“GIVEN AND SHED FOR YOU”
1 Corinthians 11: 23-32
Holy Thursday: 9 April Anno Domini 2020
Father Jay Watson SSP
Our final Lenten Midweek Mass is fittingly and most appropriately Holy Thursday—the day in which Our Lord instituted The Sacrament of Altar at the Last Supper. Indeed, Luther’s last of the 6 chief parts, the final of the three Sacraments is The Holy Communion. The Word of the Lord in the Law killed you and all believers. The glorious free Gospel of Jesus’ commandment keeping and dying for your sins birthed you from the dead with eternal life. The Our Father gave you a constant communication with your God and Lord. The Sacraments showed you how all of this came to you. First in your re-birth and adoption of Grace in the Waters of + Baptism, and then the daily continuation of this new life of repentance and absolution in Confession & Absolution.
But now, tonight, the night in which He was betrayed, He institutes the greatest of The Sacraments, the one which is simply called The Sacrament. This Holy Supper which is true Eucharist (Thanksgiving) and Communion. It is quite simply The New Testament itself—Jesus’ last will and testament wherein He gives you to eat and drink, Himself. You feast on God.
One could dig deep into the Hebrew Scriptures, the so-called “Old Testament” or “Old Covenant” to understand the origins of Christ’s institution on Maundy Thursday. While we won’t be doing that, it is worth mentioning that The Lord skinned, and thus killed, a real animal, I have no doubt a sheep or two, to clothe Adam and his spouse. Real flesh shorn of its real skin, nothing representational. Noah sacrificed real dead lambs and oxen on an altar wherein their real blood splashed about. Moses and the Israelites cut the throats of real Paschal Lambs and slathered real blood, not “it makes me think of blood paint” on door posts and lintels. And before that even they ate real unleavened bread with their real mouths…they did…no unbelieving strangers were dining with them at the Passover. It was real water that gushed out of the rock that followed them during the Exodus and most assuredly real bread which appeared on the wilderness ground every morning for 40 years in the form of manna.
The word manna is translated literally as “what is it?” And THAT, is the question.
The Sacrament of Altar… “what is it?” It is the true Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ…for us Christians to eat and drink. And, if it’s not really the true Body and Blood of Jesus, then it doesn’t matter who consumes it…any more than it matters who drinks Coke and eats Big Macs. If it’s not His Body and Blood then two things: 1) You’re calling God a liar; and 2) You’re calling God a liar.
Or, I guess you don’t believe what Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul wrote. But why do people who believe God spoke creation into being; parted the Red Sea, saved the three men in the fiery furnace, translated Elias into heaven in a fiery chariot, walked on water, cured Bartimaeus, and Rose from the dead, not believe Jesus when He says: “Take eat THIS (the bread He was holding in His hands) IS My Body?” Either Jesus meant what He said, or, Ulrich Zwingli and his followers (99% of protestants and non-denominational sectarians) are correct. Zwingli proposed a diabolical interpretation which he called alloeosis, i.e. Jesus said one thing but meant another thing. Zwingli said that although Christ said “is” what Jesus really meant was “represents.” Luther’s response was grammatical, philological, syntactical, morphological, and Biblical: IS MEANS IS.
Using Blaise Pascal’s famous “wager” example it is clear to all that either Zwingli was correct or Luther (and the entire Church for 1,600 years) was correct. It is either IS or it only “represents.” When a Saint encounters the Living Christ Jesus at the final judgment, it will be better to have trusted in the words which the Evangelists and Apostle have recorded than in the rationalistic philosophy of a Zurich cult leader and a bunch of American pietists, holy rollers, and Romophobes. And, if the liquid in the chalice is only wine, or God help them grape juice, and the objects on the paten are only bread…then, as I quoted Flannery O’Connor several weeks back: “to hell with it.”
But it is His true physical bodily presence of His Body and Blood. No, not in the normal way of food and drink, but rather in a Sacramental, Mystical, Mysterious way that we can not comprehend the way we might desire to. Can you comprehend the way ONE Jesus of Nazareth can be both True Man and True God—Two Natures—yes One Person? No. No you can’t. But you believe that, and call it the Personal Union. Therefore, all should believe what He and His Church have always taught about The Supper—His Supper, and call it and believe it to be the Sacramental Union.
You come to the Holy Mass and receive The Blessed Sacrament because God desires you to, and bids you to: “Do This.” The Church requests your presence as something Christians just do…not by way of Law and regulation, but by way of Good News and Nourishment for the struggles ahead. “And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine (preaching and teaching) and fellowship, (i.e. that is) and in breaking of bread (The Sacrament), and in prayers” [Acts 2. 42]. Look at the back of the worship folder any week to Article 24 of The Apology, to see how the Church receives Her Immanuel…EVERY Lord’s Day and other festivals and feasts on which she gathers.
Why? You really need to go home and re-read your Small Catechism and even your Large Catechism on The Supper.
But in conclusion, and in answer to the WHY.
The benefit (the reason you do it, the reason you’re here now) is shown in these words “given, and shed for you, for the remission of sins; namely that in The Sacrament forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation are given…”
When writing to the Corinthians, Saint Paul had adequate opportunity to “set the record” straight for those Gentile, non-Jewish, followers of Jesus. If anyone could have explained the strange new ceremony that all the followers of “The Way” were participating in (Koinonia; Communion) so as to set consciences at rest it would have been Paul. Had it all been mere “memorial,” “symbolical,” and “representational” Paul could have made it crystal clear for them and the Church of all ages to follow.
He did not. Paul simply repeated the Words that Jesus had uttered, and given to him, at the first Maundy/Holy Thursday. The Words that Matthew, Mark, Luke, Luther, and Watson also simply repeat to you and believe. You too, blessed Saints, you too.
BELIEVE! Believe “given and shed for you.”
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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