The Lord's Supper

I

ORIENTATION

He said, "Go into the city to a certain man and say to him, 'The Teacher says, My time is at hand. I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.' "

Matthew 26:18 ESV

WE DO NOT PRESUME TO COME TO THIS YOUR TABLE, MERCIFUL LORD, TRUSTING IN OUR OWN MERITS, BUT IN YOUR MANIFOLD AND GREAT MERCIES

This is a handbook on the Lord's Supper. It aims to lead its readers to full participation in the Lord's Supper as a holy meal, a meal that Christ established for the benefit of his disciples in their journey from earth to heaven. It is, if you like, a menu for a lavish, tasty dinner rather than an analysis of its origin, its composition, and the nutritional value of the food it supplies.

Yet even that is a daunting task. While it is, superficially, a simple symbolic meal that consists of a piece of bread and a sip of wine, in reality it is much more than that. In fact most of it is hidden from human sight, such as its location, its host, its guests, and its food. Its location is not just in the place where a congregation of people has assembled, but also in the presence of God in heaven together with all his angels and all the saints who have gone before us. The risen Lord Jesus is its host and God's holy people on earth are its guests. Its food is the body and blood of Jesus.

It is no wonder then that the Lord's Supper has always frustrated all attempts to understand and explain it in rational human terms. It is also no wonder that it has aroused so much disagreement and controversy. It calls into question some of our most widely held assumptions about the nature of the world and our life in it: assumptions about time and space and matter, assumptions about human life and death, as well as our nature and destiny as embodied people. It shows us how limited and one dimensional all these concepts are, and opens us up to appreciate our life on earth as part of a great mystery. Since the Lord's Supper is itself a mystery, we will be able to appreciate it best, and most fully, if we take it as divine banquet that is hosted by the risen Lord Jesus, locate it within the context of God's whole history with his people, and use his word to understand it according to his purpose for it.

The struggle to understand the Lord's Supper goes back to the difficulty that the disciples of Jesus had in naming it. In fact, even Jesus himself did not give it any name but only told his apostles how to celebrate it, and why. So they, and those who came after them, followed his lead and referred to the whole meal by some part of it. Thus Luke calls it "the breaking of the bread" (Luke 24:35; Acts 2:42). Paul calls it "the Lord's supper" (1 Cor 11:20) and "the table of the Lord" (1 Cor 10:21). By the end of the first century it was called "the Eucharist," or "the Thanksgiving," in an early Christian handbook called the Didache, as well as in the letters of Ignatius.1 Eventually it was also called "the Sacrament," or "the Blessed Sacrament," or "the Sacrament of the Altar" to indicate that it was a sacred act, and "Holy Communion," a name that recalls Paul's description of it in 1 Corinthians 10:16 as our communal reception of Christ's body and blood and our communion with each other through them.

Since there is no one name for it, I shall use the widely accepted biblical name for it and refer to it as the Lord's Supper. I prefer that name because it reminds us that it is not just an ordinary meal. It is a divine banquet, a festive dinner hosted by the risen Lord Jesus for his disciples.

In Matthew 26:18 Jesus claims that the appointed time for the inauguration of his Supper had come, the time that his heavenly Father had set for it and for his death, a time that coincided with the celebration of that particular Feast of the Passover at that moment in the life of Israel as God's people and the life of Jesus on earth. The Lord's Supper cannot be separated from that context or understood apart from it.

On the one hand, its inauguration comes at the climax of God's dealing with his people. That began with his call of their forefather Abraham, their delivery from slavery in Egypt, and God's covenant with them at Mount Sinai, continued in their life with him in the Promised Land, and culminated in the life and work of Jesus as the promised Messiah. The Lord's Supper marked God's time for a new Passover for all people and a new exodus from death to eternal life with him. Since it is part of that long story it must be understood in the light of all that God did and promised to do then; all the holy meals that God provided for his people in the Old Testament foreshadowed this most holy of all holy meals, just as the earthly service of worship that God instituted for his people at Sinai foreshadowed their participation in the heavenly service of the new covenant with the risen Lord Jesus as its high priest (Heb 10:1).

