Sunday, March 27, 2016

The Church and Body Life: The Lord's Supper



Welcome! He is Risen! (He is risen indeed!) Today we celebrate the resurrection of Christ. There is no greater miracle, no more important event (perhaps other than Creation) in the entire Bible. The resurrection of Christ is the foundation of our faith. Because Jesus rose from the dead, we know that we can trust everything He ever said, that through believing and trusting personally in Him, we can be forgiven of our sins and have eternal life.

I have recently been looking into wills and trusts for our family. We have a will, but we have not updated it in many years, and there have been many changes to our family and our possessions since then; as a result, we are long overdue in going back and, really, starting over, asking the big questions about what we want to happen when one or both of us is gone.  As I have thought about this personally, I have been surprised by the intensity of the emotions I feel specifically in wanting things to be arranged as much as possible for Mimi if I should precede her in passing on to the “better country” as C.S. Lewis puts it. I can imagine the stresses of having to deal with all the accounts, government agencies, decisions, and so on, on top of the stresses of the loss itself, and I greatly desire to ease things, to set things into place in advance, as much as I can while I still can. The thought of not being there for Mimi to help her brings on unique emotions, emotions I find hard to even name.

This has made me think of Jesus. He loved His disciples and friends (and by extension, us) infinitely more than I could ever love my wife or children. But He too thought about leaving them behind. Everything comes to a head at the last supper. I want to go through some of the account of it starting at John 13:1.


It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for Him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. – John 13:1

Unlike us who never know when we might die, Jesus knew exactly when His time would come, and it was coming the following day. I don’t know what you would be like if you knew you would die tomorrow, but apart from the Holy Spirit of God working in me, I am pretty sure that my focus would be on myself. I would feel fear and nervousness over what was about to happen, regrets over things I had not done as well as things I had done but should not have done, and in short, I would be a wreck, self-centered, useful to no one. In such contrast is Jesus. “He loved them to the end.” What was He thinking about? Them. How to help prepare them for His death. How to provide for them. And simply how to help them “get it,” that He was the Son of God, the Messiah, future King of kings and Lord of lords, and yet, that He loved them so much that He was going to the cross for no other reason than to save them (and us). “He loved them to the end.” I don’t know if there is a more poignant sentence in all of Scripture.

And so what did He do? Well, John tells us:

Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under His power, and that He had come from God and was returning to God; so He got up from the meal, took off His outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around His waist. After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash His disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around Him. – John 13:3-5

Let’s skip ahead a little to verse 12:

When He had finished washing their feet, He put on His clothes and returned to His place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” He asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. – John 13:12-17

So what was this last minute preparation about? Humility. Servitude. Out of His love of them “to the end,” He wanted them to really get this. And He wants us to get this as well, to really get it.

I am committed to making a list of instructions of what to do if I pass away before Mimi, things that will ensure that the financial arrangements I am making have their full realization. Imagine someone purchasing a life insurance policy but the spouse doesn’t know how to collect – this is what I want to avoid. Jesus was doing something similar. Lesson 1 on His list was the lesson of being a servant, no matter your worldly position in life.

Later in John Jesus gives Lesson 2:

“My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for Me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come. A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.” – John 13:33-35

Jesus emphasizes that these are final lessons, essential lessons. Lesson 2 is to love one another. Love is a command, something to do. It cannot be solely a feeling, because we cannot really control our feelings, not very well. It is the Greek word agape, and to know what it means we need only look at the next phrase: As I have loved you, so you must love one another. Wow. In the way that love has been lived out in Jesus’ life, we too are to live it out. Sacrificial love. Love that puts the other infinitely above the self. The disciples had not yet experienced or understood that Jesus’ love included dying for them, but I think they saw enough of Jesus’ love for them traveling with Him that they understood the incredible standard that Jesus had set for them.

Including the parts of this passage we have skipped over along with the other gospel accounts, it is incredible to think about this love Jesus had for them, because the disciples were not easy to love. You have them, during this same meal, arguing over who is the greatest. You have Peter boasting about how He would do anything for Jesus, when Jesus knew that He would deny Him three times. And you have Judas, on his way at that very moment to betray Jesus. Yet Jesus loved them still. He loved them to the very end.
Jesus then gives them Lesson 3:

Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in Me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with Me that you also may be where I am. – John 14:1-3    

Lesson 3 was to not be troubled or fearful, but to believe and trust in Jesus, even when He was gone. And in this lesson was a powerful promise: “I will come back!” This was fulfilled in the resurrection. His promise was kept! Praise God!

