Bible Text: John 13:1-15, 34-35 | Preacher: Pastor Andrew Richard
On this night Jesus said to His disciples, “With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Lk. 22:15). We see our Lord’s heart in these words. He eagerly looked forward to this meal, and He was so eager because He would at that meal institute the Holy Supper of His body and blood. After speaking those words, that’s what He does. “With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer,” and then He gives them the bread and says, “This is My body.” He gives them the cup and says, “This is the New Testament in My blood.” Jesus longed to give us this Supper. If with fervent desire He desired to give it, then let us desire with fervent desire to receive it, for we are the ones who stand to gain something. As we meditate this night on the Sacrament of the Altar in preparation for receiving it, let us return once more to the basic questions: What is it? What is it for? How should we receive it? And what flows from it?
First, what is the Sacrament of the Altar? “It is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, under the bread and wine, instituted by Christ Himself for us Christians to eat and to drink.” It is the body and blood of Jesus. This is obvious from Jesus’ words, and you weren’t surprised at the answer. Yet the devil is constantly trying to ally with our fallen human reason to make us doubt this reality, and at the same time tries to make us bored with things that we’ve already heard and learned. But faith is never bored with that which strengthens it, and given what we’re up against, it’s worth dwelling on this point, that the Lord’s Supper is the body and blood of Jesus.
How can bread and wine be Jesus’ body and blood? On the one hand, the Lord has not granted us a full explanation. We need to know what the Sacrament is and what it’s for, but we don’t need to know how it works in order to enjoy its benefits. It’s like we sing, “How this can be I do not know; / He has not willed the way to show; / Such streams my reason ought not ford; / I only need to trust His Word” (ELH 324:9). And therefore, on the other hand, we can say exactly how bread and wine can be Jesus’ body and blood: His Word. Jesus says, “This is My body,” and so it is. This is the same Word that said, “Let there be light” (Gen. 1:3), and there was light. This is the same Word that said to the leper, “I am willing; be cleansed” (Mt. 8:3), and the leper no longer had leprosy. In the Sacrament the same Word speaks who said to the servants at the wedding, “Draw some out now, and take it to the master of the feast” (Jn. 2:8), and it was no longer water, but wine; the same Word who said to the Canaanite woman, “Let it be to you as you desire” (Mt. 15:28), and a demon was driven out of her daughter; the same Word who said, “Lazarus, come forth!” (Jn. 11:43), and raised Lazarus from the dead.
The Word of Jesus does what it says, and if He says of bread, “This is My body,” then it is His body, as surely as the sun and moon stand in the heavens by His Word. So don’t get lost in the question “how?” but dwell instead on the question “what?” This is the body of Jesus, the very same body that reclined with the disciples at the Last Supper, the body He assumed in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the body that angels hailed at Christmas, the body before which demons beg and cower, the body whose touch is life-giving, the body that bled the blood of God for you, the body that bore your sins and did away with them in death, the body that was raised from the dead and which you will follow in the resurrection. When you kneel at the altar during the Lord’s Supper you bow to that body before which you will stand on the Last Day to be judged. And what a comfort it will be on Judgment Day to know that He who sits on the throne has so strongly desired your innocence before Him that He has given you His very body to eat and blood to drink. And this points us to the purpose of the Sacrament.
So second, what is the Sacrament for? Again Jesus has spoken clearly: He says it is “for the forgiveness of sins.” Now Jesus could have attached His forgiveness to any physical elements, but He chose food and drink in order to teach us something about forgiveness. You’ve been hungry before. You know what it is to feel an emptiness in your stomach and desire to fill it. You know what it is to thirst, to have a dry mouth and parched throat and long for something to wet your lips. You’ve felt a craving before for some specific dish and yearned for it and sought it out and enjoyed it. You know the feeling of satisfying hunger, of quenching thirst, that these are some of the most delightful sensations God has given us to enjoy, to sit back after a good meal and sigh and smile contentedly.
This all teaches us about the forgiveness of sins and the Lord’s Supper. You’ve felt the emptiness of hunger not only in your stomach, but in your heart. You know what it is to sin, to know you’ve sinned, and to feel that deep lack inside, that lack of your own righteousness, the great void that leaves you nothing to boast of before God, a hole that must be filled or you will die. You know what it is to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to yearn for it and crave it and seek it from your Lord, to cry out with a hollow heart and a parched throat for forgiveness. And to this longing Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Mt. 5:6). While Jesus can certainly satisfy that hunger with the preached Word, Jesus also in His wisdom has instituted this Sacrament that involves bodily eating and drinking to teach us the truth of Psalm 107:9, “He satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul He fills with good things.”
