Alternating during the Wednesdays of Lent, I am taking turns with the local Lutheran pastor preaching or guiding meditations and reflections on themes from the catechisms.
Shared on Wednesday, April 5, 2017
Scripture
readings: 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Matthew 26:26-29
I wish the Schwan Truck
would start making regular deliveries again, because I’m waiting for a new bag
of frozen pierogi. A pierogi is like a Polish ravioli. It’s a pasta stuffed
with potatoes or other stuff. It’s good stuff. I have a taste for it.
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| Photos: Burkett Lake, north of Desert Aire/Mattawa WA March 2017 |
I have a taste for pierogi
because I have (or did have) something that you may not have had. I had a “Baci”.
Baci is a Polish word for grandma, and I had a Polish grandma, and (because of
her) I’m also Polish. Of course, I’m an American, too, and that’s very
important to me. But I’m also Polish.
I know this because my
Baci told me so; along with my other older Polish relatives. They told me I
looked Polish, although I suspect that this was a love-based sort of “fib”.
They also told me that I thought the way I did because I was Polish; and it’s
true. I do think like them (at least a little bit) to this very day.
“Jak się masz?" That means,
“How are you?”
Since we’re in church I
should say, “Pan jest z tobą”. * (I know I'm not saying this right.)
Then, I guess, that you
should respond by saying, “A także z tobą.” (That would mean, “And also with
you.” You can guess what the other means.)
So, in a way, I am Polish.
I’m American, but I change when I eat pierogi. I become Polish. All of a
sudden, I become, once again, the kid helping my Baci make pierogi for my
family, and learning Polish words. I become the kid who ate the food of Poland
with my Baci.
This is a long way to say
that the Holy Communion of the Lord’s Supper is an even holier and more
powerful meal than pierogi. The Lord’s Supper claims you and changes your
identity.
It tells you that you are
a different person, and that you belong to someone else. If you will believe,
the Lord’s Supper makes you a Jesus-person, and you belong to him.
Some of the old catechisms,
the old teaching-questions-and-answers, of the Reformation ask us what are the
ways that Jesus uses to make his salvation effective. What are the ways that
Jesus uses to make everything that he is, and everything that he has done
powerful, and real, and a living part of us? What are the ways that Jesus uses
to make everything that he is, and everything that he has done, and everything
that he has change our lives, and change the very nature of our world, as we
experience it, and live in it? There are several ways.
Those ways are called: his
laws, his word, the sacraments, and prayer. The sacraments of the church of the
Reformation tradition are Baptism and the Holy Communion of Lord’s Supper.
The tradition I come from
says that the power of the Lord’s Supper doesn’t come from the ceremony of it.
The power doesn’t come from what the bread, and the wine, or the juice, are made
of (when we eat and drink them as part of the ceremony). The power doesn’t come
from the authority of the person who is doing the ceremony of the Supper, or who
gives us the bread and wine. Our tradition says the power comes, “by the
blessing of Christ and the working of His Spirit in those who receive them by
faith.”
My Baci had a lot of
blessing in her. She had a lot of spirit in her. She had something that made me
different (in some ways) from any of the other kids I knew.
In God’s hands, the Lord’s
Supper goes deeper than that. The blessing of Christ and the working of his Holy
Spirit are infinitely more powerful in the work of changing us and making us
different.
My catechism says that the
Lord’s Supper is a regulation. That means it’s a rule. We might not like rules,
but it should be easy to see what a strange rule it is that requires us to
accept the idea that humble things, like bread and wine (or juice) are the way
to receive great things.
That should make us think
deeply. The everlasting Son of the Everlasting Father came by the power of the
Everlasting Spirit to become a baby, who became a carpenter, who became a wandering
teacher, who became a victim of injustice who was executed on a cross in order
to give us great things.
His rule says that there
is no other way than this. The Lord becomes a servant. The servant becomes the
King and Savior. The bread and wine become the presence of Jesus: the Servant,
the King, and the Savior, the Life-Changer.
It’s the only way. It’s
the rule. To become great, you first must be a servant, and even a slave. This
is the rule in the heart of God. This is the rule for his kingdom, in the church.
This is what God wants to do, in order for his people to carry his kingdom out into
the world. God wants to make you become the humble signs of great things.
This is the rule for what
he does with bread and wine. It’s the rule of his heart, and he insists on
using his rule to change you into something else, and make you his own. He
wants his heart to become your heart. The Lord is wonderfully consistent on
this point: this rule.
You can see how this
regulation of the Lord’s Supper can only be truly received by faith. It’s not
the rule of the world’s heart. It’s the rule of God’s heart. It takes faith to
receive the Lord’s rule for what is truly great, and to be changed by it. It’s
by faith.
My catechism, and the word
of God (properly understood), teaches that, in this meal, Christ and the benefits
of a new covenant are “represented, sealed, and applied to believers by
physical signs.” (Question #92) This just means that what Jesus is, and what he
came to do, and what he continues to do, can be communicated to you through the
bread and the wine.
When you have been claimed
by Jesus, you don’t just see signs with the eyes in your head. You get a new
heart that sees, and hears, and knows. A seal was a bit of wax that had been
imprinted with a symbol of the identity of the owner of the object, or the
maker of a promise. A covenant is a promise.
