FEELINGS AT THE ALTAR
Don’t try to “generate” feelings at the Altar. If you are depressed or sick or distracted, you may fail and go away disappointed. No, come just as you are! The Supper is for
you in your worst of moods or in the numbness of no emotions at all. Christ did not abandon His Presence in the Supper to the roller coaster of your moods, or even to your
ability to remember Him. In fact, Jesus’ body and blood are so surely present in the Supper that even an “unworthy” person (that is, who is unrepentant or doesn’t recognize
the body of Jesus in the Supper) actually receives the body and the blood – although to his own harm (I Cor. 11:27-29). Repentance and affirming the words “for you” is all
that “qualifies” you to come! Your emotions or power of meditation do not cause His presence. The bread is - not might be - a participation in His body; the cup is a
participation in His blood (I Cor. 10:16). “This is – not might be - my body.” Jesus is the host at this Supper, and He will not fail to be there for you!
HOLY COMMUNION: THE BREAK OF DAWN
The Lord’s Supper will be even richer for you if you come remembering that there is a powerful future dimension to it. Jesus added this anticipation of the future to the
Supper when, in the Upper Room, He said, “I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God” (Mark 14:25). As you eat the
Supper, you are standing on tiptoe by His side, peering ahead to celebrating with Him in His new world! His Supper is the appetizer, the hors d’oeuvre for the resurrection
banquet at His coming! Paul writes, “Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes” (I Cor. 11:26). His Supper is God’s
“packed lunch” for you as you make your way along the hard and joyous road home! The future broke into time with the resurrection of Jesus. In Communion, that future
breaks into your life. The Lord’s Supper is the dawn for you, because “it is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine, for us Christians to
eat and to drink, instituted by Christ Himself” (Luther). Through it you already have one foot in the coming new world. As the resurrected Lord presents you with His own
atoning body and blood, He does away with the boundary between your present death-bound existence and the new creation where there is no more dying. You receive
what He has promised: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise Him up at the last day” (John 6:54). At the Altar you taste “the
goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the coming age” (Hebrews 6:5).
THE LORD’S SUPPER IS THE GOSPEL
When we look at the very earliest New Testament writings (Galatians, I & II Thessalonians, I Corinthians) we see four basic facts, drawn from the life of Christ, that constitute
the Gospel. (They are, of course, found in the other New Testament books too.)
1. He died on a cross.
2. He arose and appeared to His disciples.
3. He promised to return.
4. He gave us His Supper.
The Supper was not an after-thought, a decoration like icing on a cake or tinsel on a Christmas tree. It is part and parcel of the Gospel. It is part of the very foundation on
which Christ’s Gospel and Christ’s Church are constructed. It is the continued Presence among His people of the resurrected man who is also God. The Supper
guarantees us that He is not an “absentee God.” The Supper is pure grace, just as His crucifixion, resurrection, and promised return are pure grace. The Gospel is all
about forgiveness, life, and salvation. So is the Supper. When Jesus gave them His Supper, He told His disciples that His sacrificed body and blood, present now in
bread and wine, are “given and shed for you for the remission of sins.” And Luther adds, “where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation.” Jesus’
Supper is Gospel – pure Gospel!
THE LORD’S SUPPER: A MYSTERY
No one can fully describe the awesome things that become ours under the humble forms of bread and wine in Holy Communion. Rather than try to explain it, come to the
Supper ready to be touched by the Real Presence of your Savior Jesus. Here you meet the One who is “true God, begotten by the Father from eternity, and true man, born of
the virgin Mary.” It’s “the medicine of immortality,” to use the words of Ignatius, a 2nd Century believer. Time and space evaporate, and the body broken and the blood shed
at the Cross invade our very body and soul and release into us forgiveness, life, and salvation! The powerful resurrected One joins us to Himself. The great Communion
hymn puts it this way:
Draw near and take the body of the Lord
And drink the holy blood for you outpoured.
Offered was He for greatest and for least,
Himself the victim and Himself the priest.
With heavenly bread makes those who hunger whole,
Gives living waters to the thirsty soul.
The judge eternal, unto whom shall bow
All nations at the last, is with us now.
Luther wrote, “For us, the Sacrament is a street, a bridge, a door, a ship, and a stretcher, on which we journey from the world into eternal life.” Mystery indeed.
