Maundy Thursday

Maundy Thursday, 9 April 2020 | A Sermon on 1 Corinthians 11:17-32 by Samuel Zumwalt, STS |

1 Corinthians 11:17-32 English Standard Version, © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers]

 

¹⁷ But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. ¹⁸ For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part, ¹⁹ for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized. ²⁰ When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat. ²¹ For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk. ²² What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not. ²³ For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, ²⁴ 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.” ²⁵ 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.” ²⁶ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. ²⁷ Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. ²⁸ Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. ²⁹ For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. ³⁰ That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. ³¹ But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. ³² But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

 

RECEIVING JESUS. REALLY!

 

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

 

Divisions in the Church

 

The Church in Corinth was divided at the microlevel. There was no church building, so they met in homes. Since wealthier folks tend to have larger homes, the wealthier Corinthian Christians provided the gathering space. Because the original Passover was set within a meal that included unleavened bread and wine, the early Church continued to assemble in each other’s homes for “the breaking of the bread” (see Acts 2:42, 46). St. Paul identifies the problems that arose by continuing to have the Lord’s Supper within the context of a meal (think potluck!), and practice was changed for the whole (catholic) Church because of the divisions emphasized in the meal.

 

It seems almost (?} every pastor deals with divisions in the local congregation. In my seminary days that began now forty-four years ago, the PKs (pastors’ kids) had far less naivete about the Church than the rest of us. They had seen and heard how sin causes divisions, and divisions in the body tend to get focused on the pastor(s). St. Paul has already told us that the Church in Corinth was divided according to with which pastor each faction most identified. The most difficult faction was the “spiritual” folks, who were certain they were closest to Jesus.

Although the flood gates of division opened after Martin Luther, he was not the one who changed fifteen hundred years of eucharistic theology. We Lutheran Christians believe, teach, and confess that Christ Jesus is really present in the Host and the Cup of the Eucharist. In fact, unlike some whose practice belies Lutheran identity, Luther refused to commune with those who did not believe, teach, and confess the Real Presence of Christ in the Host and Cup. Yes, the first major division in the Church occurred over the two natures of Christ and the second over Peter’s successor’s authority, but the flood gates of division were and are principally seen in what is believed, taught, and confessed about the real presence of Jesus in the Host and Cup.

 

St. John’s gospel more than the others depicts the Lord Jesus as the Point of crisis (judgment). What we believe, teach, and confess about the Incarnation, that the Word of God became flesh in Jesus, also is at stake in what we believe, teach, and confess about the Lord’s Supper.

 

The True Body and Blood

 

Although St. Paul’s written account of the Words of Institution (11:23-25) likely predate the written account in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke), he makes clear in 11:23 that he received this account from apostolic teaching. Our Lord Jesus reinterprets the Passover through His passion, death, and resurrection. Now, the Lord’s Supper is not merely a remembering of what Jesus once said and did. Those baptized into His saving death and glorious resurrection are joined to Jesus. Receiving Jesus’ true Body and most precious Blood in the Host and Cup, we receive His benefits: the forgiveness of sins accomplished by His saving death, the eternal life that He has always shared with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and the salvation which the baptized will experience at death and, then, fully at the resurrection of the body on the last day.

 

Anti-Roman Catholicism among Protestants has often been most emphasized by communion practices. Rationalism, which might best be defined by believing only what seems reasonable to persons, has described the Real Presence of Jesus in the Host and Cup as superstition, magic, and even “popery.” While the Lutherans practiced weekly Eucharist for two hundred years after the Lutheran Reformation, they succumbed to rationalism (thinking) and pietism (feeling) in the frequency of reception of the Lord’s true Body and most precious Blood. This was exacerbated by the availability of clergy to preside at the Eucharist particularly in the frontier days in America. The Bavarian Lutheran pastor, Wilhelm Loehe, seems to be the first to attempt to restore the catholic substance to Lutherans in the 19^th century. Curiously, in America, it was the Restoration Movement that resulted in the Disciples of Christ and the separate Churches of Christ that restored weekly communion, but without belief in the Real Presence in the elements.

