'As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup': the Lord's Supper and the heart of the Christian Faith
1 Corinthians 11:26
“For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” [1]
Since Saint Paul penned these words, only a few decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper has been celebrated by Christians in a vast array of diverse circumstances.
In ancient basilicas, grand cathedrals, and humble parish churches.
On battlefields, in prisons, and at hospital bedsides.
In the face of bitter persecution; in the midst of secular indifference; and at the coronation of monarchs (most recently, the coronation of His Majesty the King).
In times of peace and times of war; in times of celebration and times of grief.
In large, cosmopolitan cities, at the very heart of political, economic, and cultural life; and in small, quiet villages, very far from the centres of power.
In each of these circumstances, in all of these circumstances, the Sacrament has been celebrated and, in the signs of bread and wine, the saving death of Our Lord Jesus Christ has been set forth … proclaiming that the saving, forgiving, reconciling, gracious love of God in Christ Crucified is present in each and every circumstance; each and every time; each and every human experience.
As Saint Paul would famously declare in another of his epistles: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord”. [2]
This is why Christians have celebrated the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper in all circumstances, all contexts: for in the bread and wine, the love of God in the Crucified Lord is set before us, given to us, assuring us that - in each and every circumstance, each and every context - we are loved, forgiven, reconciled, justified, redeemed by the Cross of Christ.
“For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
When we consider the vast array of diverse circumstances in which this Sacrament has been celebrated over the centuries, we are also confronted with the reality of the different Christian traditions.
The Eucharist has been celebrated by the great Orthodox churches of the East, with their ancient liturgies.
It has been celebrated in venerable Roman Catholic monasteries, soaked in prayer and faithfulness over many, many years.
It has been devoutly celebrated in plain Presbyterian kirks in the west of Scotland.
And it has been celebrated according to the noble words of the Book of Common Prayer in Anglican parish churches.
With these differences have come disagreements and disputes - sometimes in our past, scandalously and shamefully, violent disagreement and dispute, as Christians have persecuted one another over different understandings of this Sacrament.
This is entirely contrary to Our Lord's purpose in instituting the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper on the same night that he prayed “that they all may be one”. It also rejects the teaching of Saint Paul, who stated the Sacrament gave expression to the church’s unity; he wrote, “we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread”. [3]
That the rich variety of Christian traditions have different, even contrasting, ways of articulating the gift that is the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper should not be a cause of angry dispute.
Jeremy Taylor, a great theologian of our Anglican tradition and a bishop of this diocese in the mid-17th century, a time of heated and violent debate between Christians, said of this Sacrament, that we are “to walk charitably with our disagreeing brother, that this may indeed be a sacrament of charity, and not to wonder if he be mistaken in his discourses of that which neither he nor you can understand”. [4]
Whatever our differing theological perspectives, in each of the great Christian traditions, the words of Saint Paul - “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” - describe what occurs when this Sacrament is celebrated: we are all brought before Christ Crucified, set before us in the signs of bread and wine, the One who is our forgiveness, our salvation, our redemption.
There are two pictures which might help us see this. The first is an 1890 painting by the Hungarian artist Istvan Csok. It is of the Lord’s Supper in a village church in the Hungarian Reformed tradition. The minister is in a plain black robe, the villagers are standing around the Lord’s Table, receiving the Sacrament.
The second is a photograph of Cologne Cathedral in March 1945, the final weeks of the Third Reich. The city has recently been occupied by US forces. The cathedral has been badly damaged in the fighting. Rubble from bomb damage strews the floor. The windows are blown out. And a group of perhaps twenty US soldiers are kneeling as Mass is celebrated at the cathedral’s altar.
The circumstances of each picture are vastly different. One is a simple village church; the other a grand cathedral.
One is the simplicity of the Reformed tradition; the other, the rich Latin liturgy of the Roman Catholic tradition.
In one, the ordinary concerns of village life at the end of the 19th century: the harvest, being a good neighbour, domestic matters. In the other, the heavy cost of defeating the evil of Nazism; of comrades fallen in the fields, villages, and towns of north-west Europe; of the grim news from liberated concentration camps.
Great differences, yes. But, in each picture, the Lord’s saving death is being proclaimed in the signs of bread and wine in the Sacrament.
And this brings us to the church’s centre, the very heart of the Christian faith: the events we are commemorating on these great days - Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Day.
It is these events which define the Christian faith: Our Lord’s saving death upon the Cross and His glorious Resurrection.
Whenever we gather for this Sacrament, as bread and wine are set before us upon the Holy Table, as Our Lord’s words are heard - ‘My body given for you, my blood shed for you’ - as solemn thanksgiving is offered, we are brought again and again to the saving events which define Christian faith, which are the church’s centre, which make us Christians.
In all the circumstances of life; in all of our diverse experiences; and in the rich variety of Christians traditions … we are all, always, brought by this Sacrament to the centre of the Christian Faith, to Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Day: to God’s redeeming love in Christ Crucified, always forgiving us, always reconciling us, always healing us in heart and soul, always renewing us in Christ.
“For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
__________
[1] From the Epistle appointed for Maundy Thursday in BCP 2004, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26.
[2] Romans 8:38-39.
[3] 1 Corinthians 10:17.
[4] Jeremy Taylor, 'The Worthy Communicant' 1.V.4.
[5] BCP 2004, Holy Communion Two, Great Thanksgiving Prayer 1.
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