Dear Friends in Christ,
Juliet told Romeo, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” We apply the truth of those words to our remembrance of the holy meal our Savior Jesus Christ instituted the night in which he was betrayed. Any name for that precious meal is sweet to the sinner’s ear.
So many crucial issues are facing us, our families, our nation, and the entire world. Why take a night to ponder anew something the world sees as insignificant. Even many of our fellow Christians do not consider this supper holy at all.
By God’s grace through the Holy Spirit we trust Jesus’ words that are beyond our understanding. We celebrate the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, the Eucharist because the Word of God stands behind it. “Come, and drink for the forgiveness of sins.”
This evening we focus on The Partnership We Experience in Holy Communion. It is a partnership between earthly elements and Christ’s true body and blood. It is a partnership between the communicant and Christ. It is a partnership among communicants who eat and drink together.
We call Jesus’ new meal the Lord’s Supper because he instituted it. Sacrament of the Altar because Jesus offered up his body and blood on the altar of the cross. Eucharist because our Lord gave thanks when he gave his disciples the cup to drink. The most common is our circles is Holy Communion, or simply communion.Com
The Apostle Paul defines communion as a participation. We can also define it as a sharing in common, or a partnership. Paul wrote, “Is not the cup of thanksgiving for we which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?” The Greek questions indicate the expectation of a “yes” answer.
There is a partnership in Holy Communion. It is a partnering of the earthly elements of unleavened bread and grape wine, which was on the table for the Passover meal. Jesus body and blood are present in Jesus’ word. They come together in what we call the sacramental union. When Jesus says that his body and blood is a real presence in the bread and wine through his word, “This is my body… this is my blood,” we take our Lord at his word because his word is sufficient for our faith.
That sacramental union makes communion sacred and special. It is not the same as any meal we eat and drink elsewhere. Otherwise, we might just as well be elsewhere when it is offered as if it were not sacred and special. Holy
Communion is the means of grace through which bread and wine are partners with Christ’s body and blood by which we are partakers of the forgiveness of sins.
In childlike faith, we say with Mary, “For nothing is impossible with God.” When we think about what is impossible, how about partnership or communion between Christ, and me between a sinner and the holy Son of God? How is that possible? It is possible in the vertical partnership we experience in Holy Communion. In 210, Who Knows When Death, we sing “His body and his blood I’ve taken In his blest supper, feast divine; Now I shall never be forsaken for I am his and he is mine.”
The sacrament gives me participation in salvation. I enjoy a connection with Christ that gives me all the blessings of his sacrifice. I am a partner in his holy birth, in his perfect obedience to the law and in his death. He has atoned for my birth in sin, my disobedience to the law, and died my death reaping the wages of my sins that is death.
All those blessings in this partnership with Christ are vertical in the sense they all come down to be from above in the risen and ascended Christ. Nothing goes from me up to Christ in Holy Communion. I do not sacrifice something that earns forgiveness and offer it up to God. I do not just merely observe a custom or outward ordinance that merely represents or reminds me of Jesus. Holy Communion is a vertical partnership of grace in which I contribute nothing but receive everything.
How important this is to remember often because we need forgiveness often. I have an assurance in which I depart from the chancel step in peace as I return to all those crucial and at times cruel issues of daily living. The Holy Spirit tells me repeatedly in the gospel that Christ is my Savior and gives me his salvation. Holy Communion is that most personal time of partnership. It is a partnership meeting where I do not have to do anything, just hear my partner’s words and plans and count my blessings that he has connected me to him.
There is another partnership meeting in Holy Communion. We experience the partnership among communicants who eat and drink together. The apostle put it this way, “Because we are one loaf, we, who are many, are one body; for we all partake of the one loaf.”
The horizontal partnership is the fellowship we have with another in the visible church by virtue of our shared confession of faith. It is a fellowship primarily of our common saving faith in Christ that is in our hearts and known only to God. However, we see it visibly through our church membership and confession of our mouths. Taking Holy Communion together acknowledges both of those partnerships. Both are necessary for shared participation as part of the one loaf.
Think of slices of bread. All different kinds of slices are all bread but they are not alike in the loaf; wheat bread, rye bread, white bread all may be one loaf in the sense they all are bread but they are different. Therefore, Christians who are in fellowship in the body of Christ are different and not part of the same visible loaf.
What a blessing to a congregation of believers in fellowship to express that partnership in closed communion. Spouses, children and parents, siblings, fellow members all enjoy the partnership that forgives their sins and enables them to grow in love for God and for one another as at the same time it preserves us in faith to eternal life. The frequent offering and generally frequent reception of Holy Communion by our members has grown and strengthened the partnership we enjoy as pastor and people at Bethlehem.
Holy Communion by any other name is just as sweet to the sinner’s ear. It is the aroma of our Christian and Lutheran partnership. God not only invites us to come and savor his grace, but also actually gives us this grace and power repeatedly to his glory. Amen. <SDG>