The Power and Presence of the Lord’s Supper/Eucharist/Mass/Holy Communion Luke 22:14-23; 1 Cor 11:17-34
Introduction
For centuries the meaning of the Lord’s Supper has divided the Church with an intensity like almost nothing else. If you are a Catholic a Church without the eucharist would be no church at all whilst several Protestant groups (Salvation Army, Quakers) don’t celebrate communion at all. I recall an Anglo-Catholic saying, “As long as there is a priest and an altar there will be a church”. Then there was the Lutheran pastor “explaining”, why it’s “Lutheran altars for Lutherans only.” And as long as the Pope holds to the ruling that the mass is a sign of unity rather than a means to unity the Church will remain functionally divided. Should we worry that some churches replace bread with wafers, use leavened bread (Luke 22:7, 19-20), use grape juice instead of wine, use multiple cups and celebrate the Lord’s Supper infrequently (1 Cor 11:18) instead of following the format laid out in scripture?
When we started attending a Lutheran congregation, I was very mindful of their particular interpretation of who should take communion, so I respectfully abstained for some months. I believe that towards the end of that period Jesus shared with me something of his heart when he said, literally, “I have desired with desire to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. Do this in remembrance of me.”” (Luke 22:19; 1 Cor 11:24-25).
I agree with the man who said the confusion and division about the meal of the Lord is demonic in origin? “Satan fears an army of already-dead Christians, who are learning week by week to die… (they) cannot be stopped…(Satan) has expended tremendous energy to prevent our doing it (Supper) the way Jesus said to do it.” (James Jordan http://www.biblicalhorizons.com/rite-reasons/no-42-doing-the-lords-supper/)
Passover
The background for the Lord’s Supper is the Passover. That Jesus turned a celebration of the great saving event of the exodus into a meal about himself and his sacrifice to form a new covenant with all humanity is a very powerful statement of his identity.
In Exodus (12:14) the Passover is instituted as a “memorial (Heb zkr and cognates) day…throughout your generations”. This is the background for Jesus’ command, “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:29; 1 Cor 11:24-25). This language throughout the Old Testament taught each generation of God’s people that they were caught up into the dynamic of saving history. Every generation was immersed in God’s mighty deeds in the past which were real in the present and would be sustained in the future.
In the theology of the Old Testament the participants in the Passover meal were taken back to the event of the Exodus 8 You shall tell your son on that day, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.’…14 And when in time to come your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ you shall say to him, ‘By a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery….3 Not with our fathers did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today…. “When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord our God has commanded you?’…3 You shall eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days you shall eat it with unleavened bread, the bread of affliction—for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste—that all the days of your life you may remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt.” (Ex 13:8, 14; Deut 5:3; 6:20 ff; 16:3) Each generation is brought into the power of the foundational nation-shaping event.
In the new covenant context our “remembrance” (anamnesis) reminds God of the action which he has executed through his Son’s suffering, death, and resurrection and links us through faith to the entire history of salvation. We participate in God’s mighty deeds as a present reality. This “remembrance” is a spiritual reality which has nothing to do with emotional sentiments or intellectual speculations.
“Remembrance” re – actualises /makes real again what is remembered. We are there in the death and resurrection of Christ. The dominant action is from God to us, not us to God. The doing of the action “stimulates” God’s memory and his acts of memory are synonymous with his acts of intervention. (in biblical thinking when the Lord remembers he acts e.g. Gen 8:1; 30:22; 40:14; Luke 1:54 cf. Num 5:15; 1 Kings 17:18; Ezek 33:13-16). The “of me” in remembering Christ brings fresh communion with the Lord who carries in himself the reality of what we “remember”.
This means the typical evangelical Protestant and Pentecostal way of “doing communion” which lays an emphasis on our remembering the cost of Jesus sacrifice, usually with sadness or quietness, is unbiblical, individualistic, activist and subjective. It is too much about us and our powers of recollection and too little about what God has graciously completed for us already in Christ. God does not throw us back on ourselves to make our response in our own strength, this is a works – oriented rather than a grace – oriented understanding and experience of the Lord’s Supper.
If this much is clear, what actually happens in the Lord’s Supper. The reading of Christ’s “words of institution” and the symbols of bread and wine might be “visible words” (Augustine) to stir our faith up our faith but then what?
Presence to Bless
All discussions about the “real presence of Jesus” in the Supper begin with an acknowledgement that the ascension means Christ has left the space-time of this world (Acts 1:9-11). It is a mistake to believe in some sort of a mystical change in the elements of bread and wine when they are consecrated by a priest at the so-called moment of consecration. The answer to our longing for fellowship with the glorified Lord happens through the Spirit. The real “conversion” in the Lord’s Supper takes place in the hearts of the faithful where the Spirit resides (Ezek 36:26; Gal 4:6). Our death and rising in Christ mean we have a new heart where he lives by faith (Eph 3:17). The third Person of the Trinity is the key to the dynamic of our fellowship with God in Communion.
