With this piece we reach the final part of the âRethinking Churchâ series. The topic is such a controversial one â some might say itâs been the most divisive and controversial issue in the whole history of the church â that Iâve been putting it off. However, itâs time to stop prevaricating, take the bull by the horns, face the music, and confidently mix my metaphors. In this piece we are going to look at the Lordâs Supper, also called the Eucharist, Communion, or the Mass.1
I grew up in Baptist / independent evangelical churches, which tend to be more informal when it comes to communion. For example, I never went to a âMidnight Massâ service on Christmas Eve throughout my entire childhood. In fact, I think the first time I went to a midnight communion was at my old church, once I was ordained. My abiding memory of those services was not simply the fact that it was very late and I was very tired, but that you would often see people coming out to them who you wouldnât see the rest of the year. I began to realise that some people â not many, but a few â had the idea that coming to Midnight Mass was their annual offering to God. In their minds they a deal with God â theyâd basically ignore him the rest of the year, but so long as they came to Midnight Mass it was fine.
Itâs hard to know how common this view is, but itâs undeniable that large parts of the church see the Lordâs Supper as just about the most important human activity we can engage in. For example, Calvin Robinson â coming from the Anglo-Catholic perspective â once said: âEverything revolves around the Mass, the source and summit of the Christian faith.â Priests in Catholic and Anglo-Catholic churches will usually celebrate Mass on a daily basis, and there are a number of days of obligation when Catholics are required to attend Mass (and not to attend is a sin, unless there is a very good reason).2 Even churches which donât see the Supper in this way do still view it as some kind of high point in the life of the church â itâs hard to get away from.
As Iâve been preparing for this piece, Iâve tried to read from a variety of sources about the Lordâs Supper. One of the things which has struck me is that itâs very difficult to see past the traditions which have developed in the last two thousand years. A lot of what Iâve read (in my opinion) has been coloured by the traditions we have in our churches. It seems to me that one of the biggest problems here is seeing the Bible through the lens of our own experiences and preferences. Part of the problem is that the Bible really doesnât get too specific about what the Lordâs Supper should look like in practice, leading to lots of variation over the years. Itâs easy to read the Bible and see oneâs own tradition in it, without thinking about what alternatives there might be.
So, what weâre going to do here is take a very brief look at the Bible to outline a few principles about the Lordâs Supper. This is not going to be a full Biblical study, which would be well out of the scope of a short post like this. Instead, what I want to do is take a birdâs-eye-view and see if there are some principles which we can learn about what the Lordâs Supper should look like.
If youâd like to read the whole Rethinking Church series, here are the links to all the previous posts:
The Lordâs Supper in the Bible
The importance of a meal
One of the first things to understand about the Lordâs Supper is that⌠itâs a supper â a meal! This is something which itâs easy to overlook with the traditional ways that churches celebrate â a scrap of bread (or wafer) and a tiny sip of wine is hardly what I would call a meal.3 Not to mention the fact that most churches celebrate the Lordâs Supper in a âserviceâ (see part five of this series for why I donât use that word) rather than in the context of a meal.
While I was researching for this piece, I found this article on the Bible Project website which is a very helpful look through the whole Bible about the significance of meals in Scripture. I like that it traces the theme back to creation, then on to the Passover and Israelâs feasts, and then on to Jesusâ meals.
What struck me is the fact that meals are not simply something you do â like sleeping or walking. Thereâs a deeper, spiritual, significance to meals. Think of Revelation 3:20, a verse which Holman Hunt made famous in his painting The Light of the World:
Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.
The thing which most most people remember about that verse is the standing at the door and knocking. But it goes on to say, for anyone who hears and opens the door, the Lord himself will come in and eat with them. The metaphor of eating together was chosen intentionally: the Lord coming to eat with us has profound spiritual significance. It means we share fellowship (or âcommunionâ) with him⌠it means we know him.
And thatâs the thing about meals: eating together is all about fellowship. You donât tend to eat with people you donât like â you definitely wouldnât (willingly) invite them over to your house for a meal. If you invite someone round for a meal, itâs a gesture of love and friendship. This is why the early church held âlove feastsâ (Jude 12), which were most likely meals where the church got together to eat and celebrate the Lordâs Supper.4 Eating together and sharing the Lordâs Supper werenât separated into two separate categories. Maybe this is why there is some ambiguity in the New Testament about the meaning of the words, âbreak breadâ (as in Acts 2:42) â whether it means âto eat togetherâ or âto share the Lordâs Supperâ. Maybe we have introduced a distinction which the early church did not have.
The point here is that eating together is not something tangential to the point of the Lordâs Supper. The Supper reminds us that we, the church, are bound together through Christâs body and blood. When we come together to celebrate, Christ is not absent but right there in our midst (Matthew 18:20). What happened to the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus is a good image â the two disciples meet Jesus, and recognise him when he breaks the bread at their meal. I donât think this is meant to be the first Lordâs Supper, per se, but rather a picture of Christ coming among us and eating with us. Even though we donât see him with our eyes, that doesnât mean he is any less present.
In my opinion, one of the greatest mistakes of the modern church is to separate the Lordâs Supper from a meal. Most churches today donât eat together very often, and when they do itâs usually a separate from taking bread and wine. The Lordâs Supper is celebrated as part of a âserviceâ; meals are eaten at other times. Why this disconnect? The Lordâs Supper was originally within the context of a meal: the synoptic gospels make it clear that the bread and wine were taken during the course of the meal.5
Iâve mentioned fellowship several times already in this section, so letâs move on to think directly about that.
