Observing the Lord’s Supper today must begin with understanding what exactly it is we are observing. No one says it better than Robert Farrar Capon:

Consider the scene in church on a Sunday. Here are a bunch of people, more or less dressed to the nines, in an expensive building, with maybe very spectacular music and even a paid choir, deliberately celebrating the worst thing the human race—which includes them—has ever done; the murder of God Incarnate.

The closest equivalent might be like celebrating the holocaust. Who would do such a thing? And yet in a sense, Christians celebrate the murder of God every time they take communion.

Capon may have overstated his case somewhat. For Christians are not so much celebrating what they have done to Jesus, but rather, what He has done for us. We are not celebrating that we killed Him. Far from it. We are celebrating that He came, and died, and most importantly of all, rose again from the dead, so that through Him, the entire world is forgiven of all their sin and eternal life is freely given to those who believe in Jesus for it. This is what we are celebrating.

And so one has to wonder if a five minute ceremony with a tiny cracker and shot-glass of wine is a proper celebration. It seems that something much grander, much more enjoyable, much more celebratory, is needed. Where the food and drink flow freely. Where there is laughter and smiles and the full enjoyment of life.

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While there is some mystery as to how the Last Supper—which was a Passover meal—transitioned into a weekly (or possibly daily) Lord’s Supper observance as part of a fellowship meal among believers, there is no mystery whatsoever around the fact that the Lord’s Supper was full supper.

The Lord’s Supper was actually a meal. The most surprising thing about this idea is that it is actually surprising to many Christians.

For over a thousand years, Communion, the Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper has usually entailed little more than a bit of bread and a tiny taste of wine or grape juice. The Lord’s Supper is no longer a supper; it has become the Savior’s Snacklet or the Nazarene’s Nibble.

But if there is one thing that is clear from the accounts in Acts, and the description in 1 Corinthians 11, the Lord’s Supper was a full meal. In Corinth, the problem with the Lord’s Supper was that some people were eating and drinking everything before everyone had arrived (1 Cor 11:21-22, 33-34). Some people were even getting drunk (1 Cor 11:21).

Paul instructs them to wait for one another, so that everyone can share in the food and drink, and if there are some who are too hungry to wait, then they should eat a little bit at home before they come to the Lord’s Supper so that it can be observed and enjoyed with everyone present (1 Cor 11:34).

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The first “Lord’s Supper” was actually a Jewish Passover meal (cf. Matt 26:17-30; Luke 22:7-23). A typical Jewish Passover meal involves lots of food and wine, with numerous symbolic items and actions during the meal. It commemorates the deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt, and through the meal, Jesus is showing that in Him, all the world is now delivered from slavery to sin and death. The worldwide Exodus occurs in Him.

In the Gospels, there is no instruction from Jesus that the church should continue to practice and observe this meal. And even if there was, the Apostles and the early believers would have understood Jesus to be referring to the annual Passover meal, rather than a monthly, weekly, or daily observance.

Transitions to a Regular Meal

Yet something happened in the early years of the church so that by the time Paul writes 1 Corinthians, it appears that the believers in Corinth are regularly gathering to observe something called “the Lord’s Supper” (1 Cor 11:20). There were problems with the way they were observing the meal, and so Paul provides some corrective instruction about this meal (1 Cor 11:17-34). As part of these instructions, Paul refers to the Passover meal which Jesus shared with His disciples on the night before He was crucified (1 Cor 11:23-26). So somehow, in the span of a few decades, the Lord’s Supper goes from referring to the once-a-year observance of Passover to being a more frequent meal of fellowship with other believers.

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The Lord’s Supper, or Communion as it is often called, is the second religious rite which churches would be wise to give up.

Not that we would actually get rid of it, but just as with baptism, we can look at the symbolism it had in the days of Jesus and the early church, and then find ways to resurrect and maintain that same symbolism today. So just as with the discussion about baptism, this section will progress in a similar fashion.

First, passages about the Lord’s Supper will be considered, followed by some brief suggestions for how the symbolism behind the Lord’s Supper might better be accomplished today. In this way, we are not doing away with the Lord’s Supper, but are allowing the way it is performed today to die a natural death so that it can be raised to new life and new meaning in the church today.

The Magic of Communion

Just as with baptism, the typical communion service today borders on the mystical and magical. This is especially true in some Catholic and Lutheran circles where the bread and wine inherit the actual (or spiritual) attributes of the body and blood of Jesus. I am not about to get into the complex history and debate surrounding consubstantiation (the Lutheran view) and transubstantiation (the Catholic view), except to say that both, in one way or another, see the bread and wine as becoming something more than just bread and wine, and in this way, the elements become holy and impart grace to the believer.

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In this series on baptism, we have seen that baptism is primarily a symbolic way of indicating a death to the past and the birth to a new life for the future. In our culture, water baptism may not be the best way to symbolize this change.

Yesterday I suggested cutting long hair as an example which might be culturally equivalent.

There are numerous other cultural rituals and symbols which could be used to indicate that a change has taken place in your life, and which would cause people to ask why you did it. Any visible, outward, public display which would cause people to ask why you did it and what it represented could accomplish the same purpose which water baptism accomplished in New Testament times. Water baptism indicated a death to the past and a new life for the future. So in our society, any action which indicates such a radical change could be seen as a form of culturally relevant baptism.

Alternatives to Baptism

Clothing. I have a friend who always wears black. All black, all the time. She is not gothic; she just likes black. One day she came in wearing a pink shirt. It was shocking. And of course, she got asked why. In the opposite way, if someone wears colorful clothing, and then starts wearing all white, or all black, people will ask why.

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Yesterday we looked at how new believers in other cultures could possibly symbolize their death and resurrection in Jesus through using the burial symbolism of their culture.

In western culture, there are two main customs on how to treat people who die: they are buried or cremated.

Burial Symbolism and Water Baptism

Water baptism is a decent picture of burial, but the image might be even better if rather than dress the baptismal candidates in robes of white, they dressed as we would a dead body, and maybe the symbolism could be enhanced if there was a burial procession on the way to the baptism, and if the baptismal tank looked less like a hot tub and more like a casket. These sorts of adjustments to water baptism would make the death, burial, and resurrection symbolism much more clear for the average viewer.

What might be really symbolic is to have an actual casket up on the stage, and have the baptismal candidate lay down in it in front of everyone. The lid is closed, and then after a short period, is reopened, and to everyone’s amazement, the body is gone! But then the person reappears at the back of the room and walks again to the front. This sort of thing is done all the time in magic shows, and while I don’t know how the magicians do it, if a church could pull this off, it would do a wonderful job symbolizing the death, burial, and miraculous resurrection of those who believe in Jesus for eternal life.

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