“23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” That’s what Socrates said when he was on trial for his life: “the unexamined life is not worth living.”
Why are you choosing to raise your children the way you are? Examine that. Why did you decide to come here this morning? Examine that. Why are setting your agenda for the week ahead the way you are? Examine that.
Why will you partake of the Lord’s Supper this morning? Examine that. Why won’t you partake of the Lord’s Supper this morning? Examine that.
This morning we are going to examine what we do when we take the Lord’s Supper. We all have a tendency to go through the motions in habitual actions and this sacrament is a habitual action. We do it on a regular rotation. That means we have to take a step back from time to time to remember why we are doing it at all We need to take the Lord’s Supper in an examined way.. That is the claim of this sermon: take the Lord’s Supper in an examined way.
We will study this in four points. First: the night Jesus was betrayed. Second: the bread. Third: the cup. Fourth: proclaiming the Lord’s death. If you have your Bible open, we are covering four verses with four points and it does come out to roughly one verse per point.
So, first, in verse 23, the night Jesus was betrayed. The words we are studying this morning are familiar because they are part of our regular celebration of the sacrament; what is not familiar is the context of these words.
Paul wrote these words to the church in Corinth because their celebrations of the Lord’s Supper dishonored the Lord. Their celebrations of Jesus’ supper dishonored Jesus. Imagine that you threw a birthday party for a friend named Rhonda only to find out that the party you put together deeply dishonored Rhonda. You did, after all, invite the boyfriend who broke her heart and her former best friend who is now with that boyfriend. You weren’t thinking about Rhonda’s interests when you planned that party even though it was a party for Rhonda. Paul was trying to help the Corinthians see that they were weren’t thinking about Jesus’ interests when they were celebrating his supper. Gordon Fee is right to say that, “the Corinthian meals are not truly the Lord’s Supper because they do not reflect or proclaim the meaning of that meal as it came from the Lord himself.”
Just like that birthday party for Rhonda totally missed the point of birthday parties, so the Corinthians’ celebrations of the sacrament totally missed the point of the sacrament; that’s why Paul brought them back to the source; verse 23, “For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you.” Paul was working from the very words of Jesus; that is what is going on with the words “I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you.”
Paul made a note of telling the Corinthians that Jesus spoke these words on the night he was betrayed. The apostle chose to identify this night as the night on which Jesus was betrayed. Why refer to it that way? Why not refer to it as the night on which Jesus was arrested? “The Lord Jesus, on the night he was arrested, took bread…” Why not refer to it as the night on which Jesus prayed in Gethsemane? “The Lord Jesus, on the night he prayed in Gethsemane, took bread…” Why would Paul refer to this as the night on which Jesus was betrayed?
Well, remember the context of Paul’s words to the Corinthians. He was writing to them about unworthy celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Was anyone eating and drinking the first Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner? Was anyone eating and drinking judgment unto themselves at the first Lord’s Supper on the night Jesus was betrayed?
At the first Lord’s Supper, Jesus told his disciples that one of them would betray him—“The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed…” Jesus said, ‘“it is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot.” As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him.’
You don’t want to take the Lord’s Supper the way Judas did. Remember that when you hear the words, “the Lord Jesus on the night on he was betrayed, took bread.” That was a warning for the Corinthians because they had it in them to act like Judas. That’s a warning for us because we have it in us to act like him.
The wealthy Corinthians were taking the Lord’s Supper in such a way as to exclude the poorer members of the church. They were taking it in such a way that some got drunk and others went hungry. Their celebration dishonored Jesus far worse than that birthday party dishonored Rhonda.
Now consider how many churches are celebrating this sacrament today. Do you believe every one of those celebrations is pleasing to Jesus filled with hearts ready to obey? Do you think that 1 Corinthians just happens to record the one and only instance of a church celebrating this sacrament in a way that grieved God? There are plenty of orderly celebrations of this meal that are Corinthian to the core.
We need to ask ourselves how we might be dishonoring Jesus in this sacrament. Are you living in active hostility towards someone else within this congregation? Are you living in unrepentant sin against your Lord? Examine yourself.
Now we come to the elements of the meal itself. We will first think of the bread; that’s our second point: the bread. Bread and wine were common staples in the first century diet. It’s easy for us to miss that because we celebrate this sacrament by eating something which is foreign to our diet—namely a small rectangle of bread and an ounce of grape juice. What was common in their diet has by custom, tradition, and logistics become something we now think of as unusual and hallowed. That’s not to say that our method of taking the Lord’s Supper is wrong; it is just to say that the way we celebrate it makes it easy for us to think of this bread and cup as somehow magical. One of the reasons we are studying God’s word on this is to help restore some of its natural quality.
So, first, the bread; verse 23, ‘The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.”’
A good deal of ink and blood have been spilt over the word “is” in the phrase, “this is my body.” Roman Catholics believe that Jesus was saying that the bread truly becomes his body. When the priest holds up the host during the mass, it becomes Jesus’ body. They treat it as if it is his body and dispose of unused portions with the dignity due the body of Christ. That’s called transubstantiation in case you like to know such terms. The Lutherans believe that the body and blood are, I quote, “truly and substantially present in, with, and under the forms” of the consecrated bread and wine; so, it totally is the body of Jesus and it is still totally bread.
Our tradition believes that the bread and wine are symbols. X’s and O’s are symbols in a football playbook. Imagine that you are in the huddle this Friday and the coach points to an O and says, ‘alright, this is you. Now I’m going to want you to go long.” You look at him and say, “coach, that isn’t me. I’m not an O. I’m a human being.” How is that going to go for you? The coach knows that you aren’t an O. He doesn’t feel the need to say, “alright, this O represents you,” because you should know what he means when he points to that O and says, “alright, this is you.” That’s a bit of what Jesus was up to he held up the bread and said, “This is my body.”
