I’ve been pondering the perplexing phenomenon of Lutheran congregations not offering the Lord’s Supper every Sunday, along with the quirky, “Service of Communion without Communion” the infamous “page 5″ service of The Lutheran Hymnal, or as some put it wryly, “the dry mass.”

In The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod we’ve been passing resolution after resolution, “encouraging” congregations to offer the Lord’s Supper every Sunday for years now, but we still have far too many congregations that celebrate the Lord’s Supper every-other-Sunday, at best, or even less frequently, at worse.

Holy Scripture indicates that the Lord’s Supper was offered to God’s people each Lord’s Day (Acts 2:42; 20:7; 1 Cor. 11:20,33). The Lutheran Confessions declare in our churches Mass is celebrated every Sunday and on other festivals, when the Sacrament is offered to those who wish for it after they have been examined and absolved (Augsburg Confession XXIV, para.34). And Dr Luther in his Large Catechism writes, Indeed, the very words, “as often as you do it”, implies that we should do it often. And they were added because Christ wishes the Sacrament to be free, not bound to special times like the Passover (Large Catechism, Fifth Part, para.47).

Here’s a great resource to get you started. I am convinced that if a congregation prayerfully studies this book together, the remaining objections to communion every Sunday can only finally be attributed to willful, selfish, ignorance, and can on longer be used as a valid reason not to offer the Lord’s Supper at each Divine Service in our congregations. The point I always make with people who protest at the thought of a congregation offering the Sacrament every Sunday that it is “too often” or “too Roman Catholic” or too…whatever, is that while they may choose not to receive the Sacrament every Sunday, they have no right to deny this gift to others simply because they don’t want it.

When we consider the enormous blessings that we receive in the Lord’s Supper, that we are receiving from Christ Himself, His very body and blood for forgiveness, life and salvation, how could we not want to receive this gift at every Divine Service?

Simply put, I can not think of one single good reason why the Lord’s Supper is not offered in our congregations every Sunday. Can you? If your congregation does not offer the Lord’s Supper every Sunday, why doesn’t it? And what can you do about it?

We drink the most holy blood of Christ, the blood that atoned for our sins, frees us from the stain of sin, protects us from the powers of darkness, fills us with the Holy Spirit, transfuses us with the divine life of Christ. That meal is our theophany, the appearance of the triune God among us for our salvation. — John Kleinig, *Grace Upon Grace* p. 282 HT: Weedon

The proper, simple, and natural meaning of the words of institution teaches that Christ Himself is present with us in the celebration of the Supper with both His deity and His flesh, and that He comes to us in order to lay hold on us (Phil. 3:12) and join us to Himself as intimately as possible. This brings sweetest comfort. For Christ, both God and man, must lay hold on us in order that there may be a union between Him and us. But we, weighed down by the burden of sin and pressed under the weight of our infirmity, are not yet able to enter the secret places of heaven (Col. 2:18) and penetrate to Him in glory. He Himself therefore comes to us in order to lay hold upon us with that nature by which He is our Brother. And because our weakness in this life cannot bear the glory of His majesty (Matt. 7:12ff .; Acts 9:3ff .), therefore His body and blood are present, distributed, and received under the bread and wine. Nor does He will that we wander around the gates of heaven uncertain in which area of heaven we ought to look for Christ in His human nature or whether we can find Him; but in the Supper He Himself is present in the external celebration and shows by visible signs where He wills to be present with His body and blood, and there we may safely seek Him and surely find Him, for there He Himself through the ministry distributes His body and blood to the communicants. These most sweet and necessary comforts will be completely snatched away from us if the substantial presence, distribution, and reception of Christ’s body and blood are removed from the Supper. —Martin Chemnitz

I’m utterly fascinated by “word clouds.” I’m enjoying creating them as a way to analyze and study a text and what it emphasizes. Here is a “word cloud” created from the Epitome of the Formula of Concord’s article on the Lord’s Supper. You can generate your own by using Wordle.
Be looking for more. If you find this all utterly boring, just move along. Look at the cloud below and notice what is most emphatic in the Formula’s discussion of the Lord’s Supper: Christ, and interestingly, the nearly equal weight given to bread/wine and body/blood, and the word “holy.” What catches your eye in the cloud below?

