I’ve long said that the Lutheran tradition offers much of value even for non-Lutherans. In part, this is because our theology is more thoroughly worked-out than that of most other Protestant traditions. Also, Lutheranism puts a big emphasis on “church,” whereas much of Protestantism is so focused on the individual that it is sometimes in need of help when it comes to the corporate dimension of the Christian life.
In support of my thesis, Lexham Press, an evangelical publisher, has been publishing a number of Lutheran authors, asking them to address issues common to all Christians. It began with Rev. Harold Senkbeil’s The Care of Souls, which led to other titles by him and more ministry resources by Lutherans. These include Rev. Lucas Woodford’s Pastoral Leadership and Rev. Harold Ristau’s Spiritual Warfare. I was especially delighted to see books by my own pastor, Rev. Tyler Arnold’s Pastoral Visitation, and our congregation’s cantor, Phillip Magness’s Church Music. (I should add that Lexham will also be publishing my next book, with co-author Rev. Trevor Sutton, on Technology and Vocation.)
Lexham has also been publishing books by John Kleinig, the Australian Bible scholar, theologian, and devotional author who has become highly prized by confessional Lutherans in America. Lexham published his important book Wonderfully Made: A Protestant Theology of the Body. Lexham has also bought the rights from Ballast Press to his translation of J. G. Hamann’s London Writings that I edited, with a new edition coming out soon.
Lexham has enlisted Kleinig as an author in its Christian Essentials series, a line of brief books on the basic tenets of the Christian faith. Kleinig is the author of God’s Word: A Guide to Holy Scripture. And now he has released The Lord’s Supper: A Guide to the Heavenly Feast.
I was frankly astonished that an evangelical press would ask a Lutheran to write about the Lord’s Supper. A Christian of any tradition could draw freely and profitably from what an experienced and gifted Lutheran pastor could say about pastoral visitation or pastoral leadership. The Lutheran view of God’s Word as a means of grace is distinctive, but non-Lutheran Christians don’t usually have objections to it and often find it enormously edifying. But the Lutheran view of the Lord’s supper–the Real Presence? that the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ? that the sacrament is saving?– is surely a bridge too far.
The Reformed split off from the Lutherans over the Lord’s Supper, as would all other Protestants. Surely non-Lutherans could not accept the Lutheran view of the Lord’s Supper without becoming Lutherans!
I was also curious about how Kleinig would go about this assignment. I knew he would never water down his convictions about the Sacrament of the Altar, so how would he explain them to mostly non-Lutheran readers?
In this well-designed and beautifully illustrated little book, Kleinig says that he is not going to be polemical or defensive, nor academic or philosophical. He’s not even going to expound on his own beliefs as a Lutheran pastor about the Supper. Rather, his approach is to plunge deeply into God’s Word, not so much to explain but to contemplate the mysteries it discloses.
All too often people confuse a mystery with a secret because they both have to do with what is hidden and unknown. But a mystery differs from a secret in one decisive respect. A secret comes from ignorance and inexperience, the lack of information about something or our inadequate understanding of it. A secret ceases to be a secret once you know it. But a mystery remains hidden even when you know it. In fact, it becomes more mysterious and wonderful the more you know it.
Kleinig unpacks the mystery of the Lord’s Supper–disclosing it as even more mysterious than we perhaps have realized–and he writes about it in “an attitude of reverent devotion and astonished adoration.”
And yet, Kleinig being a supreme Old Testament scholar, the book is full of illuminating scholarship. He points out that nearly all of the Old Testament sacrifices required to be performed in the Tabernacle and the Temple did not end with the death of the animal or the sprinkling of its blood on the altar. Rather, it was concluded with a sacrificial meal, in which the people making the offering fed on the animal that was sacrificed.
This was supremely so in the original Passover meal, in which the blood of a sacrificed lamb shielded God’s people from the Angel of Death, whereupon God’s people ate the sacrificed lamb. Thus freed from their slavery, they set out through the wilderness to the Promised Land. This was to be a meal of remembrance, a sign of God’s covenant, repeated throughout the future generations.
The Lord’s Supper occurred after a Passover meal, a context that charges Jesus’s actions with significance. John the Baptist described Jesus as “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). As the sacrificial lamb of the new covenant, He feeds His people with His body. Not that the Lord’s Supper is a sacrifice, as Roman Catholics believe, but, as in the Old Testament, it is the means by which those who by faith benefit from the sacrifice receive what was sacrificed.
Kleinig points out the curious fact that while Jesus often spoke of His death and resurrection, He is reticent about telling His disciples the purpose of that suffering and how that death and resurrection will benefit them, doing so briefly only one time recorded in Scripture (Mark 10:45). But in His last supper, He makes it all clear: His identifying Himself as the new Passover Lamb; “This is my body, which is given for you” (Luke 22:19); “this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28).
Kleinig places these sacrificial meals in the context of the other depictions of meals in the Bible, such as God’s theophany to the elders on Mt. Sinai in which “they beheld God, and ate and drank” (Exodus 24:11) and the gift of manna in the wilderness. Especially intriguing was his discussion of the seven meals described in Luke at which Jesus is present, in each of which He reveals Himself, brings healing, and/0r offers the forgiveness of sins. All of these meals, says Kleinig, point to and are fulfilled by Jesus’s last meal with His disciples, which they are to repeat in His remembrance.
The book also discusses the various accounts of the Last Supper in the New Testament, the “I am the bread of life” passages in John 6, and more. He concludes:
In that holy meal we receive Jesus completely as our Savior, and with him everything that belongs to him as God’s Son, everything that he has gained for us by his bodily life and death, as well as his bodily resurrection and ascension. All this is provided for us with his body and blood, given to us as a free gift for the remission of our sins.
In his introductory chapter, Kleinig says,
It is no wonder then that the Lord’s Supper has always frustrated all attempts to understand and explain it in rational human terms. It is also no wonder that it has aroused so much disagreement and controversy. It calls into question some of our most widely held assumptions about the nature of the world and our life in it: assumptions about time and space and matter, assumptions about human life and death, as well as our nature and destiny as embodied people. It shows us how limited and one dimensional all these concepts are, and opens us up to appreciate our life on earth as part of a great mystery.
In this book, Kleinig takes readers from all backgrounds on a ride through Scripture that will make them hunger and thirst for Christ’s body and blood.
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