Pastors' Keystrokes

No Sacrament Apart from the Word of God

Written by Pastor Nuckols Wednesday, 25 November 2009 10:21

We may say that there can never be a Sacrament apart from the Word—“For without God’s Word the water is plain water and no Baptism.  But with the Word of God it is a Baptism” [SC IV 10]—and hence that the Sacrament effects nothing that is not in the final analysis effected by God’s Word.  Yet it did, in point of fact, please God for our salvation to bind certain effects of His Word to the Sacraments.  A warning is in order for anyone who undervalues and disdains the special blessing of the Sacrament of the Altar: Let him beware lest he lose the Sacrament altogether and along with the Sacrament the Word also!  How often have people imagined themselves to be gathered in Jesus’ name, when in fact they were only gathered in their own!  How often have they believed themselves able to subject the presence of Christ to sense perception—we can only accept this claim on trust!—when in fact they have merely imagined this presence!  How often have people believed themselves to have experienced the communion of saints when what they experienced was not the communion of the Holy Spirit but just a communion of the pious flesh!

We would not know anything of the church or the Holy Spirit if God’s Word did not tell us that it exists.  But now Scripture tells us that Baptism and the Lord’s Supper gives us a share in the communion which binds the members of the church with each other and with Christ: “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body” (I Cor 12:13) and “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body” (I Cor 10:17).  But when Scripture tells us that Baptism and the Supper establish the “communion of the Holy Spirit” (2 Cor 13:14) that exists in the church, we must accept this even when we are unable to comprehend how the Sacraments can “do such great things” [SC IV 9].

We do not know why we must be born anew from above “by water and Spirit” (John 3:5).  We do not know why “there are three witnesses, the Spirit, the water and the blood; and these three agree” (I John 5:8).  Scripture’s saying this must be sufficient for us.  Nor can we dodge its clear statements by claiming that the idea that the Holy Spirit is given through the Sacraments is magic and therefore incompatible with the lofty spiritual and ethical heights of biblical religion.  This reproach does not fall on us who ascertain the contents of the NT, but on the apostles who had obviously not reached the lofty and spiritual and ethical heights of enlightened idealist philosophy.  Idealist philosophy and the theology it has spawned down the ages since Origen has always been deeply offended that the Holy Spirit is not given directly but through means, as the church’s confession says, and that not only the Word serves as means in this process but also the elements of water and of bread and wine that accompany Christ’s Word in the Sacraments.  This offense has led to an unremitting series of attempts to evade the NT’s clear teaching concerning the means of grace by either reinterpreting it, or else declaring it nonbinding.  But this is to do violence to Holy Scripture.  God’s Holy Spirit surely has other ways of working than the human spirit.  The antithesis of matter and spirit as we know it manifestly does not exist for the Holy Spirit.  The incomprehensibility of the Holy Spirit’s mode of operation is the reason why the NT’s teaching concerning the communion of the church established by Baptism and the Lord’s Supper eludes our understanding.  The claim that the greatest, and most profound, and most all-encompassing community of human history has been established by these unimpressive-looking Sacraments is just as offensive to our thinking as is the assertion that the Holy Spirit is given along this path.  And yet this is the case!  For this reason the church herself remains an insoluble riddle for human reason, a pure article of faith like the article concerning the communion of saints, sanctorum communio. 

In addition to the Bible passages already quoted there remains a further indirect proof that the Sacrament is truly the agent which brings this community into being.  This is the description of the church as the body of Christ as we first find it in Paul.  There is nothing intrinsically surprising in the church’s being described as a body, a corpus.  The comparison of a human community with a body is very ancient.  That the church is a body because she is animated by the Holy Spirit is an idea that makes complete sense.  “There is one body and one Spirit . . . one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all” (Eph 4:4-6)—this and similar statements contain nothing that the reader of the NT would not grasp immediately.  The description of the church as a “body in Christ” which occurs in Romans 12:5 is also understandable without further ado: “so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.”  On the other hand, the description of the church as the body of Christ remains a riddle.  This formulation brings a totally fresh idea into the picture of the body, which indeed ceases to be a picture.  Calling the church a body is to use a figure of speech that can also be applied to other communities.  But calling her the body of Christ involves first of all the assertion that just as there is only one Christ so likewise the church is something completely unique.  And second, this terminology establishes the most intimate union between the church and that other manifestation of the body of Christ, namely, the glorified body of the risen and exalted Lord in heaven to which our earthly “lowly body” will one day be conformed (Phil 3:21).  This body is a reality in heaven. 