The importance of fellowship
This point is very much related to the previous one, but I think itâs worth making it explicit. The whole point of eating together is that we share fellowship. As Iâve said several times through this series, Christ did not come to make us a âteam of individualsâ. He came to form us into a new people, a new society. The church is not made up of private individuals, each with their own separate relationship with God but not to one another. We donât come to church with our own private agendas that have nothing to do with one another. As God calls us into relationship with himself, he calls us into relationship with one another.
The Lordâs Supper is supposed to be not simply an expression of each believerâs individual relationship with the Lord, but rather a celebration that the risen Lord is in our midst. It should be a joyful expression of a Christ-centred community.
This is why Paul needed to write as he did in 1 Corinthians 11:17-34. The problem was that the Christians in Corinth were not eating the Lordâs Supper, even though they were taking bread and wine. He says:
So then, when you come together, it is not the Lordâs Supper you eat, for when you are eating, some of you go ahead with your own private suppers. As a result, one person remains hungry and another gets drunk. Donât you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God by humiliating those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you? Certainly not in this matter!
1 Corinthians 11:20-22
The Christians in Corinth thought they were celebrating the Lordâs Supper, but they werenât. The reason, Paul says, is because the way they went about it didnât demonstrate love for one another. In fact, the way they were going about things actually caused humiliation for some of them. Paulâs overall point is that we canât claim to be taking the Lordâs Supper if the way we are going about it does not demonstrate the fellowship we have with one another.
I think this is an extremely important point for us to take on board in our individualistic culture today. As Iâve said on numerous occasions throughout this series, many Christians today see church as being a vehicle for them to express their own private faith in God. Many, perhaps most, Christians donât see church as about loving others. You can see this in many ways, including the way churches go about the Lordâs Supper: itâs not like sharing a meal in the ordinary sense. People take the bread and wine, quietly sitting on their own (or kneeling at the rail), thinking about their own sins and their own spiritual life, while barely giving a thought to anyone else.
Perhaps this is an exaggeration, but in my experience of church this is normal: people simply donât connect their own sins with how they treat others in the church. They think of their own sin as occasionally doing the wrong thing, rather than thinking of sin primarily as falling short in our duty to love others â especially fellow Christians. âFellowshipâ for many Christians is a quick chat over coffee after the service before getting back to your own life. Obviously this affects everything about church, as Iâve been trying to highlight throughout this series. However, perhaps the greatest issue is with the Lordâs Supper, which is supposed to be an expression of our fellowship in and through Christ.
I wonder what Paul would have to say to the church today? Would he say to us today that we are eating the Lordâs Supper or not? This brings us to the final point.
The details are (relatively) insignificant
One of my biggest takeaways from this series is that God has given the church a large degree of freedom when it comes to how the church operates. We as Christians are supposed to love one another and help one another, and God has given the church pastors and teachers to help people understand the Bible and build their faith up in that way. When we meet together, we should be loving one another and helping one another. But within that, there are no hard and fast rules about how many times we should meet, where we should meet, what we should do when we meet, and so on. As long as weâre loving one another, the details donât matter.
Itâs the same when it comes to the Lordâs Supper. How often should we celebrate? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Yearly? And what exactly should we do when we do take the bread and wine? These details are simply left for us to fill in.
Perhaps God did this intentionally because he wanted to teach us an important lesson. He wanted us to learn that fellowship with Christ and one another is more important than the specifics of how we share the Supper. As Paul said, if you take bread and wine but donât truly share fellowship with others, âitâs not the Lordâs Supper that you eatâ. Itâs a bit like the Old Testament Israelites offering sacrifices at the temple without their hearts being in it. As Hosea put it:
For I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.Hosea 6:6
If there is the presence of Christ through the Holy Spirit, and true love for one another, that matters far more than holding a weekly ceremony where bread and wine is distributed. What would God have to say to churches today who are strict about celebrating the Lordâs Supper every week, yet do not âlove one another deeply, from the heartâ (1 Peter 1:22)?
I do not say this because I think churches shouldnât bother to celebrate the bread and wine. But rather, perhaps God has made the details somewhat sketchy because he doesnât want us to miss the main point. We canât take the Lordâs Supper if we do not recognise Christâs presence with us every day. We canât take the Lordâs Supper if we donât seek to obey Christ every day. We canât take the Lordâs Supper if we donât embrace what Christâs sacrifice means for how we live with one another.
Conclusion: Getting back to the reality
Something that Iâve been finding all the way through this series is that churches today have outward rites and ceremonies â such as the Lordâs Supper â but they are often lacking the inner reality.
If God is saying anything to the church right now, itâs this: stop focussing on the outward ceremonies and start focussing on the basics once again. Submit to Christ as Lord in every area of your life. Seek to obey him every day, in everything â put him first. Love one another, in the power of the Holy Spirit. If we focus on these things, perhaps the other problems with the church will right themselves.
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The names donât have any particular theological significance apart from the Mass, which usually denotes the Roman Catholic understanding. Outside of the Catholic and Anglican traditions (e.g. Baptist churches), âCommunionâ seems to be the most common. I believe the early church came to favour the term âThe Lordâs Supperâ, which Cranmer also used in the Book of Common Prayer, so this is the name I will use primarily.
I find it hard to understand the mindset of people who think that attending Midnight Communion was an obligation for them, but didnât seem to think that coming to church the rest of the year was an obligation. To my mind this just goes to show that people will believe all sorts of strange things, which is why itâs important to ensure that people are taught properly.
The mischievous part of me wonders whether Matt Hancock would call that a âsubstantial mealâ, but letâs leave that there for nowâŚ
I discovered that these were significant enough for Wikipedia to have a whole entry on them!
Mark 14:22 and Matthew 26:26 both say explicitly the Lordâs Supper occurred âwhile they were eatingâ.