Lent 1

March 9, 2014

Holy Communion is the Tree of Life

In Nomine Jesu

For the next five weeks we will delve into the richness and goodness of Holy Communion. We have, for some time now, discussed in bible study hours, in council, elders, and voter’s meetings, and amongst one another, the opportunity of a more frequent partaking of our Lord’s Body and Blood. To some, this is perhaps new news. To others, its old news, here we go again news, rolling of the eyes news. Yet beloved children, the preaching of the manifold blessings of Holy Communion isn’t some sort of strong arm move by a perceived few to get the many to do what they want. Sadly, it seems that we have been consumed by “pro and con” talk. For such talk is always rooted in the Law. It can only kill. It can only judge. It can only constrain. It can’t speak blessing. It can’t speak forgiveness. It can’t reconcile those standing in their proud and respective corners. We are to look at Holy Communion as it is, as our Lord gave and gives it to us sinners: pure and sweet forgiveness for our manifold sins. We are to look at Holy Communion as our Lord’s gift of consolation and unity to His otherwise broken and divided people. We are to look at Holy Communion as it reveals to the world and our neighbor the common confession that we share in our one Lord, one faith, one baptism. To look at it any other way is to make a deadly move. It’s to mix the commandment with the promise, the Law with the Gospel, the “Thou shall not eat” with “This is My Body given for you.” Over the next five weeks I encourage you to immerse yourself in the biblical, hymnic, and catechetical writings of the Lord’s Supper. We preach not to a particular practice, rather we preach the Gospel and allow it to have free course in our hearts so as to move us closer to God in faith and in eager love toward our neighbor. As Luther preached in his Invocavit Sermons of 1522, “change should be left to God, and his Word should be allowed to work alone, without our work or interference.    

In the beginning and before man existed, God spoke and Adam awoke, and from Adam, Eve awoke, and they both lived in happiness and rightness in Eden. The history of their genesis comes to us as a picture of another life, a far distant world. The trees pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the rivers watering the garden; the animals so tame that before Adam they strove and they were named; the easy soothing occupation of caring for the garden and keeping it---all of it brings to our mind visions of peace so perfect that quickly we remove it from earth, and so we speak of Eden as some sort of legendary and mythical place, a dream world created in the mind of Moses. But such is not the case. Eden was earth and earth was Eden. Its loveliness emanated from Him who created all things, who is love, and who loves life. Our Lord Jesus Christ established the truth of the garden’s existence when He said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser” [Jn 15:1]. Jesus describes Himself as the true vine who is life even as His Father, the Gardner, nurtures and sustains life.

In paradise Adam dwelt, sinless, with Eve to be the image-bearers of pure innocence and perpetual joy. They were not angels or spirits. They were living beings, body and soul, flesh covering bone and blood coursing through veins. In this gifted garden so newly made, He placed the very sign of His love, the sign that He was for them and not against them, that He desired only good for them, for them to never know or experience evil or suffering, that He loved them dearly and that He had given them everything, and what He had not given them was for their good. A Tree was given them, a Tree that would preserve them from disease and weariness, gladden their hearts and bring joy to their bodies until the day where He would translate them from their perfect life in Eden to an even more abundant life in heaven. Our bodies are stronger in their youth, but in their old age they become worn out, sown in weakness and death. But in this Tree was fruit that would have preserved their perpetual youth. Never would there be the nagging tug of the grave. Never would their heads bow down into the dust of the earth. Because of this fruit all of man’s strength would have remained unimpaired. This day of gladness would never end.

Yet in this garden also grew another tree of which our parents knew.  Around this tree sanctity was shattered, perfection perforated. By an enticing serpent life was murdered by this slithering murderer. Sin, suffering, and death would have its ugly genesis. Guilt and shame would follow our first parents. Even now it follows their sons and daughters as we suffer our own sin, guilt, and impending death. Sin and shame, disgrace and death mount its unrelenting attack on us and we are soon found hiding in fear where the bearers of our flesh once stood. Sin, past and present, leaves us hiding in the darkness, on the edge of humanity, even as God says not, “Where are you,” but “This is My Body given for you. This is My Blood shed for you.”  The forgiveness that God speaks and gives is bought by another tree, not planted in a garden, but upon a barren hill outside of Jerusalem. It is the tree of the cross. The cross of Jesus brought life to this fallen world. The cross of Jesus brought the forgiveness of sins and the promise of eternal life. The cross of Jesus is the replanting of the Tree of Life in our midst. In the shambles of our life, of our sin and death, He plants Himself for us, this life-giving, resurrecting fruit to receive. 

