'Do this,' is the true meaning of the words, not 'in remembrance of
Me,' but something far more sweet and pathetic--'do this for the
_remembering_ of Me.' The former expression is equal to 'Do this
because you remember.' The real meaning of the words is, 'Do this in
case you forget'; do this in order that you may recall to memory what
the slippery memory is so apt to lose--the impression of even the
sweetest sweetness, of the most loving love, and the most
self-abnegating sacrifice, which He offered for us.
There is something to me infinitely pathetic and beautiful in looking
at the words not only as the commandment of the Lord, but as the
appeal of the Friend, who wished, as we all do, not to be utterly
forgotten by those whom He cared for and loved; and who, not only
because their remembrance was their salvation, but because their
forgetfulness pained His human heart, brings to their hearts the
plaintive appeal: 'Do not forget Me when I am gone away from you; and
even if you have no better way of remembering Me, take these poor
symbols, to which I am not too proud to entrust the care of My
memory, and do this, lest you forget Me.'
But, dear brethren, there are deeper thoughts than this, on which I
must dwell briefly. 'In remembrance of Me'--Jesus Christ, then, takes
up an altogether unique and solitary position here, and into the
sacredest hours of devotion and the loftiest moments of communion
with God, intrudes His personality, and says, 'When you are most
religious, remember Me; and let the highest act of your devout life
be a thought turned to Myself.'
Now, I want you to ask, is that thought diverted from God? And if it
is not, how comes it not to be? I want you honestly to ask yourselves
this question--what did _He_ think about Himself who, at that
moment, when all illusions were vanishing, and life was almost at its
last ebb, took the most solemn rite of His nation and laid it
solemnly aside and said: 'A greater than Moses is here; a greater
deliverance is being wrought': 'Remember Me.' Is that insisting on
His own personality, and making the remembrance of it the very apex
and shining summit of all religious aspiration--is that the work of
one about whom all that we have to say is, He was the noblest of men?
If so, then I want to know how Jesus Christ, in that upper chamber,
founding the sole continuous rite of the religion which He
established, and making its heart and centre the remembrance of His
own personality, can be cleared from the charge of diverting to
Himself what belongs to God only, and how you and I, if we obey His
commands, escape the crime of idolatry and man-worship? 'Do this in
remembrance,'--not of God--'in remembrance of Me,' 'and let memory,
with all its tendrils, clasp and cleave to My person.' What an
extraordinary demand! It is obscuring God, unless the 'Me' _is_ God
manifest in the flesh.
Then, still further, let me remind you that in the appointment of
this solitary rite as His memorial to all generations, Jesus Christ
Himself designates one part of His whole manifestation as the part
into which all its pathos, significance, and power are concentrated.
We who believe that the death of Christ is the life of the world, are
told that one formidable objection to our belief is that Jesus Christ
Himself said so little during His life about His death. I believe His
reticence upon that question is much exaggerated, but apart
altogether from that, I believe also that there was a necessity in
the order of the evolution of divine truth, for the reticence, such
as it is, because, whatsoever might be possible to Moses and Elias,
on the Mount of Transfiguration, 'His decease which He should
accomplish at Jerusalem,' could not be much spoken about in the plain
till it had been accomplished. But, apart from both of these
considerations, reflect, that whether He said much about His death or
not, He said something very much to the purpose about it when He said
'Do this in remembrance of Me.'
It is not His personality only that we are to remember. The whole of
the language of the institution of the ritual, as well as the form of
the rite, and its connection with the ancient passover, and its
connection with the new covenant into connection with which Christ
Himself brings it, all point to the significance in His eyes of His
death as the Sacrifice for the world's sin. Wherefore 'the body' and
'the blood' separately remembered, except to indicate death by
violence? Wherefore the language 'the body _broken_ for you';
'the blood _shed_ for many for the remission of sins?' Wherefore the
association with the Passover sacrifice? Wherefore the declaration
that 'this is the blood of the Covenant,' unless all tended to the
one thought--His death is the foundation of all loving relationships
possible to us with God; and the condition of the remission of
sins--the Sacrifice for the whole world?'
This is the point that He desires us to remember; this is that which
He would have live for ever in our grateful hearts.
I say nothing about the absolute exclusion of any other purpose of
this memorial rite. If it was the mysterious thing that the
superstition of later ages has made of it, how, in the name of
common-sense, does it come that not one syllable, looking in that
direction, dropped from His lips when He established it? Surely He,
in that upper chamber, knew best what He meant, and what He was doing
when He established the rite; and I, for my part, am contented to be
told that I believe in a poor, bald Zwinglianism, when I say with my
Master, that the purpose of the Lord's Supper is simply the
commemoration, and therein the proclamation, of His death. There is
no magic, no mystery, no 'sacrament' about it. It blesses us when it
makes us remember Him. It does the same thing for us which any other
means of bringing Him to mind does. It does that through a different
vehicle. A sermon does it by words, the Communion does it by symbols.
That is the difference to be found between them. And away goes the
whole fabric of superstitious Christianity, and all its mischiefs and
evils, when once you accept the simple 'Remember.' Christ told us
what He meant by the rite when He said 'Do this in remembrance of
Me.'
II. And now one word or two more about the other particulars which I
have suggested. The past, however sweet and precious, is not enough
for any soul to live upon. And so this memorial rite, just because it
is memorial, is a symbol for the present.
