When we celebrate the Holy Eucharist in remembrance of Christ's saving death, we are in effect saying: "No offering that we could bring could possibly reconcile us to Thee, our God. All that we can plead is the work of Thy Son, His perfect obedience in all that He did and all that He suffered, His Body nailed to the Cross for us, His Blood poured out for the forgiveness of our sins. As by the mystery of the Sacramental Union Thou hast made His true Body and Blood present for us in this Bread and in this Cup, for us Christians to eat and to drink, so, we beseech Thee, let it be present in Thy sight also as the price of our redemption. Let it remind Thee that Thou hast forgiven mankind in the reconciliation which Thou hast wrought in Thy Son. Before Thee we appeal to no virtue, no righteousness of our own, but only to the alien righteousness of Thy Suffering Servant and Son, our true Paschal Lamb, which was offered for us and has taken away the sins of the world, Who by His death has destroyed death, and by His rising to life again has restored to us everlasting life."
[The Church, p. 241]
10 comments:
Amen.
Today we had communion at both services in advance observance of Epiphany. In between Pr. Nuckols spoke in adult Bible class of the comfort of the Supper, in terms very like yours.
Thanks!
Helen
Pr. Nuckols! Helen, you're at the same church as my beloved Darcy Huckleberry. She's getting married back here in May. Darcy's on the shorter side of the human race and has VERY long hair. Do you know her?
With all due respect to Dr. Piepkorn, I think this prayer is, well, frankly...not only unnecessary but quite possibly misleading to the point of being harmful. I find no Biblical, or Confessional, justification for praying that the Lord's body and blood in the Supper is to be somehow used to "remind" God of the propitiatory sacrifice of His Son. I think it quite possibly distracts from the "for you-ness" of the Supper and runs the considerable risk of reintroducing a whole kit and kaboodle of very bad understandings of the Supper from the High Middle Ages, which the Lutheran Reformation quite correctly dumped.
Oh, go read your Gerhard and Hollaz again! ;)
Better yet, get thee to thy hymnal and meditate upon what it means to sing:
May Thy body, Lord, born of Mary,
That our sins and sorrows did carry,
And Thy blood *for us plead*
in all trial, fear, and need.
Plead? To whom? For what? On what basis???
I knew you would quote that hymn verse, but I'm thinking there is something a bit different going on there than with Piepkorn's prayer. I think I smell, with Piepkorn's prayer, a whiff of a non-eucharistic sacrifice of the Mass dish in the oven. Many carbs, not enough protein.
I would agree with Rev McCain except for the fact that there is a qualifying passage that immediately follows the 'offending' statement:
"Before Thee we appeal to no virtue, no righteousness of our own, but only to the alien righteousness of Thy Suffering Servant and Son, our true Paschal Lamb, which was offered for us and has taken away the sins of the world..."
He points out that this is not our work but Christ's and then says that the sacrifice "was offered" and not "is offered". The tense is important since the sacrifice of the mass "is offered" while the atonement on the cross "was offered". I find the ideas of the prayer more consistant with Lutheran thought than the errors that are found in the Roman rite.
But it strikes me as odd and cumbersome terminology that is too easily confused. I prefer prayers with clearer wording that get straight to the point. Who are we trying to impress?
Well, Pastor Weedon and Pastor McCain, Piepkorn's prayer IS close to the Catholic doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass. Close, but no cigar. (I'm not sure this will please either of you!)
Piepkorn's prayer: "No offering that we could bring could possibly reconcile us to Thee" is absolutely true. EXCEPT: that which he gives to us.
Which is more or less what Piepkorn says when he prays that we "plead the work of Thy Son".
[Note - Mike - that the "work" is Christ's in this prayer, not ours.]
The thing is, Piepkorn still sees this as an offering "alien" to us.
Catholic doctrine (on the other hand) says that it is NOT alien to us, because of the humanity of Christ and our communion in that righteousness which comes through this divine gift of God's human body and blood.
Until the Reformation, the church never separated the sacrifice of "thanks and praise and offering of our very selves" from the gift of the Body and Blood. The giving of the gift is a part of the same liturgical action as the offering of the sacrifice of thanks and praise. Also, we eat and drink the gift, thus assimilating it to ourselves SO THAT our very bodies can be an offering to God. Finally, the gift that is offered to us (the Body and Blood) are not "alien" to humanity, but are precisely HUMAN body and blood, ie. One with Us.
That's what Christmas is about, ain't it?
Sigh. David, where on earth do you get the idea that "alien righteousness" means anything other than HUMAN righteousness? Alien simply denotes that this righteousness is found entirely in the Person of the God-man by His most holy obedience and suffering. It is full and complete in Him and it becomes and is ours only in union with Him. But it is certainly and always a human, flesh and blood, righteousness. As Pilate unwittingly said: Ecce, homo! Here is man as man was always intended to be, finding His whole life in submission to the Father.
Mr. Schutz said:
[Note - Mike - that the "work" is Christ's in this prayer, not ours.]
Mike replies:
Duh.
...in Christian love of course. ;)
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