But we also know that when Jesus returned, He did not stay with the disciples forever, but only for a number of days. After this He ascended into the clouds, into heaven. And since that day we wait for Him to return. His promise “I will come back” applies as much to us and that future day when Jesus returns as it did to the disciples. And just as He kept His promise then, He will certainly keep His promise again.

Lesson 4:

“If you love Me, keep My commands… Whoever has My commands and keeps them is the one who loves Me… Anyone who loves Me will obey My teaching.” – John 14:15,21,23

Lesson 4 was to do what He taught them, to really do it, to put it into practice, to make it their lives. Again, I think of providing for my family a list of instructions for what to do if I pass away. The point of this list is not to discuss it or write songs about it or make nice needlework art from it – not that these things are bad, they’re not – it’s just that the point is to do it. My instructions will include how to actually collect on life insurance I have put into place. I want Mimi to actually do this so that she gets the benefit of the life insurance! In a similar way Jesus wants us to obey His teachings so that we get the benefits of it! His commands are not burdensome, but are given in love for our good.

Lesson 5:

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him, for He lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. – John 14:16-18

Jumping to verse 26,

… the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. – John 14:26-27

What is Lesson 5? Jesus does not leave us as orphans; He sends another, the Holy Spirit. Just as good parents include the name of alternate guardians in their will, so does Jesus name His guardian: ‘Holy’. He helps us in countless ways, including helping us to keep His commands, Lesson 4.

John chapter 14 ends with “Come now, let us leave.” And so Jesus continues to teach the disciples as they go or prepare to go, incredibly encouraging and powerful truths. I only have time to touch on them with the briefest of notes here, because there is something else I wish to go into. But in John 15 and 16 Jesus gives them the analogy of the vine and the branches and tells them, “Remain in Me.” We cannot live out a life of obedience to Christ without continual dependence on God. Jesus also warns them that persecution will be part of the Christian life, part of following and remaining in Christ. He also tells them to testify about Jesus, to tell others about Christ. And He tells them that ‘Holy’ will have much more to tell them, more than they could bear at this point.

He then again explained to them that “In a little while you will see Me no more, and then after a little while you will see Me.” And He explains this further:

“Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.” – John 16:20-22

Jesus concludes with a glorious prayer in John 17, praying first for His disciples, and then for all of us, that we would “know” – and we do! Just as He lives, we are a living answer to His prayer.

I do want to focus on one other important thing that happened at that last supper – this is found in Luke 22:

After taking the cup, He gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you. For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”  In the same way, after the supper He took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is poured out for you.” – Luke 22:17-20

Matthew puts it this way:

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to His disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is My body.” Then He took a cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.” – Matt. 26:26-29

Jesus had hinted earlier at this, in His teachings to the crowds at Capernaum:

Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For My flesh is real food and My blood is real drink. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood remains in Me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent Me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on Me will live because of Me. – John 6:53-57

Today we call this Communion, or Breaking Bread, or the Lord’s Supper, or the Eucharist. (That latter term comes from the Greek word eucharisteo which means to give thanks; it is the word used for this in the Matthew and Luke accounts.) The disciples participated in this first Lord’s Supper, and later continued to do so with regularity. Acts 2:42 says,

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. – Acts 2:42

And so this is one of the two ordinances of the church instituted by Christ Himself; the other is baptism, which we taught on last week. Both of these are commands Jesus said to do; in Matthew 28 Jesus says to baptize people, and we have just seen that Jesus said on the Last Supper to take the bread and the cup “in remembrance of Me.” Now you may wonder whether foot washing should be a third such ordinance. I don’t think so, because, first, you don’t see examples of the early church in Acts doing this, whereas you do have examples of baptism and communion, and second, the wording is subtly different: I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. The word “as” is there in the Greek; the message to the disciples was to be a humble servant just as Jesus had just demonstrated. In contrast, Jesus said directly to baptize people and to drink the wine and eat the bread. Not that there is anything wrong with a foot-washing service; it can be a powerful tool to teach exactly the lesson Jesus intended to teach.

Now the Roman Catholic Church teaches that the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ and do so when and only when Roman Catholic priest consecrates it; they use the term transubstantiation to describe this. Catholics have also taught that communion is in fact a propitiatory sacrifice. I find no support for especially the latter two ideas in Scripture; most concerning is the idea that it is itself a sacrifice in any sense. Christ died once for all. “It is finished,” He said on the cross. And the New Testament teaches that all believers are priests (I Peter 2:9) so it seems quite mistaken to imply that only ordained priests have some kind of special power that others do not have.

