Lusk on Lord's Supper

Some jottings arising from Rich Lusk’s second Auburn Avenue Media lecture on the Lord’s Supper:

Rich Lusk notes that the classic Reformed view asserts that the Lord’s Supper is an offering or sacrifice in a sense, although it is not a re-offering of Christ or propitiatory. In the Supper Christ is offered to us and just like the Old Testaments saints, we eat the sacrifice. The fact that the bread and wine are separated, as the animal was, shows that it is a sacrifice. The Biblical way is always a way of sacrifice and the Christian life is one of sacrifice. Like the peace offering of the Old Testament we participate in eating in God’s presence.

The Supper is our sacrificial thank offering towards God. That is what Eucharist means. It is a time for joyful thankful feasting together with the risen Christ, not private introspection about sin.

Calvin says that as in the Supper God offers us Christ, so we offer Christ to God. The movement is primarily from God to us, but also from us to God. We offer ourselves in union with Christ, the only way in which we can offer anything to God.

In response to Christ’s once for all propitiatory offering, we offer our thank offering of Christ and we in him.

The Supper is a re-humanizing reversal of the fall. Our lives are to be eucharistic thank offerings to God. Gratitude is at the heart of it. If Adam and Eve had stopped to give thanks before eating the forbidden fruit, they would surely have realised they should not eat.

Jesus tells us to do this as Jesus’ memorial, not as an individualistic remembrance. Like the rainbow and the Old Testament sacrifices, the memorial calls on God to keep his covenant, renew the world. They plead the blood of Christ and claim the promises of God. The proclamation of the Lord’s Supper is primarily to God himself.

The supper is an objective, true, real, means of grace. It is a cup of blessing. God’s promise makes a blessing intrinsic to it. But the Supper must be received worthily, with a living faith. We may face chastisement if we eat unworthily or even judgement and curse if we eat unbelievingly. Jesus may be really present to judge.

Calvin quotes Augustine as saying that in the elect alone the sacraments effect what they promise. Our faith does not constitute or trigger the means of grace. Faith receives what God has firmly promises. Calvin says that the symbol consecrated by the word keeps its own force and nothing can prevent it from being what it is but its blessing is received only by believers. The flesh and blood of Christ are truly given to the unworthy and unbelievers but not received by them. The supper is a faithful pledge not a bare sign even to unbelievers though it becomes a curse to them. Something powerful and efficacious happens every time we come to the supper. There is no neutrality, as when the gospel is preached.

The Supper is the sacrament of the Church’s unity.

The Supper is an administration of the Word and Promise of God.

The Supper is the Gospel in edible form, it is Jesus Christ, crucified and risen for us.

The Supper must not become a theological puzzle to be solved but a gracious offer to be received. We must not be so caught up with metaphysics that we miss what the Supper essentially is. The mystery is that the Spirit unites us to Christ in heaven in this meal.

The Bible is all about eating from garden, to Abraham receiving bread and wine with Melchizedek, Passover, Manna, water from the rock, testing with food and drink in the wilderness, feast days, Is 25, Jesus eating and drinking, wedding at Canna, banquet parables, feeding miracles, Levi’s party, Last Supper, Lord’s Suppers, resurrection meals, Acts 20 – bread breaking, the wedding Supper of the Lamb.

As C. S. Lewis says, God is the ultimate materialist – he created matter. The Kingdom of God comes from another world, but it enters this world and transforms it.

The Supper and the incarnation are the ultimate affirmation of this world.

Ecclesiasties 2:24-25 – working, eating and drinking. 10:19 – feasting and laughter, wine makes merry. Psalm 104 – wine is to gladden men’s hearts. We are to enjoy bread and wine lawfully to God’s glory. Bread and wine are God’s good gifts and the fruit of human labour. They are the most basic of human food, created on the 3^rd day – wheat and fruit. Bread is 1^st, alpha food – basic substance which you need to subdue creation. Wine is last, omega drink – rest, celebration. You don’t start your day with wine but you end it that way. Bread and wine encompass all of life, just as the Lord’s Day is the last (8^th) and the first day of the week.

We are sensible creatures – we are to feel the benefits of the Supper to us as we do this. The crucial doing is the eating and drinking.

The Old Covenant contains 80 feast days (including Sabbaths) and one fast. That’s my kind of religion!

In the Old Testament sacrifices, the Spirit is God’s fire. The sacrificial animal is both Jesus and the people. God is eating you and you are eating Jesus. As the smoke ascends, the sacrifice (representing the worshipper) is incorporated into God, the glory cloud: you participate in and communicate with God. “You are what you eat” is good theology. God’s eating the offering is a sign of his grace and openness, not his neediness.

Jesus’ body: (1) the physical incarnational body of the historical Jesus (2) the bread, “this is my body, given for you”(3) the church is the body of Christ.

As Luther says, we are not only eating Christ, we are eating one another – incorporated into one another. In the words of the ancient slogan, “the Eucharist makes the church”. We eat Christ’s body (the church) and become Christ’s body.

Calvin was a receptionist rather than a consecrationist. It is in eating the supper that it becomes the body of Christ, not in an abstracted consecration. There is no localised presence and no epiclesis. We pray a prayer of thanks not of consecration.

The doctrine of transubstantiation tended to exclude children from the Supper as kids are likely to spill the holy blood of Jesus.