Simply Lutheran

A Lenten Devotion on The Lord’s Supper:
“Discerning the Body and Blood of Christ in His Supper”
1 Corinthians 10:15-17 NKJV “I speak as to wise men; judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread.”

My Christian friends: While discernment is exhorted in our public worship’s liturgical formula in the Sursum corda, “Lift up your hearts” or rather “Our hearts are lifted up,” joy awaits us as we anticipate hearing Christ’s very words of blessing the bread and cup of wine in the Words of Institution. However, the question may linger of whether or not the communicant acknowledges what it is that beckons his coming forward to the altar even as all sing the Agnus Dei, “O Christ, Thou Lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us…”

Not only must the communicant have sure faith, without doubting, in what it is that the minister holds out to proffer him, but the pastor himself must know what it is that the Lord Christ has done in preparing His own table and thereby prove to be a good steward of the mysteries of God, as St. Paul wrote the Church in Corinth: “Let a man so consider us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required in stewards that one be found faithful.”

Faulty thinking causes faith to erode so that you see what you receive from the hand of the servant of God as merely bread and wine. Many are of this mindset even though they confess that it is the “real” or “true” body of the Lord. Think upon the many times that it had been said that the Supper should only be celebrated only a few times in the year so that the congregation won’t get wearied of it or, as I have been told many times in the past, that we might take it (i.e. Communion) for granted. But remember that it is the Lord Christ who alone sets His table, who alone stated as His Last Will and Testament by saying of the bread, “This is my body” and of the cup of wine, “This is my blood.”
As Martin Chemnitz (the second “Martin” of the Reformation) wrote in his Examination of the Council of Trent: “We grant, with Irenaeus, that after the blessing in the Eucharist the bread is no longer common bread but the Eucharist of the body of Christ, which now consists of two things – the earthly, that is bread and wine, and the heavenly, that is the body and blood of Christ. This is certainly a great, miraculous, and truly divine change…What now, after the blessing, is truly the body and blood of Christ.”

Martin Chemnitz, again, wrote in his book De coena Domini (The Lord’s Supper) published in Jena, Germany 1590, “Some, of course, try to get around these statements of the ancients by saying that Christ is united with us only by some unique spiritual connection which nevertheless is called bodily…”Chrysostom in his Homilia (sermons) 82 in Matthaeum (Matthew), 45 in Johannem (John)…say…that there is a threefold kind of union between us and Christ: 1. By faith through the Spirit; 2. By love, which along with other gifts is the work of divine efficacy and renewal. But he (St. Chrysostom) also contends there is still another, more intimate kind of union between us and Christ, namely, not only by the Spirit and by efficacy, but we are truly united with his very flesh or body, so that we together with Him are joined as though into one lump (massa), through eating that which is bestowed upon us in the Lord’s Supper when He says: ‘This is My body.’ This does not take place in such a way, however, that the flesh of Christ is far distant in heaven and unconnected with us, but in a way that when we eat His body we have Him in us in totality.” (Martin Chemnitz, The Lord’s Supper [De coena Domini], translated by J.A.O. Preus, CPH, 1976 pp.163 – 167.)

Martin Luther, in his Great Confession concerning the Lord’s Supper, is quoted in the Book of Concord in the Formula of Concord as teaching: “…if I were to say over all the bread there is, ‘This is the body of Christ,’ nothing would happen, but when we follow His institution and command in the Supper and say, ‘This is My body,’ then it is His body, not because of our speaking or our declarative word, but because of His command in which He has told us to speak and to do and has attached his own command and deed to our speaking.”

Friends, you have often heard people say that Christianity isn’t a religion (which according to the common definition of religion is not true) but that Christianity is a relationship (which is true). This is absolutely the case at point. Can anyone be more intimate than when Jesus was when He was born of the Virgin Mary taking on human flesh, but without sin, in order to identify with His own creation? Could you ever be more intimate with Jesus than when you come to understand that this same human flesh born of the Virgin Mary now gives Himself into death on Calvary’s cross, for the atonement of the world’s sins? He now gives Himself to you, personally, to eat for the forgiveness of your own sins. The same can be said of the blood of Christ; for that very blood that flowed from your Savior on that old rugged cross is now given to you to drink for the forgiveness of sins. This is the most intimate relationship you could possibly hope for as Jesus truly gives Himself bodily to you in His Supper as His Last Will and Testament.

Innovations and novelties added to the Lord’s Supper do nothing but hinder the communicant from knowing the true intimacy with his Savior that relies first upon Christ communing His body with the bread and His precious blood with the wine, the same natural flesh and blood that was crucified for sinful man. Only then would the faithful have the real and substantial body and blood of Jesus. Anything less than what Jesus said could not be His body or blood but merely a spiritual semblance without the substance itself.

Luther at the 1529 Marburg Colloquy emphasized the Latin phrase Hoc est Corpus Meum, “This Is My Body!” to solve a disputation with Ulrich Zwingli over the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Courier & Ives had a lithograph c.1873 picturing a priest offering holy communion. They entitled the picture Hoc est enim Corpus Meum translated “This is truly my Body.” May Jesus’ very words of blessing ring as clearly today for the salvation and comfort of weary sinners.

The fifth stanza of Samuel Kinner’s hymn of 1638, “Lord Jesus Christ, Thou hast Prepared,” summarizes today’s devotion:
“Though reason cannot understand
Yet faith this truth embraces;
“Thy body, Lord, is everywhere
At once in many places.
“How this can be I leave to Thee, Thy word alone sufficeth me,
I trust its truth unfailing.” Amen.