THE LORD’S SUPPER: HE STOOPS TO CONQUER
It seems so unspiritual! Why would God want to use such earthly things as bread and wine – and water, while we’re at it – to accomplish spiritual purposes? We are
tempted to oppose our spirituality to the “sensuality” of the Lord’s Supper. We like to oppose the physical to the spiritual. Perhaps that’s why many people tend to put the
Supper “on the back burner” as really not essential to their walk with God. We just don’t see how physical things can accomplish spiritual tasks.
But wait. Have you noticed how prominent physical things are in God’s way of doing things? The Bible begins with His calling the physical world into existence. God
creates us with bodies. Jesus uses mud and pool water as a means of healing a blind man and bringing him to faith. Most importantly, when God wanted to redeem us, it
was decided that He who is the eternal Word must first become flesh! “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree” (I Pet. 2:24). And you are to present your body
(not your "hearts," as we are prone to say) as a living sacrifice which is your “spiritual act of worship” (Rom. 12:1). For your Creator/Redeemer, there is no gap between the
spiritual and the physical. In fact, your resurrection body will be a “spiritual body” (I Cor. 15:44), which does not mean a non-physical body (whatever that might be!) but a
raised physical body that is totally dedicated to adoring and serving God.
Back to His Supper. That physical things in God’s hands cannot accomplish spiritual tasks never entered into either Jesus’ or the apostles’ minds. In Jesus’ hands,
bread and wine become a means to refresh you spiritually – in other words, a means of grace – because He attaches powerful words to them. For Paul, lowly bread and
wine consecrated by Jesus’ words become the very locale of His body and blood that were given and shed for the remission of your sins: "Is not the cup of thanksgiving for
which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?" (I Cor. 10:16). How kind of Him to
stoop to conquer, and to occupy you - body, mind, and heart!
ONCE & FOR ALL, YET AS OFTEN AS YOU EAT & DRINK.
The Bible tells us that “Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God” (I Pet. 3:18). Why, then, do we talk about receiving
forgiveness through the Lord’s Supper? Didn’t that happen through His sacrifice at the cross? Or are we to believe that we are repeating in the Sacrament the sacrifice
that was offered up once and for all two thousand years ago - and isn’t that wrong? Certainly Jesus wasn’t thinking like that when He gave the Supper to His disciples.
The Sacrament of the Altar is neither something separate from, nor in addition to, Jesus’ once-for-all sacrifice on the cross. However, the One who was offered up at
Golgotha is present through His Supper to gift us now with the fruit of His atoning death. Jesus is the Sacrifice, and He presents us with the very body and blood that were
offered up once for all at Calvary. Holy Communion is something like the Fellowship Offering in the Old Testament. Here the worshippers ate in God’s presence the very
animal that had been sacrificed, consuming it in fellowship with the God who had accepted it and them. The Supper is not a grim exercise of recalling something that
happened long ago at The Place of the Skull. The past is here in the present! Time and space disappear. The Lord Jesus Himself makes His eternally valid sacrifice
contemporaneous with us! Because it is the risen Lord who unites us with His sacrifice, He also makes us partakers of His resurrection as well as His final victory over
sin, death, and Satan. There is nothing to be added to the Sacrifice that was made once for all. However, that Sacrifice is personalized for you as often as you eat the
bread which is His body and drink the wine which is His blood.
Don’t try to “generate” feelings at the Altar. If you are depressed or sick or distracted, you may fail and go away disappointed. No, come just as you are! The Supper is for
you in your worst of moods or in the numbness of no emotions at all. Christ did not abandon His Presence in the Supper to the roller coaster of your moods, or even to your
ability to remember Him. In fact, Jesus’ body and blood are so surely present in the Supper that even an “unworthy” person (that is, who is unrepentant or doesn’t recognize
the body of Jesus in the Supper) actually receives the body and the blood – although to his own harm (I Cor. 11:27-29). Repentance and affirming the words “for you” is all
that “qualifies” you to come! Your emotions or power of meditation do not cause His presence. The bread is - not might be - a participation in His body; the cup is a
participation in His blood (I Cor. 10:16). “This is – not might be - my body.” Jesus is the host at this Supper, and He will not fail to be there for you!
