Friday, May 31, 2019

William Barclay on the Institution of the Eucharist in the Gospel of Luke


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)