EVERY SUNDAY
HOLY COMMUNION, AND THE 10:30 A.M. DIVINE SERVICE
Inviting others over to the house for dinner is a generous gesture. It means friendship, an opening for discussion and sharing burdens.
How much more so when invited to God’s House and, to His Table for the Lord’s Supper! What sinners desperately need often is the forgiveness of their sins. God knows and accommodates, setting up His Supper in His House.
Luther writes in the Large Catechism. “We must never regard the sacrament as a harmful thing from which we should flee, but a pure, wholesome, soothing medicine that aids you and gives life in both soul and body. For where the soul is healed, the body is helped as well,” (Part V, par. 68).
The elders and I have discussed and studied this great Gift, as well as our great need of it often. Presently Trinity offers Holy Communion on the First and Third Sundays of the month, along with the days of the festivals, Christmas, Transfiguration, Easter, etc.
The Bible urges a continual, repeated and frequent offering of the Supper. “Keep doing this in remembrance of Me,” (1 Cor. 11:24). The Holy Spirit does not say every day, every other day, or even once a year. “Often” teaches the need of the Supper for every sinner, letting the hunger of a Christian be the deciding factor.
The new Luther’s Small Catechism (2017) says:
Christ has not specified a particular timetable but invites us to come often to this Sacrament on account of the gifts He bestows here and our own great need. In the New Testament, the Sacrament was a regular and major feature of congregational worship, not an occasional extra (Acts 2:42; 1 Corinthians 11:20, 33). This practice continued in the church, and in Reformation times our church celebrated the Sacrament “every Lord’s Day and on other festivals” (Ap XXIX 1). (p. 329)
Beginning the weekend of September 8-9 this Fall, the Lord’s Supper will be offered in every Divine Service. The individual’s own hunger and desperate need will determine whether to partake of the Lord’s Meal.
To accommodate this change, the 10:30 a.m. service will be changed to 10:45 a.m. on Sundays. This change will help greatly with our Sunday School hour, where requests have been made for a longer time to teach the Bible to God’s children, big and small.
