Supper. This is the reason why in the history of the church only those who
shared a particular church’s doctrine and confession of the faith ate and drank
together in the one church fellowship. To be a member of a particular church
means to share the Lord’s Supper together. The Book of Concord, the book of our
Lutheran confessions of the faith—which is a wonderful book for people to read,
by the way—and which is professed to be upheld in the constitution of every LCA
congregation and also by every pastor at their ordination, says that no one
should be admitted to the Lord’s Supper unless they have first been examined. I’ve
sinned against this many times and not given people the proper pastoral care
that they deserve and require.
The early Lutherans really cared about what people
believed when they came to the Lord’s Supper. This was never meant to be a
harsh, cold rejection of people from the Supper, but church fellowship and
church unity is quite different from the unity we have with people when we
share a donut and a cup of a coffee with them. Church fellowship and church
unity has to do with entering into the real and living presence of the Lord
Jesus Christ.
So sometimes if we bring a friend to church, they might
not be ready to receive the Lord’s Supper yet, and this situation often
happens. It’s not right to simply invite everyone who happens to be at church
to come to the Lord’s Supper, because not everyone who is there necessarily
knows what’s going on, and they need to be taught. And when we teach people the
word of God in the church, we are caring for them with God’s means and we
strengthen them.
But then of course, we don’t like it when people feel left
out. Well, this is a really wonderful opportunity for us to show a genuine
Christian hospitality. We should walk alongside them and encourage them. If you
have a friend in church who has never attended the Lord’s Supper in a Lutheran
church before, and you don’t want them feel left out, well, you can sit in the
pew together with them and wait until next time. Explain to them, “Listen,
we’re not wanting to leave you out, but the Lord’s Supper is a very important
thing, and things should be done properly, and if you would like to receive the
Lord’s Supper, you should talk to the pastor about it, so that you can learn
about it.” You can even give them a catechism or something which can help them
learn, and try your best to answer their questions.
So often today, pastors are the only ones who have a
conscience about who receives or doesn’t receive the Lord’s Supper. St Paul
calls pastors servants of Christ and
stewards of the mysteries of God. He says: It is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy. But
every one in the church should take this seriously, otherwise we end up with a
situation where lay people want to twist the pastor’s arm or even emotionally
blackmail the pastor into giving their friend the Lord’s Supper. This has often
happened to me in this parish, and it shouldn’t be the case at all. Of course,
we want everyone to receive the Lord’s Supper, but we also want everyone who
receives the Lord’s Supper to share in our unity of faith. Otherwise, the words
of St Paul will rebuke us: When you come
together it is not for the better but for the worse. For, in the first place,
when you come together, I hear that there are divisions among you. And the worse division is when there is
a division between the pastor and the people. As a pastor, I don’t withhold the
Lord’s Supper from some people for fun, or because I’m a member of the Taliban,
or because I have a big head and love power trips. The reason for this is for
the genuine real pastoral care of souls, which sometimes people just don’t
understand at first. We all have to work together to encourage each other in
the faith and build each other up.
On the other hand, if you don’t share in the unity of
faith of another church, you shouldn’t take communion there. If you don’t
believe that the pope is infallible, or if you don’t believe that the Lord’s
Supper is an atoning sacrifice on behalf of all the living and also those souls
still in purgatory, or if you don’t believe that you should pray to Mary, then
you shouldn’t take the Lord’s Supper in the Catholic Church. If you don’t
believe that Christians can believe whatever they like so long as they have a
bishop, then you shouldn’t take communion in the Anglican Church. And the same
goes for other churches, if they deny the virgin birth, or the resurrection, or
the true presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s Supper. Church unity
comes through a shared faith, not a shared institution, or a shared
nationality, or a shared sense of friendship. You might think I’m being a bit
strict about this, but the Lord’s Supper is such a serious business: It is
Jesus Christ’s own will for us, given to his disciples on the night on which he
was betrayed, before he went to die for the sins of the whole world. It is so
important that we commune with a good conscience and for the benefit of our
conscience. And it’s precisely in these sometimes awkward contexts where our
Lord Jesus Christ gives each of us the opportunity to give a faithful witness
to the truth, and to let our light shine in the world.
Now St Paul goes on to speak about specific abuses of the
Lord’s Supper in the church of Corinth, and how some would gorge themselves
with food, and some would go hungry.
But this is the context that St Paul then speaks the Words
of Institution.
He says: For I
received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the
night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke
it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the
new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of
me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup you proclaim the
Lord’s death until he comes.
You see from our text that our church has always taught
the simple words of Jesus. When we come to the Lord’s Supper, what is placed
into our hands and into our mouths is in fact the Lord’s own body through the
bread. What is poured into our lips is in fact our Lord’s own blood through the
wine. We don’t understand how this comes about, except that we trust that our
Lord’s words are true and clear. This eating and drinking of our Lord’s body
and blood is what we are called to do in remembrance of him.
You can be certain that the Lord’s Supper is not a
memorial meal of only bread and wine, where Christ’s body and blood are absent.
You can be certain that this is not the case, because Jesus himself on the
night he was betrayed said, “This is”, and he did not say, “This represents” or
“this symbolises.”