If ever you have delighted in a feast, this one offers more delight. If ever you have sat back after a meal with a full, warm belly and breathed a contented sigh and smiled a contented smile, and felt that all is right with the world, know that this feast fills you to even more perfect satisfaction, and warms you with the life-giving blood of Jesus, and is a cause for the most contented sigh and the most contented smile, and beyond merely making you feel that all is well, it actually makes all well: the Sacrament of the Altar forgives your sins and assures you that God is favorable toward you. You kneel before the Lord, and He stretches out His hand toward you, and that hand does not bear a sword to punish, but bears to your lips His own body and blood. How gracious it would be even if the Lord only fed us here with mere bread and wine, and simply showed that instead of being angry with us He wants to give us our daily bread. Even if that were all, it would still be more than we deserve and would still be gracious on Jesus’ part. But He has given us something far greater than mere bread and wine, food and drink as far above bread and wine as heaven is above earth. Not content with nourishing us with His creation, Jesus here gives us His own body and blood and nourishes us with Himself and delivers to us the forgiveness of sins.
So the Sacrament of the Altar is the body and blood of Christ, and it’s for the forgiveness of sins. Third, how should we receive it? It is no light thing to approach the Lord. How shall we do so? Note very carefully, if you wait until you are worthy to approach the Lord and receive His holy body and blood, you will never do so, because you will never be worthy. Yet it makes very little sense to think you must be worthy of the Lord in order to receive the Lord. That would be like saying, “I’ll go to the doctor after I’m better,” or, “I’ll wait to eat until I’m full,” or, “I’ll beg for alms once I become rich.” Jesus says, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” (Mk. 2:17). Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners, and His present company is neither better, lest we think we deserve His presence, nor worse, lest we think He will turn us away. Jesus instituted the Sacrament “for the forgiveness of sins,” and so the more sinful you feel the more eager you should be to approach. And if you don’t feel sinful, remember Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians, “Let a man examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup” (1 Cor. 11:28). Reflect on the Lord’s commandments. Look into them as into a mirror and see yourself for what you are. Such examination stirs up a hunger for the Sacrament. The Law of God shows just how empty and lacking we are and how much we stand in need of the nourishment of Christ’s body and blood for the forgiveness of sins.
Yet even this self-examination does not make us worthy to approach. The man who is truly worthy to approach the Sacrament is not he who is sinless, for that man doesn’t need it, nor he who has most thoroughly examined himself, for he knows he’s the least worthy, but the one who has faith in these words, “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” Faith hears those words “for you” and says, “Yes, Jesus intends it for me. I wouldn’t dare approach on my own, and I know my unworthiness, but Jesus said, ‘For you,’ and so I come believing that He wants me to, believing that it is His body and blood, believing that it will forgive my sins.” And so we examine ourselves by the Law in order to stir up hunger, but faith in Jesus’ words brings us to the altar and receives all the benefits there offered.
Finally, what flows from this blessed Sacrament? Jesus shows us in this evening’s Gospel. After they had eaten, Jesus “laid aside His outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around His waist. Then He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around Him” (Jn. 13:4-5). Love and humility and service flow from this Holy Supper. Jesus calls the foot washing an “example,” meaning that we Christians need not perform this exact deed for one another, but the same love and humility and service will flow from this Supper. In what way do we wash one another’s feet, so to speak? Let’s start with Jesus’ words in the reading. He says, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean” (Jn. 13:10). We are baptized. Jesus has washed us completely clean of all sin. Yet in the first century, when the man who had bathed went outside on the dusty roads in his sandals, his feet would get dirty. That didn’t mean he needed to shower again, just like no amount or gravity of sin ever means we need to be baptized again. Yet people would show hospitality to one another by providing a bowl of water and sometimes even a servant to wash the feet of guests. In this world we’re going to get dirty, that is, even though our sins are washed away, we sin nonetheless. A sinful nature sticks and clings to us until we die. We can’t get rid of that sinful corruption in ourselves or in anyone else, but we can overlook a fault and forgive a sin.
At the Lord’s Table we receive His body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins, but we don’t kneel there alone. We’re surrounded by fellow sinners, fellow Christians, and as we receive Jesus’ body and blood, it’s as if we each also receive the Lord’s towel and bowl of water to use with each other. When your brother sins against you, whether he knows it or not, whether carelessly or in the heat of the moment or whatever the circumstances might be, you can get out the Lord’s towel, and remember that though Jesus is the master of all He is among us as the one who serves, and you can get out the Lord’s bowl, in which He daily washes your feet and does not count your trespasses against you, and you make your brother’s feet clean in your sight. The Lord has washed your brother entirely, just as the Lord has washed you entirely. The Lord has made him clean, and therefore you see him as such. We’re in no position to play spot the dirt with each other. Praise be to Christ, He has taken all the dirt away. So instead of dwelling on one another’s faults, we consider how we can love one another, and in Christ’s spirit of humility we think about how we can serve our brother.
With fervent desire Jesus desired to institute His Holy Supper, and may He grant you a like desire to partake of it. It is His very body and blood. It grants the forgiveness of sins. It is properly received by the one who has faith in His Word. And from it flows Christian love. Indeed, as we sing in the Magnificat, “He has filled the hungry with good things.” In the name of Jesus. Amen.