Worship - Supper of the Lord

The following comments accompany Chapter 18 of Batsell Barrett Baxter's book, The Family of God.  This chapter discusses the Lord's supper as one of the five elements of Christian worship.

At some point in history the word "communion" became a complete substitute for the idea of observing the Lord's supper.  Someone said to me once that he didn't need to attend worship, because he could have communion with God in his home.  I knew what he meant.  The word "communion," while still referring to the Lord's supper, had come to mean a different thing, something that could be done anywhere, in a variety of ways.  Maybe he had an answer for this too, but I wondered how he could take part in the Lord's supper by himself at home, by his own choice, while his church presumably met to take part in it together.  Of course that doesn't make sense.  We come together to break bread in the supper of the Lord.  We commune, but we do it by observing the supper.

Have you ever wondered how the bread and fruit of the vine happened to be in the presence of Jesus when He instituted the Lord's supper?  They were part of the passover meal that was prepared for Jesus and the disciples in the "guest chamber where [they] should eat the passover."  The meal consisted of a roasted lamb, unleavened bread, bitter herbs, and a drink referred to as fruit of the vine.  When Jesus made His points about the bread being His body and the wine being His blood, he used only two of the items.  Because these two relate back to the statements made by Jesus on that occasion, these are the elements of the Lord's supper.

The bread is without yeast.  The drink is grape juice, wine, or wine with water.  No one can authoritatively make a case for one meaning or the other in the phrase, "fruit of the vine," but there are some good reasons to minimize or avoid alcohol content in the observance.

We cannot find a place where Jesus said how often to observe the Lord's supper.  It is in the example of the early church, in places such as Acts 20:7, that we see it observed every first day of the week, and we fail to find it observed on any other weekday.  Yet, the fact that it is mentioned as a reason the church came together does not make it the only reason they met.

People have commented or behaved as if the Lord's supper was the entire sum of our worship.  Perhaps it is also because Jesus said directly, "Do this in remembrance of me."  Surely, of all the elements of worship, it can be the most intensely personal and central act of worship.  Yet, to discount the other things we do in worship and put this element on a higher pedistal can lead to a legalistic approach, in which we touch base on one thing while ignoring other important--and necessary--things.

There is a retrospective purpose for the Lord's supper, because we do it in Christ's memory.  Truly it is a living monument to a life and a sacrifice greater than any other one can name.  Also there is a prospective purpose for it.  We look forward to the Lord coming again, and as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, we proclaim His death "until He comes," looking forward to that day.

A lot of prayers have been lifted up through the years about whether we will eat and drink the Lord's supper "in a worthy manner."  Baxter points out that the passage in 1 Corinthians 11 that mentions this does not refer to some recent deeds that are wrong but what the person should and should not do while taking the Lord's supper.  Not thinking of Jesus and His sacrifice for us is what the passage warns against.  Having a problem with sin might cause someone to need to straighten it out before participating, but Baxter rightly remarks that such a person then needs to take part, to be strengthened by receiving what the Lord's supper provides to a person.

It is only when the practices of the church began to be "modernized" in denominational doctrine that the Lord's supper became anything other than a weekly observance.  The Biblical stand is to take part in it on the first day of every week, and that is what the church should uphold.  Baxter writes that it calls us back to the central facts of the Christian religion, and that is so very true.  May the church continue to honor this practice, "until He comes."