The Heart of Devotion:
The Centrality of The Sacrament [of the Altar]
And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers (Acts 2:42). This is how St Luke describes those 3000 souls who received Holy Baptism the Day of Pentecost. One theologian renders they devoted themselves as “they persisted obstinately” (Senkbeil, Dying to Live, p119). In what were they obstinately persisting? The breaking of bread is St Luke’s way of referring to the Lord’s Supper (cf. Lk 24:35). It was a common designation used the early Christian Church. The disciples of Jesus persisted obstinately in the Lord’s Supper, gathering often to eat His Body and drink His Blood given and shed for the forgiveness of sins.
Five years ago last Sunday St Peter’s Lutheran Church returned to the historic Christian practice of every Sunday Communion! For the past 260 Sundays in a row our Lord’s holy Body and precious Blood have been distributed to hungry and thirsting souls from the altar at 11th and Temple! We do not boast in this. God forbid! Except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to [us], and [we] to the world (Gal 6:14 NKJV). Rather we rejoice in our Lord’s great goodness in giving us, on the night when He was betrayed, this Holy Meal, not only as a remembrance or memorial, but as His true Body and true Blood for the forgiveness of our sins. He never ceases to feed and nourish us on this Manna from heaven.
Some may ask, “Do we have to have the Lord’s Supper every Sunday?” To them I would reply, “That is the wrong question.” Indeed our Lord has not specified the frequency of Holy Communion. For He wanted it to remain free. We ought to compel no one. Our Lord Jesus said, often. As often as you drink it; as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes (1 Cor 11:25-26). How often shall we preach Christ and Him crucified? Every Lord’s Day? Each Sunday? Everyday? So often we also receive His Body and Blood in the Sacrament of the Altar. “A Sunday without the Supper, a Lord’s Day without the Lord’s Supper was inconceivable in the church of the New Testament. For the celebration of the Supper was the heartbeat of the church” (Hermann Sasse, The Lonely Way, Volume 1; p480). The Lord’s Supper cannot be surrendered and the Church remain.
In the Augsburg Confession we believe, teach, and confess, “Because the Divine Service is for the purpose of giving the Sacrament, we have Communion every holy day, and if anyone desires the Sacrament, we also offer it on other days, when it is given to all who ask for it. This custom is not new in the Church” (AC XXIV 34). “Every holy day” refers not only to every Sunday - for it is indeed holy, as it is the day our Lord rose victorious from the dead and is sanctified by the preaching of the Word - but also to other days, such as feasts and commemorations of the saints. (Check Lutheran Service Book page xi for more.) Swedish Lutheran, Bishop Bo Giertz, wrote, “If we would travel around the world or back through the centuries, we would see that the Lord’s Supper ever since the earliest times of Christianity as a matter of course was and remains the main divine service, celebrated every Sunday in the overwhelming number of locations where the Church is present” (Christ’s Church, Kindle location 2702).
The Lord’s Supper is not a “have to” for the Church. It is a “get to.” We Christians get to receive Holy Communion often. We get to regularly and weekly receive the crucified, risen, ascended, and glorified Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. We get to often be joined in the most intimate and mystical way with the Son of God who shares in our flesh and blood. We get to be surrounded with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. “Here [in the Lord’s Supper] Christ offers to us the entire treasure that He has brought for us from heaven” (Large Catechism, V 66).
We weekly and daily have the devil around us, never giving us a moment’s peace, constantly seeking to snatch the Word from our hearts and minds. We weekly and daily have the world and all its temptations and allurements enticing us away from Christ and His Sacrament. We weekly and daily have our weak and sinful flesh with us. We know all too well what sort of fruit our flesh is: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these (Gal 5:19-21). “Therefore, the Sacrament is given as a daily pasture and sustenance, that faith may refresh and strengthen itself” (Large Catechism, V 24).
In short, Holy Communion is the heart and center of the Holy Scriptures and of the Christian faith and life. The Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins, and regularly and often given from the Altar at St Peter’s, is the beating heart that gives life to the whole body; both the body of the Church and the body of the Christian. The center of this life is lived in faith toward God and in fervent love toward the neighbor.
