a feast of assurance…
[Unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from Bullinger’s Decades and have been lightly adapted.]
The church I served previously would sometimes have communion before our shared lunch, the afternoon after the morning service would be finished. We’d file down to the basement hall where we hosted meals together, and before we ate lunch we’d celebrate the Lord’s Supper. When I led, I was face to face with my people, right in front of the flock, much nearer to them than in preaching. In and among my sheep. We’d eat the bread and drink the wine, then we’d sing a hymn, usually the Doxology. Then we’d eat lunch together. It was intimate. It was sweet. It was one of my favorite parts of the Lord’s Day together, and it seemed to get somewhat closer to the grammar of the Last Supper as we see it in the gospels.
I was talking with another pastor friend, and I mentioned how I wanted to get back to using one loaf and one cup. I commented that I knew this was practically impossible after Covid, I mean, who has that much faith nowadays, but I wanted to get as close to what Jesus actually did at the Last Supper as possible. He calmly asked, ‘What did they do after the Day of Pentecost?’ What do you mean? ‘Well those who believed the message that day were baptised, and about 3,000 were added to their number. Not really possible to use one loaf and one cup.’ Oh. Thus ignominiously ended Aaron’s excursions into sacramental reform.
While the means of the Supper are not unimportant, far more important in the Supper is the theology of the Supper.
The supper consists of the word and manner, promise and ceremony. The word is this: that Christ is preached to have been given up to death for our sins, and that he shed his blood for the forgiveness of our sins. Promise is made to all that believe, that their offences shall be forgiven. The same thing is also expressed by the manner. The manner is diligently set down in writing by St Matthew, Mark, and Luke, whom St Paul followed and didn’t vary at all from.
There’s one question I don’t think I’d ever considered before, why both bread and wine? The pastoral answer, par for the course for Bullinger, is remarkably comforting.
Why didn’t the Lord deliver the sacrament of the supper to us in one form, either bread or wine, instead of under both kinds? The doctors of the church by one consent understand this to be the reason: so that he could signify, or rather testify, to us, that he took both soul and body upon himself, and he gave the same for us, and he has also delivered our souls and bodies from everlasting destruction.
There are amusing discussions on whether or not to use leavened bread vs unleavened bread (it doesn’t matter), or whether to use white wine or red wine (it also doesn’t matter, though, speaking personally, white wine just seems wrong). Whatever you do, don’t do bread and cheese as did the Pepuzianes and the Priscillians. Noted.
Bullinger didn’t only instruct his flock as to what they were to do, he also pointed out what they weren’t to do. He opposed private communion, as communion was a corporate meal. It’s worth pointing out that communion isn’t a theological free-for-all. It matters what we do, why we do it, and how we do it. As the practice of paedocommunion is making a resurgence in our day, it is appropriate to examine if the practice fits as part of historic and Reformed orthopraxy. Given the significant of the Supper to Christian life, we have an obligation to carefully consider the impact of both our beliefs and our practices.
There’s a comment on the sort of plates and cups that should be used in the Supper, and, in his classic way, Bullinger gets to the heart of the matter with a pithy historical quote.
Boniface the archbishop was asked long ago, if it were lawful to minister the sacraments in vessels of wood. He answered, ‘In old times golden priests used wooden cups, but now wooden priests use golden cups.’
Now Bullinger errs in his sermon by over-emphasizing the memorial nature of the Supper.
When our Lord solemnly said, ‘Do this in remembrance of me,’ it is as if he said, ‘Now I am present with you, before your eyes. I shall die and ascend up into heaven, and then this holy bread and wine shall be a memorial or token of my body and blood given and shed for you. Then break the bread and eat it, distribute the cup and drink it. And do this in the remembrance of me, praising my benefits bestowed upon you in redeeming you and giving you life.’
It is explicitly eaten in memory of our Savior, but is that all it is? Even in Bullinger’s own description of the supper we see he is working to communicate that the Supper actually does something. It’s a feeding. It’s a nourishing. It’s an assuring. It’s a participating in the body of Christ.
The holy baptism of our Lord Christ is coupled with the sacrament of the body and blood of our Lord, which we also call the Lord’s supper. For those whom the Lord has regenerated with the washing of regeneration, those he also feeds with his spiritual food, and nourishes them to eternal life.
As the Lord’s Day 29 in the Heidelberg Catechism (q/a 79) reminds us, and in rather striking language,
These visible signs and pledges assure us, that we are as really partakers of his true body and blood (by the operation of the Holy Spirit) as we receive by the mouths of our bodies these holy signs in remembrance of him; and that all his sufferings and obedience are as certainly ours, as if we had in our own persons suffered and made satisfaction for our sins to God.
One aspect of the Supper that Bullinger misses is the horizontal examination that Paul explicitly urges in 1 Corinthians 11. This is such a serious matter that it’s the first thing the apostle addresses in the Corinthians’ communion errors. The consequences of this failure are severe: because the believers failed to examine themselves and take seriously their sin against each other in the gathered congregation even at the Supper, they were judged with serious illness and even death. Do we take division and unreconciled relationships within our congregations seriously? In our churches today, would we ever abstain from the bread and the wine because we were in open and unresolved conflict with another brother or sister? That’s not that everything has to be fixed before we eat and drink, but we all know the difference between working through a conflict and pretending the conflict isn’t there. The latter is a grave sin against the body.
Given the seriousness attached to this supper, ‘wouldn’t it be better to wholly abstain from the Lord’s supper’? Bullinger answers the question himself for a short while, but then decides to bring in the big guns. And with this quotation we’ll conclude. It’s that good.
Nor am I ashamed to cite word for word the comfort of Master John Calvin–a godly and learned man, who with great commendation teaches in the church at this day, my fellow-minister and most well-beloved and dear brother–which he has set down for the afflicted in this case. ‘Let us remember,’ he says, ‘that this holy banquet is a medicine for the sick, a comfort to the sinful, an abundant gift to the poor; which to the whole, righteous, and rich, if any such person could even be found, would bring small benefit. For seeing that in this banquet Christ is given to us to be eaten, we understand that without him we faint, fail, and are forsaken. Moreover, seeing that he is given to us to be our life, we understand that without him we are but dead. Therefore, this is the greatest and only worthiness that we can give to God, that we lay before him our own vileness and unworthiness, that through his mercy he may make us worthy of himself; if we despair in ourselves, that we may be comforted in him; if we humble ourselves, that we may be lifted up by him; if we accuse ourselves, that we may be justified by him. And if we attain to that unity which he commends to us in the supper, and as he makes us all to dwell in him, so that we may wish as well that there were one soul, one heart, and one tongue in us all, if we weigh well and meditate on these things, then these thoughts shall never trouble us: we that are naked and destitute of all goodness, we that are stained with spots of sin, we that are half dead, how should we worthily eat of the Lord’s body? Let us rather think that we being poor come to a plentiful giver, we that are sick come to a physician, we that are sinful come to a Saviour; that the worthiness which is commanded by God, consists first in faith, which rests all in God and nothing in ourselves, and secondly, in charity. And such charity it is, as it is sufficient if we offer it to God imperfect, that he may increase it to the better, seeing we cannot perform it as perfectly as it ought to be.’
Amen.
Next, on the institutions of the church