It is a great miracle that Jesus on the first Maundy
Thursday, as he celebrated the Passover with his disciples, was able to say,
“This is my body”, even though they could see him in his body sitting in front
of them. That is no hindrance to Jesus, whose true human body is inseparably
united to his divinity, in such a way that his human body can be present in
different ways and in different places at the same time, just as Christians
throughout the world on Sunday mornings can eat and drink the same body and
blood of Christ in whichever church they are attending.
We don’t believe that we are chewing on Jesus’ fingernails
or crushing up his bones. This is not what Jesus meant. We are not adding
anything to Good Friday, and re-sacrificing Christ every week. The Lord’s
Supper is not a sacrifice; it is a gift of God, where Jesus Christ himself
comes and visits us and brings all the benefits of his death and resurrection
to us, by putting his body and blood into our hands and mouths, as often as we
eat and drink these things.
Now how often should you come and receive the Lord’s
Supper. Jesus simply says: As often as
you drink it. There is no rule
here. You should want to come as often as the opportunity presents itself, but
as well there’s no rule if you can’t come for a while. The matter is completely
free.
Then at the end of this first part of our reading, St Paul
says: For as often as you eat this bread
and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
You see here how St Paul still speaks about the elements
as bread and cup, even though they have been consecrated as the body and blood
of Christ. This is because there is a very special union which occurs between the
bread and the body of Christ, and the wine and the blood of Christ, in such a
way that through the bread we receive the body of Christ, and through the wine
we receive the blood of Christ. And when we eat the bread and drink the cup, we
proclaim the Lord’s death and look forward to the time when he comes again in
glory.
+++
Now in the second part of the reading we read this:
Whoever, therefore, eats
the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of
the body and blood of the Lord.
Notice here that St Paul does not talk about people being
“unworthy” to receive the Lord’s Supper, but he talks about people receiving it
“unworthily”. Now what’s the difference? No-one is worthy to receive the Lord’s
Supper—we are all sinners, and fall short of the glory of God. None of us
deserves to receive it, and no-one should think that they are worthy to receive
it. There should be nothing that we have in our hand with which we claim to be
worthy to receive the Lord’s Supper.
But St Paul says that a person can receive the Lord’s
Supper in an unworthy way, or in an unworthy manner, or unworthily. A person
who eats and drinks unworthily, he
says, will be guilty concerning the body
and blood of the Lord. (This passage also strengthens our belief in the
true presence of Christ’s body and blood. How can a person be guilty concerning
the body and blood of the Lord, if these things aren’t there?)
So St Paul says: Let
a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks
judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have
died. For if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are
judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along
with the world.
If the Lord’s Supper would give you a bad conscience, then
stay away from it, and talk to your pastor. If the Lord’s Supper gives you a
bad conscience, then it’s doing the opposite of what it should do. Also, it
sometimes happens, that when the Lord’s Supper is celebrated, especially in
large celebrations, that all sorts of factions in the church are appeased one
way or another through the Lord’s Supper to the offense of someone else. Once
again, the Lord’s Supper is for good conscience, not to create a bad
conscience. So St Paul calls us to examine ourselves: first of all, to examine
our conscience, with respect to our sin. If we don’t believe that we are
sinners and don’t believe that we are completely unworthy of the supper, then
we receive the supper unworthily. But if we believe that we are unworthy of it,
then we do receive it worthily.
But also, St Paul says: For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks
judgment on himself. St Paul calls us to discern the body, to recognise that it is actually our Lord’s body
that we come to receive, and nothing less than that. St Paul even says: That is why many of you are weak and ill,
and some have died. Many people today believe that the Lord’s Supper
itself—especially the communion from a common chalice—will make them ill. But
the Lord’s Supper is Jesus’ own invention—he knows what he’s doing, and he is
present in the Supper himself, not to distribute evil and disease to us, but to
distribute blessings and life and forgiveness and salvation to us. If people do
become sick, St Paul says, it is not because there is anything wrong with the
Supper, it is because a person has received the supper unworthily, not examined
themselves, and not discerned the body. The Lord himself is there to administer
his blessings to us, and also his judgment. But St Paul says: If we judged ourselves truly, we would not
be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we
may not be condemned along with the world. Even when we are disciplined, the
Lord Jesus himself is giving us a wake up call, calling us to repentance.
And so, as we remember the night on which Jesus was
betrayed, let us love one another as Christ has loved us, so that all people
may know that we are his disciples.
Let us examine ourselves in heart and mind and come to
partake of this most holy mystery—this wonderful supper, which the Lord Jesus
comes and prepares and consecrates for us himself. He comes into the world not
to condemn the world but so that the world may be saved through him. He comes
to celebrate his supper with his disciples and he comes to love them to the
very end. He comes to wash our feet and humbly to share our life with us.
This is the body of Christ
which is given for you.
This is the new covenant in
Christ’s blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.
Let us eat this bread and drink this cup and proclaim the
Lord’s death until he comes. Amen.
Lord Jesus Christ, what a wonderful and precious gift you
have given us in your own holy supper—your flesh and blood which you have
bequeathed into our hands and mouths as our precious inheritance. Strengthen us
with this supper that our joy may be full. Amen.
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