“We are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all … (who) after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God.

(Hebrews 10:10)

The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is the symbol of that supreme mystery of the Christian faith: the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ upon Calvary’s cross for the sins of the world. But what do we know of sacrifice — we, who now come to this sacrificial supper of the Lamb of God? What do we know of His sacrifice for us, or of our sacrifice for Him?

Soren Kierkegaard said that: “As a skillful cook preparing a dish in which already a great many ingredients are mingled says: ‘It needs still just a little pinch of cinnamon’ (and we perhaps could hardly tell that this little pinch of spice had entered into it, but he knew precisely why and precisely how it affected the taste of the whole mixture). Or, as an artist says with a view to the color effect of a whole painting which is composed of many, many colors: ‘There and there, at that little point, there must be applied a little touch of red.’ (And perhaps we could hardly ever discover the red that is there, so carefully has the artist suppressed it, although he knows exactly why it should be introduced.) ‘So is it,’ says Kierkegaard, ‘with governance and the need for sacrifice.’”

“Oh, the governance of the world is an immense housekeeping and a grandiose painting. Yet He, the Master, God in heaven, behaves like the cook and the artist. He says, “Now there must be introduced a little pinch of spice, a little touch of red.” We do not comprehend why, we are hardly aware of it, since that little bit is so thoroughly absorbed in the whole, but God knows why.”

Writing in his journal, Kierkegaard said: “Humanly speaking, what a painful thing thus to be sacrificed, to be the little pinch of spice — the small spot of red! But, on the other hand, God knows well the one whom He elects to use in this way, and then God knows also how, in the inward understanding of it, to make it so blessed a thing for that one to be sacrificed, that among thousands of diverse voices which express, each in its own way, the same thing, that One’s also will be heard, and perhaps especially his which is truly de profundis, proclaiming: ‘God is love.’ The birds on the branches, the lilies in the field, the deer in the forest, the fishes in the sea, countless hosts of happy men and women exultantly proclaim: ‘God is love.’ But beneath all these sopranos, supporting them as it were, as the bass part does, is audible the de profundis which issues from the sacrificed One: ‘God is love.’” (The Journals — Soren Kierkegaard)

The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews put it this way: “Jesus, who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” In the divine governance it is a joy that is set before us to choose the way of sacrifice, for God’s sake, and thus only do we enter into the glory of life.

Here is a person who has been good, kind, sympathetic, unselfish. In the last illness that One suffers excruciating pain. Patiently the sufferer endures it, uncomplaining. Friends and relatives wonder why. They say: “Why must so devoted a servant of the Lord suffer on thus, with all hope gone? What good is accomplished? Why can’t a merciful God call His own home and stop this awful, useless pain?” But when the end comes and all has been borne in faith and trust and resignation, then those who stood by and watched, exclaim: “The suffering of God’s righteous servant has been for our sakes that our faith in God should be strengthened. Truly that One’s sacrifice brings us closer to our God in understanding trust and happy obedience.”

When Washington’s officers grew discontented over their trials and deprivations and presented their leader with a list of their grievances against the Continental Congress, you may remember that Washington remarked: “Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles to read your catalogue of grievances, for I have grown not only gray, but almost blind in the service of my country.”

Dr. Tom Dooley said he had always been obsessed with being happy. The big turning point in his life came “one sizzling morning in July, 1954,” when he was fresh out of medical school “with a brand new DOCTOR in front of his name and a new Navy lieutenancy as well. His ship was assigned to cruise duty in the Western Pacific.”

This particularly hot July morning they cruised into Hiaphong Harbor and an overloaded boat of refugees from the Viet-Nam Civil War came steaming out to meet them. The boat was built to carry less than a hundred, but there were more than 1000 people on it.

“Here,” wrote Dooley, “were smallpox, terminal tuberculosis, hideous cancers, and some diseases I couldn’t even name. It was my first glimpse of Asia. I was the only doctor on ship. I set out my poor array of bottles and needles and swabs and blindly, hopelessly attacked the mountain of suffering before me. But before long a strange excitement began to grow in me. It was so apparent that a simple plaster cast would take the agony out of this broken arm! A few shots of Vitamin C would have this man on his feet! Hours later I stopped for a moment to straighten my shoulders and made another discovery — the biggest of my life. I was happy, deeply, deliriously happy.”

So that decided it for Tom Dooley. He got out of the Navy as fast as he could and went to the Jungles of Laos and put up his little shack of a hospital.

An old professor who knew Tom’s former plans for the good life wrote him asking: “What’s happened, Tom? Why the big change?” Dooley wrote back: “There wasn’t any change. I’m still the same egotistical, self-centered guy to whom you tried to teach some medicine. I’ve never wanted anything except happiness for Tom Dooley — and here I’ve got it.”