That is taught us in the great chapter--the sixth of John's
Gospel--which was spoken long before the institution of the Lord's
Supper, but expresses in words the same ideas which it expresses by
material forms. The Christ who died is the Christ who lives, and must
be lived upon by the Christian. If our relation to Jesus Christ were
only that 'Once in the end of the ages He appeared to put away sin by
the sacrifice of Himself'; and if we had to look back through
lengthening vistas of distance and thickening folds of oblivion,
simply to a historical past, in which He was once offered, the
retrospect would not have the sweetness in it which it now has. But
when we come to this thought that the Christ who was for us is also
the Christ in us, and that He is not the Christ for us unless He is
the Christ in us; and His death will never wash away our sins unless
we feed upon Him, here and now, by faith and meditation, then the
retrospect becomes blessedness. The Christian life is not merely the
remembrance of a historical Christ in the past, but it is the present
participation in a living Christ, with us now.
He is near each of us that we may make Him the very food of our
spirits. We are to live upon Him. He is to be incorporated within us
by our own act. This is no mysticism, it is a piece of simple
reality. There is no Christian life without it. The true life of the
believer is just the feeding of our souls upon Him,--our minds
accepting, meditating upon, digesting the truths which are incarnated
in Jesus; our hearts feeding upon the love which is so tender, warm,
stooping, and close; our wills feeding upon and nourished by the
utterance of His will in commandments which to know is joy and to
keep is liberty; our hopes feeding upon Him who is our Hope, and in
whom they find no chaff and husks of peradventures, but the pure
wheat of 'Verily! verily I say unto you'; the whole nature thus
finding its nourishment in Jesus Christ. You are Christians in the
measure in which the very strength of your spirits, and sustenance of
all your faculties, are found in loving communion with the living
Lord.
Remember, too, that all this communion, intimate, sweet, sacred, is
possible only, or at all events is in its highest forms and most
blessed reality, possible only, to those who approach Him through the
gate of His death. The feeding upon the living Christ which will be
the strength of our hearts and our portion for ever, must be a
feeding upon the whole Christ. We must not only nourish our spirits
on the fact that He was incarnated for our salvation, but also on the
truth that He was crucified for our acceptance with God. 'He that
eateth Me, even he shall live by Me,' has for its deepest
explanation, 'He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath
eternal life.'
My friends, what about the hunger of your souls? Where is it
satisfied? With the swine's husks, or with the 'Bread of God which
came down from Heaven?'
III. Now, lastly, that rite which is a memorial and a symbol is also
a prophecy.
In the original words of the institution our Lord Himself makes
reference to the future; 'till I drink it new with you in My Father's
kingdom.' And in the context here, the Apostle provides for the
perpetual continuance, and emphasises the prophetic aspect, of
the rite, by that word, 'till He come.' His death necessarily implies
His coming again. The Cross and the Throne are linked together by an
indissoluble bond. Being what it is, the death cannot be the end.
Being what He is, if He has once been offered to bear the sins of
many, so He must come the second time without sin unto salvation. The
rite, just because it is a rite, is the prophecy of a time when the
need for it, arising from weak flesh and an intrusive world, shall
cease. 'They shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of the Lord;
at that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord.' There
shall be no temple in that great city, because the Lord God Almighty
and the Lamb are the Temple thereof. So all external worship is a
prophecy of the coming of the perfect time, when that which is
perfect being come, the external helps and ladders to climb to the
loftiest shall be done away.
But more than that, the memorial and symbol is a prophecy. That upper
chamber, with its troubled thoughts, its unbidden tears, starting to
the eyes of the half-understanding listeners, who only felt that He
was going away and the sweet companionship was dissolved, may seem to
be but a blurred and a poor image of the better communion of heaven.
But though on that sad night the Master bore a burdened heart, and
the servants had but partial apprehension and a more partial love;
though He went forth to agonise and to die, and they went forth to
deny and to betray, and to leave Him alone, still it was a prophecy
of Christ's table in His kingdom. Heaven is to be a feast. That
representation promises society to the solitary, rest to the toilers,
the oil of joy for mourning, and the full satisfaction of all
desires. That heavenly feast surpasses indeed the antitype in the
upper chamber, in that there the Master Himself partook not, and
yonder we shall sup with Him and He with us, but is prophetic in
that, as there He took a towel and girded Himself and washed the
disciples' feet, so yonder He will come forth Himself and serve them.
The future is unlike the prophetic past in that 'we shall go no more
out'; there shall be no sequences of sorrow, and struggle, and
distance and ignorance; but like it in that we shall feast on Christ,
for through eternity the glorified Jesus will be the Bread of our
spirits, and the fact of His past sacrifice the foundation of our
hopes.
So, dear brethren, though our external celebration of this rite be
dashed, as it always is, with much ignorance and with feeble faith;
and though we gather round this table as the first generation of
Israelites did round the passover, of which it is the successor, with
staff in hand and loins girded, and have to eat it often with bitter
herbs mingled, and though there be at our sides empty places, yet even
in our clouded and partial apprehension, and in the imperfections of
this outward type, we may see a gracious shadow of what is waiting
for us when we shall go no more out, and all empty places shall be
filled, and the bitter herbs shall be changed for the asphodel of
Heaven and the sweet flowerage round the throne of God, and we shall
feast upon the Christ, and in the loftiest experience of the utmost
glories of the Heavens, shall remember the bitter Cross and agony as
that which has bought it all. 'This do in remembrance of Me.' May it
be a symbol of our inmost life, and the prophecy of the Heaven to
which we each shall come!