REPENT: TURN TO
JESUS.
Receive A Special Assurance Of Your Forgiveness.
In the name + of Jesus.
The city of Corinth was a godless city, which
is to say that the worship of the true God was practically non-existent before
St. Paul arrived. It is not to say that
there were no gods honored in Corinth.
Corinth was a major trade center.
There were people from all over who acknowledged all kinds of gods. Even if they did not worship them all, each
one would have been considered a valid option.
So, when St. Paul arrived and began to preach there, his message would
have been regarded as just another preacher who promoted just another god.
Paul, however, taught that there are no other
gods. Already back in the Old Testament,
the Lord declared, “I am
the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God” (Isaiah 45:5).
Jesus Christ did not change that declaration. Rather, Jesus is the Lord who came in the flesh. Now, the people in Corinth were sophisticated
people. They are similar to people in
our city—multi-cultural and well-educated.
They would demand to know: “Why is the Lord the only true God? Why should we dismiss all others?” These are valid questions; we should not
pretend that they don’t deserve an answer.
And we don’t want to give the impression that we’ve never given them any
thought.
The answer is found in Jesus Christ.
Jesus claimed to be God. This gives
us one of two options: Jesus is God or he is not. There is no middle ground on this. Either Jesus is God and we fear, love, and
trust in him above all things, or Jesus is a crackpot worthy of scorn. In addition to claiming to be God, Jesus said
this: “The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, and they
will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day” (Matthew 17:22-23). And
then he did it. Jesus died for sinners,
and then he rose from the dead. This
verifies that he is the Lord, as he said.
This verifies that your sins have been paid for, as he said. And this is why we are convinced there is no
other God.
This is the message St. Paul delivered to the Corinthians,
and it is the message which the Church still delivers today. This is the message that reveals God’s mercy
to sinners. Jesus’ sacrifice reveals
that you do not need to live under the guilt of sin. Jesus’ resurrection assures you that you do
not need to be consumed by the fear of death.
There is no reason to avoid God or even to wonder if God cares about
you. The Lord God is a Savior God. Jesus gives you full pardon for your sins. Jesus is your refuge from death and
hell. No other god gives you salvation, because
no other god saves.
While this good news delights our hearts, we still become fearful. We still have doubts about our forgiveness,
about God’s love, and about the finality of death. When we feel our mortality, we wonder if our
faith is strong enough. When our
conscience bothers us about the sins we continue to do, we wonder if we are
really forgiven. If our lives and our thoughts
are still not pure, we wonder if our faith is real. We have God’s promises to cling to, but our
grip is not always as tight as it should be.
The good news is that it is God who holds you in his care. And more good news: God does not limit
himself to urging you to take his word for it.
At the first Passover, the Israelites were told to take the blood of a
spotless lamb and to mark the doorposts of their homes with it. The Lord told them that, when the angel saw
the blood of the lamb, he would pass over their homes. The blood of the lamb would deliver them from
death. Now, God could have simply said, “I
will not put anyone in your home to death.”
Instead, the Israelites had something they could see. God gave them something tangible to comfort
them—blood they could see, touch, and smell.
Likewise, the blood of the Lamb of God, a lamb without spot or blemish,
was shed to save you. Now, wouldn’t it
be wonderful if the Lord was able to give that blood to you? And of course, he does! The blood of the Lamb is given to you from
this altar again and again as a special assurance of your forgiveness.
When St. Paul delivered the Gospel in Corinth,
he did not restrict himself to words.
St. Paul delivered gifts which Jesus himself had left for his
Church. These gifts are given in ways
that we can see and smell and touch and taste.
St. Paul taught the Corinthians: “I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you,
that the Lord Jesus on the night when 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.’ In the same way also he took the cup, after supper,
saying, “This
cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do
this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me’” (1 Corinthians
11:23-25).
The sacrament of the altar is no mere reenactment
of Jesus’ last supper. If it were, it
would be up to us to stir up our imaginations to find any benefit from it. It would be like going to a Civil War battle
at Greenfield Village. Watching the people
in their blue and grey uniforms firing blanks at each other is pretty
cool. Some pretend that they got shot
and fall down as if dead. But after several
volleys, someone declares the battle over.
