There are great benefits to using our wonderful Lutheran chorales in worship. They do not entertain us, and are not intended to entertain us. But, they do edify us and build us up spiritually.
The classic chorales are of a high devotional quality, in view of their Christ-centered biblical content and their good literary form. And they also serve a catechetical function: as they teach us the faith in a positive way, while also warning us away from errors that would weaken or damage our faith and our relationship with God.
The communion hymn that we will sing in conjunction with the administration of the Lord’s Supper this evening is a good example of such a chorale. Samuel Kinner, who wrote this hymn in the seventeenth century, was a German Lutheran layman – a physician. Harry Bartels, who translated it into English, was a pastoral colleague and a friend.
Let’s take a look at a few verses from this chorale, which is a devout and grateful prayer to Jesus. Let us consider how our faith is being shaped and what we are being taught from God’s Word in those verses. (Lord Jesus Christ, You Have Bestowed #320)
There is a connection to the festival of the Ascension of Our Lord, which we are observing today, in verse 2. We pray there to Christ:
Though visibly from earth, you’ve gone, Already now ascended,
And here to us remain unseen Till this brief time is ended,
Until the Judgment shall begin When we will stand before Your throne And joyfully behold You.
The ascension of Jesus did indeed remove him from the physical sight of his disciples. And we cannot see him with our eyes, either. But someday, he will visibly return to the earth. St. Luke, in the Book of Acts, tells us that while the disciples watched,
“He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.”
The society in which we live is filled with skeptics, who won’t believe in anything that they haven’t experienced with their bodily senses. Sadly, this cuts them off, in their deluded minds, from many supernatural truths relating to God: not only his warnings and blessings, and his abiding presence among his people, but sometimes even his very existence.
What the Christian church teaches about God, about Jesus, and about the Holy Spirit, seems to them to be just so much irrelevant nonsense, which has no bearing on real life. But this attitude also often sets these people up for demonic deceptions.
A lot of the experiences that are brought about in someone’s life through occult activity are seen to be very real. And so, while they turn away from the church and its worship, they latch onto the claims of mediums, fortune tellers, and Wiccan spell-casters.
They can see some practical consequences of what occult practitioners do, and so they believe in this: even though they are completely lacking in discernment of exactly what it is that they are seeing, and of where it comes from.
But, they can’t see Jesus. So they don’t believe in Jesus.
The Christian religion is growing in Africa, however. This is true of various churches, including Lutheran, Anglican, and Catholic.
Observers have noted that one of the distinctive features of the church in Africa, which seems to represent a large part of the reason for its strength and vibrancy, is that the Christians there have a very strong belief in the supernatural, and a strong orientation toward the supernatural world.
They are willing to believe in things that they cannot see with their physical eyes, and they are willing to be deeply devoted to those things, because of the power of God’s Word and sacraments in their lives. Again, I’m talking about Lutherans, Catholics, and Anglicans, who are adherents of sacramental and liturgical confessions.
The out-of-control emotions of the Pentecostals and charismatics do not feed and nurture a genuine faith. But the supernatural, faith-building potency of the Lord’s Supper – when the body and blood of Christ come into contact with a Christian’s physical body, and with his believing soul – leaves no doubt about the reality of an invisible yet truly present Savior, and about the reality of the forgiveness that he brings and delivers.
And that leads us to verses 3 and 4 of the hymn:
Still You are here, as says Your Word, With us, Your congregation,
With now Your flesh and bones, O Lord, Not bound to one location.
Your Word stands as a tower sure, None can o’erthrow its truth secure, Be he most shrewd and subtle.“This is My body,” thus You say, “Eat orally, so take Me;
All drink My blood; by you I stay, And you shall not forsake Me.”
Thus You have spoken, so ’tis true; Naught is impossible with You,
For You, Lord, are almighty.
The meaning of the ascension of Jesus – when viewed through the lens of the mystery of the incarnation – is not that Jesus is now nowhere, as far as his presence in this world is concerned. It is that Jesus is now everywhere: in this world and far beyond.
