The Sacrament of the Altar: Do You Really Believe This? - Part 2

The other thing about the Lord's Supper that people really struggle to believe is what we Lutheran's call "the doctrine of the real presence."  In brief:  We believe the Bible speaks clearly, that Christ identified the bread and the wine used in the Supper as His Body and Blood.  That is what He gave His disciples in the Supper.

The counterargument offered to this most often is that Jesus was speaking figuratively.  These say that Jesus was only creating a symbol that only points to the real body and blood sacrificed on the cross.

Now let me say this:  If we had nothing but the words of scripture to go on, then I would have to admit that this argument is POSSIBLE, but it's still not the clearest interpretation of the scriptures we have.  There are many ways to argue this point, and we cannot go through them in depth here - I urge you to participate in a confirmation class to delve deeper into "why" questions - but here's a brief summary:

1.  The clearest meaning of Jesus' words (though also most challenging to modern sensibilities) is the literal sense.  Even St. Paul takes it that way in 1 Corinthians 10:16: "The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?  The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" So without a compelling argument from Scripture itself, we receive the clearest meaning.

2.  The Lord's Supper is clearly patterned after the Passover observed in Egypt and the "blood of the covenant" offered at the foot of Mt. Sinai.  In both cases, the blood was applied directly.  And in the subsequent annual observance of the Passover, the blood of the sacrifice was applied directly.  It is a stretch to imagine that Jesus would have instituted a change to the basic structure of the very ritual He referenced when He's talking to Jews (i.e., those who would have VERY naturally taken the ritual to mean a literal application of the sacrificed blood.)  "Going the other way" requires that we read INTO scripture something that NONE of the Gospel writers recorded.

I'll give you another argument, though I don't want you to take it as seriously as the previous two:

3.  The practice and doctrine of the earliest church affirms their belief in the real presence in the sacrament.  The idea that the bread and wine are just symbols was an innovation that was introduced MUCH later in history.  (It really took off in the wake of the Renaissance, among the second generation of reformers,  and (especially) during the Enlightenment; i.e., over a thousand years AFTER Jesus instituted the Supper.)