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The Lord’s Supper: Nostalgia or Sacrament?
Manage episode 490990643 series 2992303
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📖Mark 14:22-31
➡️ Jesus Institutes the Lord’s Supper
Jesus gives His disciples bread and wine and declares, “This is my body” and “This is my blood of the covenant, poured out for many.”
This moment isn’t just symbolic — it’s sacramental. Jesus isn’t speaking metaphorically; He’s delivering His very body and blood for the forgiveness of sins.
As Lutherans confess, Christ is truly present in the Supper, and His gifts are given to sinners in real time. It’s not nostalgia or reenactment. It’s God working here and now.
This meal fulfills the Passover. In the OT, the Passover wasn’t just a remembrance — it was participatory. Israelites didn’t simply recall the Exodus; through the meal, they were joined to it.
Jesus brings that same reality to the Lord’s Supper. No longer are believers just remembering past salvation. In the Supper, they receive it.
Recreating Seder meals today misses the point. Clinging to the shadow when the reality is given every Sunday in the Lord’s Supper turns salvation into nostalgia instead of participation.
➡️ Jesus Predicts That Peter Will Deny Him
Immediately after this, Jesus predicts Peter’s denial.
Though Peter insists that he won’t, Jesus tells him the rooster will crow twice before he denies Him three times.
The disciples all join Peter in pledging loyalty.
This exchange shows the danger of turning Jesus’ words into challenges instead of warnings. Jesus wasn’t testing Peter — He was preparing him.
But Peter, in pride, saw it as a chance to prove himself. Like us, he wanted to be the hero. Salvation doesn’t rest on our performance — it rests on Christ.
The Lord’s Supper isn’t a ritual for the strong. It’s a gift for the weak, the scattered, and the sinful — for Peter, for you, for me.
Contributor Rev. Harrison Goodman is the Higher Things Executive Director of Missions and Theology.
Contributor Eli Lietzau is the pastor at Wheat Ridge Evangelical Lutheran Church in Wheat Ridge, CO.
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