That our faith might always have a new pledge of the forgiveness of sins, Christ also instituted His Holy Supper. This Sacrament provides new support for our faith so it can remain firm against every wavering and weakening. Whoever has gone to Holy Communion can say, “How can I doubt, asking if I have a share in Christ’s atonement for the world and if my sins are forgiven me? Christ has given me a share in His body, which He presented to God on the cross as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, and He has given me to drink of the blood that flowed on Golgotha for the universal forgiveness! What more could Christ do to convince me that I belong to those who have been pardoned by Him? Here all doubt must vanish.

Source:
Walther
God Grant It
Page. 790.

Update: I learned in the conversation that has taken place in
the comment section under this post that in fact Dr. Stuckwisch is not
requiring children who are presented to him for first communion to have
committed to memory the basic/primary texts of the Small Catechism,
which are: Ten Commandments, Creed, Lord’s Prayer, Confession, Lord’s
Supper. I would therefore moderate my support for his comments and
indicate that I believe, as Dr. Sonntag makes clear in one of his posts
below, that clearly our Confessions indicate that such familiarity with
these texts is what our Confessions do expect and require. Therefore, I
would respectfully differ with Pastor Stuckwisch on this point. I would therefore not be communing the six year old child that Dr. Stuckwisch is communing. But,
otherwise, I heartily agree with his pastoral concerns regarding the
age of first communion. I believe Pastor Stuckwisch has done a fine job of making the case for earlier age of first communion, but I believe we are bound together to follow the practice indicated in our Lutheran Confessions of requiring memorization of the primary texts of the Catechism [not the explanations necessarily]. I continue to believe however, in spite of this difference with Dr. Stuckwisch, that the practice of denying the Sacrament to children until after they have completed a two or three year course of instruction is not founded on Biblical or Confessional principles. In the comments that follow this post, you will read how one pastor, William Weedon, is going about these things in his parish and I would agree with his practice]

One of the blessings of the new hymnal Lutheran Service Book is that it puts squarely in front of Lutheran pastors and congregations using it, the opportunity to think more carefully about an earlier age of first communion. Like many of you reading this, I did not receive the Lord’s Supper until I was in the seventh grade, after eight years of Lutheran day school education which included extensive instruction in the faith and complete memorization of Luther’s Small Catechism. But as I had children and observed them as they were taught the basics of the Christian faith: the Commandments, Creed, the Our Father and as they were taught about Holy Baptism and Holy Communion I came to realize that withholding the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar from them until they had gone through "confirmation" simply had no Biblical or Confessional justification.

I’ve been thinking for many years now that we really do need to end the practice of using the Lord’s Supper as a "carrot" we hold before the "horse" through the confirmation process. Further, I found myself growing increasingly concerned by the overall message we are sending when we withhold the Lord’s Supper from children and make it a sort of "graduation" gift, in fact, when confirmation is treated as a kind of "rite of passage" that Lutherans must go through on their way to adulthood.

Then, as I studied Scripture, the Lutheran Confession, Luther and other Lutheran fathers more I realized that our entire system of confirmation really is not rooted in the age of the Reformation and Lutheran Orthodoxy as much as it is rooted in practices that sprang up during the age of Pietism, when it was felt that we need to "do something" to make all these precious realities "more special" and to make sure that people are "really serious" about these things, hence, the process of confirmation became regarded as, in some ways, even more important than Baptism.

I’ve come to realize that we have this quite wrong. And just about the time I came to these conclusions, I was very sad to realize that a, thankfully small, group of Lutheran pastors had, based on similar concerns, gone too far over toward a solution that called on the Church to give the Sacrament to infants in arms and toddlers. Force-feeding the Sacrament to children who have no awareness of what this Sacrament is and why they come to receive it is a grave error and those who advocate infant communion are doing so in contradiction of Sacred Scripture and the Lutheran Confession. Sadly, the fact that there are some who go to this extreme has a tendency to "spook" others from even wanting to talk about an earlier age of first communion.

I awoke this morning to find this wonderful blog post by the Rev. Dr. Richard Stuckwisch. Pastor Stuckwisch is a thoughtful, deeply pastoral and theological man who brings significant experience as a parish pastor and a parent to bear on this issue (he has nine children!).

I commend his comments to you and invite you to consider them prayerfully. I believe he makes the points that must be considered and I can find nothing in these words that contradict what the assumption is in our Confessions about those who wish to receive the Lord’s Supper. This is the most well stated defense of an early age for first communion I’ve read. What are your thoughts about it? Pastor Rick Stuckwisch offers these comments. Click on the "continuing reading" link.

Read more…