Furthermore, this body is the gift of the Lord’s Supper, which is given to us with the bread and is thus a reality on earth in each celebration of the Eucharist.  Alongside the body of Christ in heaven and the body of Christ in the Eucharist, there now steps the body of Christ as church.  It is perfectly plain that in this expression the word “body” ceases to be a mere picture and participates in the same high level of reality as do the other expressions.  There is the body of Christ in heaven.  There is the body of Christ in the Eucharist.  There is the body of Christ in the church.  The body of Christ in heaven is made present on earth in the Lord’s Supper.  By virtue of believers being fed, the church becomes the body of Christ.  One can say this speculation.  Anyone who says this, however, must at the very least concede that this is a biblical speculation.  For these statements about the body of Christ contain no thought that is not deduced from the NT, no thought that could be omitted by anyone who seriously intends to expound the NT.  It is not theological speculation but unquestionably the teaching of the NT that when believers celebrate the Lord’s Supper they become a body.  This ecclesial body becomes the body of Christ.  Belonging to the church means being a member of Christ’s body, being incorporated into Christ.  This incorporation occurs in the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper in a way that we are completely unable to picture or imagine.

Many of these ideas and concepts have been gleaned from my readings of Herman Sasse.

Struggles of the Faith Refreshed in the Supper

Written by Pastor Nuckols Wednesday, 04 November 2009 15:59

The Church Doesn't Look Holy

Written by Pastor Nuckols Thursday, 29 October 2009 09:03

          There is a great paradox between the outward appearance of the Church and its inner reality. The people of God appear weak, poverty-stricken, and despicable. Its appearance of weakness is to be set against the hidden truth about this Church; it possesses the true riches of God, even though it does so only by faith in His promise. Its seeming weakly outward appearance belies its inner glory; its present poverty obscures its heavenly treasure.

          One aspect of the apparent weakness of the Church is its insignificant size. Dr. Luther said, "God nevertheless has His little church (Ecclesiolam) , even though it is small (exiguam) and hidden (absconditam)." [LW 3, 345] It is the "small flock of the godly". [LW 1, 254] Size does not make the Church, neither does holiness. But its smallness should not blind people to its true nature and riches. This Church, although small in number, is the seed on account of which God shows kindness to a troubled earth; like Atlas it carries the world on its shoulders; it is no less than the ruler of the world. The Church of the small remnant of the faithful is despised; it bears the marks of suffering, persecution and the cross. Its unimpressiveness is a function of the outward appearance of the appointed signs and 'places' upon which its life is centered, that is, the Word preached and the Sacraments administered.

          Paradoxically, it is the essential hiddenness of the true Church of believers which calls for the teaching about the marks of the Church. In the context of the hiddenness of the true Christians amongst the hypocrites in the mixed Church, it is the teaching of the marks of the Church which confirms that despite all appearances to the contrary, this Church is indeed 'Church'. It does so against the appearance of impurity and compromise. The marks serve as a defense against the legalists who explicitly demand a pure gathered Church of true believers, denying the name 'Church' to a mixed community. They also defend against the charge made against the Church by its enemies of insignificance and weakness.

The catholic Concept of Church

Written by Pastor Nuckols Sunday, 18 October 2009 10:59

            What kills a church is the loss of that which preserves the church, the Word of God and the Sacraments of Christ. Compared with the impressive rites performed in the pagan temples, the Sacraments of the church are inconspicuous, simple actions—a simple washing with water, the breaking of bread, the prayer of the Holy Supper, the distribution of the bread and wine. And yet there is a great difference. This simple rendering of the apostolic message is more than human talk and more than human wisdom. Christ himself is speaking the Word of His Gospel through the mouth of His called minister: “Thy sins are forgiven unto thee.” This washing with water is not only a sign, a picture, but really the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit, bringing us forgiveness of sins, and with it life and salvation. For the hands of the minister and the words he speaks are the hands of Christ, the words of Christ. And the bread and the wine which we receive from the minister, we receive really form the hands of Christ. The bread and wine are not only symbols, like the corresponding things in the mystery religions, but they are really the true body of Christ and the blood which He shed for us for the remission of sins.  Forgiveness of sins, this is always the first gift of Christ, in the Word of the Gospel, in Baptism, in the Lord’s Supper.

            The American concept of the church basically avoids this question. It surrenders dogma and liturgy as something unessential—“trifling matters.” For us, however, both of these belong to the essence of the church: the Word and the Sacrament, confession and liturgy. We understand the protest against an ossified orthodoxy and a dreary ritualism, and we agree with this protest. But we believe that the church possesses in the Word of God the eternal truth, over against all the relativism of human knowledge. And we believe that in the evangelically understood Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, that in the liturgical life of the church which is grounded on these things, the powers are present which are able to establish a new and real human fellowship, even in an age in which all human fellowships are unraveling.