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CONFESSION, EXHORTATION,
AND
HOLY COMMUNION
Walter Sundberg
After he passes on to the Corinthians what we know today as the Words of Institution regarding the Lord’s Supper, St. Paul admonishes the reader:
This admonition was taken with the utmost seriousness in the early church. A document called the Didache, which means “teaching” in Greek and which apparently stems from the second century, includes very specific rules regarding Christian behavior in relation to the sacraments. With regard to the Lord’s Supper, it has this to say: “You must not let anyone eat or drink of your Eucharist except those baptized in the Lord’s name. For in reference to this, the Lord said, ‘Do not give what is sacred to dogs’ [Matt. 7:6]… If anyone is holy, let him come. If not, let him repent. Our Lord come. Amen,” (Didache 9,5; 10,6). The early church believed fervently that the Lord would soon return to earth and usher in the final reign of God which would mean salvation for believers, final defeat of the forces of evil, and damnation for the enemies of God. The Lord’s Supper was food for the journey of faith in a perilous world. It meant the forgiveness of sins to be sure; but only to the faithful who faced their sins and committed themselves anew to holiness of life until the Lord’s coming in glory.
As the decades passed and the first generation of Christians died, the belief in the Lord’s swift return began to fade. Since with the Lord “a thousand years” is “as one day” (2 Peter 3:8), the delay of Christ’s return was ascribed to the fact that God operates on his own sovereign timetable to bring about the consummation; in the interim, however long it may be, the church’s duty is to remain a faithful and unchanging witness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in judgment and grace. The fear of the righteous judgment of God and hope for the “end time” or eschaton never lost their grip on the faith of the church and remained especially vivid in the practice of confession of sins and Holy Communion.
At the beginning of the Reformation, Luther continued this eschatological witness as he formulated sacramental liturgy. In his Exhortation to Communicants from 1525, which in the service followed the sermon and preceded Holy Communion, Luther echoes the warning of the Didache from fourteen centuries before. It is worth quoting in its entirety:
Dearest Friends in Christ: You
know that our Lord Jesus Christ, out of unspeakable love, instituted at the last
this his Supper as a memorial and proclamation of his death suffered for our
sins. This commemoration requires a firm faith to make the heart and conscience
of everyone who wants to use and partake of this Supper sure and certain that
Christ has suffered death for all his sins. But whoever doubts and does not in
some manner feel such faith should know that the Supper is of no avail to him,
but will rather be to his hurt, and he should stay from it. And since we cannot
see such faith and it is known only to God, we leave it to the conscience of him
who comes and admit him who requests and desires it. But those who cling to
open sins, such as greed, hatred, envy, profiteering, unchastity, and the like
and are not minded to renounce them, shall herewith be barred and we warned
faithfully not to come lest they incur judgment and damnation for their souls as
St. Paul says [I Cor. 11:29]. If however someone has fallen because of weakness
and proves by his
Although separated by thirteen centuries, Luther’s warning in this exhortation and the warning found in the Didache are strikingly similar. Both seek to follow St. Paul’s admonition to self-examination.
The exhortation to communicants in the Lutheran tradition reflects an essential responsibility of the minister called the “office of the keys”: That is, the duty not only to loose the sins of church members who repent, but also to make sure that those who come to the Table understand that sins remain bound to those who are unrepentant. It was standard in Lutheran service books. As late as the Service Book and Hymnal of 1958, one could still find it clearly stated in the liturgically; although by then it was relegated to a “preparatory service” for Holy Communion held prior to an actual Communion Service. This rubric wasn’t much used, but at least it was available in the worship book. The exhortation to communicants in the Service Book and Hymnal reads as follows:
Dearly Beloved: The Holy Supper of our Lord Jesus Christ hath been instituted for the special comfort and strengthening of those who humbly confess their sins, and who hunger and thirst after righteousness. Forasmuch as we intend to come to the Lord’s Table, it becometh us diligently to examine ourselves as St. Paul exhorteth us.
We find when we do this, that we are under the dominion of sin and death. To save us from death, make us children of God and exalt us to everlasting life, our Lord Jesus had mercy on us, took our nature upon him, and himself became obedient unto death.
In order that we should believe this with greater confidence and be strengthened in cheerful obedience to his will, he hath instituted the Sacrament of the Altar in which he giveth us his Body and Blood to eat and to drink. Whoever eateth this Bread and drinketh this Cup, firmly believing the words of Christ, liveth in Christ and Christ in him, and hath eternal life.
We should also do this in remembrance of him, showing his death, that he was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification. For all he hath done we are bound to give him most hearty thanks, to take up our cross and follow him, and as he gave commandment, to love one another as he hath loved us. For as we are all partakers of this one Bread and drink of this one Cup, so are we all one body in him,” (SBH, pp. 205-51)
There then follows confession of sins, after which, the minister declares absolution in the following manner:
Almighty God, our heavenly Father, hath had mercy upon us, and for the sake of the sufferings, death, and resurrection of his dear Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, forgiveth us all our sins. As a Minister of the Church of Christ, and by his authority, I therefore declare unto you who do truly repent and believe in him, the entire forgiveness of all your sins: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen
On the other hand, by the same authority, I declare unto the impenitent and unbelieving, that so long as they continue in their impenitence, God hath not forgiven their sins, and will assuredly visit their iniquities upon them, if they turn not from their evil ways, and come to true repentance and faith in Christ, ere the day of grace be ended,” (SBH, p. 252).
“Ere the day of grace be ended” -- in this phrase, the eschatological faith of the early church speaks out in full voice.
It is I think indicative of the laxity of mainline Lutheranism today that if any of these traditional forms of warning were used in our services people would be shocked and perplexed. The continuity of eschatological consciousness from St. Paul in First Corinthians through the Didache and Luther to the old Service Book and Hymnal has been decisively broken. Ours is a therapeutic mindset which offers Divine things in soft-focused, nonjudgmental terms. The Lord’s Supper is now a “celebration” of fellowship in which the pastor boldly declares “the entire forgiveness” of all sins to those present, who apparently receive absolution simply by virtue of attending the service. Indeed, the confession of sins itself is merely an optional preface to the Service of Holy Communion. And in the Service of Holy Communion itself, there can be found no exhortation to communicants. For all the vaunted interest of the church’s liturgical elite in the worship tradition of the church, the deepest and most essential continuities of worship practice connected with the Lord’s Supper have been weakened beyond recognition.
Søren Kierkegaard, the great Danish philosopher of the nineteenth century once warned the Lutheran Church of his day that “there is always a secular mentality that no doubt wants to have the name of being Christian but wants to become Christian as cheaply as possible” (For Self-Examination, Princeton, 1990, p. 16). It is high time we confess this “secular mentality” for the sin that it is. One important way to do this is to reassess our sacramental practice as Lutheran Christians and recover our true liturgical roots in Bible, early church, and Reformation and return the office of the keys to its rightful place. The language in which this is done must be chosen with care so that it faithfully communicates divine truth. Perhaps the exhortation to communicants could be fulfilled by simply quoting St. Paul’s admonition directly from Holy Scripture to remind people of the full meaning of the Sacrament of the Altar.
God calls us to examine ourselves. We dare not shirk our duty.
Walter Sundberg, Professor of Church History at Luther Seminary in
St. Paul, MN and a member of the WordAlone Theological Advisory Board
This article was originally printed in a pamphlet introducing the WordAlone Hymnal Project, “Lutheran Hymnal for Church and Home” in April 2005
