The Testament of Jesus

The claim that godless sinners are justified by faith alone without the deeds of the law entails also the claim that the Lord’s supper is properly understood and used only when it is administered and received as gospel—as sheer, unmerited gift. It is a beneficium not a sacrificium. What happens in the supper, that is, is simply, the gospel. What our Lord did at supper “on the night in which he was betrayed” must therefore be conceptualized, taught, and proclaimed as pure gospel if we are to approach what might be called a “Lutheran” understanding of that supper. The absolute basis for such understanding and practice is first, last, and always, that it is gospel promise.

From time immemorial theologians have argued about the context from which to extract keys to interpret the supper. Is it or is it not a passover meal? Is it the last of the eschatologically charged meals of Jesus with his disciples? Is it a covenant meal of some sort? A Todah thankoffering? All such contexts are no doubt important. But it appears that something very obvious has usually been missed. Missing is the simple fact that the texts of the supper themselves set forth the essential context within which it is to be understood. That is the fact that it took place on the night in which he was betrayed. Any reading of the texts demonstrates that the accounts are laced through and through with the fact of the betrayal. Argument about whether or not it occurred on the night of the passover meal is rendered more or less irrelevant. What occurred is indelibly stamped by the fact that it took place in the context of the betrayal.

What occurred in the supper is therefore first and foremost encompassed and comprehended within its own concrete and particular story. Jesus was not symbolically or ritually previewing or acting out something that would “really” happen at some other place or time. Disregard for what the texts actually say is largely responsible for the fruitless searches for a context that will supply the supper with some “sacramental” meaning not immediately apparent. All of that is far overshadowed, if not simply cancelled, by the fact that it took place in the context of his betrayal. Think on it! He, just when his very body and blood are being “handed over,” “surrendered up,” to the “authorities” of this age, both religious and civil, takes bread and cup and in contradiction and defiance of the betrayal says, “This is my body given for you, this cup is the New Testament in my blood shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” And along with it the eschatological promise: I shall not drink of this cup again until I drink it new with you in the kingdom. It is a new testament.

In other words, his body is handed over and his blood shed by the authorities of this age, but he remains sovereign and with the bread and the wine as his testament bequeaths his body and blood to his disciples. One calls to mind Jesus’ words from the Gospel of John: “No one takes my life from me, I lay it down of my own accord.” On the night in which he was betrayed Jesus gives his body and blood to his own.

As Luther rightly perceived, the conceptuality at work here is that of testament, as in “last will and testament.”� The The The conceptuality of testament clearly sets forth and insists upon the gospel character of what occurred. Jesus, in the face of his betrayal, makes his last will and testament and designates his heirs. “This cup is the New Testament in my blood shed for you and for many for the remission of sins.” The point here is that what happens on the night of the betrayal is not simply to be conflated with and interpreted by what happens on the day of crucifix- ion. When that is done, what happened in the upper room necessarily gets subsumed under one’s interpretation of Golgotha. It becomes a symbolic anticipa- tion of what happened on the cross.

To be sure, the testament is inextricably related to what happens on Golgotha. Most obviously, of course, the testament does not go into effect until the death of the testator. But the conceptuality of testament should not simply be subsumed under one’s theory about the atoning significance of the death. In the history of the tradition that has meant overwhelmingly that the supper is understood in sacrificial terms: a sacramental and ritual reenactment, representation, or remembrance of the vicarious satisfaction by Jesus of what humans owe God. The “sacrifice of the mass” in Roman Catholicism and the sacrificial character of the eucharistic prayers in Lutheran and protestant rites are the liturgical offspring of this (mis-)understanding. Reinhard Schwarz puts the matter quite clearly.

The underlying test for every conception of the Supper is that of the manner in which it can align itself with the situation of Jesus “in the night in which he was betrayed” …In the late medieval doctrine of the Supper, the act of consecration, the central part of the sacrifice of the mass, was expressly connected with the last meal of Jesus with his disciples. In that meal celebration, therefore, Jesus had ostensibly acted out a sacramental rite of sacrifice, in a sense a previewing of his own sacrificial death. He was thereby supposed to have transferred to his disciples themselves the priestly duty of redoing retrospectively a sacramental representation of his sacrificial death. In a sense, the sacrificial rite at the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples therefore relates to the church’s sacrifice of the mass in mirror-image-like fashion. The symmetrical axis lies, so viewed, in the sacrificial death of Christ whose sacramental representation once previewed by Jesus is now again retrospectively celebrated. The sacramental activity of Jesus among his disciples therefore finds its meaning in the supposition that Jesus intended to institute the churchly celebration of the sacrifice of the mass. (See Reinhard Schwarz, “The Last Supper: The Testament of Jesus,” tr. Gerhard O. Forde, The Lutheran Quarterly 9 (1995) 391-403, and Schwarz, “Der hermeneutische Angelpunkt in Luthers Messreform,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 89 (1992) 340-364.)

But this draws the supper into an entirely different hermeneutical scheme.! It becomes a symbolic event, a ritual repetition of something that happened long ago, or a liturgical “re-presentation” or “memorial” of the “sacrifice” on Golgotha. The result is that direction is reversed. The body and blood are offered first and foremost to God and returned to the people only in the form of “sacramental grace”—with all its attendant problems. One is no longer justified by faith alone in the promise and testament, but by “gratia gratum faciens” (“grace that makes one graceful”) or other appropriate internal motions and modifications. The effect of the sacrament becomes internalized in a way that can do real damage. The gospel character of the supper is lost.

Via Forde’s “The Last Supper as the Testament of Jesus”