************ Sermon on Heidelberg Catechism Q & A 75-80 ************
Doctrine: the Lord's Supper
By: Rev. Adrian Dieleman
This sermon was preached on September 9, 2001
Q & A 75-80
1 Corinthians 11:17-26
"The Lord's Supper"
Introduction
Based upon the Scriptures, the Catechism tells us that Christ commands believers to partake of the Lord's Supper:
Christ has commanded me and all believers
to eat this broken bread and to drink this cup.
(A 75)
For, in instituting the Lord's Supper, Christ has said, "do this in remembrance of me" (1Cor 11:24).
As we celebrate the Lord's Supper this morning we are called to look in three directions: to the past, to the present, and to the future.
I Past: Memorial Promising Forgiveness
A First, in celebrating the Lord's Supper we are called to look to the past. In instituting the Supper the Lord Jesus ordained it as a memorial: "Do this," He commanded, "in remembrance of me." And it was instituted at an occasion that was itself a memorial: the Passover meal. Therefore the Supper is, first and foremost, a memorial dinner. When we eat and drink we commemorate a past event.
Christ and His disciples were together to eat the meal remembering the night the children of Israel were led out of Egypt by God's mighty arm. They ate the Passover lamb. The blood of that lamb had marked Israel's houses so that they were passed over by the angel of death.
After they had commemorated the old deliverance, Jesus took bread, and He broke it – that is, He shared it with His disciples. Then He shocked them by saying, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me" (1Cor 11:24). Then He passed a cup of wine. He said, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me" (1Cor 11:25).
According to our Lord's Supper forms, Jesus "ordained this holy supper as a constant memorial and visible proclamation of His death" (P.H. p.979). We eat the bread and we drink the wine in remembrance of His death.
The Lord's Supper, then, is a memorial feast.
B As with the Passover, in the Lord's Supper we don't just remember the death but we also celebrate the deliverance or salvation of God's people because of the death. The Catechism says,
The Lord's Supper declares to us
that our sins have been completely forgiven
through the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ
which he himself finished on the cross once
for all.
(A 80)
I have always loved the way our Lord's Supper form puts it:
As we partake ... we bear witness that our Lord Jesus was sent by the Father into the world, that he took upon himself our flesh and blood, and that he bore the wrath of God on the cross for us. We also confess that he came to earth to bring us to heaven, that he was condemned to die that we might be pardoned, that he endured the suffering and death of the cross that we might live through him, and that he was once forsaken by God that we might forever be accepted by him.
(P.H. p.979)
The Lord's Supper, then, holds before us the promise of the forgiveness of our sins because of Christ's one sacrifice upon the cross.
C At the same time this also says something about the seriousness of our sin and the wrath of God upon that sin. We are reminded that we need saving. We are reminded in the Lord's Supper that God does not and cannot allow sin to go unpunished. Our sin is such an affront to His holiness and righteousness that God has to punish it. And He did. He had His only Son crucified.
The Lord's Supper, then, is a memorial to a past event – the suffering and death of Christ – promising us the forgiveness of sin.
D In holding out before us this promise the Catechism, unfortunately, says some unbiblical things about the broken bread that we receive to eat. It says,
as surely as I see with my eyes
the bread of the Lord broken for me
and the cup given to me,
so surely
his body was offered and broken for me
and his blood poured out for me
on the cross.
(A 75)
Actually, just as with the Passover lamb, the Scriptures emphasize that Christ's body was not broken (John 19:33-37; cf Ex 12:46; Num 9:12; Ps 34:20). The "broken body" idea comes from a word the King James Version of the Bible inserted into 1 Corinthians 11:24. Our New International Version of the Bible correctly reads here, "This is my body, which is for you." But the King James Version of the Bible incorrectly reads, "This is my body, which is broken for you." By the way, the old blue Psalter Hymnal copies the King James here and contains this unbiblical idea in two different places (Old P.H., p.147 & #421:2).
If Christ's body was not broken, why do we always break that piece of bread during the celebration of the Lord's Supper? We break bread for the same reason that Christ broke bread the night He instituted the Lord's Supper: in order to share and distribute. Christ broke off pieces of bread from a loaf and gave a piece to each one of His disciples (cf Mt 26:26).
