Carolyn’s Reviews > Heaven on Earth: The Gifts of Christ in the Divine Service > Status Update

Last Supper stands as the most significant meal of Jesus and the most important occasion of His breaking of bread. This is because it is the only meal in which Jesus identifies the bread as His very body and the contents of the cup as His very blood. It is also the only meal that Jesus directs His disciples to repeat. When the Christian Church later breaks bread in celebrations of the Last Supper, this is in response

When Jesus mentions bread, He is pointing to table fellowship where those dining receive both the physical bread needed for life in this world now as well as the eschatological bread that provides the life of the age to come as spiritual sustenance even now. This follows the pattern of the Old Testament manna, which certainly was physical earthly food, but which at the same time provided miraculously and in abundance

Jesus uses Psalm 118 to describe His upcoming rejection by the Sanhedrin. What is so extraordinary about Jesus' imminent crucifixion is that His rejection is the means by which He will become the cornerstone and is therefore a reference to His glory. God's glory is manifested in the rejection of God's Son (v. 22). For the psalmist, this great reversal of rejection as a means for glory is the Lord's doing and therefo

As we saw on the way to Emmaus, where there is no hearing of the Word to cause hearts to burn, the meal cannot open eyes to the eternal realities of heaven on earth in Jesus Christ. This reality-that we join angels and archangels and all the company of heaven in feasting with Christ in His Kingdom-is the reason why we give thanks. And so the Lord's Supper is also called the Eucharist, which means the giving of thanks

Viva vox Jesu--the living voice of Jesus--is what we hear when His Word is read and preached. The Word of Jesus is both a written and an oral word. This Word, though written in words inspired and canonically received, is also spoken and heard within a community called the body of Christ. This voice is a living voice, for by it Jesus Christ is present for us bodily. This Word comes from the Word made flesh, a Word tha

In the ancient world, the king would sometimes visit a village or city. Anticipating his coming, villagers would line the road waiting for him to appear, an as he entered the city they would cry, "Lord, have mercy!" Amid their shouts, one could also hear petitions form the crowd for gifts that reflected the king's mercy, such as food, protection, lower taxes, and most important, peace. Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem

The ordinaries form the core of our acknowledgment of gifts received with eager thankfulness and praise. This means that Christ stands not only as the giver of gifts in Word and Sacrament but also as the one in whom we respond back to the Father with eager thankfulness and praise. The Church placed these ordinaries where they are to respond to the reality of Christ's presence in Word and Sacrament, that is, the ordin

There is no longer a collective, cultural biblical literacy. Christian presuppositions, which may have been badly skewed in previous generations, do not shape society in our time. Nor do the children of our postmodern culture process reality through a rationalistic structure, but instead perceive what is real through both their minds and their bodies, through visceral experience. Instruction in the faith in a classro

There is no longer a collective, cultural biblical literacy. Christian presuppositions, which may have been badly skewed in previous generations, do not shape society in our time. Nor do the children of our postmodern culture process reality through a rationalistic structure, but instead perceive what is real through both their minds and their bodies, through visceral experience. Instruction in the faith in a classro

We are truly children of the Enlightenment, that is we process the things in our culture through our minds and emotions, and the signals that come to us through our senses are secondary. Unlike the culture of the first centuries of the Christian Church and those of the Mediterranean world today, we tend to trust only those things that come to us through our minds, not realizing that our senses together with our minds