| Maundy Thursday, 2003
The Bond of Love
Luther and Zwingli were the first generation of Protestant Reformers and Calvin was a half-generation behind them. This gave John Calvin the time and vantage point from which to evaluate the theology of both men, especially their eucharistic teaching. It is known that Luther and Zwingli disagreed sharply about the sacraments. Zwingli held that the observance of the Lord's Supper was only effective for remembering Christ's death. It simply reminds us of what Jesus did on the cross.
Luther's view was close to the Roman Catholic one. He believed the consecrated bread and wine truly become the grace-conveying body and blood of Christ. When the two men met in Marburg, Germany to work out their differences, they split over the phrase, "This is my body." According to Zwingli, the word is cannot really mean is . When Christ said, "This is my body," He was actually saying "This signifies my body," "This represents My body." Luther pounded the table and insisted that the word is must be interpreted literally. That is, Jesus Christ is physically and bodily present in the consecrated bread. In Zwingli's view, Jesus Christ is entirely absent from the bread and wine of Holy Communion.
Calvin attempted to strike a middle path between Zwingli and Luther, yet his view was much closer to Luther and Augustine. And for that reason his Holy Communion teaching is rejected today by about 99 percent of people who call themselves Calvinists. On this Maundy Thursday that Christ instituted the Lord's Supper let us review a couple fragments of Calvin's eucharistic teaching.
Calvin used the words sign and reality to describe how Christ is present in the bread and wine. These are terms he borrowed from St. Augustine. During the Holy Communion, the elements of bread and wine are signs of the body and blood of Christ. This is not the same thing as saying that the bread and wine are mere symbols of Christ's body and blood like Zwingli did. For Calvin the bread and wine of the Supper are signs representing something present, not signs representing something absent. Under the right conditions these signs of Christ's body and blood actually become Christ's body and blood. Where the sign is, there is the reality also. Calvin drew a distinction between sign and reality, but not a separation. If we partake of the flesh of Christ by faith, the secret power of the Holy Spirit causes the sign to become the reality, and the Spirit pours the life of the flesh of Christ into us. The life-changing benefits of Christ's divine nature and human nature are communicated to us. How does this differ from the Lutheran and Roman Catholic view? They tie the flesh of Christ specifically to the elements. They speak of a local or corporal presence in the elements of bread and wine. Calvin avoided that notion. For him it leads to a superstitious idolatry of the consecrated bread. Medieval Christian practice had given a totally exaggerated importance to the adoration of the host. In order to avoid the magical view, he insisted that, in order to partake of the flesh and blood of Christ, faith and the work of the Holy Spirit were necessary. [For a more thorough discussion please acquire Keith Mathison's Given For You: Reclaiming Calvin's Doctrine of the Lord's Supper . I am indebted to Mathison's insights for the majority of the insights in this sermon. Highly recommended!]
As the Holy Spirit operates in the bread and wine, and God's people partake of those elements in faith, a great miracle takes place. Calvin comments, "I conclude that Christ's body is really truly given to us in the Supper, to be wholesome food for our souls." "In his Sacred Supper [Christ] bids me take, eat, and drink his body and blood under the symbols of bread and wine. I do not doubt that he himself truly presents them, and that I receive them."
Furthermore, for Calvin, the Eucharist is a key component of sanctification. Zwingli and his followers fail to see anything special about the Lord's Supper. The same blessing and grace one receives in Holy Communion can be received by hearing a sermon about Jesus' death on the cross. With this notion, why celebrate the sacrament when you can accomplish the same thing through preaching? Thus, a low sacramental view leads to infrequent observances. Calvin was alarmed by the logical consequences of the Zwinglian concept. The Church and her worship would inevitably suffer spiritual anemia.
What role does the Eucharist play in sanctification? You are not a whole and perfect Christian as soon as you are baptized. Baptism is only the initiation into communion with Christ. A lifelong process of growth in Christ-like character and spiritual maturation follows baptism. The Lord's Supper is one of those main ingredients that allows you to increase in sanctification. It is the Eucharist that nourishes you, and sustains your communion with Christ, and leads you to praise and magnify Him more fully.
For Calvin, the primary benefit of the Lord's Supper is that it strengthens our faith and our union with Christ, but he did not ignore the horizontal dimensions of the sacrament. The Eucharist gradually produces a bond of love between believers. Here we find a link between the foot-washing ritual Jesus practiced on Maundy Thursday and the Eucharist that He instituted. Jesus washed the feet of His disciples to show them the necessity of loving one another with small acts of service. The Eucharist is what motivates you and me to perform those sacrificial actions. He remarks,
"For there could be no sharper goad to arouse mutual love among us than when Christ, giving himself to us, not only invites us by his example to pledge and give ourselves to one another, but as he makes himself common to all, so also makes all one in himself."
In his major work called the Institutes of Christian Religion , Calvin beautifully explains why the Eucharist is properly termed "the bond of love":
The Lord also intended the Supper to be a kind of exhortation for us, which can more forcefully than any other means quicken and inspire us both to purity and holiness of life, and to love, peace, and concord. For the Lord so communicates his body to us there that he is made completely one with us and we with him. Now, since he has only one body, of which he makes us all partakers, it is necessary that all of us also be made one body by such participation. The bread shown in the Sacrament represents this unity. As it is made of many grains so mixed together that one cannot be distinguished from another, so it is fitting that in the same way we should be joined and bound together by such great agreement of minds that no sort of disagreement or division may intrude. I prefer to explain it in Paul's words: "The cup of blessing which we bless is a communicating of the blood of Christ; and the bread of blessing which we break is a participation in the body of Christ Therefore we are all one body, for we partake of one bread" (1 Cor. 10:16-17).
The idea that Christians are like grains of wheat is a helpful metaphor. In the life of the Church we are so ground up and mixed with Christ and each other that we become one loaf of bread. That is the picture of what Christian unity should be. Calvin goes on to say: "We shall benefit very much from the Sacrament if this thought is impressed and engraved upon our minds: that none of the brethren can be injured, despised, rejected, abused or in any way offended by us, without at the same time, injuring, despising, and abusing Christ by the wrongs we do; that we cannot disagree with our brethren without at the same time disagreeing with Christ; that we cannot love Christ without loving him in the brethren; that we ought to take the same care of our brethren's bodies as we take of our own; for they are members of our body; and that, as no part of our body is touched by any feeling of pain which is not spread among all the rest, so we ought not to allow a brother to be affected by any evil, without being touched with compassion for him. Accordingly, Augustine with good reason frequently calls this Sacrament "the bond of love."
Come now to the Lord's Table. This is a meal that strengthens the bond of love among us and with Christ. It is a sacrament of transforming, sanctifying power. Return to Sermons |