II Present: Nourishment and Communion
A Second, the Lord's Supper also says something about the present.
The first thing we are shown about the present is that God, in and through Christ, nourishes and refreshes our souls. The Catechism says,
as surely as
I receive from the hand of him who serves,
and taste with my mouth
the bread and cup of the Lord,
given me as sure signs of Christ's body
and blood,
so surely
he nourishes and refreshes my soul for
eternal life
with his crucified body and poured-out blood.
(A 75)
At the time of Jesus the basic ingredients of a meal, for both a peasant and a king, consisted of bread and wine. Wine was used because water – unless it is boiled – was unsafe to drink. Bread was used as the spoon or the fork. You took a hunk and dipped it into the common pot of meat or vegetables or stew. In using these elements, says the Catechism, the Lord Jesus
... wants to teach us that
as bread and wine nourish our temporal life,
so too his crucified body and poured-out
blood
truly nourish our souls for eternal life.
(A 79)
It's a basic fact of life that in order to live we have to eat. This is true for temporal or physical life. And, this is true for eternal or spiritual life too. For temporal life God gives us potatoes and milk, rice-balls and tea, bread and wine. For eternal life God gives us Christ, His body and His blood.
In the Lord's Supper, then, we are shown that God, in and through Christ, gives us the nourishment we need to live forever.
B The second thing we are shown about the present is a double or two-fold communion. First of all, there is a communion between Christ and believer. In the Lord's Supper believers participate in the body and blood of Christ (cf A 77). According to the Catechism, to eat the crucified body of Christ and to drink His poured-out blood means that
Through the Holy Spirit, who lives both in
Christ and in us
we are united more and more to Christ's blessed
body.
And so, although he is in heaven and we are
on earth
we are flesh of his flesh and bone of his
bone.
(Q & A 76; cf A 80)
The Catechism also says that Christ
... wants to assure us, by this visible sign and
pledge
that we, through the Holy Spirit's work,
share in his true body and blood
as surely as our mouths
receive these holy signs in his
remembrance.
(A 79)
In fact, the Lord's Supper shows the mystical union between Christ and Christian to be so great
... that all of his suffering and obedience
are as definitely ours
as if we personally
had suffered and paid for our sins.
(A 79)
In the Lord's Supper the bride, which is the church, is further united to the bridegroom, Who is the Lord. In the Lord's Supper we, by faith, intimately share in the Lord's true body and blood. To use an illustration from marriage, the Lord's Supper, through the operation of the Holy Spirit, does for Christ and Christian what the wedding ceremony does for husband and wife – it unites them to each other so that "we are flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone."
C There is in the Lord's Supper also a second kind of communion: a communion among or between believers. The Catechism refers to the communion among or between believers in the Lord's Supper when it quotes from what the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:
Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf. (1Cor 10:17; cf A 77)
Our Lord's Supper form has much to say about this communion. It tells us, for instance, not to come to the Lord's Table if we are living "in enmity with our neighbor" until we are first "reconciled" (P.H., p.978). And, it calls the holy sacrament "a means of grace that unites us with one another in the bond of the Spirit ... Thus, even as he unites us with himself, he strengthens the bond of communion between us, his children" (P.H., p.980).
III Future: Pledge of Coming Kingdom
A Third, the Lord's Supper also says something about the future. In the Gospel accounts the institution of the Lord's Supper takes place against the background of the coming of the Kingdom. We read in the Gospels these words of Jesus:
I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father's kingdom. (Mt 26:29; cf Mk 14:25)
I will not eat [this meal] again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God. (Lk 22:16)
You are those who have stood by me in my trials. and I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (Lk 22:28-30)
These texts tell us that we cannot and should not celebrate the Lord's Supper apart from the expectation of the full triumph of the Kingdom of God. According to these texts, the invitation to the Lord's Supper should also be seen as an invitation to the heavenly wedding banquet.
B I have always liked the way our Lord's Supper form ties in this expectation of the heavenly wedding banquet to the celebration of the Supper:
... the remembrance of our Lord's death revives in us the hope of his return. Since he commanded us to do this until he comes, the Lord assures us that he will come again to take us to himself. So, as we commune with him now under the veil of these earthly elements, we are assured that we shall sometime behold him face to face and rejoice in the glory of his appearing. (P.H., p.980)