Discourses at the Communion on Fridays

[ 1 ] Luke 22:15

[ 1 ] Luke 22:15 • Prayer Father in heaven! We know well that you are the one who enables both willing and completing1 and that longing, when it draws us to renew communion with our Savior and Atoner [Forsoner],2 is also from you. But when the longing lays hold of us, oh that we may also lay hold of the longing; when it wants to carry us away, that we may also abandon ourselves; when you are near to us in the call, that we may also keep near to you in supplication; when you offer the highest in the longing, that we may also buy its opportune moment,3 may hold it fast, sanctify it in quiet hours by earnest thoughts, by pious resolves, so that it may become the strong but also well-tested heartfelt longing that is required of those who worthily want to partake of the holy meal of the Lord’s Supper! Father in heaven, the longing is your gift; no one can give it to himself, no one can buy it if it is not given, even if he were willing to sell all4 —but when you give it, then he can surely sell all in order to buy it. So we pray for those who are gathered here that they may go up to the Lord’s table today with heartfelt longing and that when they leave there, they may go away with increased longing for him our Savior and Atoner. 1. See Philippians 1:6, 2:13. 2. This term is generally translated as “Redeemer” but in Danish it is the nominal form of forsoning, which means “atonement” or “reconciliation,” and in the communion discourses it refers specifically to Christ as the one who makes atonement or satisfaction for sin through his death on the cross. 3. See Colossians 4:5; Luke 22:6. 4. See Matthew 13:44–46. Part 1 38 Luke 22:15: I have heartily longed to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. The sacred words just read, which are Christ’s own words, undoubtedly do not belong to the institution of the Lord’s Supper, yet in the narrative they stand in the closest connection with it; the words of institution follow immediately after these words.5 It was on the night when he was betrayed, or rather he was already betrayed, Judas was already bought to sell him and had already sold him;6 the betrayer now sought only the “opportune time, so that he could betray him to the high priests without a crowd” (Luke 22:6).7 For that he chose the stillness of the night in which Christ now for the last time was gathered with his apostles. “And when the hour came he sat down to supper, and the twelve apostles with him. And he said to them: ‘I have heartily longed to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.’”8 That it was the last time he did not learn afterwards; he knew beforehand that it is the last time.9 Yet he did not have the heart to initiate the apostles entirely into how close the danger is, that it is this very night, and what the danger is, that it is the most ignominious death, and how inevitable it is. He who alone bore the sin of the world,10 he also bears here alone his frightful knowledge of what will happen there. He who struggled alone in Gethsemane,11 alone, because the disciples slept, he is also alone here, even though he sits at supper with his only confidants. Thus what will happen this night, how it will happen, by whom it will happen, there is only one person in that little circle who knew, he who was betrayed—yes, and then one more, the betrayer, who is also present .12 So Christ sits down to supper with the apostles, and as he takes a seat at the table he says: “I have heartily longed for this meal.” My listener, does it not seem to you that this really belongs to the Lord’s Supper in a deeper sense, both intimately and exemplarily, not 5. See Luke 22:19–20. 6. See Luke 22:3–6. 7. Loosely quoted from the 1819 Danish edition of the New Testament in Biblia, det er, Den Ganske Hellige Skrifts Bøger (Kiøbenhavn: C. F. Schubart, 1819). 8. See Luke 22:14–15. 9. See Luke 22:16...