Pardon the delay…

There is no longer any serious historian who denies that Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper. Indeed, there are hardly any scholars who seriously deny that Jesus wished this Supper to be repeated by His people. Where in early Christendom would there have been the commanding spirit who would have thought of bridging the time between the death and the return of the Lord with such a celebration, in which past and future again and again become present, and the distance between heaven and earth is bridged? The church has been able to survive the delay of the Lord’s return, for which it has been praying for nineteen centuries and for which it has been waiting so long, only because Sunday after Sunday is the “Day of the Lord,” the day of the anticipated parousia, the day on which He comes to His congregation under the lowly forms of bread and wine and “incorporates” Himself in it anew.

Sasse, Herman (2013-01-09). Letters to Lutheran Pastors – Volume 1 Concordia Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Possessed, lost, forgotten, & beginning to re-learn.

Communion Cross with JesusWhat the Church of the Lutheran Reformation possessed and what modern Protestantism has lost, what Catholicism before the Reformation had largely forgotten and what modern Catholicism has largely learned to understand again is the simple truth of faith in the real presence of the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in, with, and under the forms of bread and wine in Holy Communion.

Concerning that truth the congregations of the Lutheran Reformation were “instructed often and with the greatest diligence,” both adults and children. The Sixth Chief Part of the [Small] Catechism was written just for the instruction of children. If one hears again and again nowadays that children cannot understand it or not yet understand it, if modern Protestant catechetical instruction has almost become the art of distilling out of these plain words written for fathers of the house and their children a doctrine that swings somewhere between Zwingli and Calvin and is presented as Lutheranism simply because it is not blatant Zwinglianism, then one certainly is no longer surprised if the instruction that Article XXIV of the Augsburg Confession has in mind scarcely happens anymore. Then it is even less surprising that “instruction against other false teaching concerning the Sacrament” no longer takes place and that it is regarded as nothing but tactlessness or a violation of Christian love.

Sasse, Herman (2013-01-09). Letters to Lutheran Pastors – Volume 1

What Else?

“There we shall be still and see, see and love, love and praise. Behold what will be in the end without end! For what else is our end but to reach the kingdom that has no end?”

-Augustine, City of God, Book XXII.30

Quit hitting the books

It is bookkeeping, therefore – our enslavement to it and God’s rejection of it – that seems to me to be the burden of the closing lines of this parable of the Chief Seats. Jesus warns his host not to consult any records he has kept on people: not the Friend/Foe ledger, not the Rich/ Poor volume – and none of the other books either; not Nice/Nasty, Winners/Losers, or even Good/Bad. And he warns him because, as far as God is concerned, that way of doing business is over. It may be our sacred conviction that the only way to keep God happy, the stars in their courses, our children safe, our psyches adjusted, and our neighbors reasonable is to be ready, at every moment, to have the books we have kept on ourselves and others audited. But that is not God’s conviction because he has taken away the handwriting that was against us (Col. 2:14). In Jesus’ death and resurrection, God has declared that he isn’t the least interested in examining anybody’s books ever again, not even his own: he’s nailed them all to the cross. Accountability, however much it may be a buzzword now, is not one of his eschatological categories.

Robert Farrar Capon on Luke 14:1-14