Good morning lovelies.
My fellow Substacker and gracious friend of + the sanitarium +, Oh Susanna, sent out a really interesting post about the Lord’s supper yesterday, and I thought you guys might be interested in reading it.
Her post makes some interesting points about the church’s common expression of the Lord’s Supper that I’ve secretly wondered about, but never had the guts to comment on. My favorite of these is that, according to a very obvious reading of Paul’s words, the early church didn’t celebrate the sacrament sitting silently in a church service in nice, ordered pews with thimblefuls of grape juice and a stale crackers. Instead, they made an actual meal out of it. It is a supper, after all.
And because they understood it to be an actual, convivial meal (which is also what the Passover was, from whence the Lord’s Supper came), they were able to grasp the oneness Jesus was interested in creating within us toward Him and each other when we were able to partake in it.
I mean, do you guys ever wonder why the Lord’s Supper is also called Communion?
Yes, it is about His body and blood being offered for our salvation. But it is also about how once that body and blood was offered, we were able to become one with Him and one with each other [i.e. fellowship], and how important it is to keep investing in that oneness.
Back in Jesus’s day, if you shared a meal with someone, you made yourself one with that person. This is why Jesus always had the Pharisees breathing down His neck about eating with the lower castes of society. I think the closeness we feel when we share “bread and wine” with others (what I mean by this is hospitality—eating with people to serve and get to know them) is still very real today, we just don’t acknowledge it as intensely as first century Israelis did. Simply put, eating (and yes, even drinking) with someone is a truly bonding experience.
To me, the heart of the Lord’s Supper is seen most profoundly in the phrase Jesus says just after telling the disciples to each drink from a single cup of wine (sharing the cup = oneness = communing):
Mark my words—I will not drink wine again until the day I drink it new with you in my Father’s Kingdom. (Matthew 27-29, NLT).
Call me too much of a mystic if you want (I’ve been called worse LOL), but when I read this verse, every romantic fiber in me sighs. Jesus is intentionally withholding something wonderful and pleasurable from Himself until every one of His followers can sit with Him in person, in heaven. He is waiting for us.
He.
Is waiting for
us.
For the many members made one by His body and blood—this fellowship— to finally be complete.
He’s waiting for us to get there so He can once again pass a single cup of shared wine around to all those who have been reborn into His family—who have become his blood relatives because of His blood sacrifice.
He’s waiting, because you don’t start a celebratory dinner until everyone who has the right and privilege to be there is present. That’s real love, real respect, and real communion. Or community. There’s no point in having a big meal set out if the ones whom you had hoped to commune with aren’t there.
The point of the bread and the wine, as seen in Jesus’s selfless pledge in the last verse, is not just the bread and the wine: it’s also about who (Who) is partaking of it with you and how you are treating those partaking of it with you (which I’ll touch on in a second).
Honestly, I think the Lord’s Supper as a church sacrament used to be a lot more profound and life changing than it is today. Imagine this intentional, intimate meal; drinking from the same cup, as it were. Eating together with only the simplest of ingredients and the holiest of intentions. Imagine filling your belly with not only the naturally warming and convivial comfort food of the shared bread and wine, but also filling your soul with the clarifying, bonding type of human interaction that is geared toward learning about each other and toward understanding each other better.
Wouldn’t you feel more “one” with your fellow believer if that was how we practiced the Lord’s Supper?
And yes, the Corinthians had definitely taken the liberty and essence of the communion meal too far. It makes sense that Paul tells them to stop treating the Lord’s Supper like a company Christmas party.
He also tells them the value of examining their hearts so as to not eat and drink “unworthily” and he lists a few things that can do that to a person in 1 Cor. 11:
Divisions with and amongst others (v. 18), being selfish, flippant, or inconsiderate toward others during the meal, especially the poor (v. 21-22), not recognizing the gravity of why Jesus would institute this sacrament (v. 29), simply being rude or a glutton during the meal (v 33-34).
Paul’s frustration over these points that could sully one’s Communion are not religious rocket science. It goes back to Jesus’s words in Matthew 22:37-40. Essentially, don’t treat Jesus’s sacrifice like it’s nothing, and don’t treat your neighbor like he or she is nothing. Put Jesus first, your neighbor and his/her needs and concerns a close second. Sounds like the essence of Christian living to me.
Paul uses strong words to remind them to put aside their selfishness and lack of self control so that a spirit of reverence and love will characterize how they approach this special meal. This makes sense, because as far as I know, the only way I’m gonna have love and reverence towards God and my neighbor is to walk in His Spirit, and that takes intentionality: the type of intentionality towards the Spirit within us that we should be constantly running towards, whether we are partaking of Communion or not (Galatians 5:16).
Oh Susanna, you’ve ruined me with this article.
Anyway, I’ve totally already said too much. Don’t let my verboseness stop you from reading Oh Susanna’s article. I hope you guys like her post as much as I did. You can find it here.
I have always felt the same way as you! I loved the fact that our old church shared communion every Sunday with loaves of bread and a glass of wine or juice that each person dipped their torn piece of bread in rather than passing trays of communion cups and cracker bits. However, it is always when we share an actual meal with our Christian brothers and sisters, especially amongst our life group, that it truly feels like we are sharing the Lords supper. To feast together and build
each other up as we fellowship feels more life giving and full than simply drinking out of a teeny cup.
I love your take on this! Glad it inspired you!