Your unworthy servant,
Pastor Mierow
Ash Wednesday
The Centrality of The Sacrament [of the Altar]
And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers (Acts 2:42). This is how St Luke describes those 3000 souls who received Holy Baptism the Day of Pentecost. One theologian renders they devoted themselves as “they persisted obstinately” (Senkbeil, Dying to Live, p119). In what were they obstinately persisting? The breaking of bread is St Luke’s way of referring to the Lord’s Supper (cf. Lk 24:35). It was a common designation used the early Christian Church. The disciples of Jesus persisted obstinately in the Lord’s Supper, gathering often to eat His Body and drink His Blood given and shed for the forgiveness of sins.
Five years ago last Sunday St Peter’s Lutheran Church returned to the historic Christian practice of every Sunday Communion! For the past 260 Sundays in a row our Lord’s holy Body and precious Blood have been distributed to hungry and thirsting souls from the altar at 11th and Temple! We do not boast in this. God forbid! Except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to [us], and [we] to the world (Gal 6:14 NKJV). Rather we rejoice in our Lord’s great goodness in giving us, on the night when He was betrayed, this Holy Meal, not only as a remembrance or memorial, but as His true Body and true Blood for the forgiveness of our sins. He never ceases to feed and nourish us on this Manna from heaven.
Some may ask, “Do we have to have the Lord’s Supper every Sunday?” To them I would reply, “That is the wrong question.” Indeed our Lord has not specified the frequency of Holy Communion. For He wanted it to remain free. We ought to compel no one. Our Lord Jesus said, often. As often as you drink it; as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes (1 Cor 11:25-26). How often shall we preach Christ and Him crucified? Every Lord’s Day? Each Sunday? Everyday? So often we also receive His Body and Blood in the Sacrament of the Altar. “A Sunday without the Supper, a Lord’s Day without the Lord’s Supper was inconceivable in the church of the New Testament. For the celebration of the Supper was the heartbeat of the church” (Hermann Sasse, The Lonely Way, Volume 1; p480). The Lord’s Supper cannot be surrendered and the Church remain.
In the Augsburg Confession we believe, teach, and confess, “Because the Divine Service is for the purpose of giving the Sacrament, we have Communion every holy day, and if anyone desires the Sacrament, we also offer it on other days, when it is given to all who ask for it. This custom is not new in the Church” (AC XXIV 34). “Every holy day” refers not only to every Sunday - for it is indeed holy, as it is the day our Lord rose victorious from the dead and is sanctified by the preaching of the Word - but also to other days, such as feasts and commemorations of the saints. (Check Lutheran Service Book page xi for more.) Swedish Lutheran, Bishop Bo Giertz, wrote, “If we would travel around the world or back through the centuries, we would see that the Lord’s Supper ever since the earliest times of Christianity as a matter of course was and remains the main divine service, celebrated every Sunday in the overwhelming number of locations where the Church is present” (Christ’s Church, Kindle location 2702).
The Lord’s Supper is not a “have to” for the Church. It is a “get to.” We Christians get to receive Holy Communion often. We get to regularly and weekly receive the crucified, risen, ascended, and glorified Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. We get to often be joined in the most intimate and mystical way with the Son of God who shares in our flesh and blood. We get to be surrounded with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. “Here [in the Lord’s Supper] Christ offers to us the entire treasure that He has brought for us from heaven” (Large Catechism, V 66).
We weekly and daily have the devil around us, never giving us a moment’s peace, constantly seeking to snatch the Word from our hearts and minds. We weekly and daily have the world and all its temptations and allurements enticing us away from Christ and His Sacrament. We weekly and daily have our weak and sinful flesh with us. We know all too well what sort of fruit our flesh is: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these (Gal 5:19-21). “Therefore, the Sacrament is given as a daily pasture and sustenance, that faith may refresh and strengthen itself” (Large Catechism, V 24).
In short, Holy Communion is the heart and center of the Holy Scriptures and of the Christian faith and life. The Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins, and regularly and often given from the Altar at St Peter’s, is the beating heart that gives life to the whole body; both the body of the Church and the body of the Christian. The center of this life is lived in faith toward God and in fervent love toward the neighbor.
Your unworthy servant,
Pastor Mierow
Ash Wednesday
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