HOLY COMMUNION: THE BREAK OF DAWN
The Lord’s Supper will be even richer for you if you come remembering that there is a powerful future dimension to it. Jesus added this anticipation of the future to the
Supper when, in the Upper Room, He said, “I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God” (Mark 14:25). As you eat the
Supper, you are standing on tiptoe by His side, peering ahead to celebrating with Him in His new world! His Supper is the appetizer, the hors d’oeuvre for the resurrection
banquet at His coming! Paul writes, “Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes” (I Cor. 11:26). His Supper is God’s
“packed lunch” for you as you make your way along the hard and joyous road home! The future broke into time with the resurrection of Jesus. In Communion, that future
breaks into your life. The Lord’s Supper is the dawn for you, because “it is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine, for us Christians to
eat and to drink, instituted by Christ Himself” (Luther). Through it you already have one foot in the coming new world. As the resurrected Lord presents you with His own
atoning body and blood, He does away with the boundary between your present death-bound existence and the new creation where there is no more dying. You receive
what He has promised: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise Him up at the last day” (John 6:54). At the Altar you taste “the
goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the coming age” (Hebrews 6:5).
THE LORD’S SUPPER IS THE GOSPEL
When we look at the very earliest New Testament writings (Galatians, I & II Thessalonians, I Corinthians) we see four basic facts, drawn from the life of Christ, that constitute
the Gospel. (They are, of course, found in the other New Testament books too.)
1. He died on a cross.
2. He arose and appeared to His disciples.
3. He promised to return.
4. He gave us His Supper.
The Supper was not an after-thought, a decoration like icing on a cake or tinsel on a Christmas tree. It is part and parcel of the Gospel. It is part of the very foundation on
which Christ’s Gospel and Christ’s Church are constructed. It is the continued Presence among His people of the resurrected man who is also God. The Supper
guarantees us that He is not an “absentee God.” The Supper is pure grace, just as His crucifixion, resurrection, and promised return are pure grace. The Gospel is all
about forgiveness, life, and salvation. So is the Supper. When Jesus gave them His Supper, He told His disciples that His sacrificed body and blood, present now in
bread and wine, are “given and shed for you for the remission of sins.” And Luther adds, “where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation.” Jesus’
Supper is Gospel – pure Gospel!
THE LORD’S SUPPER: A MYSTERY
No one can fully describe the awesome things that become ours under the humble forms of bread and wine in Holy Communion. Rather than try to explain it, come to the
Supper ready to be touched by the Real Presence of your Savior Jesus. Here you meet the One who is “true God, begotten by the Father from eternity, and true man, born of
the virgin Mary.” It’s “the medicine of immortality,” to use the words of Ignatius, a 2nd Century believer. Time and space evaporate, and the body broken and the blood shed
at the Cross invade our very body and soul and release into us forgiveness, life, and salvation! The powerful resurrected One joins us to Himself. The great Communion
hymn puts it this way:
Draw near and take the body of the Lord
And drink the holy blood for you outpoured.
Offered was He for greatest and for least,
Himself the victim and Himself the priest.
With heavenly bread makes those who hunger whole,
Gives living waters to the thirsty soul.
The judge eternal, unto whom shall bow
All nations at the last, is with us now.
Luther wrote, “For us, the Sacrament is a street, a bridge, a door, a ship, and a stretcher, on which we journey from the world into eternal life.” Mystery indeed.
THE LORD’S SUPPER: HE STOOPS TO CONQUER
It seems so unspiritual! Why would God want to use such earthly things as bread and wine – and water, while we’re at it – to accomplish spiritual purposes? We are
tempted to oppose our spirituality to the “sensuality” of the Lord’s Supper. We like to oppose the physical to the spiritual. Perhaps that’s why many people tend to put the
Supper “on the back burner” as really not essential to their walk with God. We just don’t see how physical things can accomplish spiritual tasks.
But wait. Have you noticed how prominent physical things are in God’s way of doing things? The Bible begins with His calling the physical world into existence. God
creates us with bodies. Jesus uses mud and pool water as a means of healing a blind man and bringing him to faith. Most importantly, when God wanted to redeem us, it
was decided that He who is the eternal Word must first become flesh! “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree” (I Pet. 2:24). And you are to present your body
(not your "hearts," as we are prone to say) as a living sacrifice which is your “spiritual act of worship” (Rom. 12:1). For your Creator/Redeemer, there is no gap between the
spiritual and the physical. In fact, your resurrection body will be a “spiritual body” (I Cor. 15:44), which does not mean a non-physical body (whatever that might be!) but a
raised physical body that is totally dedicated to adoring and serving God.
