And guests we are, invited to the Supper as a privilege, not by right.  An old prayer before the distribution of the Sacrament expresses our status as guests in these words:  We do not presume to come to this Your Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in Your manifold and great mercies.  We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under Your Table. . .  As guests, we approach this Supper with humility and meekness.  We approach the Supper conscious of our great unworthiness, never thinking of demanding our own way, never thinking to dictate to our gracious Host what the Supper is, or the manner in which we or anyone else is to come to His Altar.  He’s told us what the Supper is.  He’s told us how we are to come to His Altar, what our attitude should be, what we are to believe and confess before we come.  He’s told us all these things in His Word.

So if you’ve had questions about our Communion practice here at Mt. Olive, I ask you to pay special attention to this sermon.  If you think our Communion practice is narrow-minded, harsh and unloving, I exhort you:  pay special attention to this sermon.  In the Scriptures God tells us how we at Mt. Olive are to conduct ourselves as a congregation of the Holy Christian Church. 

So let’s begin with the question, What is the Lord’s Supper?  It’s an appropriate question to ask on this feast Day of St. Mary, Mother of our Lord.  All festivals in the Church’s calendar are really about our Lord Jesus Christ.  The festival of St. Mary is no exception, for its true focus is the Savior who was miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary for us and our salvation. 

The Lord’s Supper could not exist if God the Son had never become incarnate in the womb of His mother Mary. The Small Catechism reminds us of this when it asks, What is the Sacrament of the Altar, and then supplies this answer:  It is the true Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine, instituted by Christ Himself for us Christians to eat and to drink. 

The Incarnation of the Son of God, therefore, is a prerequisite to the Lord’s Supper.  If you’ve got no Incarnation, then you’ve got no Body and Blood.  If you’ve got no Body and Blood, then you’ve got no Supper, no Sacrament.  Just a bit of bread and a sip of wine, and not even a decent mouthful at that.  According to Christ’s Word, the Lord’s Supper is His Body, given for us.  It is His Blood, shed for the remission of our sins.

And so St. Paul writes in 1^st Corinthians 10:16  The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the Blood of Christ?  The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the Body of Christ?   The expected answer to Paul’s questions is “yes.”  Yes, it is the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ.   Paul identifies the cup of the Sacrament with the very Blood of Christ, and the bread of the Sacrament with the very Body of Christ.  He drives this identification home when, quoting our Lord’s Words of Institution, he writes in 1^st Corinthians 11:23-26:

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me." In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the New Testament in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes.

Paul received this teaching about the Sacrament from Jesus Himself.  That which Paul received, he delivered to the church at Corinth.  That which Paul delivered to the church at Corinth, is now delivered to the holy Christian Church of all ages, through Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians.  The Bread of the Supper is Christ’s Body, broken for us Christians.  The Cup is the New Testament in His Blood, shed for the remission of sins. 

The Small Catechism reminds us of the wonderful benefit we receive when we eat and drink our Lord’s Body and Blood in penitent faith:  These words, “given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins,” show us that in the sacrament forgiveness of sins, life and salvation are given us through these words.  For where there is forgiveness of sins, there also is life and salvation. . .

Think of it:  In, with and under the bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ graciously gives His true Body and Blood for the forgiveness of our sins.  The Body of the Babe born to Mary, the Blood that coursed through His infant veins.  The Body tortured and abused, pierced with thorns and nails and spear.  The Blood that flowed from His wounds in a cleansing tide sufficient to take away the sins of the entire world.  For your sins and my sins.  It’s all made present for us here in the Sacrament, so that St. Paul writes that as often as we eat the bread and drink the cup we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes again.  In the Lord’s Supper, the crucified Christ actually comes to us with His Body and Blood to give those who commune in penitent faith forgiveness of sins, life and salvation.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?  In fact it sounds so good, that we should properly want everyone to commune here.  We should want everyone to be able to partake of this wonderful Supper our Lord has made available to His Church.  I want people to be admitted to our Altar here at Mt. Olive.  The two things that give me the greatest joy as a pastor in Christ’s Church are administering the Sacrament of Holy Baptism by which a poor sinner is cleansed and born anew into the kingdom of God; and giving the Holy Supper of Jesus’ Body and Blood to someone after they’ve been properly instructed and can now confess the Faith we confess at Mt. Olive.  Yes, I want to allow new people to commune here.  If I could I would commune everyone; that’s how wonderful I think the Sacrament is.  But I have to remember, it’s not my Supper. It’s the Lord’s Supper, and as a pastor I’m merely a steward of that Supper.  I’m called to see that it is distributed in a way pleasing to Christ.