The people on the ground get up and return to their units. Nothing was really accomplished except to
stir up your imagination.
That is not what Jesus told us to do,
because the holy sacrament is no reenactment.
Jesus tells us: “This is my body, which is for you” (1 Corinthians
11:24). Why does it matter that this
is Jesus’ body? St. Peter wrote, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that
we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you
have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24). Jesus gave his body into a real, cursed death. That lifeless body was laid in a grave, and
then rose from the dead. Jesus’ body has
paid for sin, sanctified the grave, and overcome death. This is what he gives to you for the forgiveness
of your sins, for deliverance from death, and to make you a partaker of eternal
life. Turn to Jesus for a special
assurance of your forgiveness.
“In the same way also he took the cup, after supper,
saying, ‘This
cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do
this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me’” (1 Corinthians 11:25). These words of
Jesus were much more shocking than saying that the bread is his body. Going all the way back to the days of Noah,
when God first put meat on the menu for mankind, God had forbidden the consumption
of blood. The Lord told Noah after he
left the ark: “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you.
And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with
its life, that is, its blood” (Genesis 93-4). This
was prohibition was made even stronger under the Law through Moses. The Lord forbade his people from eating meat
with the blood still in it. He gave this
reason: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for
you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the
blood that makes atonement by the life. Therefore
I have said to the people of Israel, No person among you shall eat blood”
(Leviticus 17:11-12).
Now, Jesus told his disciples, “Drink of it, all of you, for this
is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for
the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:27-28). Why? Because the life is in the blood. Jesus poured out his life-blood at the cross
to make atonement for our sins—the death of Jesus for the life of the
world. But we do not feast on a dead
Savior. Jesus is risen from the dead. He not only claimed, “I am the
resurrection and the life” (John 11:25), he proved that he is. And therefore, he gives us the cup to drink,
and the life is in the blood. We receive
the life that strengthens and keeps us in the one true faith unto eternal
life. Turn to Jesus for a special assurance
off your forgiveness.
If we were merely reenacting the events of Holy Thursday, we would ultimately
receive nothing from our Lord. If we served
from this altar nothing but bread and wine, we would gather around a snack
rather than the heavenly feast. If all
of this only represents what Jesus gave into death for us, then we are all just
actors in a play. Some celebrate this sacrament
for one reason: Jesus said, “Do this.” They
do this to show Jesus that they are serious about being his disciples because they
obey his commands.
However, this is not what Jesus says about Holy Communion. Jesus’ command, “Eat and drink,” is not about
our act of obedience. It is an invitation,
like telling a man who was rescued from an avalanche, “Eat this soup. It will warm you up.” He does not eat it to show his obedience, but
to live. This is why we heed Jesus’
invitation to the banquet. We need it to
live. He makes that clear when he says
what this feast is for: “for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28). We do not come to this altar to prove
anything. We come because there is life
in the blood. Turn to Jesus for a
special assurance of your forgiveness.
St. Paul says, “As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you
proclaim the Lord's death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26). So, the Lord’s Supper
is a visible sermon. The Lord Jesus, crucified
and risen, delivers himself immediately to our bodies in the eating and the
drinking. We acknowledge that the forgiveness of
sins comes through the body which bore our sins and the blood which was shed at
the cross. Jesus makes us partakers of his
death which atones for all sin and guilt.
He gives a special assurance of the forgiveness of sins for sinners who
crave God’s boundless mercy.
We believe in one God, because there is only one God. The Lord God is the Maker of heaven and earth. He is also the one who has reconciled his creatures to himself by becoming one of us. And to assure us that we are his, and that we will be forever, he delivers to us the body and blood which were given to save us. Since Jesus’ body and blood have overcome death, so do those who receive it. And so, we will live and reign with the one true God, and we will feast with him in the heavenly banquet—here, for a moment; there forevermore.
In the name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Due to recurring spam, all comments will now be moderated. Please be patient.