Back to His Supper. That physical things in God’s hands cannot accomplish spiritual tasks never entered into either Jesus’ or the apostles’ minds. In Jesus’ hands,
bread and wine become a means to refresh you spiritually – in other words, a means of grace – because He attaches powerful words to them. For Paul, lowly bread and
wine consecrated by Jesus’ words become the very locale of His body and blood that were given and shed for the remission of your sins: "Is not the cup of thanksgiving for
which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?" (I Cor. 10:16). How kind of Him to
stoop to conquer, and to occupy you - body, mind, and heart!
ONCE & FOR ALL, YET AS OFTEN AS YOU EAT & DRINK.
The Bible tells us that “Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God” (I Pet. 3:18). Why, then, do we talk about receiving
forgiveness through the Lord’s Supper? Didn’t that happen through His sacrifice at the cross? Or are we to believe that we are repeating in the Sacrament the sacrifice
that was offered up once and for all two thousand years ago - and isn’t that wrong? Certainly Jesus wasn’t thinking like that when He gave the Supper to His disciples.
The Sacrament of the Altar is neither something separate from, nor in addition to, Jesus’ once-for-all sacrifice on the cross. However, the One who was offered up at
Golgotha is present through His Supper to gift us now with the fruit of His atoning death. Jesus is the Sacrifice, and He presents us with the very body and blood that were
offered up once for all at Calvary. Holy Communion is something like the Fellowship Offering in the Old Testament. Here the worshippers ate in God’s presence the very
animal that had been sacrificed, consuming it in fellowship with the God who had accepted it and them. The Supper is not a grim exercise of recalling something that
happened long ago at The Place of the Skull. The past is here in the present! Time and space disappear. The Lord Jesus Himself makes His eternally valid sacrifice
contemporaneous with us! Because it is the risen Lord who unites us with His sacrifice, He also makes us partakers of His resurrection as well as His final victory over
sin, death, and Satan. There is nothing to be added to the Sacrifice that was made once for all. However, that Sacrifice is personalized for you as often as you eat the
bread which is His body and drink the wine which is His blood.
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| Columns Section: 世紀網站專欄區 世纪网站专栏区: 007-016 柏大恩 專欄 柏大恩 专栏 Pastor Don Baron Column 作者：柏大恩 柏大恩 Pastor Don Baron |
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HIS SUPPER: JESUS, YOU, AND ME
The sharing of the body and blood of the Lord that comes through bread & wine (I Cor. 10:16) is not only a “vertical” thing – that is, Jesus and you communing privately
together. It also has an important “horizontal” dimension. It’s Jesus…and you…and your sisters & brothers in Christ, being re-connected in a fellowship that will never
end. The horizontal aspect of the Lord’s Supper is made very clear in the very next verse, where Paul writes, “Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body,
for we all partake of the one loaf.” You are bound together with that person to your left and right, and with all who commune at the altar! It isn’t always easy, this horizontal
dimension of our life with Christ. We’re all “sinner-saints” – justified yet sinful – who sometimes rub one another the wrong way! That’s why Luther’s illustration is
interesting: he reminds us that bread happens only after a lot of grains have been crushed. Then they’re ready to be blended into dough, baked, and become “one loaf.”
Even in a Christian congregation, you can be “crushed” and hurt by a fellow sinner-saint. As you go to the altar, be aware of those around you and thank the Lord Christ for
them. Where there is distance between you and another person, wipe it out with forgiveness! While you’re sitting below, pray for each brother and sister in Christ as you
see them proceeding up to the Altar. Yes, that includes not only the ones you “like” and are attracted to; it includes all in your church family. The horizontal and vertical
dimensions of Holy Communion are both important!
THE SUPPER: DEEPLY PERSONAL
“Even though in the Sermon there is the very thing that there is in the Sacrament and vice versa, yet there is the advantage that here (in the Sacrament) it points to a particular
person. Here it is given to you and me in particular” (Martin Luther). The Lord’s Supper is the Gospel personalized. You might respond to the preached Gospel by
saying, “Well, that’s all fine and good, but how do I know it’s intended for me?” But you can’t say that to the bread and wine that is placed in your hands and mouth! That is
for no one else but you! It’s as if your very name were written on the bread and the cup! No wonder Holy Communion is called “the Sacrament of assurance.” It’s for you
who wonder if Jesus really loves you. It’s for you who are tired of your sins and of yourself, and you feel unworthy to come. It’s for you lonely widows, and you worried
parents, and you unemployed, and you ailing and dying ones, and you who are at the end of your rope. Whatever your condition, there is a piece of bread and a sip of wine
waiting just for you. In them, He is waiting to get very personal with you. Come.
