The Feast of Faith - The Meaning of Communion (Part One)
Reading: 1 Corinthians 10:1-4, 14-22; 11:1-2, 23
Eating and drinking are rarely viewed as merely utilitarian, as something we do simply to satisfy hunger and thirst to fuel our bodies. We tend to prepare our food for consumption and expect it to be pleasing to our eyes and palate. Eating and drinking typically mean more than simply ‘filling up.’ We might feel honored to be invited to a Formal Dinner at a prominent venue or a Birthday Party for a loved one (and equally displeased if we were left out!). We might refuse to eat with someone because of our displeasure over something they’d said or done, just as we might expect a first date to include something to eat or drink; it’s how we get to know one another.
Eating and Drinking have always been viewed as social activities, as something done with others to further and deepen relationships, open communication, celebrate important milestones, and remember life-changing events. In some cultures, eating and drinking are also viewed as deeply spiritual: it is by eating and drinking that one communes with a god or spiritual power. In that sense, it is a sacred activity.
In fact, all of these ideas are deeply Biblical. The Bible is full of feasting from first to last. God creates us as hungry omnivores and sets the creation before us to both cultivate and consume. He forbade the fruit of only one tree, and in short order, it was exactly that fruit that was consumed, leading to our death. Adam and Eve ate themselves to death. It’s no wonder that God’s saving actions included a sacred meal. For instance, God instituted the Passover, a family gathering to drink wine, eat Lamb, bitter herbs, and unleavened bread at the table. By gathering for Passover, Israel ate its way to life. Jesus established the New Covenant through a meal with his disciples, a Passover gathering for ‘The Last Supper’ that became ‘The Lord’s Supper’, reminding his disciples of his sacrificial love and his future return. That final scene in the drama of redemption is described in Revelation as ‘the marriage supper of the Lamb,’ and so quite literally, from beginning to end, the Bible is a record of feasts of life and death.
It’s in the awareness of these realities that we see that eating is deeply spiritual while at the same time being obviously material. Reflecting on the meaning of food and drink, we note relationship development, communication, remembrance, celebration, beauty, inclusion and exclusion, life and death, and blessing and judgment. All of these are present in what we call ‘Communion,’ ‘The Eucharist,’ or ‘The Lord’s Supper,’ and this is true in our personal relationship with God and our common relationship with one another.
In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul takes up the idea of hidden spiritual realities involved in eating and drinking. Christ, he writes, was the Rock from which the water flowed for Israel in the wilderness, and God was the source of the Manna they ate. The people all ‘ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink’ (1 Cor 10:3-4).
Then, in 1 Corinthians 10:14-22, Paul notes the connection between the Pagan Temple ‘communion’ and the spiritual entities behind this. Christians are to ‘flee from idolatry,’ and that will mean that they can’t have communion with the false gods and the true and living God at the same time: they’re going to have to decide at whose table they will find their food. This eating and drinking is no empty ritual. To eat the Pagan Temple food after offering it to an idol is to be communion with demons. The seen and tasted food is a vehicle to fellowship with unseen darkness. Paul writes that Christians have a meal, a table from which we eat, and that meal offers ‘communion’ with Christ himself. The Lord’s Table is not an empty ritual but is, in fact, a meal that bridges the seen and unseen. The bread and wine the believer receives is a vehicle God uses to nourish our union with the Savior and one another.
Here is how the Westminster Confession describes the meaning of The Lord’s Table:
Our Lord Jesus, in the night wherein he was betrayed, instituted the sacrament of his body and blood, called the Lord's Supper, to be observed in his Church unto the end of the world; for the perpetual remembrance of the sacrifice of himself in his death, the sealing all benefits thereof unto true believers, their spiritual nourishment and growth in him, their further engagement in and to all duties which they owe unto him; and to be a bond and pledge of their communion with him, and with each other, as members of his mystical body. WCF 29.1
Five Great Purposes of the Lord’s Table
Remembrance (anamnesis: the opposite of amnesia)
Sealing of Benefits to true believers
Spiritual Nourishment and Growth
Further Dedication (engagement in) to the Duties we have as believers
Bond and Pledge of Our Union with Christ and Each Other
One Great Mystery
Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements in this sacrament, do then also inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually, receive and feed upon Christ crucified, and all benefits of his death: the body and blood of Christ being then not corporally or carnally in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are to their outward senses. WCF 29.7
The Bread and Wine remain Bread and Wine - they are SIGNS
When consumed in faith, Christ himself is received
He is as present spiritually as the elements are physically
Another Reformed Confessional example of these truths is the Scots Confession. Here is its declaration concerning Sacraments and the Lord’s Supper:
As the fathers under the Law, besides the reality of the sacrifices, had two chief sacraments, that is, circumcision and the passover, and those who rejected these were not reckoned among God's people; so do we acknowledge and confess that now in the time of the gospel we have two chief sacraments, which alone were instituted by the Lord Jesus and commanded to be used by all who will be counted members of his body, that is, Baptism and the Supper or Table of the Lord Jesus, also called the Communion of His Body and Blood.
These sacraments, both of the Old Testament and of the New, were instituted by God not only to make a visible distinction between his people and those who were without the Covenant, but also to exercise the faith of his children and, by participation of these sacraments, to seal in their hearts the assurance of his promise, and of that most blessed conjunction, union, and society, which the chosen have with their Head, Christ Jesus.
And so we utterly condemn the vanity of those who affirm the sacraments to be nothing else than naked and bare signs. No, we assuredly believe that by Baptism we are engrafted into Christ Jesus, to be made partakers of his righteousness, by which our sins are covered and remitted, and also that in the Supper rightly used, Christ Jesus is so joined with us that he becomes the very nourishment and food for our souls. Not that we imagine any transubstantiation of bread into Christ's body, and of wine into his natural blood, as the Romanists have perniciously taught and wrongly believed; but this union and conjunction which we have with the body and blood of Christ Jesus in the right use of the sacraments is wrought by means of the Holy Spirit, who by true faith carries us above all things that are visible, carnal, and earthly, and makes us feed upon the body and blood of Christ Jesus, once broken and shed for us but now in heaven, and appearing for us in the presence of his Father. Notwithstanding the distance between his glorified body in heaven and mortal men on earth, yet we must assuredly believe that the bread which we break is the communion of Christ's body and the cup which we bless the communion of his blood. Thus we confess and believe without doubt that the faithful, in the right use of the Lord's Table, do so eat the body and drink the blood of the Lord Jesus. - The Scots Confession, Chapter 21
Apostolic Tradition - 11:1-2, 23
Here, Paul notes that he has ‘passed along’ certain matters to the Corinthians. The noun ‘traditions’ used in 11:2 appears as a verb 11:23 when Paul writes ‘delivered to you.’ The word ‘tradition’ refers to practices - actions - that Christ gave to his Apostles to give to (to ‘tradition to’ or ‘pass along to’) the Church. Long before the ancient Christians had a New Testament, they had baptism and the Lord’s Supper, two ‘traditions’ or ‘passed along from Christ’ actions that identified and strengthened the Christian community. Paul praises the Corinthians for keeping the Apostolic tradition, but as we will soon see, he does not praise them for the way in which they do so. In fact, he will write that their observance is an undoing of what Jesus gave to his people, and that is something they will have to change.