And that brings us to the second question we need to consider today:  Who should be admitted to the Lord’s Supper? Who should be allowed to commune here at Mt. Olive?

Some of you may think that everyone should be able to commune here, no matter what their beliefs --that it’s a harsh and hateful thing to deny anyone the Sacrament.  But that’s not the case.  In fact, there are times when saying someone isn’t ready to commune here is the loving and responsible thing to do.  Luther recognized this when he said that we aren’t to cast the Sacrament to everyone in the crowd.  That would actually be an unloving thing to do.

You see, Scripture says it’s possible to take communion in an unworthy manner.  Listen to what St. Paul says about this in  1^st Corinthians 11:27-32: 

Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world.

To eat the bread of the Sacrament and drink the cup in an unworthy manner is to be guilty, not of mere bread and wine, but of the actual Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Now there are several ways to eat and drink unworthily when it comes to Holy Communion.  One is to come to the Altar in a state of unrepentance. To eat and drink worthily we members of Mt. Olive are to recognize our sins, to confess them and seek the help and grace of God in turning away from our sins.  If we approach the Altar in a state of unrepentant sin, complacent about our offenses against God and His Commandments, we will be eating and drinking unworthily.  We’ll be making ourselves guilty of the Lord’s Body and Blood because of our sinful unrepentance.  To say the least, that’s not something we really want to do.  Those who commune are to repent of their sins and believe that in the Sacrament of the Altar God provides them with forgiveness and strength for newness of life.  As the Catechism says: 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 people can also commune in an unworthy manner when they don’t recognize that the Sacrament is the communion of Christ’s Body and Blood – that His Body and Blood are truly present in the Sacrament.  The reality is that those who don’t believe in Christ’s Real Presence in the Sacrament do eat and drink His Body and Blood, but to their judgment.  Instead of the blessing God intends the Sacrament to give, they commune to their harm because they are unaware of what the Sacrament is all about. 

We here in Catawba County are surrounded by churches and denominations that don’t believe that Jesus Christ is truly, bodily present in the Lord’s Supper.  You, like me, have family and friends that belong to these churches.  These are Christian churches, to be sure, but their view of the Sacrament, sadly, is deficient, and could lead to the spiritual harm of any of their members who commune here without first being instructed.  Good stewardship of the Sacrament demands that we try to prevent the harm that could come to someone who communes unworthily.  It’s the loving thing to do.  I wouldn’t want my brother’s family or my parents to commune here, for the precise reason that I do love them.  They don’t recognize Christ’s Real Presence in the Bread and Wine.  They don’t understand what Communion is all about.

But there is another factor to be considered in admitting people to the Sacrament of the Altar.  And that is the matter of unity of doctrine.  Many times in the New Testament we read the exhortations that believers are to be unified in what they believe and confess.  The New Testament epistles are doctrinal, setting forth all the teachings of the Christian Faith which the Church is to preserve and pass on.  Our Lord told His apostles that they were to go into all nations, making disciples by baptizing in the Name of the Triune God, and by teaching their converts to observe all things which He had commanded.  The first Christians devoted themselves daily to the teachings of the apostles before the breaking of bread in the Sacrament.  Unity of Doctrine is important to our Lord.  It was important to St. Paul and the other apostles.  It should be important to us too.

Paul wrote his two epistles to the church in Corinth because there was grave disunity in faith and practice in that church.  The Greek words Paul uses to describe this lack of unity are schism and heresy.  It’s plain from reading 1^st and 2^nd Corinthians that Paul is greatly distressed by this disunity, and wants to eradicate it.  Unity in Faith and Confession is essential for the Church, particularly in a culture as hostile to biblical Christianity as ours has become.

