The Presence
How is the Lord Present? The Lord
communicates with believers during the Lord’s Supper. How and
what does He communicate to us? We’ve noted already that He
communicates His sacrificial death and its blessing. But is the Lord actually
present in any sort of way? Some would say that it’s all merely
symbolic. That the bread and the wine are just symbols – that the
Lord is in no way present! The Swiss Reformer Zwingli is usually
credited (perhaps wrongly) of teaching this view!
Is the Lord’s Supper simply a “Memorial Service”
whereby the bread and wine simply represent the Lord who is absent from His
Table? At memorial services nowadays we might have a photograph
of the person we want to remember. We wouldn’t say that person
was present. The photo would just be a reminder of him or her.
They didn’t have cameras in Christ’s day. Is the
bread and wine then the equivalent of a photograph – a representation of
Christ? There’s a great deal of truth in this! But
taken to its logical conclusion, this means that the Lord’s Supper is simply a
memorial service, like Anzac Day in Australia perhaps. The Lord
does say in Luke 22:19, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” So then,
is that what the Lord’s Supper” is? Is it a simple remembrance service
in which the Lord is absent? I think not! It’s more than that.
Martin Luther, who lived around the same time as
Zwingli, figured that the Lord was present physically among the
molecules of the bread and wine. They didn’t have microscopes in
those days, but they knew about air bubbles and so forth in the bread and wine.
It’s amazing what you see through an electron
microscope. It’s a whole new world to be explored. They
send up rockets to explore outer space. They’ve even built a gigantic telescope
up there! I don’t know how much an electron microscope costs, but
it has to be cheaper to explore inner-space as opposed to outer-space. It has
to be safer!
The consistent Lutheran believes Christ is present
physically in the inner-spaces of the bread and wine. But is this
what the Lord meant when He held out the bread and said, “This is My body”? I
think not!
Then there is the view of Rome. It is
claimed that at a certain point during the “Mass” the elements, i.e., the bread
and wine miraculously change their substance. The substance is transformed – transubstantiated.
This supposedly happens when the priest speaks certain words in Latin over the
bread and wine!
Now then, Rome has a problem. The
bread and wine remain unchanged even after the priest pronounces the formula
over the elements! Study the so-called transubstantiated bread
and wine under the electron-microscope and you’ll see that they haven’t changed
into flesh and blood as Rome alleges.
Rome claims to be sacrificing Christ all over
again, every time it celebrates Mass. It says this because it
believes Christ to be present bodily in or as the bread and wine. But
is this what Christ meant when He held the bread in His hand and said, “This is
My body”? I think not!
We’ve noted already that the purpose of the Lord’s
Supper is to strengthen the believer’s faith. It is not
for the unbeliever because the unbeliever has no faith to strengthen. However,
the Presence of the Lord is real whether you are a believer or not. But
the unbeliever is oblivious to the Lord’s presence. The Lord is
present by His Spirit at the Supper – not in His physical body.
The resurrected body of Jesus Christ is in heaven
at this very moment. He is truly a human being at the same time as
being God. However, our Lord went to great lengths to demonstrate
the reality of His resurrected body to doubting Thomas and the rest of the
disciples.
Christ is not a phantom. He’s not a piece of smoke.
He’s a Man. As God He can be everywhere at once because God is
omnipresent. But as a Man He remains in heaven no matter how many
words you mumble over the bread and wine.
We must be careful not to mix Christ’s humanity
with His divinity. The two natures of Christ is a mystery, as is
the Trinity. But this doesn’t give us license to invent doctrines
such as Transubstantiation or Consubstantiation. Therefore when
Christ held out the piece of bread in His hand, we are to understand Him to be
saying, “This represents My body.”
But Christ is really present at His Table, not
physically, but by the Spirit – the Comforter. And, since you
must not separate the two natures of Christ, it is Christ who is present
Himself, though His body remains in heaven.
No comments:
Post a Comment