the sacraments on The Cross

Preaching Commentary Ecumenical Note I celebrate the many flavors of Christianity which gather within The Pastor’s Workshop. As such, I recognize and respect the different names we use to refer to...

Ecumenical Note I celebrate the many flavors of Christianity which gather within The Pastor’s Workshop. As such, I recognize and respect the different names we use to refer to the meal we share as J...

Recognize in this bread what hung on the cross, and in this chalice what flowed from His side... whatever was in many and varied ways announced beforehand in the sacrifices of the Old Testament pertai...

John's Account of the Last Supper This passage is most often preached on on Maundy Thursday (or Holy Thursday). By our modern measure, “Thursday” would also include Gethsemane and other events of...

Context The feeding of the 5,000 in Matthew occurs within a section where questions of Jesus’ identity are heightened. Two incorrect answers of who Jesus truly is are given in 13:55 (“isn’t this the...

Ancient Lens What's the historical context? A Hard Saying The difficulty of this saying was used by opponents of the early Christians to justify persecution, yet the early church still rallie...

Ancient Lens What's the historical context? A Hard Saying The difficulty of this saying was used by opponents of the early Christians to justify persecution, yet the early church still rallie...

This guide has been updated and expanded. Our Maundy Thursday guide for 2026 on John 13 incorporates this material along with additional commentary, illustrations, and discussion questions. Check ...

Preaching Commentary Context The feeding of the 5,000 in Matthew occurs within a section where questions of Jesus’ identity are heightened. Two incorrect answers of who Jesus truly is are given in...

Pastor: Brothers and sisters in Christ, as we gather on this Thursday of Holy Week, let us humbly draw near to the Lord to remember what He has done and to receive what He gives to us by His Word an...

Ask most any Protestant about the meaning of the Supper, and you will hear the word remembrance. The problem is that a too-simplistic understanding of the Lord’s command has limited the meaning of the...

We thank you, God our Father, that by your grace, mercy and love, expressed today in Word and Sacrament, You give us Your Son, the true bread from heaven and the fountain of living water. Strengthen u...

April 2020 is an interesting time to write a book review on the sacraments (or anything, for that matter). As Tim Chester, author of the book, Truth We Can Touch , points out, You can read you...

But to reject, marginalize, trivialize, or be suspicious of the sacraments (and quasi-sacramental acts such as lighting a candle, bowing, washing feet, raising hands in the air, crossing oneself and s...

Pious souls can derive great confidence and delight from this sacrament, as being a testimony that they form one body with Christ, so that everything which is his they may call their own. Hence it fol...

Lord Jesus Christ, who when you were about to institute your holy Sacrament at the Last Supper washed the feet of the apostles, teach us by your example the grace of humility: Cleanse us, we beseech y...

How many there are who still say, 'I want to see His shape, His image, His clothing, His sandals.' Behold, you do see Him, you touch Him, you eat Him! You want to see His clothing. He gives Hi...

Just as this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains and then was gathered together and became one,  so may your church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom; for you...

The Eucharist is the very heart of Christian worship because it is so rich and far-reaching in its significance; because it eludes thought, eludes emotion, relies on simple contact, humble and childli...

[The Sacraments are] a kind of visible word of God.

Nothing presents a starker contrast between our own day and the Reformation than the current neglect of the Lord’s Supper. . . . Today, the communion hardly features as a matter of significance. It is...

The liturgy of the Eucharist is best understood as a journey or procession. It is the journey of the Church into the dimension of the Kingdom. We use the word 'dimension' because it seems the ...

[The Lord’s Supper] is a visible sermon.

To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, dest...

Where did we go wrong, that we preachers have so undervalued the Lord’s Supper and baptism? A glance around evangelical churches shows that the sacraments are the church’s Cinderellas—tolerated, patro...

The sacraments are, as it were, God’s “body language.”

Christianity . . . sees the necessity for man to have spiritual values and it shows him how to get at those through physical sacraments.

The promise of God in Christ Jesus is of such extraordinary magnitude that it seems almost impossible that it also applies to someone like me. Therefore the Lord, by means of His Supper, stamps the se...

Even in another life, as St. John sees it in his vision, we do not rise to God, but he descends to us, and dwells humanly among human creatures, in the glorious man, Jesus Christ. And that will be his...

We do not get a different or a better Christ in the sacraments than we do in the Word…But we may get the same Christ better, with a firmer grasp of his grace through seeing, touching, feeling, and tas...