📖Mark 14:22-31
➡️ Jesus Institutes the Lord’s Supper
Jesus gives His disciples bread and wine and declares, “This is my body” and “This is my blood of the covenant, poured out for many.”
This moment isn’t just symbolic — it’s sacramental. Jesus isn’t speaking metaphorically; He’s delivering His very body and blood for the forgiveness of sins.
As Lutherans confess, Christ is truly present in the Supper, and His gifts are given to sinners in real time. It’s not nostalgia or reenactment. It’s God working here and now.
This meal fulfills the Passover. In the OT, the Passover wasn’t just a remembrance — it was participatory. Israelites didn’t simply recall the Exodus; through the meal, they were joined to it.
Jesus brings that same reality to the Lord’s Supper. No longer are believers just remembering past salvation. In the Supper, they receive it.
Recreating Seder meals today misses the point. Clinging to the shadow when the reality is given every Sunday in the Lord’s Supper turns salvation into nostalgia instead of participation.
➡️ Jesus Predicts That Peter Will Deny Him
Immediately after this, Jesus predicts Peter’s denial.
Though Peter insists that he won’t, Jesus tells him the rooster will crow twice before he denies Him three times.
The disciples all join Peter in pledging loyalty.
This exchange shows the danger of turning Jesus’ words into challenges instead of warnings. Jesus wasn’t testing Peter — He was preparing him.
But Peter, in pride, saw it as a chance to prove himself. Like us, he wanted to be the hero. Salvation doesn’t rest on our performance — it rests on Christ.
The Lord’s Supper isn’t a ritual for the strong. It’s a gift for the weak, the scattered, and the sinful — for Peter, for you, for me.
Contributor Rev. Harrison Goodman is the Higher Things Executive Director of Missions and Theology.
Contributor Eli Lietzau is the pastor at Wheat Ridge Evangelical Lutheran Church in Wheat Ridge, CO.
What is The Uncultured Saints?
We’re told the same thing over and over. Christianity doesn’t fit with today’s culture. The thing is, it isn’t the culture saying it. It’s the church. We’ve done a great job figuring out what we’re not. Sometimes we forget what we are. We’re the saints, washed in the blood of the lamb. We’re sinners Jesus made holy. This defines us. There are places Christianity doesn’t fit with today’s culture because Christianity isn’t bound by culture. We’re free in Christ to be uncultured. Not against it. Not apart from it. Undefined by it, because we’re defined by something greater. Join Pr. Goodman and Pr. Lietzau, the uncultured saints, as we tackle today’s issues through the lens of the Lutheran Confessions and find answers to today’s questions rooted in a timeless truth in Christ.