That unity is to be expressed in the common confession shared by those who commune together at the same Altar.  If one person at the Altar belongs to a church that believes the Sacrament is just bread and wine and nothing more, and everyone else at the Altar belongs to a church that believes that it is truly Christ’s Body and Blood, then you have disunity at the Lord’s Table.  That’s not a good thing.  If one person belongs to a church that believes Holy Baptism saves us through the washing of rebirth and renewal in the Holy Spirit, and everyone else belongs to a church that denies that, you’ve got disunity at the Lord’s Table.  Again, that’s not a good thing.  If some people at the Altar belong to a Lutheran Church that believes the entirety of the Bible is God’s Word and is inspired, authoritative, and without error, and others belong to a Lutheran Church that teaches the Bible merely contains God’s Word, but also has things in it that are mistaken and false, then you’ve got serious disunity at the Lord’s Table. 

This is happening today within Lutheranism.  I’ll give you one example. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is currently exploring the feasibility of ordaining practicing homosexuals and lesbians; the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, on the other hand, says that the Bible prohibits that.  The ELCA is already blessing so called homosexual and lesbian unions; the LC-MS says that the Bible prohibits such a thing.  Can we truly say that there’s unity between our respective churches?

When you commune at the Altar of a particular church, you’re saying that you believe the Faith that is confessed by that church.  If you commune here you’re saying that you believe and confess what the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod believes and confesses.  Those who commune here therefore should, under most circumstances, be members of a congregation of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.  To practice otherwise is to introduce disunity at our Altar.  It could also be allowing someone to commune to their own hurt.

That’s the reason why before people commune here, we take them through confirmation instruction so they can know the teachings of the Scriptures and learn the doctrines that are confessed and taught here at Mt. Olive.  We want them to know their sin.  We want them to know the miracle of God’s grace and forgiveness in Jesus Christ, given to us through the Word and the Sacraments.  Learning these things, believing them and growing in the Faith that confesses Christ makes for a worthy communicant.   It’s not jumping through a hoop.  It’s learning how to receive the Sacrament to the health and well-being of your soul, which is what God intends.

But what about any who are here today who don’t hold membership in a congregation of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod?  Perhaps you’d like to commune today, would like to come forward to receive Christ’s Body and Blood for the forgiveness of your sins.  Are you some kind of a second-class Christian? What place for you is there at the Lord’s Table?

Let me assure you, I don’t believe you are a second-class Christian.  And yes, there is a place for you at the Lord’s Table.  The Lord invites all to come.  And if your fervent desire is to eat and drink Jesus’ Body and Blood, I encourage you in that that desire.  Fan that desire into flames, because truly the Sacrament of the Altar is a precious gift from heaven.  Act on that desire, and come for instruction and learn about all that God has done for you in Jesus Christ.  Learn about who the Triune God is, and the gifts of the Gospel He freely gives in Holy Baptism and the Sacrament of the Altar.  Learn how to confess your sin, and how to confess the Faith as taught by this Church.  Then, having done these things, experience the joy of partaking of Christ’s Body and Blood given to you in the Lord’s Supper.

Some things are worth waiting for.  Few couples get married the same day they meet.  They get to know one another first, learn about each other.  Before they’re sexually intimate God wants them to be united in holy matrimony.  The unity of the marriage ceremony is to precede sexual unity in the marriage bed.  Anything else is against God’s will.

That’s the way it is with admission to the Sacrament.  Unity of Faith must precede admission to the unity of the Altar.  The way to Unity of Faith, the way to the Altar, is through instruction in the doctrines of the Faith.  Anything else falls far from the God-pleasing ideal.

I pray this sermon will help you understand the reasons behind our communion practice here at Mt. Olive.  It’s not something I came up with on my own.  Until recently it has always been the practice of the entire Lutheran Church.  It has always been the practice of the holy Christian Church.  It is what our Lord commends to us through His servant St. Paul.  For after all, the Supper is not ours.  No, it’s the Lord’s Supper.

In Nomine Patris. . .