Spiritual Formation and the Lord s Supper: Remembering, Receiving, and Sharing 1 MEANS OF GRACE How does God work to change our lives? For centuries, God s people have answered this question by pointing to what have often been called the means of grace. God works His transforming power in our lives through three principal means: Scripture, prayer, and sacrament. First, the living God changes us through the Word of God written, read, proclaimed, applied, spoken, counseled, taken to heart, believed, obeyed, and lived out. Second, the listening God changes us in and through our prayers, as we seek Him, seek mercy, seek wisdom, seek His kingdom. Third, the tripersonal God changes us through His gospel sacraments Holy Baptism and Holy Communion. DIFFERING APPROACHES Even though both baptism and the Supper call us to deeper and deeper unity we are baptized into one Body, we are to eat together at the same table conflicts over these rites have gone on for centuries. As a church, we hold to the basic sacramental theology espoused in the Reformation era by John Calvin, Martin Bucer, Thomas Cranmer and others the theology reflected in such documents as the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Thirty-Nine Articles. Therefore, we believe that the sacraments are more than mere symbols; in fact, we believe the Holy Spirit uses the sacraments as instruments through which He draws us ever closer to Christ. Eugene Peterson, in his wonderful theological reflection upon the book of Revelation, has much to say about the importance of Holy Communion. At one point he comments that the Lord s Supper is the primary way that Christians remember, receive, and share the meaning of our salvation. We are firmly convinced, this three fold approach is profoundly insightful and clearly biblical. In this short article, we want to unpack those three terms remember, receive, and share as we seek a better grasp of the life- changing power of the Holy Communion REMEMBERING OUR SALVATION First of all, in the Lord s Supper, we remember what Christ has done for us. On the night before His suffering and death, our Lord took bread and wine, gave them to His disciples and said, Do this in remembrance of Me words now engraved on communion tables in evangelical churches across the land. In the Supper, the people of God are to remember what God has done for us and for our salvation in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is a short summary and adaptation of Spiritual Formation and the Lord s Supper: Remembering, Receiving, Sharing by Craig R. 1 Higgins (Senior Pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church) which originally appeared in the Journal of Biblical Counseling - Summer 2006. The full article can be purchased through ccef.org
We have a tendency to forget all His blessings, especially His blessing of Salvation. We forget that God so loved the world that He planned its redemption and sent His Son. We forget that Jesus loves us so much that He would rather die than live without us. We forget that the Holy Spirit is a flame of love, working to transform us into the image of Christ, into the person the Father created us to be. How badly we need to remember! In response we give Him thanks. Therefore, the Lord s Supper is a time when we come together to remember Christ s offering of Himself on the cross, and in response, to offer our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. Hence one of the historic names given this sacrament by the church is the Eucharist, from the Greek word for thanksgiving. RECEIVING OUR SALVATION In the Eucharist we also receive the meaning of our salvation. In fact, we believe we can go so far as to say that, in the Eucharist, we receive Christ. One of the sad truths of church history is that believers have often been divided over questions of theology. Can we speak of the real presence of Christ in the Supper? If so, in what way is He present? Which of the confusing theological terms (transubstantiation, consubstantiation, receptionism, memorialism, symbolic instrumentalism, etc) should we accept and which should we reject? The warning to those who would walk the road of studying theology is that there are many minefields along the way. Without entering into all these debates, it seems to us that Scripture does not allow us to see the Eucharist as merely symbolic as only a devotional aid that helps us remember what Christ has done for us. Of course the Supper calls us to remember and to give thanks; We ve already tried to make that point clear. Yet the Scriptures seem to teach so much more. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul attempts to reform that church s divisive and self-centered practices in worship, including their celebrations of the Eucharist. Divided along cultural and socioeconomic lines, their communion services were doing more harm than good (1 Cor. 11:17). In fact, he says, When you come together, it is not the Lord s Supper that you eat (11:20)! This blatant division in the midst of what should be a time of community worship is, in fact, dangerous. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep (11:30). Why does the Supper have this spiritual power both for good and for ill? In the previous chapter, while speaking of the spiritual danger of sacramental participation in the worship of demonic idols, Paul makes it quite clear: Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? (10:16). The word koinonia as used by the apostle is translated participation, communion, sharing, or fellowship in various translations of the Bible. In his paraphrase, The Message, Peterson puts it like this: When we drink the cup of blessing, aren t we taking into ourselves the blood, the very life, of Christ? And isn t it the same with the loaf of bread we break and eat? Don t we take into ourselves the body, the very life, of Christ? That captures Paul s usage of koinonia very well indeed.
