Worship Old and New Part 4: The Lord’s Supper as the Story of Jesus

Bible Readings  [ ]  = not preached

Luke 22:14-22 1 Cor 11:27-34

Introduction  https://youtube.com/watch?v=25p1TBuRIwU&si=b1e0D-OREXTknuUW

A well-known Evangelical teacher prophetically spoke of the Lord’s Supper, “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/). The devil treats the Lord’s Supper so seriously because he treats the words/commands of Jesus, literally, “I have desired with desire[1] to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. Do this in remembrance of me.”” This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 20 And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” (Luke 22:15, 19-20; 1 Cor 11:24-25). Biblically, what God speaks comes into being. Despite the Church’s statements that she accepts the authority of Scripture[, and especially of Jesus[2],] the infrequency of Communion in many churches indicates a loss of faith[3]. One reason for the decline in Eucharistic practice is our ritualisation of the Supper of the Lord, we have turned what was originally a real meal  in an ordinary home into a “religious” activity. [The original context of the Lord’s Supper was the Last Supper/Passover]. Limiting Communion to a set and inflexible ritual that must be led by an ordained minister in a special building on a certain day has disempowered the words of Jesus. Not to be concerned about such things is a sign of our serious spiritual decline.

For centuries the differences over the meaning of the Lord’s Supper have divided the Church like almost nothing else[4]. If you are a Catholic a Church without the eucharist as they understand is no church at all, whilst several Protestant groups (Salvation Army, Quakers) don’t celebrate communion at all. [I recall an Anglo-Catholic clergyman 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.” 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?] Jesus has not diminished his passion to meet with his people in his Supper.

The real issue [isn’t about anything I have mentioned so far, such as the advisability of frequent liturgical practice, but an alteration of what is called a]is the paradigm/worldview of how we interpret the Holy Communion.[ On one level we must accept that bread and wine over which the words of the Son of God are spoken “do this is memory of me”, can no longer be understood as “things”/objects to be mechanically manipulated in order to attain a certain outcome. They are holy objects whose being set apart in relation to Jesus (“consecrated”) carry the significance of his own pledge, “for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth” (John 17:19) and point us exclusively to Jesus as Son of God and sacrificial Lamb. In fact, in contrast, but not contradiction, the obvious physicality of the Lords Supper, with elements that are see, touched, smelled and tasted[5],] the “sacrament” [see footnote 6] occurs in the sphere of the last days/eschatological to which Jesus pointed when he said, “I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” (Matt 26:29).

Eschatology: the Work of the Holy Spirit

As I tried to explain a couple of weeks ago, liturgical and sacramental[6] time is not ordinary time. [Luther once said to the humanist Erasmus, "Your thoughts about God are all too human".] The key to seeing the Lord’s Supper [as Jesus sees it] is to understand it as an act of God who by the power of his Spirit fulfils what he promises (Calvin)[7]. When a liturgy starts with “lift up your hearts” the leader of the gathering exhorts us to raise our hearts to Jesus is in heaven where we are already with him (cf. Col 3:1-3), this simple exhortation is designed  to move the centre of our being (Prov 4:23) from the created world to God’s place above[8]

The Spirit has been sent down from heaven (1 Pet 1:12) with the divine authority of the ascended Lord to lift us up to share with Jesus in his communion with the heavenly 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,] means Jesus is with us 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 (cf. 2 Cor 3:18)] 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, but] grounded in the Supper’s [visible, audible and sensory] visualization [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.]