COMMUNION: PLACE OF JOY!
How sad that we dress the Lord’s Supper in the funereal black of Good Friday instead of the hilarity of Easter white! The focus of the Supper is not merely the death of
Christ. He is present as both the Crucified One and the Risen One. Eating His Supper is not a time of sadness, but of joy - joy comparable to the Sunday when the
mourning disciples were confronted with His sudden presence and realized that He was not dead, but mightily alive! Jesus said the Supper was to be eaten “in
remembrance of Me” – not “in remembrance of My death.” Smile! Celebrate! This is not a memorial service for “the late Jesus,” but a resurrection celebration, a reunion
with the One who was dead but is vibrant and alive. It is not the flesh of a corpse that we receive, but the flesh and blood of the exalted Lord who fills His universe but who
meets us exactly here in bread and wine. Leave the altar with a smile on your face!
The sharing of the body and blood of the Lord that comes through bread & wine (I Cor. 10:16) is not only a “vertical” thing – that is, Jesus and you communing privately
together. It also has an important “horizontal” dimension. It’s Jesus…and you…and your sisters & brothers in Christ, being re-connected in a fellowship that will never
end. The horizontal aspect of the Lord’s Supper is made very clear in the very next verse, where Paul writes, “Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body,
for we all partake of the one loaf.” You are bound together with that person to your left and right, and with all who commune at the altar! It isn’t always easy, this horizontal
dimension of our life with Christ. We’re all “sinner-saints” – justified yet sinful – who sometimes rub one another the wrong way! That’s why Luther’s illustration is
interesting: he reminds us that bread happens only after a lot of grains have been crushed. Then they’re ready to be blended into dough, baked, and become “one loaf.”
Even in a Christian congregation, you can be “crushed” and hurt by a fellow sinner-saint. As you go to the altar, be aware of those around you and thank the Lord Christ for
them. Where there is distance between you and another person, wipe it out with forgiveness! While you’re sitting below, pray for each brother and sister in Christ as you
see them proceeding up to the Altar. Yes, that includes not only the ones you “like” and are attracted to; it includes all in your church family. The horizontal and vertical
dimensions of Holy Communion are both important!
THE SUPPER: DEEPLY PERSONAL
“Even though in the Sermon there is the very thing that there is in the Sacrament and vice versa, yet there is the advantage that here (in the Sacrament) it points to a particular
person. Here it is given to you and me in particular” (Martin Luther). The Lord’s Supper is the Gospel personalized. You might respond to the preached Gospel by
saying, “Well, that’s all fine and good, but how do I know it’s intended for me?” But you can’t say that to the bread and wine that is placed in your hands and mouth! That is
for no one else but you! It’s as if your very name were written on the bread and the cup! No wonder Holy Communion is called “the Sacrament of assurance.” It’s for you
who wonder if Jesus really loves you. It’s for you who are tired of your sins and of yourself, and you feel unworthy to come. It’s for you lonely widows, and you worried
parents, and you unemployed, and you ailing and dying ones, and you who are at the end of your rope. Whatever your condition, there is a piece of bread and a sip of wine
waiting just for you. In them, He is waiting to get very personal with you. Come.
COMMUNION: PLACE OF JOY!
How sad that we dress the Lord’s Supper in the funereal black of Good Friday instead of the hilarity of Easter white! The focus of the Supper is not merely the death of
Christ. He is present as both the Crucified One and the Risen One. Eating His Supper is not a time of sadness, but of joy - joy comparable to the Sunday when the
mourning disciples were confronted with His sudden presence and realized that He was not dead, but mightily alive! Jesus said the Supper was to be eaten “in
remembrance of Me” – not “in remembrance of My death.” Smile! Celebrate! This is not a memorial service for “the late Jesus,” but a resurrection celebration, a reunion
with the One who was dead but is vibrant and alive. It is not the flesh of a corpse that we receive, but the flesh and blood of the exalted Lord who fills His universe but who
meets us exactly here in bread and wine. Leave the altar with a smile on your face!
| Pastor Don Baron's Communion Articles received from Pastor Don Baron |
