Month: November 2011

We thank God that the hour has already come where we don’t concern ourselves with worshipping on Mt. Gerizim or Mt. Zion (see John 4:16-26); neither location would be convenient for us. Fellowship with God is not limited to one particular place. Worship, though, still has particulars. He is a particular God, not a pluralistic God. We come to the Father only through His Son, the Messiah.

In particular, the Messiah has come and we have fewer reasons than ever to wonder about God’s promises. The Messiah has come and we who believe are no longer outside the covenant blessings. The Messiah has come, obeying the Father in perfect righteousness and offering Himself as a sacrifice for our unrighteousness so that we are no longer in our sins. We worship the Father because of the crucifixion and resurrection of the Son. We don’t worship what we don’t know.

So we remember, we celebrate, and we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes as we eat and drink at this particular table. None of us deserve it. We may not have had five divorces, but we were all spiritual adulterers, quenching our soul thirst some other place than the fountain of living water. By His wounds our failed and faulty lives have been healed. Now we eat the bread and drink the cup, having been exposed as broken sinners and having been saved by Him who bore our particular sins.

Every Lord’s day when our church celebrates communion, I pray twice. We normally don’t do that at home, praying once before the meal and then again in the middle of it. In this practice we are following Jesus’ pattern with two prayers of thanks.

Paul wrote, “on the night he was betrayed, [Jesus] took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, ‘This is my body which is for you. do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also he took the cup” (1 Corinthians 11:23-25; see also Luke 22:19-20). I understand “in the same way also” to refer to giving thanks. The account in Matthew makes it clear. After giving His disciples bread and eating together, “He took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them” (Matthew 26:26-27; see also Mark 14:23).

Giving thanks happens in two places, before eating and before drinking. This is why the Lord’s supper is sometimes called the Eucharist.

In our day, usually only the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox refer to this ordinance by the name of Eucharist. That’s too bad we have to carry so much vocabulary baggage around with us. The word eucharist comes from the Greek word eucharisteo which means, “I give thanks,” the word found in all four passages above. The noun form, eucharistia, means “thanksgiving.”

We have a thanksgiving feast 53 times a year, with only one of those scheduled for a Thursday. Our family meals this week should be different because we’ve been practicing eating with sinners, eating with those who aren’t like us, eating with those who annoy us, eating with those who don’t deserve love, because we don’t either. What brings us together is the grace of Christ, and He invites all who believe to eat at His table. That’s a reason to give thanks.

All the ones believing in the Son see life. All the ones not obeying the Son remain under God’s wrath. When Christians come to the Lord’s supper we see the emblems of both life and wrath.

The bread and the cup symbolize the body and blood of the Lord. He took on flesh and lived among us. More than that, He took on our sin and bore God’s wrath in the flesh. He was wounded for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities. The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. It was the will of the Father that the Son pour out His soul to death and be numbered with the sinners, with us, the objects of God’s righteous judgment.

The table reminds us of the wrath deserved by us. The table also reminds us that Christ took our wrath and there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace. With His stripes we are healed. This is why He came from heaven, died on the cross for our sins, was buried, and was raised on the third day. By His knowledge we are counted righteous. We are His offspring, His children. Out of the anguish of His soul He sees and is satisfied.

So we who receive His testimony see and are satisfied. By the Spirit’s work, we have life. By faith, we see life. By grace, we eat and drink life. Christ, the Righteous, has brought us to God and we commune with Him. If we believe, our iniquities, our guilt, our sorrows have been taken away. God didn’t rewrite history. God gave us life, forgiving us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us, nailing it to the cross. Come, take, and eat this meal of remembrance because wrath has been satisfied and we see life.

One theme we keep repeating during our communion is the depth of the ditch of self-examination; we’re never quite sure when to stop digging, when we’ve hit the bottom. Eating and drinking in an unworthy manner warrant’s God’s discipline, so we ought not to come to this Table casually, let alone under the impression that God invites us due to our credentials. Nevertheless, we fall into the ditch when we can only think about ourselves. Our attention here, and our affections, belong on someone else.

This is the problem of any idol. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul warned against the example of idolatry that Israel set. The people served the idol of indifference, sitting down to eat and drink and rose up to play. They served the idol of sensuality, indulging in sexual immorality. They served the idol of self, grumbling and complaining about their circumstances. They were tempted in ways we all are, ways that are common to man. But He won’t let us be tempted beyond our ability, He will also provide a way of escape.

Paul then exhorts believers away from idolatry and explains how to do it. “Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. 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? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” In other words, we topple idols by communing with Christ and with each other at this Table.

Week by week, as we commune with Him, we decrease and He increases. We become what we eat, though, of course, in His world, that doesn’t happen overnight. But it does happen, as sure as night becomes day every morning. He is conforming us into the image of His Son. He is building up the whole body, uniting us and purifying us for our wedding day, for the marriage supper of the Lamb. We look to Him as we eat His flesh. We wait for His return as we drink His blood. He gets all our attention here and, as that happens corporately, we are made like Him and united in Him.