Remembrance and Re-enactment

Whilst Eucharist calls us to live in the realm of miracle, much of the Church has de-supernaturalised the sacraments. At the time of the Reformation, followed later by most Baptist, Evangelical, and Pentecostal (which, given their elevation of the miraculous is quite surprising) traditions, Protestants reaction to [medieval] transubstantiation[9] wrenched the Eucharist from its supernatural nature by giving it the status of a memorial which is something WE do. The principal action moved from a heavenly dynamic to one within the life of the worshipper. This places the emphasis on human responsibility [incompatible with God’s ongoing initiative in Incarnation][10]. The attempt to explain by reason the changed significance of the bread and the wine moved our focus away from Christ to us! In a [mistaken] intellectualised Protestant worldview baptism becomes my testimony of faith and eucharist becomes what I do to remember Jesus.   [ Trinity, creation, incarnation, atonement, resurrection and Second Coming become bare facts[11] to be believed  and] mystery and relationality are lost.] That Communion is really about God’s initiative  becomes clear when we probe the biblical origins of Jesus words,

In Exodus (12:14) we read that 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 used throughout the Old Testament to teach each generation of God’s people that they were personally involved in God’s saving acts of the exodus from Egypt.  Every generation was immersed in God’s mighty deeds in the past which were by divine provision 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. Moses commands (the passage from Deuteronomy in particular is after the death for the exodus generation),  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 by divine promise into the power of the foundational nation-shaping events.

In the new covenant context, our “remembrance” in Eucharist (anamnesis) reminds God of the action which he has performed through his Son’s suffering, death, and resurrection and links us through faith to the entire history of salvation. “In Jesus’ words the new end time order of salvation is established, in which the kingdom of God, the resurrection of the dead, and the transformation of all things dawns” (Peter Brunner). We participate in God’s mighty deeds as a present reality. Such  “remembrance” is a spiritual reality that takes us into the realm of miracle and it 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 in Eucharist “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; 9:1ff; 30:22; 40:14; Ex 32:13; Deut 9:27; Ps; 105:8 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”.

 

The typical Protestant/Evangelical/Pentecostal way of “doing communion” emphasising our remembering the cost of Jesus sacrifice, usually with sadness or quietness, in a way that 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 to his grace in our own strength, this is] It is a works – oriented rather than a grace – oriented understanding and experience of the Lord’s Supper[12].

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? But what actually happens in the Lord’s Supper. In what way is Jesus really present in his Supper? [Again, the focus is on Jesus, in his High Priestly action corresponds to the humanity to God movement of Incarnation.]

Presence to Bless[13]

Any discussion about the “real presence of Jesus” in the Lord’s Supper,[ a space in which his sovereignty is supreme,]  begins with recognising that the ascension means Christ has physically left the space-time of this world (Acts 1:9-11). In his “Today”[14], there is nothing between God and humanity[15] except himself [16]. [Jesus is the “primal sacrament”] the relation between God and humanity in Christ fills the sacrament with significance so the Eucharist is a primary means by which the Lord gives himself to his Church[17].

God infallibly and faithfully acts with favour towards the doer of actions directed to him in faith (Acts 10:4)[18]. A Christian congregation meets to make “ἀνάμνησις/anamnesis/ “remembrance”, of the crucified and risen Christ in the power of his perfectly acceptable sacrifice so Jesus is present in our midst in his living reality (cf. 1 Cor 5:4).  The once-for-all full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice and offering of Christ becomes newly present through the Eucharistic remembrance/ anamnesis[19]. The real presence of Jesus confronts the Church with the purposes of God realised in the new creation in Christ in signs which convey “the powers of the age to come” (Heb 6:5)

There is no sort of mystical change in the elements of bread and wine when consecrated by a priest at the so-called moment of consecration. Our longing for deeper fellowship with the glorified Lord happens through his 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.]

“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 Eucharist we increasingly grow n the revelation of what Christ’s death and resurrection means to God and what it means to God is EVERYTHING: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, until Jesus returns. In the presence of Jesus, 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. The whole (past, present and future) Jesus is present to us at his Supper. This is a most sober reality.

Presence to Judge

Do you remember this fearsome passage: “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)

A friend once said that if the Lord was still dealing with us as he did there Early Church there would be bodies all over the place. When we think of the infrequency of healings in the Western Church, I see his fears are in fact being fulfilled.

