200409 Maundy Thursday bulletin
Sermon manuscript:
About two and a half years ago our church celebrated the 500th
anniversary of Martin Luther nailing the 95 theses concerning indulgences to
the church door. This marked the beginning of an intense struggle throughout Christendom.
Martin Luther’s writings caused much turmoil. Everybody had to take a stand.
Was Luther correct or not?
There was another man, named Desiderius Erasmus, who was a
little older than Luther. He had long been in favor of cleaning up corruption
in the Church at that time. For that reason he was sympathetic to some of what
Luther was teaching. However, there was a lot that he didn’t like too. In a way
he was rather conservative. He wanted to keep the teachings as they were, even
if they weren’t biblical, because he feared the strife and dissension that
comes with doctrinal controversies.
So in 1524 Desiderius Erasmus wrote a short book where he
attacked something that Luther had been teaching. Luther taught that we are
born with an enslaved will. Erasmus said that we have a free will. This topic
is important and beneficial to study. Perhaps we will some time. But I’m not
bringing this up to discuss the controversy itself. I want to talk about
something Erasmus said against Luther in course of his book.
He basically said that Luther was being altogether too
certain about what the Bible said. Over the course of history there have been a
lot of people who have said different things about what the Bible says about
this or that topic. The Bible, he said, was a confusing book. Who can make
heads or tails of it? It is best to leave interpretation to the professionals.
Let the priests, bishops, and the pope tell us what it all means, because the
Bible is basically useless in settling any controversies.
This really struck a nerve for Luther. I don’t think Erasmus
was prepared for the vehemence with which Luther responded. I think Erasmus
thought that all people thought that the Bible was a rather hazy and difficult
book whose interpretation was best left to the professionals. Luther said, “No.
The Bible is not hazy. The Bible is clear. If there’s anything that’s hazy,
then it’s the people who are reading it. You will be better blessed by reading
the inspired prophets and apostles than you will with reading all the other
stuff that folks have written about
what the Bible says. Each person can and should believe what the Bible says,
not what people say.”
I agree with Luther: The Bible is clear. It is plain spoken.
It doesn’t beat around the bush and leave all kinds of things open to a
person’s interpretation. If anything, the Bible is a bit too clear for our
liking. People would like it to be less clear so that they can bend and twist
it any way they please.
I’ll give you a couple examples of the Bible being more
explicit than we want it to be. When God called Abraham and his descendants to
be his people he gave Abraham the sign of circumcision to accompany it. That
means, “Cut off the foreskin from your penis, and cut off the foreskin from all
your sons’ and grandsons’ penises eight days after they are born.” Does that
make you a little uncomfortable? Well, that’s what circumcision is. I didn’t
make it up. It’s right there in Genesis. How does circumcision do anything or
benefit anyone? I’m not sure. But that’s what God clearly said.
Or one time God told Abraham to take his son, his only son,
Isaac, whom he loved, and kill him as a sacrifice on a mountain that God would
show him. That’s all too plain in its meaning for our liking. We’d like to turn
it into a metaphor or something so that we can safely ignore it. But Abraham
believed this word to be true and faithful. He didn’t interpret it out of
existence. Let God be true and every man a liar.
This is how the Bible is. It records how God deals with
people in a very simple way. The problem is that we often have a hard time
believing it. But that isn’t God’s fault. Neither is it the Scriptures’ fault.
It’s our fault if we don’t believe what God has said.
Now let’s talk a little bit about the Lord’s Supper. There
are very few things in Christendom that have been fought over more than the
Lord’s Supper. What is it? What does it do? Very learned men have written big
books about it, arguing with some other guy who wrote big books about it. The
different confessions of the Lord’s Supper divide Christendom to this day.
Desiderius Erasmus’s solution looks attractive here. For the
sake of peace we could maybe say that this is all very confusing and difficult.
Who knows what Jesus means when he institutes the Lord’s Supper. Let’s all just
agree to disagree.
If this were just an earthly and unimportant matter, then
such advice would be well taken. If you and I were having an argument over
which football team is the best, then it would be wise to set the argument
aside if it was causing turmoil and strife.
But that’s not the nature of the debate when it comes to the
Lord’s Supper. Jesus is speaking plainly and simply. What he says is not
difficult to understand so far as the words are concerned.
He took break and when he had given thanks, be broke it and
gave it to the disciples and said, “Take, eat. This is my body which is given
for you. This do in remembrance of me.” In the same way also, he took the cup
after supper, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying: “Drink
of it, all of you; this cup is the new testament in my blood which is shed for
you for the forgiveness of sins. This do, as often as you drink it, in
remembrance of me.”
