Communion

Baptism is the sacrament of Christian initiation; the Lord’s Supper (also called Communion or the Eucharist) is the sacrament of Christian growth and development. Both are vital. The early Christians were well aware of this and valued both highly, including regular gatherings to eat and drink in remembrance of Christ. Here again we are often impoverished by our own tradition. The very names used for it in Scripture hint at the breadth of meanings in this most wonderful sacrament. The Lord’s Supper takes us back to the upper room (1 Cor. 11:20). The breaking of bread alludes to the familiar action of beginning and having a meal (Acts 2:42). Holy Communion indicates a joint participation in the body and blood of Christ (1 Cor. 10:16). Eucharist (meaning “thanksgiving”) speaks of blessing God for all that Jesus has done for us (1 Cor. 11:24; Didache 9.1). (Mass, though somewhat obscure in etymology, probably means dismissal of the congregation into the world for ministry and mission. Mass is not a New Testament term, though the idea of sending out certainly is.)

Communion in the Early Church

Most early Communions did not take place in a church at all but in a home (see Church in the Home). People would begin to appear in the early evening with materials for a potluck supper. They greet one another. They are happy and relaxed; work is over. All are on one level here, men and women, Roman citizens and commoners, slaves and free. Lamps are lit. Couches are set. Feet are washed. They have a meal, reclining around a courtyard or squashed into a room. They share news. Someone produces a musical instrument, and they begin to sing. Indeed, they create new songs, snatches of which are to be found in the New Testament, like “Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” (Ephes. 5:14) or “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come” (Rev. 4:8).

Meanwhile someone brings out the church box, which contains their most precious Christian belongings: some sayings of Jesus or perhaps a letter from an apostle. The praise is heartfelt. Speaking in tongues might well follow. There could be prayer for a healing or a specific need of one of the members. Certainly prayer, the reading of an Old Testament Scripture, the recitation of a story about Jesus and some words of encouragement from members of the community, along with joyful singing, will all feature. And as the evening comes to an end, they tell again the story of Jesus’ passion and break bread and drink wine in remembrance of him. Every scrap is finished. The prayer that Jesus taught them is recited. They move around and embrace one another with a holy kiss and then go home. All very simple. No service books. No priests. No altars. Every eye is on the unseen Lord, the bread, the wine and each other. And then—out into the night, spiritually refueled for the journey of the coming week.

What Is This Meal?

There have been many speculations. Some have seen the meal as a haburah, a special religious meal held by a group of friends. Others have sought to show that it derived from a kiddush, a Friday-evening family gathering to prepare for the sabbath. Still others have looked to pagan sources for this meal. But the clue to understanding this meal lies in the Passover of the Old Testament, as 1 Cor. 5:7-8 makes plain: “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival.”

A Passover with a Difference

The biblical scholar Joachim Jeremias persuasively demonstrated this Passover background to the Communion in his book The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, and all subsequent scholarship on the subject has been beholden to him. He points out eleven elements in the account that substantiate this Passover background. For example, the Last Supper took place in Jerusalem; it extended into the night; it was a small, intimate gathering; the participants reclined instead of sitting; a dish preceded the breaking of bread; wine, an essential at Passover, was drunk; the words of institution are an adaptation of Passover haggadah; Judas went out, ostensibly to give to the poor—a Passover custom—and so on.

Jeremias piles up the evidence that the meal was an anticipated Passover. He then deals with ten objections. There are two he does not handle. One is the absence of any mention of a lamb. Was this due to the compression of the account as Christians recited what was special about that Passover? Was it because they saw Jesus as the Passover lamb? We may never know. The other of Jeremias’s omissions was an explanation of how the annual Passover celebration turned into the weekly (or even more frequent) Christian celebration. The frequency was probably due to the well-remembered fact that the Master had made a point of eating regularly with his disciples. They had regular common meals, but all subsequent communal meals were impregnated with the meaning of this awesome night, repeated often, at his express command.

All four Gospel accounts, despite their different nuances, are agreed that Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, spoke interpretative words over it and gave it to his disciples. It is beyond the scope of this article to study in detail this meal that gave rise to the Holy Communion, but the following factors are of great importance.

First, this complete meal extended for a long time. Our accounts cover only the special Christian differentia in this Passover meal; the bread and wine were only selections from a much fuller mealtime together.

Second, the annual Jewish Passover was not a sacrifice but the memorial of the first Passover, which certainly was a sacrifice when the lambs of Israel died and their blood was painted on the door lintels to avert the angel of wrath. Equally, the Christian Eucharist is not a sacrifice but the memorial of that great sacrifice when the Lamb of God shed his blood to avert judgment on a sinful world.

Third, the words body and blood, clearly a pair, lead us back in Aramaic to the only pair that Jesus could have used: bisra udema. Both are sacrificial words. Each denoted violent death. They point to Jesus’ sacrificial death on the morrow.

Fourth, by giving his disciples the bread and the wine, Jesus gives them a share in the benefits of his atoning sacrifice, just as the Israelites who ate the Passover lamb shared not in making the sacrifice but in its benefits—rescue from bondage and death in Egypt. This is how sacrificial language came to be applied to the Communion. Properly speaking, it is not a sacrifice but a dramatic, concrete fresh appropriation of Jesus’ atoning sacrifice and a means of enjoying its benefits.