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.

Paul’s language in 1 Corinthians (cf. 5:1-5) is some of the strongest language in the New Testament about the power of the final judgement breaking into human experience before the End. Such eschatological irruptions were needed because the Lord’s Supper was part of an ordinary meal, and whilst the rich believers were gluttonising the poor had nothing to eat, then they were coming together to celebrate their unity in the Spirit around the table of the King. With such anti-kingdom of God hypocrisy the Lord was sending sickness and death into their midst. But 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 killing in the same meetings and they couldn’t discern it was all from him !

[If today you intentionally ran a women-only, or a rich only, or a black/white/Chinese only, or poor, students, lawyers, tongues-speaking, fundamentalist only Lord’s Supper 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 see at the Lord’s Supper today?

Fellowship/Communion

Our holy communion consists in the uniting of the Church in space-time with the holy communion of God and humanity embodied in the ascended and glorified Jesus. Through Eucharist we see ourselves inside God’s all saving story in Christ in creation Fall incarnation death resurrection ascension church kingdom new heavens and earth. “The worshipper at the Eucharist is himself present in the Upper Room, on Golgotha, in the Garden of Resurrection, at the Golden Altar before the heavenly throne…)  even now are present at the marriage-feast of the Lamb [read this twice]” (Richardson). Amazing in its truthfulness!

“The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are cone body, for we all partake of the one bread.” (1 Cor 10:16-17). Such   a corporate sharing of a common salvation means sustaining unity. “The Eucharist is given to the Church to be the sacrament of unity; it is that by which the Church becomes what it is, namely, one body in Christ.” (Richardson). In Eucharist we experience an echo of the joyful worship around the enthroned Lamb of God in heaven, where Christ clothed with his gospel is in the centre, we are lifted up through the power of the Spirit to worship the one triune God  clothed with his promises and acts anticipating end-times hope.

Conclusion

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. We should expect all the results of gospel proclamation at Communion – conversions, healings, deliverances etc. as well as acts of judgement. A congregation which understands and experiences the Supper as the real presence of Jesus in the Spirit will long increasingly for his Second Coming. (Is this happening?)

[As the earthly Body of the 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) and so] we are touched by the prophetic dynamic of Isaiah, “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 glorious inheritance in Christ (1 Cor 15:54).

[Participation in the heavenly worship (Rev 8:3 cf. 6:9; 9:13) at once the eschatological anticipation of and participation in the worship of heaven.]

[Unlike any other practice, the Eucharist opens up the panorama between the death/resurrection of Jesus and anticipating the future deliverance of his Return inaugurating of the new creation. No wonder Satan and his evil hosts hates the celebration of the Lord’s Supper and has expended tremendous energy to prevent our doing it the way Jesus said. A theologian once said, “It (Holy Communion) is constitutive of the Christian community itself, and where there is no Eucharist there is no Church of Christ.” (Richardson) Taken literally, most of the Church would be non-existent, but nothing about the Lord’s Supper should be confined to the limits of literalness. With the help of the Spirit of Jesus we need to see that the Eucharist celebrates the fulfilment by the New Adam of the original mandate to the first Adam to rule “all things”; this is the majestic cosmic vision that breaks down the reigning dualisms between heaven and earth, space-time and eternity, sacred and secular, work and worship. The sacrament ultimately anticipates the restoration of the world order in unhindered relation to God by affording the church real contact with Christ’s own fully healed humanity in which is contained “the restoration of all things” (Acts 3:21 cf. Matt 19:28).]

We can approach the Lord’s gift of his Supper tonight as a actual proclamation of the gospel just as real as when we first heard and believed[20] [it isn’t the bread and wine in a passive sense that communicate Christ, but the taking, breaking, pouring and sharing[21] [22]. This is what perpetually dynamises the Christian life so we live already as full citizens of the world to come (Phil 3:20)