In his Epistle to the Ephesians, St. Paul did not teach that the ascended Lord is now present in just one physical, circumscribed location somewhere in heaven. Rather, he writes that Christ “ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.”
During his time on earth, the powers and abilities of Jesus’ divine nature were usually hidden. He lived most of the time according to the limitations of his human nature, in the form of a servant, even to the point of suffering and dying to atone for our sins.
Yet even when he was in this state of humiliation, Jesus did occasionally do extraordinary things that he was able to do only because he was the almighty God in human flesh. One of those things was his institution of the Lord’s Supper.
On that night, his body – with his blood coursing through it – was visibly seated at the table. But his body and blood were also, at the same time, invisibly present in the bread and wine that he was offering his disciples.
When Jesus says that something is so, then it is so. When Jesus says that he is with us always, even to the end of the age, then he is with us.
When the ascended Lord says at our altar – and at a million other altars all around the world – that the consecrated bread is his true body, and that the blessed wine is his true blood, then that is what is there: at our altar, and at a million other altars, all at the same time.
The power of Christ’s Words of Institution penetrates the darkness of our doubt, and brings the light of faith and hope. Jesus’ supernaturally potent Words draw us into an ever-deeper union with him, as they mystically lift us up to where he is in his ascended glory.
Paul explains this profound truth in his Epistle to the Ephesians:
“God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ…, and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
And the life-filled Words of Christ also draw us into a more compassionate mutual love for one another.
The presence of Jesus – for us, with us, and in us – is so much more real to us than the perishable things of this earth that our hands are able to touch. The creator of our five physical senses is higher and greater than our five physical senses.
Yet our belief in that creator – and that redeemer – is not just something we spin out of our imagination without any evidence. Paul says in his Epistle to the Colossians that the Word of God he was sent and authorized to preach concerns “the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery…: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
We may not be able to see Jesus with our physical eyes. We do, however, see the sins that remain in our life, on account of which we need Jesus.
Those sins are very real. They trouble us and alarm us – or at least they should. In the prayer of confession that we used this evening, we humbly called out to God:
“Throughout life we have often and in many ways offended You, our Lord and Maker, in thought, word, and deed; so that You could with perfect justice reject and condemn us for all eternity. Therefore we come before You with sorrow of heart, in dread and terror of Your holy justice and of everlasting death.”
As the sins are real, so too is such a prayer of repentance also very real. But neither the sins nor the prayer are more real than the Savior who hears that prayer; and who forgives the sins, cleanses us of them, and covers us with his righteousness in their place.
The absolution that Christ speaks through his called servant is like the first coat of a bright white paint that covers over the old blackness of our transgressions. And the Lord’s Supper is then like the second coat of that white paint.
Jesus – from the right hand of God the Father Almighty, and from within the means of grace in his church – continues to layer his pardon upon us, throughout all our days: reconciling us to the God whose holiness we have offended; and energizing us for a life of righteousness and good works as the Spirit-wrought fruits of our repentance.
Christ does all this, and through all this fills us with heavenly joy, until our time on earth is over. Then the heavenly joy of faith and hope in this world will be translated into the higher joy of heaven itself, where we will await the final resurrection and the eternal reunion of soul and body.
But while we remain in this world, the Sacred Supper of Christ remains, as he governs all things from the right hand of the Father in such a way as to preserve that sacrament for us. And the song of our church, and our own song, likewise remains, so that we now close with verses 7 and 8:
O help, Lord, that we worthily Go to Your holy Table,
Our sins lamenting heartily, And with Your merits noble
And Your great kindness us refresh; Then surely e’er we’ll strive afresh Thereby our life to better.Lord Christ, to You be highest praise For this blest Supper given!
While ’gainst it men bold falsehood raise, Keep it for us from heaven!
Help that Your body and Your blood May be my soul’s consoling food In my last moments! Amen.