The two essential elements of an assembly’s worship are the Word and sacrament, especially the Lord’s Supper. We receive from the Lord light and bread, including truth about the food. The thing that connects them both is faith, and I’d like to brine that subject a bit longer.
Consider our upcoming national holiday. There are many who will sit at a table, masked and in their worried mind, who will eat some turkey stuffed with anxiousness. The word thankfulness will be on their lips but their hearts will nag them about the fraud of it all. Their joys are all in temporal things, and it is hard in 2020 to pretend that temporal things are dependable things. It will not be sufficient to reread about the pilgrims and the founding fathers because we have shot their wad. Theirs is a story of freedom, and there is some sense of possibility in the story, but the fear is that their story (was racist and/or) is finished.
When we come to the feast of the Lord’s Supper we have a different story to remember. The story does have history of struggle and sacrifice, but the commemoration meal includes news of how what happened guarantees what will happen. It is a story, along with a meal, of promise. The prophets who anticipated the coming and suffering of the Messiah were joined by apostles who anticipated the re-coming and conquering of the Messiah, along with the called and chosen and faithful.
We do not eat the bread of anxious toil, but the bread of quiet trust. The Lord builds the church, the Lord watches over His people, and He gives joy to His beloved. We know it because of the Word, and we know that all the words of God will be fulfilled (Revelation 17:17). That’s a promise, and so we feast.