TITLE: “The Holiest of Nights”

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text for today is the Gospel from St. John chapter thirteen.

On this most holiest of nights we remember our Lord’s Passion and death for our salvation. It was the Feast of the Passover, the night when every pious Jew celebrated with word, teaching and meal what God had done for them in delivering them from the hand of the Egyptians. That first covenant had been sealed in blood, the blood of the Lamb for the sacrifice. Then in Exodus 24 they offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord. Moses read from the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. He then took the blood of the sacrifice, and the text says he threw it on the people and said, ““Behold the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words.”” (Exodus 24:8 ESV) The blood was on the people, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up the mountain to commune with God. The vision was beautiful, with a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. They entered into the presence of God, they beheld God, and ate and drank.

But it wasn’t enough. Again and again they made the sacrifices. They remembered the Passover. The blood of the sacrifices had to be made again and again, year after year. They remembered the covenant, but the sacrifices had to be repeated. It was never enough. The author of Hebrews puts it this way:

“But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.” (Hebrews 9:11-14 ESV)

So on the night when our Lord is betrayed, the night when He makes the one, great sacrifice for all people and all time, He meets with His disciples. He serves them, washing their feet as a sign of humility. He acts as their slave. He then delivers the greatest of all gifts to them. He delivers them Himself. He gives them His body and His blood to eat and to drink. The Israelites of old ate of the passover lamb to remind them of God’s deliverance from the Egyptians. But now, all of God’s people eat and drink of the one, great passover Lamb without spot or blemish. He is the true and perfect sacrifice not made with hands.

So what does this mean for you, dearly beloved? What this means for you is simple, profound and beautiful. It means that this night we remember that Jesus’ sacrifice is once and for all. But when we remember, it isn’t something really that we do. We remember because Jesus gives Himself to us. It is His work, this holy remembering. He sacrifices Himself on the cross, and now delivers that one, great sacrifice to you in His Body and Blood. This is, quite literally, how we remember His death. We remember His death by participating in it. By eating His body and His blood, we show the world that Jesus died, that He rose again from the dead, and that He now rights at the right hand of God, where He gives Himself for the life of the world.

So come, eat and drink the sacrifice that He made for you once and for all. Eat and drink, rejoice, and live. In His holy name, Amen.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in true faith, unto life everlasting. Amen.

From the Messiah Messenger, April 2009

By Pastor Todd A. Peperkorn

Our congregation is in the process of separating first communion from confirmation, so that while they may be done at the same time, they are not necessarily going to be done at the same time. This move is the result of several years of study on my part as your pastor, and on the part of the elders, as we have wrestled with how to best serve the people whom God has entrusted to our care in this place. In order to further our conversation, I believe it would be helpful

Why are we separating first communion and confirmation? I have wrestled with this question for many years, and I would distill the reasons down to the following basic points:

1. We receive Christ’s Body and Blood for the forgiveness of sins, and we should want to give it to our children as soon as possible.

This is the simplest and most important point. The Scriptures teach us that we receive Holy Communion for the forgiveness of sins (Words of Institution). The catechism teaches that “in the Sacrament forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation are given us through these words.” Our hymnody repeatedly affirms this as well, with such lines as “Lord may thy body and thy blood, be for my soul the highest good,” and “Thy blood, O Lord, one drop has pow’r to win Forgiveness for our world and all its sin,” and “This food can death destroy,” and many more.

If this is the case, as a Church we should want to commune our children as soon as we are able to do so, because of the many blessings which God gives through the Sacrament of the Altar. It is not a reward at the end of a lot of work, like a graduation present. Rather, it is a gift to be received in faith, and a testimony of God’s love toward us in Jesus Christ.

2. The biblical requirement for receiving the Sacrament of the Altar is faith.

Our catechism question puts it this way:

Who receives this sacrament worthily?
?Fasting and bodily preparation are certainly fine outward training. But that person is truly worthy and well prepared who has faith in these words: “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” But anyone who does not believe these words or doubts them is unworthy and unprepared, for the words “for you” require all hearts to believe. 

This is a part of the basis for our understanding that receiving the Lord’s Supper isn’t simply a matter of maturity, rational development, age, service in the church, who your parents are, or some other criterion. The question is faith, and the confession of faith. Since we can’t read someone’s heart, we can only read their lips (verbal confession) and their feet (how their confession shapes what they do). If someone confesses the Christian faith as it has been given to us in the Scriptures, comes to the Divine Service to receive the gifts, speaks and acts as a Christian, then we should commune them.

This is also, by the way, why we practice closed communion. We only admit those individuals to the Altar who confess the faith as it has been given to us in His Word and confessed by this congregation. If someone confesses the faith differently by being a member of a different church body, we aren’t saying they aren’t a Christian. We are saying that because their confession is different, we can’t commune together at this time.

So when it comes to our own children, who are catechized here at church and/or at our school, at our Sunday school, and who attend the Divine Service here with their families, there is no question really that they are Christians, and furthermore that they confess the faith as we do.

3. The notion that in order to receive Holy Communion requires massive amounts of head knowledge and catechism memorization goes against the rest of our actual practice.

We don’t require adult confirmands to have massive amounts of memorized materials. We don’t require current members to continue to demonstrate a level of understanding beyond what we confess together Sunday morning. In fact, I would go so far as to say that children often have a clearer grasp of the Christian faith than adults, because they don’t have as many rationalistic or emotional baggage to bog them down. Jesus actually holds up children as the model of faith (Mark 10:13-16).

Certainly teaching the faith is important. We are all lifelong learners of God’s Word, and learning God’s Word goes right along with Holy Baptism (Matthew 28:16-20). But it is very difficult to argue from the Scriptures that having massive amounts memorized should be a prerequisite for receiving the Sacrament. It is good. It is helpful. We should all continually learn the Scriptures and the Catechism by heart. But this is not a prerequisite.

4. Having a period of formal instruction for children at a later age (5-8 grade range) is good and useful, but cannot be used as an argument for withholding Holy Communion from them at that time.

One of the reasons that I have urged separating first communion from confirmation is simply because I want to have a formal period of instruction with children when they are in the middle school years. I simply don’t think that we should use that period of instruction as a gateway or barrier to receiving the Sacrament of the Altar. By separating first communion and confirmation, we are able to offer this period of instruction to our children, but also give them the Sacrament at an earlier age. Otherwise, my fear is that we simply move confirmation younger and younger, and the opportunity for that later instruction will be harder to realize.

5. The possibility of abuse exists whether we separate confirmation and first communion or not.

There are always going to be individuals who are going to try and beat the system. There will always be people who want to do the absolute least amount of work possible in order to get their children confirmed. Some people are only going to respond to the Law. If I as the pastor require them to attend church while their child is in instruction, then they will. If I don’t require it, they won’t come. Or, they will only come a few times a year.

So how do we as a congregation respond to this? We respond by praying, by encouraging, and by working as responsibly and as carefully as we can to deliver the Gospel in as many ways as God has given us to do it. It makes no sense to me as a pastor to penalize one child because another child’s parents might not want their child to receive the Gospel.

Conclusion and Implications

Practically speaking, what I envision is that down the road, we will generally have first communion around first to third grade, and confirmation between fifth and eighth grade. However, I think it will take us some time to get to that point. There will be several years of transition, and different families are going to want to handle this differently. This is fine and good, as we work through this together as a church.

These are a few more thoughts on our ongoing conversation here. I hope it is helpful, and I would continue to encourage you to come to bible class, where we are discussing this at some length.

In Christ,
Pastor Peperkorn