“You see, when Jesus gave us the beatitudes He wasn’t describing some dream world that might come some day to pass. He was talking simply and matter-of-factly, as He always did, about things as they are. ‘Blessed — Happy — are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.’ What Jesus was saying is: ‘If you’re extra-sensitive to sorrow, and you do something, no matter how small, to make it lighter, you can’t help but be happy. That’s just the way it is.’”

Do you and I ever wonder why the church seems so ineffectual? Why her world missions’ movement is so faltering — her ministry to her own members so uninfluential in their lives. A disillusioned minister once knelt in his study to pray for his congregation. Down the church roll he went, interceding with the Eternal for each person according as he thought the needs of each to be. Lower and lower sank his spirit as he came to name after name of people who rarely if ever came to divine worship, whose lives so little evidenced the grace and mercy of God, whose spirits did not stand up in adversity and travail. The minister mused: “Can it be that the church is ineffectual because we have refused sacrifice? Is it because members and ministers alike have chosen the way of the crucified One and perverted its meaning of sacrifice into surfeit?”

One remembers again and again the story of the Moravian missionaries to Greenland, who after twenty years of fruitless toil in indirect approaches to the savage mind, found suddenly that the natives’ minds were responsive to the appeal of the cross. Probably St. Paul made no mistake when he began his ministry to the Corinthians “first of all” with the message of the atonement, saying: “I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”

The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews chides his readers who are face to face with stern times for repeatedly going over and over again the fundamentals of Christian faith and practice: laying again and again the foundation doctrines — of repentance from dead works, of faith toward God, of the doctrines of baptism and the laying on of hands, and of the resurrection of the dead and of eternal judgment.

What is the author of the Epistle to those early Christians talking about? Why, the people who’ve been preached at and preached to and trained for, but who have never begun to move out on into the realm of Christian service which begins only at the point of sacrifice. The inspired writer wants to lead them into a new apprehension of the High Priestly service and sacrifice of Christ, in order that they may be prepared to offer themselves as living sacrifices on the high altar of faith.

We are called by the mercies of God “to present our bodies as living sacrifices unto God, holy, acceptable, which is our reasonable service — that we be not conformed to this world, but that we may be transformed by the renewing of our minds, that we may prove what is that good, and acceptable and perfect will of God.” (Romans 12:1-2) This is the sacrifice of Christians — the many who are the one body in Christ.

At a Quaker meeting, one who was unaccustomed to the long season of silence that characterized Quaker meetings, turned to the man on the bench beside him and whispered: “When does the service begin?” And the devout Quaker at his side whispered back: “The service begins when the meeting ends.” The point, the purpose of all our preaching, all our study, all our worship is Christ-like service.

But there is no saving service without sacrifice. There is no remission of sins without the shedding of blood. There is no lifting, helping, redeeming power to save apart from sacrifice. There is no cheap and easy way to redeem a lost world. Even the blessed Son of God found the best and only way to be a cross. Let us then draw near to the Holy Supper instituted by our Lord for the perpetual memory of His sacrifice of Himself for our sakes — and there in quiet submission wait upon Him to hear what He may say to us of the sacrifice to which He is calling each one of us.

PASTORAL PRAYER

O Heavenly Father, as we come to Thee in prayer we ask for the gift of a heart like the heart of Jesus Christ — a heart more ready to minister than to be ministered unto, a heart moved by compassion towards the weak and the oppressed, a heart set on the coming of Thy Kingdom in the world of people.

We pray for all sorts and conditions of people, O God, such as our Lord Jesus Christ was accustomed to give special thought and care: For those lacking food and clothing; for the blind and the lame and the maimed; for lepers and prisoners and those oppressed by any injustice; for the lost sheep of our human society; the fallen women and men, the drug and alcohol addicts; for all lonely strangers within our gates; for the worried and the anxious; for those who are living faithful lives in obscurity; for those who are fighting bravely in unpopular causes; for all who are laboring diligently in Thy vineyard.

Grant, O Father, that Thy loving kindness in causing our lives to fall in pleasant places may not make us less sensitive to the needs of others less privileged, but rather more incline us to lay their burdens upon our own hearts. And if any adversity should befall us, let us not brood upon our own sorrows, as if we alone in all the world were suffering, but rather let us busy ourselves in the compassionate service of all who need our help. Thus let the power of our Lord Jesus Christ be strong within us and His peace invade our spirits, for the coming victory of His Kingdom. Amen.

• Scripture Reference: Hebrews 10:10-12 • Secondary Scripture References: Romans 12:1-2 • Subject : Sacrifice; 769; 660 • Special Topic: Communion Meditation • Series: n/a • Occasion: Communion Meditation • First Preached: 1/7/1951 • Last Preached: 1/5/1997 • Rating: 4 • Book/Author References: The Journals, Soren Kierkegaard