Lift up your hearts!

This morning we have considered how the life that is ours in Christ is presently hidden with Christ in God; our life, which is Christ Himself, is above. This teaching supplies the reason why we use the Sursum Corda and why it has traditionally been related to this Table that is spread before. The Sursum Corda, “Lift up your hearts,” and the response, “We lift them up to the Lord,” is intended to direct our minds and wills to the source of our life in heaven, namely, Jesus Christ. The Lord’s Supper, you see, is a heavenly feast. It’s not so much a feast wherein Christ comes down, as it is a feast wherein we go up. Since Christ, as we read this morning and as we confess in the Creed, is now sitting at the right hand of the Father, there is no sense in which he can come down to be present in the bread and wine. Christ, who is our life, is in heaven. And if you would commune with him, truly feeding upon his body and blood, then you must go to him. That is why the church has always used the Sursum Corda in relationship to the Lord’s Table; we must go to him. And we go to him by faith, confessing our sins and receiving his pardoning grace, which is we why we recite the Sursum following our confession and absolution. And we go to him being consecrated by the Spirit working through the Word to make us holy priests. Thus faith in Christ and the operation of the Spirit are the ways that we lift up our hearts to the Lord and go to him. It is by faith and the working of God’s Spirit that you are to feed upon Christ, who is your life. So put your faith in Him now and feed upon Him. And in feeding upon Him by faith know that His life is really and truly being communicated to you and will be made manifest in your life. Thus you see that this Table is the primary means by which you direct your mind and will to things above so as to manifest the life of the world to come.