Commenting
on the institution narrative of the Eucharist in Luke’s gospel, William Barclay
wrote:
(i) He said of the bread, “this is my body.” Herein
is exactly what we mean by a sacrament. A sacrament is something, usually a
verb ordinary thing, which has acquired a meaning far beyond itself for him who
has eyes to see and a heart to understand. There is nothing specially
theological or mysterious about this. In the house of everyone of us there is a
drawer full of things which can only be called junk, and yet we will not throw
them out; we cannot make ourselves do so, because when we touch and handle, and
look at them, they bring back to us this or that person, or this or that occasion.
They are common things, but they have a meaning far beyond themselves. That is
a sacrament. When Sir James Barrie’s mother died, and when they were clearing
up her belongings, they found that she had kept all the envelopes in which her
famous son had sent her the cheque he so faithfully and lovingly sent. They
were only old envelopes, but they meant much to her. That is a sacrament. When
Nelson was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral a party of his sailors bore his
coffin to the tomb. One who saw the scene writes, “With reverence, and with
efficiency, they lowered the body of the world’s greatest admiral into its
tomb. Then, as though answering to a sharp order from the quarter deck, they
all seized the Union Jack with which the coffin had been covered and tore it to
fragments, and each took his souvenir of the illustrious dead.” All their lives
that little bit of coloured cloth would speak to them of the Admiral they had
loved. That is a sacrament. The bread which we eat at the sacrament is common
bread, but, for him who has a heart to feel and understand, it is the very body
of Christ.
(ii) He said of the
cup, “This cup is the new covenant made at the price of my blood.” In the
biblical sense, a covenant is a relationship between man and God. God
graciously approached man; and man promised to obey, and to keep God’s law. The
whole matter is set out in Exodus 24:1-8. Now the continuance of that covenant depends
on man’s keeping his pledge and obeying this law. Man could not and cannot do
that; man’s sin interrupts the relationship between man and God. All the Jewish
sacrificial system was designed to restore that relationship by the offering of
sacrifice to God to atone or sin. What Jesus said was this—“By my life, and by
my death, I have made possible a new relationship between you and God. You are
sinners. That is true. But because I died for you, God is no longer your enemy
but your friend.” It cost the life of Christ to restore the lost relationship of
friendship between God and man.
(iii) Jesus said, “Do
this and it will make you remember me.” Jesus knew how easily the human mind
forgets. The Greeks had an adjective which they used to describe time—“time,”
they said, “which wipes all things out,” as if the mind of man were a slate,
and time a sponge which wiped it clean. Jesus was saying, “In the rush and
press of things you will forget me. Man forgets because he must, and not
because he will. Come in sometimes to the peace and stillness of my house and
do this again with my people—and you will remember.”
It made the tragedy
all the more tragic that at that very table there was one who was a traitor.
Jesus Christ has at every communion table those who betray Him, for if, in His
house, we pledge ourselves to Him, and then if, by our lives, we go out to deny
Him, we too are traitors to His cause. (William Barclay, The Gospel of Luke [The Daily Study Bible; Edinburgh: The Saint
Andrew Press, 1955], 276-78)
