“This is the feast of victory for our God – Alleluia.  Worthy is Christ, the Lamb who was slain, whose blood set us free to be people of God…”  

We’ve spent the last couple of weeks in our sermon series talking about two important Lutheran aspects of the Eucharist .  We first talked about preparation – addressing the “who gets to eat” question.  We said communion is the meal of the baptized.  But we also said that discernment of the gifts of the Eucharist or “Sacrament of the Altar” is important.  When Luther said that person is “well prepared and worthy who believes these words ‘given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins’” we remind ourselves that the life of the baptized believer is always one of repentance and therefore, self-examination before we eat the bread of forgiveness and the wine of release.    

 

Last weekend Pastor Mark Knappe showed us that communion has always been understood as a “participation in Christ’s body and blood” and from the very earliest Christian sources we see the consistent presumption that Jesus is truly present in the meal – something that Luther embraced wholeheartedly.  We believe, albeit as a mystery, that our Lord is in the bread and wine because that is what he said – as for example in John 6:53-57 (“my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink”). 

 

I have cited the words of the liturgy of the church above, part of what we call the “Hymn of Praise”, themselves inspired by the witness of heaven recorded in Revelation 5, because of the question of “worthiness”.  In the Bible, especially the New Testament, worthiness is pretty much something that Jesus alone possesses.   John the Baptist said of Jesus, “I am not worthy to untie his sandals”, and our Lord, in some pretty bracing words, said anyone who loves father or mother more than he is “not worthy of me.”   Yes, Paul in Ephesians 4 urges believers to “live a life worthy of the calling you have received” and in Colossians 1:10, a life “worthy of the Lord.”   

 

But Christians who give honest assessment of their sins in the confession know that there is not much “worthiness” to be found in us – much as it is a blessed thing to embrace Paul’s admonitions.    Therefore, the liturgy of the church comes to our rescue, and after confession with our sober acknowledgement of how “unprepared” or “unworthy” we are, we sing with (I hope gusto) about the one “who is worthy” and who includes us at his table anyway.   When we talk of preparedness for the supper or what we must believe “about” the supper, we do well to recall how in the liturgy of the church the weekly Eucharist is a “rehearsal supper”. It is in anticipation of the marriage feast of Christ and his bride, the church. He invites the unlikeliest (unworthiest) of folks to the table.  

 

So says Revelation 5 and so says the church assembled in heaven.  As Pastor Knappe said last week, the Holy Communion rail is a crowded place – we participate not only in the body and blood of Christ but in the worship of the church triumphant.  

 

It’s a truly humbling and exhilarating thing we do … but which we do because of a cross.

Pastor Ken