Praying the Sacrament of the Altar

Holy/Maundy Thursday

April 13, 2017

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

Tonight as we observe Maundy Thursday and Jesus’ institution of His Sacrament of the Altar, we do well to recognize that this Holy Supper is not a common meal, but it the most holy mystery of the body and blood of Christ offered to us as we celebrate it. In light of our theme for this Lenten season of “Praying the Small Catechism”, the Sacrament of the Altar is Christ’s gift and testament to His Church, and so it is not to be confused with our prayers.

The Lord has sprinkled blood and made you clean. By His wounds you have been healed, and the food and drink He gives you at this heavenly feast is His body broken in death, His blood poured out for the forgiveness of your sins. In this Holy Meal, heaven comes down to earth in Jesus. And you are invited to enter heaven now, here, for Jesus brings His kingdom to you. Luther once said, “If you want your sins forgiven, don’t go to Calvary, for there, forgiveness was won for you, but not given out. If you want your sins forgiven, go to the Lord’s Supper, because there it is delivered to you.”  It is offered to those who desire this gift from God. To not offer it is to deny this precious gift to those who need it and yearn for God’s forgiveness. We dare never take this gift lightly, nor neglect the use of it.

In praying the Sacrament of the Altar, then, what we refer to is heeding the admonition by St. Paul, “Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.” A worthy preparation is therefore required lest we come upon death instead of life, receiving judgment instead of mercy.

No human work, neither fasting nor bodily preparation nor prayer, can make one worthy for the feast that Christ has prepared. Only faith in Jesus word and promise, in His real presence, delivered in, with and under the bread and wine given to eat and drink for the forgiveness of sins makes one worthy to receive this gift to our benefit.

When you examine yourself before receiving Communion, refresh yourself with the teaching you received through the Lord’s Word. A devotional aid to such prayerful preparation is the “Christian Questions with Their Answers” often included in the Small Catechism and in our hymnal on page 329.   Probably not written by Luther, this has been appended to the Catechism since 1551.  I would encourage you this evening to look through that in your preparation to receive the body and blood of our Lord.

In doing so, you will first be faced first and foremost with your need. For what is man but dust and ashes. We are born from the earth, we live from the earth, and we will return to the earth. Our sins have offended our Creator beyond our comprehension. God is righteous by nature, and so what are we but kindling for the consuming fire of His holy wrath? Will He who did not spare His own Son then spare His fallen creation or His rebellious people?

 Yet, we prayerfully consider not only ourselves in this examination, but the love of God in Christ. Your Lord invites you to His table tonight, however burdened by sins and guilt and shame. God did not spare Him so that all who believe may be spared. His body and blood proclaim that He is for you, and not against you as He grants forgiveness to all who trust in this promise. This divine feast is given that we be partakers of the divine life. This most holy medicine heals all the wounds of sin. This life giving body and blood overwhelms every mortal sin. It is a deliverance of the divine promises of God, a pledge of eternal life. As we come to eat and drink our Lord’s body and blood, we pray God would deliver what He has promised, deepen in us true faith in Him, and our love for others.

Our Lord wishes us to do this for our benefit because there is danger in treating this gift wrongly, “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. But if we judged [if we discerned], ourselves, we would not be judged.”  A person is unworthy and unprepared when he or she does not believe or doubts Christ’s words, “given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins,” for the words “for you” require all hearts to believe. Forgiveness, life, and salvation are truly offered to all who eat and drink, but only through faith do we receive the blessings offered there.

If there is no faith, if there is no trust in God’s Word that this is the true body and blood of Christ, one receives it to their harm rather than their benefit. All who come to eat and drink in the Lord’s Supper eat and drink Christ’s true body and blood, but only those who come in faith in Christ’s words receive the blessing of forgiveness of sins. For those who come in unbelief, or a denial that Christ is truly present in His body and blood, or in refusal to repent and therefore without a desire for forgiveness, their eating and drinking is not harmless or neutral. They too receive the true body and blood of Christ, but to their harm. St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11 that Christ’s body and blood is actually poison and death if eaten without faith and the Word. It is life giving to those who have faith, it is deadly to those with unbelief.  This is why those who have not yet been instructed, who hold to their sin and refuse to repent and therefore desire God’s forgiveness, who hold a different belief, or who worship at a church with a different belief, are asked to refrain. It is out of love. We do not want someone to receive this gift as a curse. Rather, we wish all who have the faith in Jesus’ words, receving His gifts to their benefit, and in turn give thanks to God for what He has done.

This is partly why one of the names for this Holy Meal is “Eucharist”, which is from the Greek word to give thanks.  But we must not be confused here. It is not our thanksgiving, nor our prayers, that make the Lord’s Supper what it is. Thanksgiving must be distinguished from God’s giving. Jesus gives thanks to the Father just before He delivers the goods. After receiving then, we give thanks to God. In the Lord’s Supper we are not offering anything to God, rather He is offering Himself to us.  Christ’s word bestow what they promise. Bread and wine are not symbols for an absent body and blood. Yet the bread and wine do not stop being bread and wine. Under these plain and ordinary elements, the Lord gives us His crucified and risen body and blood.  Not to do with as we please, but to eat and drink, and to do so with the specific purpose of receiving the forgiveness of our sins through this means.

Then we give thanks. A Eucharistic prayer comes after we are all dismissed, in the Post-Communion Collect.  It is focused not just on giving thanks for what the Lord has done, but for guiding us now outward in service toward God and others. Forgiven, we are freed from the bondage of the Law to now love another as the Lord has loved us.  This Sacrament spurs us outward into our communities, to our families, to serve them with the Gospel. 

For St. Paul also writes, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”  The “you” here is plural, indicating the celebration and proclamation of the unity in faith we share created by Christ.  This is an act of proclaiming among ourselves and every generation that in the Sacrament we share in the new covenant. In this way, this Sacrament, what we do here tonight and so often on Sunday morning, does not merely look back to what Jesus did, but it looks forward to the feast in the presence of the Lord on the Last Day. It has in view the benefits of the cross, both for our present need and our future certainty. To that we turn out attention this Good Friday and Easter.