ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CUENet AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION DOGMATICS 2 LESSON 47 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** 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. *** >> Is there a relationship between Christology and what we believe about the Lord's Supper? And if so, what is it? We celebrated the Lord's Supper last Sunday. And as I spoke the words of institution, I thought about all that you've said in this class. We are partaking of Christ's body and Christ's blood. Surely such a sacrament must teach us something about our Lord. >> DR. DAVID SCAER: Our Lutheran Confessions see a definite connection between what we say about Jesus, Christology and the Lord's Supper. In fact, in the Formula of Concord, the one article rests right next to the other one. And the Lutherans saw that the attitude that brought the Reformed to the viewpoint that the bread and the Holy Communion was not the body of Christ was correlated with their view that the human nature of Jesus did not possess the divinity. That it really wasn't God. But that's a historical question. And I will leave that to those who are doing -- doing the sessions on the Lutheran Confessions and I won't address this now. But what strikes me as being very significant is that the most explicit reference in the mouth of Jesus to the understanding of his death are found in the words of consecration in the institution of the Lord's Supper. For many years I prize very highly the words "the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many." And I said, "These must be the most holy words which have ever been spoken. Because Jesus spoke them about his own death." But since then I've come to another conclusion. And that is the words -- these words which are found in the Lord's Supper institution, "For this is my blood of the covenant which is sacrificially poured out" -- "This is my blood of the covenant which is sacrificially poured out for the forgiveness of sins," that these words are the most precious words which have ever been spoken. The previous passage simply says that Jesus offered himself as a ransom for sins. That's one step beyond saying, "Jesus died for me." I don't know. When you say, "Jesus died for me," I'm still left in the dark of how was this -- how did he do it? And of course the answer is: He made the payment for me. But there's no indicate in that passage of how he made the payment. These words by which the Lord's Supper was instituted tells us of how he made the payment. He says, "This is my blood of the covenant." We want to go back to Exodus Chapter 24, maybe -- well, one of the most significant passages so far as the nation of Israel is concerned because it is as the people are gathered around Moses that these tribes become established as a nation. And it happens in this way: Moses instructs the young men to go out and kill young bulls. And it says that they collected the blood in basins. I think it would be a much graphic -- it's just better to say and more descriptive to say they put the blood of the animals in buckets. If you don't get the message, I would suggest thinking -- think of a slaughter house. I have always -- now, I've always wanted to go to a slaughter house. I also understand that the men who have the job of slaughtering the animals cannot do it for very long. It's not a lifetime occupation. I'm sure it's not more than three years. But maybe it's only a matter of months. Because blood is the sign of death. I think all of us have been in high school or college biology classes where we have to scrape the finger and this big huge mammoth, 6'5" guy, takes blood out of his finger and passes out. I think many young mothers when the child falls down the stairs and there's blood coming out of the head of the child are totally terrified. Blood is a terrifying thing to see because it is the sign of death. Well, they bring the blood to Moses. And he takes I like to use the word buckets. And he throws the buckets on the altar. That's the sacrifice. If you've been down in Mexico -- and I've climbed up one of those temples. I won't do it again. You go to the top of the temple. And there's a drain in which they took the blood of human beings, young people, and poured it down. Blood indicates sacrifice. That's what blood means. Blood means death. The sacrifice is made. And then it says that he took the blood of the animals and he poured it on the people. I guess the translations say "he sprinkled it." No. I think it was much different. He poured it so people were drenched in blood. Let's go back to the episode of the Passover. They took the blood and they swashed it all over. It wasn't just a little dab. They put it all over. When that angel went flying over, there was no doubt. Everybody wanted that angel to fly over their house, his or her house, and there would be blood. Blood means death. Death -- don't stop here. The words of Jesus in instituting the Lord's Supper is taken from Exodus 24. Now, he is in the place of Moses. And he refers to the blood which is in the chalice. "This is my blood which satisfies the covenant." There is a charge against us. And this church must be paid. It is a very common experience to get a mortgage. I've had any number of mortgages in my life. Because it's a proforma thing. There are many reasons for getting a mortgage. Back in the old days when you got -- when you sold your house and there was a mortgage on it, you signed -- the person who was buying the house gave you a check for 50,000 bucks and you endorsed the check. Sitting right next to you in the good old days was a lawyer from the bank who took that check right out of your hand because he had to get paid first. Now, by the way, it's a very simplified situation. You go in there. They have all the paper out. They have a college student specializing in economics. And it's a very -- it's clinical. There's nothing exciting about it anymore. But the message here is that we have a debt to God. And before God can enter into a new relationship with us, a new covenant, the old debt must be paid. So Jesus says, "This is my blood which is poured out." Now, the word "pouring" has nothing to do with the sacramental act of pouring the blood or the wine from a flagon into a chalice. It means this is the blood which is sacrificially poured out so that sins can be -- so that sins can be forgiven. Luke gives us a different description of the Lord's Supper. He says that this is the blood of the new covenant. There are two sides to this. The blood which the congregation receives in the Holy Communion has two purposes. It has first been poured out to God as a sacrifice. And now it's given to us as a sacrament. When it's given to us as a sacrament, very similar, the blood was poured out on the people as a sign that the death had already been accomplished. So I would endeavor to say that the most precious words have to be spoken by Jesus. And these are the most precious words. Because he is describing himself as standing between God, offering an atonement to satisfy the wrath which we have deserved for ourselves and then pouring out the blood on the congregation, in the chalice, as a sign that it has been paid. *** 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. ***