 

St. Paul points out to the Corinthians that by their divisions, which seem to be largely based on socioeconomic distinctions in their communion practices, they are not eating and drinking the Lord’s Supper (11:20). If they wish to emphasize their socioeconomic differences, as St. James also describes in James 2, they cannot possibly be in eucharistic fellowship with the Lord Jesus. Receiving the Lord Jesus is not for the pure and sinless (or the clean and wealthy), the Lord Jesus is the Friend of sinners. Jesus is the point of division between baptized and unbaptized, between those who know the Incarnate Lord in His Supper and those who do not, and between those who recognize their kinship with all the other sinners who have fled to Him for grace and mercy. On His cross, the Lord Jesus accomplishes reconciliation both vertically and horizontally.

 

The Body Made Whole

 

We receive the Lord Jesus’ true Body and most precious Blood in the Host and Cup. Really! The Son of God, who took on our frail flesh in the Virgin Mary’s womb, has promised, and He will never lie. Our Lord’s words are His promise to really be there. Elsewhere He tells stories filled with metaphors, but, in the Words of Institution, He tells us Who and what baptized Christians receive. Again, because it must be said, first those who heard the apostolic preaching received Baptism (Acts 2:38), and, only then, did they participate in the breaking of the bread (Acts 2:42).

The Didache, an early Jewish Christian discipleship manual, from around 100 A.D., emphasizes the practices of an early Christian community (www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/didache-lake.html),

 

Doubtless, the disciples assembled with the Lord in the Upper Room on that first Maundy Thursday wondered why their Lord and Master added words to the traditional Jewish prayers of blessing over the unleavened bread and the wine. Even though He had given them predictions of His passion, death, and resurrection (see Mark 8:31, 9:31, 10:33-34), they seemed clueless about what He was telling them, not only on the road to Jerusalem but, right up to moment of His death on a cross for them, for all, and for our salvation. Only after the Risen Jesus appeared to them did they begin to understand what He was promising in His Supper. They couldn’t see until seeing. We will say more about that very soon. Won’t we?

 

Receiving the Lord Jesus’ true Body and most precious Blood is based on His Word of promise. If we do not believe His promise, how can we know Who and what we are receiving? Had the Church in Corinth believed His promise to be there for them in His Meal, they could never have knowingly kept up their sinful divisions in His presence. British novelist Anthony Burgess, who wrote the screenplay for Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, masterfully captured this in the scene when Peter and the other disciples would not go into Matthew the tax collector’s house with Jesus. The scene becomes the occasion for our Lord’s telling the parable of the Prodigal Son (see Luke 15:11ff.). As the story unfolds, Matthew is cut to the heart for his dissolute lifestyle and Peter is cut to the heart for his refusal to join with His Lord as He ate with such sinners. Peter enters the house, and with tears in his eyes says, “Lord, I am a stupid man.” The Lord gives him to his brother sinner, and Peter and Matthew embrace.

 

Building upon the reconciling work of his predecessors John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI  acknowledged that the eucharistic division between the Eastern and Western Church is a problem primarily between Peter and Andrew. If those brothers who have so much in common cannot be reconciled in the Lord’s real presence, is it any wonder that the sin at the table in Corinth continues so widely among the rest of us bearing Christ’s name? The kind of Protestant bureaucratic naivete about how to accomplish real eucharistic fellowship in the whole Church seems like listening to a little child going on about things about which he knows nothing. Protestants, no less than Rome and Constantinople, can be so obsessed with Nietzschean power.

 

In his Small Catechism, Martin Luther wrote: “But that person is truly worthy and well prepared who has faith in these words: ‘Give and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.’” On this night when we celebrate the institution of the Lord’s Supper, that’s the best that each of us can admit. We are poor, miserable sinners whom the Lord has claimed as His own and with whom He continues to eat. This side of the eschaton, Christ’s Church will be a fractured Body seeking to be made whole in Him. We cannot do more than pray to manifest the wholeness Christ gives in Baptism. But until He comes in glory to judge the quick and the dead, we come to His table empty-handed sinners who know Who and what we are receiving and praying for grace not to exacerbate the divisions that we sinners have emphasized. We will not be made completely whole in this life because of our sinful flesh (hearts and minds). Nevertheless, we pray that the Holy Spirit will make our bodies whole and the whole Body whole. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

 

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

©Samuel David Zumwalt

szumwalt@bellsouth.net

St. Matthew’s Ev. Lutheran Church

Wilmington, North Carolina USA