Dear friends in Christ at Peace and Grue,
Luther flaunts it rather than hides it: The Christian way of life leads to repentance and promises resurrection every day. Life on these terms is rigorous and demanding. It consumes the resources of faith at an astonish-ing rate. It is not surprising, then, that weariness, doubt, and unfaithfulness are familiar companions to Christians. No Christian can escape these enemies. It takes a strong and healthy faith to contend with them. A faith that needs regular nourishment.
For this reason Christians regularly gather with other believers to speak and hear the gospel-the message about the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. In doing so they remind themselves of the promises attached to the sacrament of Baptism. When they are hungry and in need of solid food, they turn to the other sacrament, a meal provided by Jesus Christ himself. This meal, like a meal eaten by the side of the road, is food for travelers who are on the way from repentance to resurrection, from death to life.
Christians have many names for this meal. It is sometimes called the Sacrament of the Altar to emphasize the importance of Christ’s sacrifice for our sin. It is referred to as Holy Communion to accent the intimate bond created between those who come to the meal and its host. In recent years, some Lutherans have begun to use the term “Eucharist,” a Greek term for “thanksgiving.”
The name for this sacrament most often used in the New Testament is the Lord’s Supper. This name identifies the two main components of this sacra-ment. First it identifies whose supper it is: the LORD’S supper, not ours. Second it is the Lord’s SUPPER: It is a meal eaten in faith in God’s promise to save. The New Testament teaches that on the night before he was put to death, Jesus took bread and a cup of wine and promised his followers that he would be with them in these things. As with the water of Baptism, bread and wine would be no more than ordinary food without this promise to save. This saving presence is there for us even if we should despise or not believe the promise of this meal, because the word and the promise depends on God not on us and our ability to create what we think is faith or trust.
How Jesus will be present he does not say, and speculation about that often creates more difficulties than it resolves. Jesus meets us for a specific purpose. He comes to feed and nourish us in the faith that in his death he has won the forgiveness of our sins and the sure hope in the resurrection from the dead. When he said of both the bread and the wine, “Do this in remembrance of me,” he was not simply asking us to remember him. He is proclaiming clearly to us the saving events of his death and resurrection.
As St. Paul wrote, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes again” (1 Corinthians 11:26). Yes, just a bit of bread and a sip of wine. No doubt it is hard on us proud beings to be reduced to this, and to think that our eternal salvation hangs in the balance. But so it is and so we come together actually to pro-claim it.
But don’t overlook that last part: until he comes. For there lies the real aim of the meal that was interrupted by death, as all things will interrupted by death. But this meal we are promised will be concluded. So come, eat, drink, and proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. And with that we come to the end of our review of the five main parts of Luther’s Small Catechism.
Pastor Dan