After the eating and the drinking. . .

One of the ways in which justification can be abused is when justification is the end of it or the only thing.  Justification necessarily leads to and makes possible sanctification.  But too often we do not hear much about the latter.  Some Lutherans are of the opinion that you do not need to say anything about it or work toward it since sanctification is automatic.  It just happens.  Those folks would also demur to the idea of the so-called third use of the Law.  Others have taken up the cause of a more deliberate and vigorous preaching of sanctification and the role of the Law as guide.  Some of that you have heard here and if you google third use you will find no shortage of materials to occupy your time.

That said, one of the great weaknesses revealed by the corona virus and its role in limiting or even shutting down the churches has been the fact that for our all work in restoring the weekly Eucharist in practice, we have not been so successful in restoring it in piety.  In other words, the Eucharist has been treated like a medicine you take in order to relieve you of the responsibility to change your lifestyle.  If you have cholesterol, you take pill and continue your unhealthy diet.  So the lack of the Eucharist has been for some the deprivation of the pill that makes them spiritually healthy and exposed the lack of a piety other than the Eucharist.

The Sacrament has come into focus in part because of the pandemic.  Virtual communions, consecrations by video, and drive by communions have all been offered as a means to keep people receiving something though outside not only the context of the Divine Service but also outside the intent.  For the eating and drinking are not part of some individual relationship to God in isolation nor is the eating and drinking the end of it all.  It is certainly a good thing that we are receiving the Sacrament more frequently than in the past and it seems that this is in part because those who commune are convinced that they are receiving the Body and Blood of Christ (though the manner of that reception remains an unsettled question for some).  The down side in all of this is that the discussion seems to stop with the eating and drinking.  The miraculous pill has been received and now it is time to go home.  Or it could mean to go back to the sinful lives that caused the need for the medicine in the first place.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.  Thanks be to God!  In these few words we are reminded that as we depart from the House of the Lord, we leave not to return to sinful ways with a clear conscience but to love and serve the Lord.  The Eucharist is not the pill we take to avoid changing our lives but the very means by which those lives are changed.  We cannot and do not cooperate with the justification but we can and should cooperate with the sanctification that flows from the forgiveness of our sins and our communion upon Christ's flesh and blood.

Though Lutherans are loathe to speak this way, it is the Eucharist that manifests us as the Church -- the body of Christ receiving the Body of Christ.  And it is the Eucharist enables us to become what we are.  Now before somebody suggests that I have forgotten the Word, the Eucharist does not exist apart from the Word of Christ for it is the Word and the element that make the Sacrament and the liturgy of the Divine Service is itself Scripture said and sung -- from beginning to end.  So I am not pitting one against the other but looking at the fullness of our life together around the Word and the Altar of the Lord.  The point, however, is that neither the voice of the Word nor our participation/fellowship in the Body and Blood of Christ are the end but the means by which we are becoming what God has declared us to be.  We cannot effect the declaration of grace but we can cooperate with the Spirit in becoming what God has declared us to be.  No, we do not take credit for it (Christ in us) but that does not let us off the hook.  We are not here to receive a God pill so that we can live in the ruts of our old lives without any guilt feelings.  Christ lives in us that we may become ever more like Him.

Receiving the Sacrament does not make up for a lack of piety nor does it excuse or justify a lack of effort or desire to be sanctified.  That is an abuse of the Sacrament.  As some have noted, the emergency conditions of this past few months may have revealed the shallowness of our Eucharistic theology and practice and the emptiness of our devotional life rooted in the Word of the Lord and manifested in prayer.  It may have also exposed the fact that our tendency to turn God's grace into something cheap and easy has kept us from using these means to strengthen us for the fight against evil and emboldening us to live new, holy, upright, and godly lives.  The mode of the Church on earth is, until the last day, always militant.  The mode of our lives in Christ is also militant, always fighting and always battling the devil, the world, and our own sinful flesh in order to that grace may abound in us and we may grow up in Christ to maturing of faith and life as the baptized.