These words are plain, perhaps all too plain, like the other
examples that we looked at. For what does Jesus say? He says, “This bread is my
body. I give it for you.” “This wine is my blood. It is the new testament, the
new covenant, the new arrangement between God and you.” What is the nature of
this arrangement? It is that this blood is shed for the forgiveness of all your
sins.
Now perhaps you might wonder, “How can the bread of the
Lord’s Supper be Christ’s body? How can the wine be his blood? How can
forgiveness be so freely dispensed? How can there be such a gracious
relationship defined by such a testament between God and the sinner ? Isn’t
that too easy?”
There are always a thousand and one objections and
qualifications that can be raised to make something that is clear seem obscure.
This is nothing new. We see this with the first commandment God gave to Adam
and Eve in the Garden of Eden. God said not to eat from the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that they eat of it they would
surely. The devil came along and twisted this clear statement. He gets the ball
rolling by saying, “Did God really say that you couldn’t eat from any tree in
the garden? What an odd thing for God to say. You must not be interpreting it
right.” Then the serpent followed this up with an explanation that seemed more
plausible and believable than the plain words that God originally spoke. In
this way Adam and Eve were deceived and thereby robbed of the peace and joy
that they used to have in their Creator.
Don’t let anyone rob you of the peace and joy that God
offers to you with the plain words of the Lord’s Supper. The body that hung on the
cross is given to you to eat in, with, and under the bread. The blood of the
Lamb of God that was shed on the cross, stilling the wrath of God against sin,
is given you to drink in, with, and under the wine. The peace between God and
man that was lost by the fall into sin is restored by the sacrifice of Jesus
Christ on the cross.
This same Lord Jesus Christ, on the night when he was
betrayed, gave his disciples this gift, and told them to continue to give this
to Jesus’s disciples in remembrance of him. And so Jesus’s disciples have
continued to do this according to the Lord’s plain command. So this sacrament
also comes to you.
The peace and joy that Adam and Eve were robbed of is given
to you in the Sacrament. It is the new arrangement between God and you. It
forgives your sins. Having received this gift you should believe that God looks
upon you as sinless and beloved and well pleasing as he looked upon Adam and
Eve before they fell. This is not because of something that you have done. It
is not because you lived in such and such a way, did or didn’t do this or that.
The reason why God looks upon you as holy and righteous is because of what
Jesus did by dying and rising for you.
I’m glad that we are able to receive this Sacrament tonight.
But I know that there are some here tonight who cannot yet receive it. There
are also some who will listen to this broadcast later in their homes. I’d like
to speak a word to those who, for whatever reason, are not able to physically
eat and drink Christ’s body and blood. Let me therefore ask you: Do you believe
what Jesus says when he says that this sacrament is his body and blood for the
forgiveness of your sins? Do you believe that the body and blood of Jesus was
sacrificed for the forgiveness of your sins? If you believe this, then you are
not despising the sacrament even though you are prevented from receiving it at
this time.
If you didn’t care about the Sacrament, then that would be
one thing. Also, if you stubbornly refuse to repent of your sins and believe
the plain words that Jesus speaks, then that would be one thing. But it’s
another thing when other circumstances are preventing you from communing, but
you still believe what Jesus says. Then you are receiving Jesus’s body and
blood spiritually, even if you are not able to receive them physically with the
congregation that is here right tonight.
God is not a legalist who insists that every i be dotted and
every t crossed. The Lord’s Supper is not a hoop to jump through or a
stipulation God requires before he will be gracious. No, the Lord’s Supper is a
gift, not a prerequisite.
As a gift it works the same way that all good gifts work: the
power behind the gift is the love that prompts the gift to be given in the
first place. Suppose a loved one gives you a gift. If they really love you,
then that gift is not a test. If, for some reason, you couldn’t receive the
gift at that moment, it doesn’t change the love that is behind it. The giver of
the gift understands. But if you despised the gift a loved one wanted to give
you because you couldn’t go to the trouble to receive it, or you didn’t care,
or you didn’t think it was important—that, of course, is a different thing. So it
us also with the Sacrament.
To sum up tonight: The words Jesus speaks in the Lord’s
Supper are plain. We might not understand how it works , but there are a lot of
things we don’t understand—even about earthly things. Jesus also is very plain
about what the Sacrament gives. It gives forgiveness and reconciliation with
God through Jesus who was sacrificed on the cross. By what Jesus plainly says
to you, you are told that you have peace with God for his body and blood’s sake.
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