Parents have to be careful
what they promise, because a child always remembers a promise. If you don’t
keep it, your child will howl the words, “But you promised.” A child knows that
a promise isn’t words. A promise is a reality that they want to be their
reality. The Lord’s Supper is about such a covenant-promise, and such a reality.
The Lord’s Supper builds
on the promise and covenant of the Passover Feast of the Jewish people. It
represents a new life. It represents a journey to the Promised Land. It
represents a journey out of Egypt: out of the land of idolatry (which is
deceptions and lies), out of the land of human power, and control, and
prestige, and out of the land where faith is not the way of life.
Jesus said, “This is my
body. This is my blood of the new covenant.” His point wasn’t to say what the
bread and wine were made of. He meant to say that the new covenant (his
promise) was made from him. Jesus is the promise. Jesus is freedom. Jesus is
mercy. Jesus is hope. Jesus is our light, and our Promised Land.
The word “remembering”, for
the ancient people of the Bible, meant much more than thinking about the past with
your brain. One of the commandments says to “Remember the Sabbath and keep it
holy.” This doesn’t mean that we can say, “Hey, it’s the Sabbath. Darn, I
forgot all about it. It’s too late to do anything about it now.”
Remembering, as all
ancient people understood, meant to enact the thing: to make it real, or to let
it become real. Doing the Lord’s Supper means living in the world of the cross.
With Christians, and among Christians, as the people of Jesus, the whole world (the
world as everyone else knows it) has been swallowed up by the world of the
cross and the resurrection. The spirit of the season of Lent, means recovering,
and rediscovering, what it means to live in the world of the cross and the
resurrection.
This strange world doesn’t
make us so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good. We bring this heavenly
world into the world that everyone thinks they know, and the Lord’s Supper is a
door to heaven from which Jesus comes out to us, and changes our life together,
and sends us out into the world.
Remembrance is this.
Remembrance is the door by which the kingdom of Jesus works. It’s how he seals
us as his own and says, “I own you. My sacrifice on the cross owns you. You
belong to me. Be my presence in my world.”
“This is my body and blood”
means “this is me on the cross”. This is my offering and my gift to you.
Let’s look at some of the
questions of that old catechism called “The Westminster Shorter Catechism”.
Q91.
How do the sacraments become effective means of salvation?
The
sacraments become effective means of salvation, not because of any special
power in them or in the people who administer them, but rather by the blessing
of Christ and the working of His Spirit in those who receive them by faith.
How would you describe the experience of the blessing of
Christ and the work of his Spirit when you share the Lord’s Supper? Has
something ever happened to you there?
Q92. What is a sacrament?
A
sacrament is a holy regulation established by Christ, in which Christ and the
benefits of the new covenant are represented, sealed, and applied to believers
by physical signs.
Being “sealed” is about ownership. What special times, or
relationships, or experiences remind you that you are owned by God: that you
belong to God?
Q96. What is the Lord's
Supper?
The
Lord's Supper is a sacrament in which bread and wine are given and received as
Christ directed to proclaim His death. Those who receive the Lord's Supper in
the right way share in His body and blood with all His benefits, not physically
but by faith, and become spiritually stronger and grow in grace.
How do you try, in your life, to “proclaim his death”? How
do you “become spiritually stronger and grow in grace” as you become a person
of the cross?
Q97. What is the right way
to receive the Lord's Supper?
The
right way to receive the Lord's Supper is to examine whether we discern the
Lord's body, whether our faith feeds on Him, and whether we have repentance,
love, and a new obedience - so that we may not come in the wrong way and eat
and drink judgement on ourselves.
This concern about the right way, and
the dangers of the wrong way, come from the Apostle Paul, in First Corinthians,
chapter eleven. The concern isn’t about the danger of guilt, but the danger of
coming without repentance, love, and a new obedience. Or it means the faith to
come to the only one who can give you what you lack.
William Barclay tells this story: “An
old highland minister seeing an old woman hesitate to receive the cup,
stretched it out to her, saying, “Take it, woman; it’s for sinners; it’s for
you.” (“The Daily Study Bible Series”; “The Letters to the Corinthians”; p.
105)
How might Holy Communion create an
experience of a different way of seeing the worth of your life and seeing the
worth of other people? How might it serve as a picture of your relationship
with Jesus?
There’s a passage that I love, about the
Lord’s Supper, in the Scot’s Confession, written in 1560.
“…this union…which we have with the body
and blood of Christ Jesus in the right use of the sacraments is wrought by
means of the Holy Ghost, who by true faith carries us above all things that are
visible, carnal, and earthly, and makes us feed upon the body and blood of
Christ Jesus, once broken and shed for us but now in heaven, and appearing for
us in the presence of his Father.”
The bread and the cup seem too small to
hold all of this; and our time with them seems too short. Our own lives seem too
small and too short.
But this is God’s rule for himself, and
for us. The rule is that God makes himself your food. How will this change you?
What will you do with it? Just think about that.
*Note: About
the Polish quote with the asterisk: if you didn’t guess, this would mean, “The
Lord be with you.”
(The catechism
questions and answers are quoted from “The Westminster Shorter Catechism in Modern English” by
Douglas F. Kelly and Philip Rollinson; P & R Publishing Company)
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