Luke 22: 19
The New Covenant

I have included the footnote of v.20 in my reading of the text.  Virtually all Greek textual scholars think that the RSV translators were in error in down-grading it to a footnote rather than putting it in the main body of the text. Even the most authoritative edition of the Greek New Testament used by virtually all scholars -- liberal and conservative -- includes it.  The theological liberals who translated the RSV made a theological decision not a textual decision in relegating it to a footnote.  And, in fact, it is confirmed in its historicity by its inclusion in the communion passage in I Corinthians 11.

But my point this morning is not textual criticism but a theological point.  It is the nature of the New Covenant, mentioned here as symbolized and confirmed by the communion.  This is also the case in the I Corinthians 11 passage that I regularly read when serving the communion.  If you are a Christian, this concept is like your "citizenship papers" in the kingdom of God.

I am concerned about the widely ranging abuses of the communion in Christianity on the one hand is the superstitious medieval input that crept into the church where people worshipped the consecrated elements and some times even carried the consecrated elements at the head of an army marching into battle.  And even in our own times people genuflecting towards the altar or (as was common in my youth) tipping the hat by a person passing a church that believed this, in the supposed belief that the left-over sanctified elements were stored there.  On the other hand is the flagrant disregard for the Covenant of Grace in which we stand and how it is abused by misuse and neglect.  I refer to such things as using the communion in a wedding ceremony or having it in church ceremonies with no sense of importance or dignity, or with no attempt to exclude unbelievers from partaking.

The significance of the elements of the communion is not in a magical change in the elements by reason of their consecration but in the fact that they are set apart by consecration as pictorial representations of the New Covenant and of Jesus Christ and what he does for us.  And those truths are of utmost importance to you who are a true Christian, redeemed by Christ and standing in the New Covenant.

I. THE NEW COVENANT IS A VERY IMPORTANT CONCEPT FOR THE CHRISTIAN.

1. It is the antithesis and healing of the problem of the "Old Covenant" -- not usually called that but implied by the word "new" in the "New Covenant."

2. It is, what in theology, is called the "Covenant of Works," that condition under which God put our distant ancestor and head of the race, when he created mankind.  It provided that Adam would decide for himself and for his ancestors and would be responsible for obeying God in their behalf.

3. And when he failed in his obedience, he caused the fall of all of us.  (People who object to this as being unfair, ignore the fact that in the real world other people decide for each one of us in many different situations and levels of seriousness: politically, nationally, economically, environmentally).

4. The "New Covenant," we entered formally and externally with our baptism and actually when we first believed and had faith in Christ.  (The baptism of covenant children is a putting of them formally in the covenant by a believing parent in the belief that God will save them.)

5. And God has given us the opportunity to renew that Covenant on a regular basis and at the same time to celebrate it dramatically with the observance of the communion which we will observe this morning on this first Sunday of the month and which we call a "sacrament" because of its signal importance and effect in the Christian life.

II. NOW THINK ABOUT FIVE THINGS THAT ARE REMARKABLE IN THIS NEW COVENANT:

A. First think about the great depth of this sacrament.

1. Perhaps millions of times the same ceremony has been observed by Christians for 20 centuries in hundreds of countries and scores of languages and in all sorts of physical situations.  On this first Sunday of the month there are probably millions of true Christians -- who have been regenerated by Jesus Christ -- celebrating this sacrament in this two-hour space between 10 and 12 o'clock.

2. We have here a vehicle of solidarity with true Christians, going back 20 centuries to the Apostles and to our Lord, Jesus Christ who said, "This cup... is the New Covenant in my blood which is poured out for you."

3. And its depth is indicated in the clear implication that we are to understand that the Lord himself is the Head of the table, even as he was at the first communion, but now spiritually and not physically.

B. Second, think about the dynamics of it.

1. We are to understand that the Lord Jesus Christ offers unto us these symbols of the basis for the New Covenant. 

2. It is not just a reading of a passage or a hearing of a passage and some feeble ceremony of everybody responding by raising their hand to indicate that they have heard it and that they accept it.  It is the Savior offering it to us individually -- the bread and the cup -- as if he were visibly present and standing in front of each person.  And that person takes that offered piece of bread -- and then the cup -- and eats and drinks them while the Savior, as it were, stands observing the devotion of the person.  This is probably implied in the calling of it the "Lord's supper," or "dinner" as the Greek word means -- (a deipnon which was the large meal of the day.)  In his spiritual and glorified state he sees "the thoughts and intents of the heart" and hears the prayers, sees the faith of the individual and that gives the communion a significant part of its meaning and effect.

C. Third, think about the symbolism of it.

1. The bread presumably is the normative bread of a culture in which it is served.  We purposely don't use wafers of soda crackers but something that resembles bread in our culture.  In recent years we have begun using bread that is made of the same grains they would have used in ancient times.  In New Testament times they would have passed a whole loaf around from person to person.  We've adapted the sacrament to modern times by cubing the bread and using individual cups to make it more sanitary and to avoid people having a fixation on sanitation rather than on the Lord.

2. That bread is said to be the symbol of the Lord's body -- not the body as a combination of flesh and bones and organs and nerves, but as the outward, visible manifestation of the person.  And the cup is said to be his blood -- the Biblical concept and symbol of the life of the individual.

D. And then forthly, Just what is it that you symbolize or agree to when you eat and drink the communion elements?

1. First, you acknowledge his person as your Savior.  The body is the outward, physical container of the soul.  When you eat this bread, you make it a part of yourself in a symbolic way -- the reason why we only take a token amount of it and, which the Corinthians didn't do, and were corrected.

2. And the cup is the acknowledging of the death of the Lord for you, bearing your sins.  In Biblical symbolism the blood is the essence of life.  Christian theology insists that the Lord died for the believer and the cup calls attention to his death as the basis for our salvation.

You drink the symbol of his life and make it a part of yourself as a means of symbolizing his offered-up life as a solution to your fallenness and the source of your resultant eternal life. 

1. On the one hand, it should be that he is the source of our salvation.  It is as if we are eating and drinking a cure for our sins, the remedy for them.

2. And then, it says that he is, positively, the source of our spiritual and eternal life, even as food is the source of our physical life.

3. And, lastly, it is a time to call upon him for forgiveness for our sins and for strength to live lives worthy of our great Savior.  It is not the judicial forgiveness of justification as in baptism, but parental forgiveness from our divine Parent.  It is, after all, a renewal of a covenant and you have sworn to follow and obey him as your part of that covenant.

My prayer for you and for myself is that increasingly in our Christian lives the communion will be to us, more and more like it was to Horatius Bonar, that wonderful Scot, when he wrote in 1855:  (#378) 

Here O my Lord I see thee face to face; Here would I touch and handle things unseen.
Here grasp with firmer hand th' eternal grace; And all my weariness upon thee lean.

Here would I feed upon the bread of God, here drink with thee the royal wine of heav'n,
Here would I lay aside each earthly load, Here taste afresh the calm of sin forgiv'n.

This is the hour of banquet and of song; This is the heav-n-ly table spread for me; 
Here let me feast and feasting still prolong; the brief, bright, hour of fellowship with thee.

I have no help but thine; nor do I need, an-other arm save thine to lean upon:
It is enough, my Lord enough, indeed; My strength is in thy might, thy might alone.

Mine is the sin, but thine the righteousness; mine is the guilt, but thine the cleansing blood; Here is my robe, my refuge and my peace: thy blood, thy righteousness, O Lord my God.