You eat this flesh of Christ. You drink this blood of Christ. Then you hear: “This true body and blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, strengthen and preserve both your body and your soul unto life everlasting.” In the middle of the garden, Adam and Eve had a tree, in the middle of our life, in our daily vocations, our Lord places Himself, the great sign and testament of His love. While the benefit of all other food is only temporary, the benefit of this food is everlasting. As Jesus says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” [Jn 6:51]. Unlike all other food, you do not digest Him away. Rather, this food remains in you and for you as a sign and testament of His love, His presence, His promise to you. In this Lenten season you will once again see sin, death, and the serpent, attempt to destroy this food, this flesh, this Jesus, Son of God yet Son of Man. It sought to sink its teeth and devour Christ’s flesh forever. But it could not. Jesus would drink the cup of scorn and dread so that you would drink the cup of blessing and abundant life. Jesus would crush the serpent’s head, so that the murderer would be murdered, death would die, sin would be atoned for, and all that would be left for you to eat, is the very goodness, the very eternal abiding life of your Heavenly Father. “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God” [Rev 2:7].   

The very paradise of the church is the fruit of the Lord’s Supper. It’s the heart and life of the church. Doing without the Lord’s Supper would be as beneficial as going without a heart. Herman Sasse warned not more than 75 years ago, “A church that does not continually gather around the Supper must undergo secularization. It must irreversibly turn into a piece of the world, because the Supper establishes the boundary between the church and the world” [Lonely Way Vol. 1: 420]. Our world and flesh is corrupt. It has no life to give. But God in His Son Jesus has planted this Tree of Holy Communion where flesh and world are made anew, where sin and death are undone, and where the promise of life is planted in His Body and His Blood for you to eat, to drink, and to live forever in His glorious presence. The Lord’s heart, heaving upon a cross, beats and breathes life into your lifeless bodies. This barren and dead tree, this pitiable and finished God, is sin’s atonement, death’s death, and a tree of life to those who eat and drink of its gifts. How else could He love you more then doing this? How could His love be any closer to you than, in your mouth and upon your lips? He deigns to feed you, His children, most unholy, His holy flesh and holy blood. Expelled from the garden of life, He brings by His death and resurrection, a new garden of life to you, in the midst of a wilderness filled with so much shame, regret, and brokenness. 

Like baptism, the Christian has enough to study and receive all his life in this gift of Holy Communion. Its gifts are unquenchable by the mind, but the body and the soul rejoices when Christ is eaten, swallowed, digested, for He is the firstfruits of all who sleep and abide in Him. When Jesus first spoke those words of institution of the blessed sacrament of the altar, He told His disciples that He would not drink this cup again until He would drink it anew with them in the kingdom of heaven. Holy Communion looks backwards to the tree of the cross, just as it looks forward to the tree of life that awaits our plush picking in the life to come. For “blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by its gates” [Rev. 22:14]. Peaceful was the Garden of Eden, but more peaceful is the repose of heaven. Bright was the beauty of the sun and the moon, the newly created home of man, but brighter shall be the glory of the new heaven and the new earth, wherein dwells righteousness, innocence, and blessedness. Glorious must have been the hymns of rejoicing when the morning stars sang together, and the sons of God shouted for joy, but more glorious will be the song of the redeemed, the festive song of the victorious Lamb. Pure and noble were Adam and Eve when—made in the image of God—they stood in the presence of the Triune God. But purer and nobler will be the bodies and souls washed in the blood of the Lamb, those made one with Christ by His flesh and blood, that union which gives them a share in the eternal inheritance of the saints in everlasting light. You must know, His love is limitless and He is forever feeding and nourishing His people. He invites you to eat and to drink, to find within Him what you cannot find in yourself, in others, or in this barren wilderness world, the Tree of eternal life every good. 

In the Name of the Father and the Son [+] and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.