As for the idea that the bread and wine literally and “wholly” (in total) become Christ’s body and blood, protestants generally also reject this. Martin Luther himself rejected this, but he did believe that the phrase “This is My Body” had to be not just symbolic, but something more. His conclusion, according to Grudem’s Systematic Theology, “was not that the bread actually becomes the physical body of Christ, but that the physical body of Christ is present ‘in, with, and under’ the bread of the Lord’s Supper.” Lutherans take this position. (Not surprising, right?) Analogies sometimes given include that of magnetism to a magnet, a soul to a body, or water to a sponge – water is present “in, with, and  under” it, but is not the sponge. Most other Protestant groups do not believe this, but instead see communion, like baptism, in what might be called symbolic and spiritual terms. I do think the gulf between the Roman Catholic position and the Lutheran position is vastly wider than that between Lutherans and other Protestants. With regards to the Lutheran view, this is another example of an issue we should be careful not to “blow up”; in contrast to the Roman Catholic view, there are no significant doctrinal errors that lead to or lead from the alternate position.

What is meant by “symbolic and spiritual”? Calvin put it this way:

“By the showing of the symbol the thing itself is also shown… And the godly ought by all means to keep this rule: whenever they see symbols appointed by the Lord, to think and be persuaded that the truth of the thing signified is surely present there. For why would the Lord put in your hand the symbol of His body, except to assure you of a true participation in it?” (Institutes, 4.17.10)

The “spiritual” part of this is similar to how Jesus says “where two or more are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matt. 18:20)

As to what the practice symbolizes, what it means, we find much insight in the John 6 passage read earlier. Just as a man cannot live physically without being nourished by food, so a man cannot live spiritually without being nourished by Christ, by coming to Him in personal relationship. He who eats His “flesh” and drinks His “blood” has eternal life. This is not talking about communion, about the breaking of bread, but about what this symbolizes, real communion, co-mingling, coming together-ness, with Christ. It means to trust in Him for your salvation. It means to pray regularly to Him. It means to spend time in His Word. It means to seek what He desires and then, prayerfully, dependent on the Holy Spirit, seeking to carry these things out.

We find additional insight in Paul’s teachings on communion in I Cor. 11:

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: 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, after supper He took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. – I Cor. 11:23-26

To proclaim the Lord’s death is to remember the cross, to remember that He died for our sins, because He loved us and wanted to reconcile us to God. To take and eat, to drink, is to acknowledge that we needed Christ to die for us. It is to say, “Yes, I personally, through faith, receive the benefits of Your sacrifice.”

As for who should take communion, Paul is clear that it is for believers, and it is for those who are willing to practice self-examination.

So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves. – I Cor. 10:27-29

This doesn’t mean you have to “get your act together” before you can partake in communion; quite the contrary, it means that you acknowledge to Him that you haven’t got your act together, that you need help, that most of all you need Him, that you agree that apart from Him you can do nothing.  This is why Christ died, for sinners just like you! And me! In taking communion, in reflecting on the awfulness and horror of the cross, not just that it was so terrible, but that He was so completely undeserving, is to better understand just how terrible were the effects of our sin, that we were truly and totally hopelessly separated from God, destined for judgment, that it should have been us up there. But because He loved us to the end, for the joy set before Him, He endured the cross.

And as proof that the sacrifice on our behalf was accepted, just as in Old Testament times the proof that a sacrifice at the most holy place was that the high priest came out alive, so too did Christ come out alive, risen from the dead. And thus, on this day, we can weep, but we can also celebrate, because we know that our sins are forgiven, and He is with us and will be with us forever.

And so, we now wish to participate together in the Lord’s Supper. In a moment we will pass the bread and the cup to you. If you are willing to examine yourself and judge yourself honestly, as the Lord judges you, and if you are a believer, that is, you believe in Him, that Jesus did die on the cross and rise from the grave and you personally trust Him with your salvation, then break off a piece of the bread and take a cup; if you don’t feel ready, for whatever reason, it’s fine to pass it on. There is no condemnation here, only love. And then, I will ask John to open us in prayer, and they I encourage you to also offer prayers in turn out loud to God, as He leads you. Then I will pray, and then we will take the bread and the cup together.

Lord, we do now what You taught your disciples to do, and what they taught their disciples, and so on, down to us. On the night You were betrayed, you took bread, gave thanks, and broke it, saying “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” We now take the bread, so thankful that you gave Yourself up on the cross, experiencing not only unimaginable pain but separation from God the Father as He poured out His punishment on You for what we deserve.

And on that night You also took the cup, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” We now take the cup and drink, so thankful that not only did you die for us, but that you rose from the dead, because by this we know that Your sacrifice was accepted and that we are forgiven from all our sins. Because of You we are now reconciled with God. Because of You, we have eternal life. Because of You, we will spend eternity in Your loving presence. We thank You for loving us “to the end.” In Jesus Name, Amen!

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