Fifth, the change in the explanatory words about the Passover is truly amazing. Normally the presider would (in obedience to Exodus 12:25; Exodus 13:8) take bread and say, “This is the bread of affliction which your fathers ate in the wilderness.” Imagine the electric atmosphere when Jesus, presiding, says, “This is—my body, given for you.” In Aramaic the saying would have gone like this, “This—my body . . . ,” leaving it open whether representation or identity was intended (an issue that has divided Catholics from Protestants for centuries). Then Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

The word anamnēsis, “remembrance,” does not mean mere mental recollection, as we Westerners would interpret it. To the Semitic mind it meant re-presentation. The Jews were accustomed to saying at Passover, “This the Eternal did for me when I went out of Egypt.” They saw the past as in some way made contemporary. Similarly, Jesus seems to have intended his disciples at the Eucharist to see his death as in some way made contemporary, however many years ago it happened. Here in this service I see afresh before my very eyes what the Eternal did for me to bring me out of a bondage and a doom far worse than those which befell the Jews in Egypt. The broken bread and the poured-out wine not only dramatically reminded the early Christians of what Jesus did for them on the cross; it also showed them that this historical event has present power and relevance. They could enter into the experience to which it referred, sharing in the benefits of his death and resurrection for them.

The blood is as significant as the bread. The Passover blood was originally applied to the houses of the Israelites and brought salvation, rescue from the destroying angel who killed the first-born of the Egyptians. That is why wine (to recall the blood) was an essential part of Passover. The benediction before the “cup of blessing” in the Passover specifically praises God for that deliverance from Egypt and the covenant with his people. The praise that followed had Psalm 116 as its core, a psalm that spoke of gratefully receiving the cup of salvation. So profound associations were combined here: the blood, the covenant, the exodus, the vicariousness, the cup and the appropriation.

Sixth, the shocking language was intentional and was remembered. To eat human flesh and to drink blood were expressly forbidden in Judaism. We need to take seriously both the metaphorical and the realistic significance of this language. We feed on Christ in our hearts, really feed on him. But we do so by faith.

The Meaning of the Meal

Set in this way against the backdrop of the Passover, both historically and theologically, the depths of the Lord’s Supper begin to become apparent.

The Passover had a backward orientation. The first Passover was a sacrifice. Indeed, it was the sacrifice that constituted Israel as a people. Succeeding Passovers were not sacrifices, though they might loosely be called such, and they had no expiatory significance. Their purpose was not to take away sins. But they brought that original sacrifice powerfully before the worshiper. It is like that with the Communion. Not a sacrifice in itself, it is the representation of Jesus’ sacrifice, and we feast on the benefits he won for us through it.

The Passover has a present orientation. The first Passover had been a meal to strengthen the Israelites for their march from the land of bondage to the land of promise. This element was reenacted annually. The theme of God’s constant care and provision for them is prominent in the account of God’s mighty rescue, recounted at the meal. The eating and drinking formed a sacred bond between the worshipers; one can see from Psalm 41:9 how heinous was the breaking of such table fellowship. It was the same with the Lord’s Supper. It too has the effect of binding together all its participants into one (1 Cor. 10:17). Its fellowship cannot be violated without the most heinous sin and disastrous consequences (1 Cor. 11:19-20, 27-30). And the Lord’s Supper too strengthens pilgrims for the journey, for it feeds them on the body of Christ (1 Cor. 10:16), and he is their nourishment and sustenance (John 6:51).

The Passover had a future orientation. It prefigured the ultimate feast of salvation as well as being the re-presentation of deliverance from Egypt. Passover would be the night when the Messiah would come. “On this night they were saved, and on this night they will be saved,” mused the rabbis. This forward look is integral to the Christian Passover, the Eucharist. In Luke’s account (Luke 22:7-23) it is stressed almost to the exclusion of all else. It is also there in Matthew and Mark and in the allusive language about the “true” bread and vine in John’s Gospel. It is notable in 1 Cor. 11:26, and the cry Maranatha (“Our Lord, come”; 1 Cor. 16:22 NRSV) was probably used at the Lord’s Supper, as we learn from the post-New Testament writing the Didache (10.4). Just as the Passover was the pledge of the coming of the messiah, so the Eucharist is the pledge of Jesus’ return and of the messianic banquet toward which every Communion points.

The Significance of Regular Communion

No wonder this is the central meal for Christians, the service important beyond all others. For it is the archetypal symbol of our redemption, past, present and future. We will grow deeper and deeper in its appreciation until we taste it new in the kingdom of God. This is especially the case if we ensure that our gatherings for the Lord’s Supper are regular, contain all the features that characterized the early Christian celebrations and, when appropriate, have the form of an actual meal (see Church in the Home; Eating). Our Master knew what he was doing when he left just two sacraments to his church—baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Both are incandescent with all the colors of salvation’s rainbow. The one points to its once-for-allness and its need to govern the dying and rising life of Christians. The other calls and empowers for persistence on the journey, as pilgrims climb the upward path. It lifts our eyes to the Lord, our bread and vine, and it points us toward God’s wedding banquet, when Christ will marry his bride, the church, forever, and there will be no more sorrow, no more crying, no more death. We shall see his face and share his likeness.

» See also: Baptism

» See also: Church in the Home

» See also: Eating

» See also: Fellowship

» See also: Sacraments

» See also: Worship

References and Resources

R. Banks, Going to Church in the First Century (Beaumont, Tex.: Christian Books, 1990); W. Barclay, The Lord’s Supper (London: SCM, 1967); M. Green and R. P. Stevens, New Testament Spirituality (Guildford, U.K.: Eagle, 1993), portions quoted with permission; J. Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus (London: SCM, 1970).

—Michael Green