More Than Words Can Say

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This is a meal, not a sermon. It is a meal with a meaning, of course, and sermons have meanings as well. Or, at any rate, some sermons do. But the fact that the meal has meaning and sermons have meaning should not make us think that a meal is a sermon—or that a sermon is a meal, for that matter.

When you are satisfied in your spirit by the preaching of the Word of God, you can and should respond to it as though you had been fed. But this is a metaphor—and a scriptural metaphor at that—but it is still a metaphor. When God feeds you with words, it is like being fed with food.

But when God feeds you with food here, it is not like you are eating and drinking. You are eating and drinking. Because it is a sacramental meal, it does more than a regular meal does, but it does not do less. God has arranged your Christian life in such a way that when you eat this bread and drink this wine, you are, in the power of the Spirit, partaking of Christ.

This is not because the meaning of the bread and wine is routed through a sermon first. This is not a sermon, cleverly disguised. This is something that stands in its own right, something that feeds us in its own way. What you are receiving here is not something that you could get by going off into the woods in order to recite Bible verses to yourself.

And so, come, eat and drink, and be satisfied.

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