ROUGHLY EDITED COPY LUTHERAN PASTORAL THEOLOGY & PRACTICE LPTP-24 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. P.O. Box 1924 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 www.captionfirst.com *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> NICK: Question 24, take 2. I was sitting in on a Sunday school lesson with the middle school adolescents last week. The students asked some questions about the bread and the wine and the Lord's Supper. Tough questions like "When does it become body and blood" and "What does the pastor do with everything that's left over, if the bread and the wine is the body and blood"? Leave it to teenagers. The teacher struggled to answer these questions, and I attempted to help as best I could. May I ask you to speak about these questions and any others you know of that are common among congregation members. What are several issues surrounding the elements�-- bread and wine and body and blood in the sacrament? >> DR. WARNECK: Nick, you raise a number of questions that are frequently on the minds of Lutheran Christians beginning with the question about when the elements, the bread and the wine, at the altar become the Lord's body and the Lord's blood. Is there that kind of a transition, a change? That's one question. And then you seem to be asking about how the pastor may properly prepare and use the elements and what the proper care of those elements must be. Let's address the initial question first. When is the sacrament the Lord's body and blood? Our Lutheran confessors and teachers -- Martin Luther succeeded by those who framed the Lutheran Confessions�-- really liked to deal with that matter in a different way than asking the question "when." Principally, for the reason that Roman Catholic theology and practice perhaps had been overarticulate in addressing that issue which led to the notion of transubstantiation. Their notion is that, when the priest speaks the words of consecration at the altar, there's a change occurs in the bread and the wine. At least this is traditional Roman Catholic theology. That the bread and the wine become something that they were not before, namely, the body and blood of the Lord. Our Lutheran fathers really wanted to move away from that scholastic kind of explanation. They leave it this way: The sacrament is the body and blood of the Lord according to its instituted use when our Lord took bread and wine and spoke those words in the company of his disciples. "Take, eat. This is my body. Take, drink. This is my blood." So that the best way to view this matter is to see the entire sacramental action from the consecration to the receiving of the same, of the Lord's body and blood, rather than fixating on a particular moment when something becomes something else and all of those kind of rational explorations. We just don't explore in this area. We follow Christ and His word. And we attempt to administer the sacrament in the company of God's people today in the manner that we understand He did so with His initial disciples. And, doing that, we comprehend the people receive the Lord's body and blood as those elements are embraced by Christ in His word in the speaking of those words by the pastor at the altar, viewing the whole matter as a whole action without penetrating with our explorations and investigations here and there and the other thing. So that's been the Lutheran way of approaching that question. May not be satisfying all together to our minds and our inquisitive nature. But perhaps we do well to follow our Lutheran fathers and leave it there. That it's a holistic action from consecration to the receiving by the people, Christ's word embracing those elements, and the people receiving what He says they receive, namely, His body and blood given for and shed for the remission of their sins. Now, a few comments in addition, Nick, on the elements themselves and how the pastor might engage his people to properly respect these elements. The bread, let's focus there first. Our understanding is that these elements were elements used in the Passover meal, the background against which Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper. Our understanding is that the bread was unleavened bread. So we attempt to use the unleavened bread made of the wheat flour in our communion services. The privilege, however, is there to use bread but of a different flour. Because there's no historical documentation that�-- exactly what was the composition of the bread that was used there at the first Lord's Supper and the like. So there's some latitude here. And this is important because there are persons who have sensitivity to the glutin in the wheat flour, allergies and the like. We had an instance recorded recently -- reported in the St.�Louis Dispatch of an 8-year-old girl in New Jersey who could not come to mass in the Roman Catholic parish because she had a digestive order -- disorder which would not permit her to partake of the wafer, the communion wafer which had a wheat flour base. And, apparently, this is important in Roman Catholic administration of the mass that the wafer be of wheat flour. The young lady has a sensitivity to this. And so she was not permitted to come to mass. Our Lutheran fathers have been much more flexible on this. And permit�-- for instance, we have a passage from Walther that says the composition of the bread could be a rice or barley base as well as a wheat flour base. So let's not get hung up on this. The term is bread. And, if it's bread, this would seem to suffice. A question arises relative to the wine and the alcohol content of the wine. First let's understand that the Passover beverage, which undoubtedly was used by Jesus and his disciples in the last supper, was wine. And that's what should be used. There are other products out on the market. There are pale wines which have an effervescent quality. They look like wine, but they are not wine. We discourage use of those kinds of beverages in the sacrament. The beverage should be wine, real wine. The alcohol content may be minimal, but still it should be wine. So you want to be a little observant in what's purchased and brought to your church for use in the sacrament. Sensitivities to the alcohol content are increasing, I think. At least our awareness of these sensitivities is increasing. Some persons for reasons of medications that they are taking. Others who may be recovering alcoholics and are very sensitive to imbibing even the smallest amount of alcohol. Now, we can say as pastors, "Well, a very small amount of wine, a sip of wine that the communicant receives in the sacrament would never harm anyone." But the perceptions of our people have to be respected here. And, if you have a person who is very sensitive to alcohol in every respect, probably it's well to accommodate that person in a little different way. How do we do this? Communing that individual with the host only really isn't advisable. Mixing a small amount of wine with water, diluting the wine, that is a possibility. Engaging intinction, that is, taking a small portion of the wafer and dipping it in the chalice and then giving that to the person is one practice. Substituting grape juice for these folks really isn't a salutary practice inasmuch as we're not using wine now. We're moving away from the instituted use. That may not be so well. Here was a suggestion I understand that came from Dr.�Knipl, professor here at Concordia Seminary, who was an expert specialist in ministry to persons with a problem with alcohol. And my understanding is that his suggestion is that a pastor might take a number of grapes on a Saturday night. Squeeze them, the juice and the pulp from them. And strain that through a clean cloth and place the residue in the refrigerator overnight. Sufficient fermentation will occur for the liquid to be wine but not in the amount of alcohol that would be harmful to any person. Probably we should really check this out more thoroughly. But it is a way of attempting to respect this sensitivity to the alcohol content in the wine. Whatever method adopted here, the preparation for the alcohol-sensitive person should be brought to the altar with the supply of wine for the larger congregation and properly consecrated by speaking the Words of Institution. We might also add in the course of the communion distribution, should the supplies of either the bread, the host, or the wine run thin and other supplies are brought to the altar, the pastor speaks the Words of Institution. He pauses in the distribution for that gesture so that there's assurance and certainty of the communing congregation that they are receiving from the Words of Institution embracing the bread and wine themselves. So I certainly haven't addressed, probably, all of your concerns. But we have simply shared a few notes on a couple of issues surrounding the elements, particularly in the administration of the sacrament. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***