Preaching and the Confirmation of the Sacrament: A Lesson from Nazi Germany

In the wake of Adolf Hitler’s ascension to power on January 30, 1933, as German pastors and theologians began to realize the dangers of National Socialism, one of the principal reforms Confessing Church leaders advocated was weekly celebrations of Holy Communion in the divine services on Sunday mornings. This marked a significant change from previous practice. By the turn of the century in Europe and North America, most Protestant churches had long since given up celebrating Holy Communion on a weekly basis, relegating the Sacrament to only a few times a year. Multiple reasons might be given for this development. Historians have pointed out the shift in the Protestant emphasis, going back to the Reformation, from the Mass to the sermon. Moreover, a pietistic stress on receiving the Sacraments in a “worthy manner” often meant that fewer communicants were coming forward to receive the elements (I Cor. 11:27). Some Protestants also decreased the frequency of celebrating Holy Communion because of the time and expense required to provide and distribute the elements. In any case, by the twentieth century in Germany, the celebration of Holy Communion in Protestant churches was only occasional.

Confessing Church leaders found that confirming the sermon with the Sacrament of Holy Communion could be an effective means of worshiping in community in an idolatrous environment. Theologians such as the Lutheran Wolfgang Trillhaas of the University of Erlangen encouraged pastors and divinity students to purposefully unite the Word and Sacrament as a way to clarify and test the good news preached in Protestant pulpits. The reintroduction of weekly celebrations of Holy Communion was one of their fundamental answers to combating Nazi intrusions in church liturgy and theology.

Pastors in the so-called German Christian movement, a pro-Nazi Christian group, preached from the authority of the pulpit that Germans should see Hitler as a national savior, “Aryans” as the superior race, Germany as a divinely favored nation, and Jews as a corrupted people worthy of contempt. Confessing Church pastors perceived in Holy Communion the power to check and expose such blasphemous messages—worldly ideologies presented as “good news”—that had crept into the German churches and deceived many Christians. Because of this insight they insisted it was time to bring back the weekly celebration of Holy Communion.

The introduction of weekly Holy Communion became a critical means for the churches to maintain their identity and ensure they had aligned themselves with Scripture amidst the Nazi consolidation of its totalitarian state. In his manual for preaching, Evangelische Predigtlehre, Trillhaas wrote, “The church of Jesus Christ lives from the Word and Sacrament as the gifts of her Lord. It is never the church of free speech. As it is bound to the written Word, so is their sermon bound to Scripture, explained and confirmed through the Sacrament.”[i]

Of all the ways to address the challenges of National Socialism and Hitler’s regime, why was increasing the frequency of Holy Communion a principal recommendation for edifying and preserving the life of the church? Fundamentally, the Sacrament requires the pastor and congregant to submit themselves—literally and metaphorically—in order to receive the elements. One receives the elements in a posture of submission, whether kneeling or standing, with open hands, ready to accept God’s gifts. But one also places himself under the authority of the gospel—the promise of God embodied in the bread and wine that become the true body and blood of Christ. As in the Sacrament, so also in preaching. The pastor submits himself to the Word, and the Sacrament explains and confirms the preached Word.

Maintaining this close bond between Word and Sacrament has notable consequences. If the pastor deviates and preaches his own or another’s “good news,” even slightly, the celebration of the Holy Sacrament can highlight and correct the error, for the truths embodied in the Sacrament shine a spotlight on doctrinal falsehoods in preaching. Consequently, the pastor cannot, as many did in Nazi Germany, proclaim another savior from the pulpit and then proceed to submit themselves in receiving the Sacrament without the incongruity becoming clear for the people to witness (for those with eyes who see and ears who hear, Matt. 13:16). Due to this binding of Word and Sacrament in the divine service, the pastor may himself realize the incongruities between his message and the Sacrament and make a change for the better in the future. But just as important, congregants can also realize the incongruity and take appropriate action.

The concern of the Confessing Church pastors in Nazi Germany was to provide a divine service that would most effectively present the community of faith with the truth of God’s Word in preaching, confirmed by the Sacrament. This was in a context in which the Nazi regime mobilized an incessant propaganda machine that tried to convince the German population that they were a master race, that Hitler was a savior figure, and that the people had an eschatological thousand-year Reich to look forward to.

While we may not be living in the Third Reich, the practices of the Confessing Church are still relevant today. Some of us, I am sure, have been to services that included Holy Communion and realized that the message was infused with political or even personal convictions that were inconsistent with the Scripture and the celebration of Holy Communion in the service. Juxtaposing the sermon and the Sacrament often makes it clear that the pastor has preached a different version of the “good news” than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Binding Word and Sacrament in divine services through weekly celebration of Holy Communion can thus help to point out when the church is beginning to rely on competing messages of the “good news.”

We also are constantly invited to partake in idolatry. Contemporary Western culture bombards us with all kinds of messages that try to convince us that we are our own gods, that our savior is ourselves, and that we are the arbiters of good and evil. Churches today struggle to keep out other messages the world purports to be “good news,” whether these involve seeking salvation in identities that have nothing to do with Christ, finding peace in self-acceptance apart from repentance, or seeing various forms of political utopianism as answers to our culture’s problems. Every age has its own particular ideologies and visions of the good life, and unfortunately sometimes these can find a place in the church and even be proclaimed from the authority of the pulpit.

Holy Communion checks the claims of all other ideologies and systems that promise life and salvation. Luther writes of the benefits of eating and drinking the elements in the Small Catechism: “in the Sacrament forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation are given us through these words. For where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation.” We need the constant reminders of the good news of Jesus Christ—that he alone is the all-sufficient Savior of the world—that frequent partaking of the Sacrament provides.

I am not suggesting that weekly Holy Communion observances are absolutely necessary. Scripture does not offer hard and fast rules to schedule the celebration of Holy Communion. But the Sacrament undoubtedly is the true body and blood of Christ for the people of God—a means of grace for the life of the church. As such it always carries powerful blessings and benefits, and these will multiply the more often Holy Communion is celebrated. As made clear above, the Sacrament is also a useful guard against wayward or even blasphemous preaching. Given these great goods conveyed by Holy Communion, it must be said that infrequent celebration will only be to our own detriment.

[i] Wolfgang Trillhaas, Evangelische Predigtlehre (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1935) 24.

William Skiles is Associate Professor of History at Regent University, Virginia Beach, Virginia, and an ordained Lutheran minister in the Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ. He is also the author of Preaching to Nazi Germany: The Pulpit and the Confessing Church (Fortress Press, 2023).