This understanding of Holy Communion is also reflected in John 6:25-59, the long exchange regarding Jesus as the Bread of Life. When Jesus questioners asked for a sign, mentioning Moses giving the people manna while they were wandering in the desert, Jesus responded by saying that it wasn t Moses, but God, who gave the people bread from heaven. When they asked for this bread, Jesus says, I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me will never go hungry, and he who believes in Me will never be thirsty (v. 35). He goes on to say, I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world (John 6: 48-51). When His critics responded with incredulity, Jesus response was in even stronger terms: I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is real food and My blood is real drink. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood remains in Me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent Me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever. (John 6 53-58) In this passage we learn what the Lord s Supper is all about: We need more and more of Jesus life in us! We need all the Jesus we can get! In the Reformed tradition to which we owe much of who we are, we have historically taught that the eucharistic bread and wine, while remaining bread and wine, are not only symbols that represent the body and blood of Christ, but also instruments of the Spirit through which we who are trusting in Christ receive the body and blood of Christ. The Westminster Shorter Catechism teaches that in the sacraments Christ, and the benefits of the new covenant (note not merely the benefits, but Christ Himself) are represented, sealed, and applied to believers. John Calvin wrote, I freely accept whatever can be made to express the true and substantial partaking of the body and blood of the Lord, which is shown to believers under the sacred symbols of the Supper. At the end of the day, however, this is a mystery. Calvin said that it is a secret too lofty for either my mind to comprehend or my words to declare. And, to speak more plainly, I rather experience than understand it (Institutes 4.17.32) SHARING OUR SALVATION In the Lord s Supper, we share the meaning of our salvation. We have a tendency, as Americans, to get wrapped up in the individualistic nature of the Supper. But the Scriptures are quite clear that the Father, in Christ, through the Spirit, is at work saving, not merely individuals, but a community. As Paul says, Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her (Eph 5:25).
The Anglican theologian Eric Mascall taught that since man is in his essence a social being that in consequence, his restoration must be not merely an individual putting of himself right with God but his insertion into a redeemed community. Eugene Peterson emphasizes it this way: The meal does more: it maintains the social shape of salvation... We do not customarily, or if we can help it, eat alone. We come together with others, with family and friends. We demonstrate basic courtesies at the table. It is the place we learn consideration and forgiveness. It is also the place to which we invite strangers, hospitality being the means by which we bridge suspicion and loneliness, gathering the outsider into the place of nurture and acceptance. The table incorporates the evangelistic thrust of salvation that Jesus insisted upon: And men will come from east and west, and from north and south, and sit at table in the kingdom of God. (Luke 13:29) The Holy Communion constantly calls us to practice biblical community. The Supper challenges us to live out the social dimensions of the gospel. At the Lord s Table we share the salvation life that is ours in Christ. A BETTER CHRIST? In the Eucharist we don t receive a better Christ how could that be possible? but we do often receive Christ better. One of the great Scottish pastor-theologians of the Reformation era, Robert Bruce, understood this well: It is certainly true that we get no new thing in the Sacrament; we get no other thing in the Sacrament, than we get in the Word. For what more would you ask that really to receive the Son of God Himself? Your heart can neither desire nor imagine a greater gift than the Son of God, who is King of heaven and earth... Why then is the Sacrament appointed? Not that you may get any new thing, but that you may get the same thing better than you had it in the Word. How does the Lord s Supper form us into the image of Christ? It is a blessed mystery beyond our rational capacities to grasp but perhaps we need to remember that God desires not only to inform our minds but also to sanctify our imaginations. As we come to the Lord s Table, may God renew our minds and revive our imaginations that we may more and more fully experience more and more fully remember, receive, and share His love for us in Christ.
Bibliography Eugene H. Peterson, Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John & the Praying Imagination (New York: Harper, 1988). Brian Gerrish, Grace & Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993). Robert Letham, The Lord s Supper: Eternal Word in Broken Bread (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2001) Gordon T. Smith, A Holy Meal: The Lord s Supper in the Life of the Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005) Leonard J. Vander Zee, Christ, Baptism and the Lord s Supper: Recovering the Sacraments for Evangelical Worship (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004). Keith A. Mathison, Given for You: Reclaiming Calvin s Doctrine of the Lord s Supper (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2002). Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q&A 92. Emphasis mine. John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion Lesslie Newbigin Our Baptism Renewed in Bread and Wine, Reform, July/August 1990, 18. Eric Mascall, Christ, the Christian and the Church (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1946), 79. Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society, 20th anniversary edition (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000)