The ancient invocation at the commencement of all the rites for communion, “lift up your hearts”, is a Spirit-inspired prayer imaging the powerful reality that the Spirit has been sent down from heaven (1 Pet 1:12) with the saving authority of the ascended Lord to lift us up to share with Jesus in his communion with the Father (Eph. 1:20; 2:6; Col. 3:1-4). The Holy Spirit takes the Church to Christ in heaven. The Spirit was sent by Christ to the Church in order to bring the Church to Christ. To say Christ is “heavenly and spiritually present” to us in the Supper (Article 28 Anglican Articles of Religion) does not mean that Jesus is present in the sacrament like a ghost but in the power of the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Cor 15:44).
By speaking to us through his promises heard in the Supper week after week the Lord through his Spirit stirs up a lively faith by which we understand ourselves to be drawn into the reconciling love of the cross. The believer is in immediate contact with the power by which Jesus was able to offer himself up on our behalf, the energy of ‘the eternal Spirit’ (Heb. 9:14), and by which he was raised from the dead (Rom 8:11). To quote John Calvin, ‘Christ in His body is far from us, but by His Spirit he dwells within us and draws us upwards to Himself in the heavens, in such wise as He pours out upon us the life-giving power of His flesh’. There is a real fellowship between Christians on earth and Christ in heaven through the Supper and by the Spirit (Heb 12:18-24).
By faith through the Spirit we are taken into heavenly spheres and enjoy the heavenly feast where the Host is our beloved glorified Lord and Savior Jesus Christ seated at the right hand of the Father. Already, we share in the riches of the coming messianic banquet (Isa 25:6-8). This is not speculative or imaginary, it is grounded in the Supper’s visible, audible and sensory representation of the gospel: “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood/for the forgiveness of sins.” (Luke 22:20; Matt 26:28). All that “the cup” meant under the old covenant about divine judgement (Ps 75:8; Isa 51:17, 22; Jer 25:15-28; Ezek 23:31-34 cf. Mark 14:36) has been taken away through the poured out sacrificial blood of Christ (cf. Ex 24). These powerful realities look forward as much as backward.
“For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” (1 Cor 11:26 cf. Matt 26:29; Mark 14:25). Through this celebration we increasingly come to know what the death and resurrection of Jesus means to God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, until Jesus returns. The Lord’s Supper is an end-times/eschatological reality which puts us in touch with the powers of the end of the age (1 Cor 10:11; Heb 6:5). Through our union with Christ the believing Church lives both in ordinary space-time and beyond it. Called into being by the Word of the gospel of forgiveness the Church really becomes the Body of Christ reaching out to the Return of Jesus.
Presence to Judge
One of the most memorable communion services in my experience was when the pastor in the church exhorted us to make peace with anyone who we sensed in our hearts we had an issue with before we took communion, together. So, I went to pray with a brother who was astonished when I approached him, but I can tell you the presence of the Lord was powerfully in that meeting.
“For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. 30 That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. 31 But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. 32 But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.” (1 Cor 11:29-32)
This is some of the strongest language in the New Testament about the power of the final judgement breaking into human experience before the End. Why was it needed? Since in the early church the Lord’s Supper was part of an ordinary meal, the rich were gluttonising whilst the poor had nothing to eat, then they were coming together to celebrate their unity in the Spirit around the table of the King. Of course, with such hypocrisy God was sending sickness and death into their midst. Why did they need to be informed by Paul of what was actually happening? As I read 1 Corinthians, especially chapters 11 and 12, the Spirit was both healing and smiting in the same meetings and they couldn’t discern it was all from the one source! Does that sort of a thing still happen today?
I imagine that if you ran a women-only, or a rich only, or a black/white/chinese only, poor, students, lawyers, tongues-speaking, fundamentalist only Lord’s Supper intentionally you would certainly come under the judgement and cleansing of God. If all of this is so intensely spiritually real, what should we expect to happen at the Lord’s Supper today?
Response
The early church Fathers described the eucharist as “medicine of immortality” (Ignatius of Antioch) because they understood it to be a vehicle for our union with Christ and the healing of humanity in him. Given this, we should expect all the results of gospel proclamation at communion – conversions, healings, deliverances etc. as well as acts of judgement. And a congregation which understands and experiences the Supper as the real presence of Jesus in the Spirit would long for the Second Coming more and more.
Conclusion
As the earthly Body of the risen and ascended Christ the Church exists in a new relation to time and space and stands against the restless flow of decay which immerses this fallen world (Rom 8:20-21). Partakers of the Lord’s Supper have been touched by the dynamic of which Isaiah prophesied, “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. 7 And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. 8 He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.” (Isa 25:6-8). This is our inheritance in Christ (1 Cor 15:54). No wonder Satan hates the celebration of the Lord’s Supper and has expended tremendous energy to prevent our doing it the way Jesus said.
Our estimation of how passionately Jesus offers himself to us if far too weak. Don’t believe my teaching about this, discern what the Spirit is saying to the churches (Rev 2:7 etc.), test this teaching (1 Thess 5:19-21). Many of us here tonight need to pray and ask the Lord about these things lest we fail to receive the fulness of the grace offered.