Just as the coach wants you to see the connection between that play on that piece paper and what happens on the field, so Jesus wants you to see the connection between this bread and cup and what happens on the cross. What happens on the cross happened for you. “This is my body, which is for you.” This meal is a way of showing your personal stake in what happened on the day Jesus died for sinners. This meal is part of your participation in what Jesus did. If you glory in the cross, glory in this sacrament. Look forward to it.
That’s just a bit about the bread; now let’s think about the cup; that’s our third point: the cup. Jesus said that, “this cup is the new covenant in my blood.” We’ve seen throughout our studies on Abraham and Deuteronomy that covenants are a bloody business. The blood underlines the seriousness of the covenant. The blood underlines the cost of breaking the covenant.
As part of ratifying the Sinai covenant, Moses took the blood of bulls and sprinkled it on the people saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.” The apostles thought of Jesus’ blood shed on the cross in that same way as the people at Sinai thought of that blood of bulls. It is sprinkled on God’s people as a sign of their covenant with God. This is why Peter greeted the early church as, “those obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood.” Our partaking of the cup is a symbol of that; “this cup is the new covenant in my blood.”
Now if there is a new covenant—“this cup is the new covenant in my blood”—that raises questions about the apparent shortcomings of the old covenant. Why get a new covenant if the Sinai covenant was working just fine? Well, and this is a gross oversimplification, but the Sinai covenant wasn’t working just fine. It was broke. It was broke, not because there was anything wrong with it, but because the people broke it. As God said through Jeremiah, “The days are coming when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant though I was a husband to them. This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time: I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.”’
That’s the new covenant Jesus had in mind when he said, “this cup is the new covenant in my blood.” In a few minutes, some of you are going to be drinking from that cup. What you will be doing is declaring yourself to be a member of the new covenant. You will be declaring that the law is written in your mind. You will be affirming that the law is written on your heart. You are declaring that you have been given a new heart that wants to obey. You are declaring that the miracle of new birth has happened within you. This is why we require profession of faith before the celebration of this sacrament.
Jesus said that this cup as well as this bread are to be taken in remembrance of him. Now, this word “remembrance” is loaded. It doesn’t mean to merely think about. Growing up, my grandma took me back to school shopping every year. The year before she died, she bought me a red, hooded sweatshirt which I still have. When I wear it, I sometimes think about her. Jesus would mean something more than that by remembrance. He doesn’t want us just to think of him.
A remembrance is not a mere memorialization. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is well worth seeing if you find yourself in Washington DC. It lists the names of all those who gave their lives in that conflict. The soldiers who survived felt forgotten by their country because the country wanted to forget the war, but this memorial says that they must not be forgotten because these men and women died in the service of their country. It is a memorial to the service of the country. It was designed to honor those soldiers. Now the Lord’s Supper is not a memorial designed to honor Jesus. It is something more.
This meal we are about to take is a remembrance in the sense that it is an act of entering into history. Here’s what I mean; it’s most likely that the meal that became the Lord’s Supper was actually the Passover meal. It’s likely that Jesus and the disciples were eating unleavened bread because the slaves in Egypt didn’t have time to wait for their bread to rise. They ate the bread with bitter herbs to represent the bitterness of slavery in Egypt. They did that, just as every generation since the Exodus did that, because each man, woman, and child was to partake of that meal as if they themselves had come out of Egypt. We get a sense of that every single time we read the law, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” You weren’t in Egypt, but you are to think about yourself as if you were. That’s what Jesus and his disciples were doing as they were eating that meal. They were entering into the history of the exodus.
We do the same with the Lord’s Supper; we enter into history. We eat bread because Jesus body was offered on the cross. We drink from the cup because Jesus’ blood of the new covenant was shed for the forgiveness of our sins. We participate in the history of what happened on Calvary. Do you wish you were there at the crucifixion? In some ways this meal is as close as you get. That’s a reason to be excited about this opportunity.
We enter into what happened at Calvary. We also proclaim what happened on Calvary. That’s our final point: proclaiming the Lord’s death. This meal doesn’t just speak to us as we take it; we also speak as we take it; that’s verse 26, “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
Every celebration of the Lord’s Supper is to be a communication to sinners about the death of Christ for sinners. The Corinthians were proclaiming something much different. They were proclaiming self-centeredness; we are only two short chapters away from 1 Corinthians 13, which was written because in so many ways that church’s behavior was loveless.
What are we as a church proclaiming? If a woman who knew nothing about Christianity joined us on a communion Sunday, what would she think we were doing when we celebrated this sacrament? We would want her to think that we were participating in the power of the death of the Son of God on behalf of sinners like us. Now she might pick upon some of that based on the praise we offer through music or the forms we read, but for her to really see that we are repentant sinners who want other sinners to repent, she would have to see our lives. She would have to know the life of this church, which is us as the people. Is the body and blood really what we are about?
Or are we only tradition for tradition’s sake? I fear that we sometimes celebrate this sacrament out of tradition for tradition’s sake. I fear that we sometimes celebrate this sacrament because it is on the calendar. If that’s the case, why do it at all? If that’s the logic, why gather to hear God’s word at all?
Now you might think that’s reading too much into this sacrament, but Jesus did say, “this is my body,” and, “this is my blood.” How and why we celebrate this sacrament says a lot about who we are as a church and what we think about Jesus. It is all about him after all.
You can have his body. You can have his blood. You can have his life. If you want something other than that, you want something other than God and this is not your meal. If the body and blood are what you are about, this is your meal. If the cross is what you are about, this is your meal. Amen.