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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