Mid
Lent 1
What
is the Sacrament
of
the Altar?
Where
is this written?
In
the early 50’s A.D., St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians and said: “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.’”
Paul
reminded the Corinthians about the words he had received, and had passed on to
them. They were the words by which Jesus
Christ had instituted the Sacrament of the Altar. The introduction to those words noted that
Jesus had done this “on the night when he was betrayed.” The words indicated
that Jesus had done this at a meal.
The
Words of Institution locate Jesus’ action at the Last Supper with his
disciples. This was a Passover meal – a
meal by which Israel remembered how God had rescued them from slavery in
Egypt. The blood of the lamb slain, and
now eaten in the meal, had marked the houses of the Israelites. God’s judgment had passed over the Israelites
as he killed the first born males of the Egyptians.
Jesus
spoke these words because he was about to be the fulfillment of the Passover
lamb. He would die on the cross on Good
Friday. His blood would be shed to win
forgiveness for us. And because of the shedding of his blood, God’s judgment
against our sins now passes over us. Yet
Jesus did not just die. On Easter he rose
from the dead as he had told his disciples.
Christ is now the ascended and exalted Lord at God’s right hand.
At
that meal, Jesus took bread and after giving thanks he broke it and gave it to
the disciples as he said, “Take eat, this is my body.” In the same way later in
the supper he took a cup of wine gave thanks over it and said, “Drink of it all
of you, this is my blood.”
Jesus
said that he was giving his body and blood to his disciples to eat and
drink. Now if you or I said this, the
hearer would immediately have to begin trying to figure out what this means.
After all, bread is bread, and wine is wine.
It can’t be the body and blood of a person.
However,
the One who was speaking these words was the Lord Jesus – the One who is true
God and true man. He was the One who had shown he has the power to raise the
dead, heal diseases, and still storms.
He has the power to do with words what no one else can.
Eat
the body of Jesus. Drink the blood of Jesus.
Christ’s words remain challenging today.
Yet we must recognize that they were utterly shocking to the Jewish
disciples. God had forbidden Israel to drink
or eat blood in any way. Yet now Jesus was
saying that he was giving them his blood to drink. The shocking nature of these
words leads us to understand that Jesus was doing something completely new –
something that had never happened before.
Jesus
says that he is giving you his body and blood in the Sacrament. These words are clear and unambiguous. One can only deny this by saying that Jesus
couldn’t or wouldn’t do this. The former is a denial of the power of the Son of
God. The latter contradicts the Incarnation itself and the located means by
which God dealt with his people in the Old Testament through the tabernacle and
the sacrifices.
Jesus
declares that he is giving us his body and blood. The words just say it. And when we look elsewhere in Scripture we find
the same thing. Paul told the
Corinthians, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in
the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in
the body of Christ?” The wine in the cup
is a participation in the blood of Christ. The bread is a participation in
the body of Christ. In the same manner, Paul went on to say, “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.”
The
words of Scripture just say it. And from the beginning, the Church believed
it. Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch,
wrote around 105 A.D. about heretics in his area: “They stay away from the
Eucharist and prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the
flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ which suffered for our sins, which the Father
raised up by His goodness.”
For
1500 years the Church believed nothing other than what our Lord says – that he
is giving us his body and blood. It was only in the sixteenth century that some
Christians began to deny this. They
denied that our Lord was working a miracle, and maintained instead that the
bread and wine is only a symbol – that it is nothing more than bread and wine
that makes us think about something.
They made the absurd argument that Church had immediately gotten
it completely wrong … and no one had noticed. They said the entire
Church had been wrong for 1500 years until they had noticed that Jesus’ words
don’t really mean what they say.
Jesus
held in his hands bread and wine. Today,
in the celebration of the Sacrament, we continue to use bread and wine. All can see that it looks like bread and
wine. It tastes like bread and wine. That is because it is bread and wine.
The apostle Paul says so when he speaks of how Christians “eat of the bread and
drink of the cup.”
Yet
because of our Lord’s words it is not only bread and wine. It is bread
and wine being used by Christ to give us his body and blood. The Small
Catechism says that the Sacrament is “the true body and blood of our Lord
Jesus Christ under the bread and wine.”
The preposition “under,” or as it sometimes said, “in, with, and under,”
confesses the truth that Christ is using this bread and wine in a way that only
he can.
Yes
it is bread and wine. But that is not
what makes it unique, and that is not where Christ sets our focus. Instead he tell us that this bread and wine
is his true body and blood. Bread and
wine. Body and blood. It is both at the same time. The Lutheran church uses the
phrase “sacramental union” to describe the fact that bread and wine, and body and
blood, are both present and received by us.
How
can bread and wine be the body and blood of the Christ at the same time? This is the mystery of the Lord’s working in
the Sacrament. We can’t explain it, but
from very early the Church used something in order to help her think about it -
and that is Jesus Christ himself. The
incarnate Lord is true God and true man at the same time. As the divine
and human natures are joined in the personal union of Christ, so the bread and
wine, and body and blood of Christ are joined in the sacramental union.
It
is Christ’s word that causes his body and blood to be present. Jesus’ words do what they say. The Large
Catechism states, “And just as we said of baptism that it is not mere
water, so we say here, too, that the sacrament is bread and wine, but not mere
bread and wine such as is served at the table.
Rather, it is bread and wine set within God’s Word and bound to it. It is the Word, I say, that makes this a
sacrament and distinguishes it from ordinary bread and wine, so that it is
called and truly is Christ’s body and blood.”
Christ’s
words spoken at the Last Supper did this.
And Christ’s words spoken today by the pastor continue to have the same
power. The speaking of these Words of
Institution is called the consecration.
Before the consecration it is plain bread and wine on the altar. After the consecration, it is the body and
blood of Christ on the altar. The bread and wine do not cease to be present,
but now it is the true body and blood of Christ under the bread and wine.
It
is Jesus’ words that cause his body and blood to be present in the
Sacrament. It is Christ’s action
and not ours. This is important because it means that our Lord’s words cause the
presence of his body and blood no matter whether you believe it or not. Our faith receives the Sacrament as a
blessing, but it is not reason that the body and blood are there. This instead is entirely caused by Christ’s
words.
When
the Lord instituted the Sacrament, he told the disciples to “take and eat.” He
told them, “take and drink.” The
Sacrament is a meal – it was given for us to eat and drink. Our Lord did not
institute it so that the body of Christ could be put on display, or so that it
could be paraded around as it was in the medieval Corpus Christi
procession. Instead, the crucified,
risen, and ascended Lord give it to his people to eat and drink. He gives it as a great blessing and
benefit. But in order to speak of that,
we will have to wait until next week.
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