On the other hand, the Lord's Supper was inaugurated at the climax of the life and work of Jesus by his sacrificial death for all people. It was the hour for the completion of his mission on earth, the mission that his Father sent him to accomplish. We cannot therefore isolate that meal from all the teaching of Jesus about himself and his heavenly Father, his work of helping and healing people in need, and all the other meals that he shared with many different kinds of people. These meals prepare us for that meal; they culminate in his Last Supper with his twelve apostles on the night before his crucifixion (Matt 26:20; Mark 14:17; Luke 22:14) and his meal with two other disciples on the road to Emmaus on the evening of Easter Sunday (Luke 24:28-32).

But the story of the Lord's Supper did not end there. He told the apostles and their successors to celebrate that holy meal regularly and communally with their assembled fellow disciples. Jesus located its subsequent celebration in the life of the church from his resurrection to his reappearance in glory at the end of that age in human history. He continues to host the Lord's Supper for and with his disciples to deliver the benefits of his sacrificial death to them.

In Acts 2:42 Luke refers to the liturgical context for the celebration of the Lord's Supper after Pentecost by those who had accepted the gospel and had been baptized. He gives us this report about their involvement in common worship: "They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and the common offering, the breaking of the bread and the prayers" (author's translation). These four communal acts are the four main components of the new service of worship in the early church. They describe the congregation's reception of God's word and the Lord's Supper and its consequent reaction to receiving them. Thus "the teaching of the apostles" is coupled with "the communal offering," and "the breaking of the bread" is coupled with "the prayers." Each of these is qualified by a definite article to show that they are familiar, technical terms which do not require any further explanation by Luke for his readers.

The first of these communal acts was the teaching of the apostles. This term includes two things-the reading of selected passages from the Old Testament and their use of them to teach the gospel of Jesus as the crucified and risen Christ (Luke 24:27, 44-47). Readings from the Gospels and the Epistles were later added to the readings from the Old Testament in what was later called "the service of the word."

The second communal act, which was associated with the proclamation of God's word by the apostles, is usually translated as "fellowship."2 In Greek it describes a common possession, a common relationship, or, as in this case, a common act. In this context it most likely describes the presentation of a common offering. That is how it is used elsewhere in some passages in the New Testament (2 Cor 8:4; 9:13; Heb 13:16).3 Thus in 2 Corinthians 9:13 Paul commends the members of the congregation in Corinth for the generosity of their "contribution," their common offering for the relief of impoverished Christians in Jerusalem. This interpretation is supported by the subsequent note in Acts 2:44 that all the believers had all things "in common."

The third communal act was "the breaking of the bread." For Luke this was the technical term for the communal celebration of the Lord's Supper as a unique sacrificial meal (Luke 24:35; Acts 2:42; 20:7). This name for that meal recalls what Jesus did when he instituted the Sacrament (Matt 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19; 1 Cor 11:24), and how he is still present at every celebration of this meal as its unseen host (Luke 24:30). Taken together with "the teaching of the apostles," it recalls Luke's description in 24:13-35 of the disclosure of the risen Lord Jesus to the two disciples on the evening of Easter Sunday in two stages, first by his proclamation of himself from the Old Testament, and then by acting as their host at their evening meal.

The fourth communal act was the devotion of the congregation to "the prayers," which flowed from "the breaking of the bread" and was associated with it. The use of the rather unusual plural indicates that this does not just refer to a single prayer but alludes to the full range of corporate prayers.4 It includes the Lord's Prayer and other liturgical prayers such as Maranatha (which means "Our Lord, come," from 1 Cor 16:22), the chanting of psalms and the singing of hymns, as well as intercessory prayer for the church in all places,...