What Are You Prepared To Do?

The Christian church has two sacraments that are given in the Bible and are foundational to its structure and existence; baptism and communion.  Of the two, only communion is commanded to be observed repeatedly by Christians.  Some churches observe this practice, which is also called the Lord’s Table, on a weekly basis.  Others do it annually or quarterly.  Any of those approaches is acceptable on the basis of holding to the letter of the biblical instructions.  The reason is that the Scriptures are silent on exactly how often Christians should observe communion.  1 Corinthians 11:26 merely says “For as often” as you do it.  It does not specify how often.  That decision is left up to the discretion of the individual church.  But regardless of how often communion is practiced, the undoubtable conclusion is that it is a custom that Christians are well acquainted with, having participated in it often. 

So when it comes to the task of preparing something to speak on about communion an interesting challenge to human wisdom presents itself.  As followers of Christ there should be an automatic interest in that which concerns Him and so a congregation should bring a high level of interest to the proceedings.  But beyond that what can one say that has not been said?  How can that which is so familiar be made fresh and exciting?  In answer to this very human concern a marvelous truth is made clear from Scripture.  1 Corinthians 1:18 tells the tale: For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.  The reality is this.  It is not the job of the preacher to make the Bible, or communion, or baptism, or any other facet of the Christian experience exciting.  The Spirit of God, residing in the hearts of believers, is quite capable of taking care of that on His own thank you very much!

That being said, I firmly believe that it is the job of the preacher to work diligently to present the gospel clearly and concisely and understandably.  If all Christians are charged with managing well those gifts that God has blessed them with, and if some are gifted to be preachers and teachers, then it is incumbent upon them to strive to be the best preacher or teacher they possibly can.  It is with this attitude that I approach the topic of communion.  My heartfelt desire is to consider what the Scriptures say about this sacrament and if possible present it in a way that would pierce through the carnality of hearts and minds in this affluent American culture we are both blessed and cursed with.

So, let’s begin by examining first the “what” of communion, or “what is it exactly that we are instructed to do?”  1 Corinthians 11:23-26 is particularly instructive here: For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed 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 He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.  The procedure is actually rather simple to follow.  We are to emulate or copy what Jesus did at the Passover meal with His disciples. 

He first took some bread, offered thanks to God His Father for it, and then shared it with the others (evidenced in the passage by the phrase “He broke it” which indicated that the bread was divided into portions for the purpose of shared consumption).  But then the Lord did something remarkable and new.  He attached symbolism to the usual task of eating a piece of bread by describing the bread itself as a representation of His body, which He knew was about to be broken and consumed just as bread is.  In this way Jesus elevated the breaking of bread, in the context of communion, from the mundane to the extraordinary.

After finishing the food Jesus turned His attention to drink.  The Scripture says that He attached symbolism to the unremarkable act of drinking a cup of wine in the same way He did the eating of bread.  In this case, rather than picturing His broken body, the liquid refers to His blood.  This blood, which in just a few hours was to run so freely and profusely all over the Lord’s body, is the basis of a Christian’s salvation.  This is so because it is the blood of a sacrifice that all the way back to the Mosaic Covenant given upon Mount Sinai confers a sentence of acquittal upon the guilty person who is standing before the judgment seat of God.

So by using His broken body and His shed blood as the symbols of communion Jesus was essentially telling us to commemorate both the physical act that He performed in subjecting Himself to torture and death as well as the grounds of our redemption in the matter of His blood which covers our sins.

It is this idea of commemoration that I want to turn our attention to now.  Having established clearly the guidelines of the Lord’s Table, I want to consider the “why” of communion, or “why are we instructed to keep this custom?”  Jesus said it this way: do this in remembrance of Me.  According to our Lord the point of communion is to recollect upon His work on the cross.  But what should that look like in actual practice?  I think that for most of us the word remember carries with it a mental image of thoughts alone.  When we say we are remembering a loved one who has passed away what we mean is that we are thinking about them.  Perhaps at the most we visit their grave and leave flowers.  Very rarely would we go any further than that in this act of remembrance.  If we attempt to remember a lesson that we learned in a classroom, again the image is that of thinking, perhaps strenuously depending on the difficulty of the topic or the time lapse between the present and when it was learned.

In contrast to this definition of remembrance, I want to suggest that what Jesus was calling for in the sacrament of communion is far deeper and more profound than what we would usually call remembrance.  To illustrate this I will use the Apostle John’s account of the last supper that Paul was describing in 1^st Corinthians.  But first let’s get some context.  All four of the Gospels contain an account of this evening when communion was instituted.  Matthew, Mark, and Luke all describe it in almost the exact same way.  For the sake of brevity I will use only Matthew’s account in Matthew 26:26-28: While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.” And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.  For reference the parallel passages can be found in Mark 14:22-24 and Luke 22:14-20.  They all sound very similar to Paul’s description in Corinthians.  But when we come to John’s gospel the evening is presented to us drastically different than the others.  John doesn’t mention the bread and cup.  Nor does he record the Lord giving the symbolism of body and blood.  In fact, the only mention of eating even found in John are a few offhand references in chapter 13 such as “during supper”, “got up from supper”, and the dipping of the morsel which is found at the end of the chapter.

Instead of the meal John focuses his attention on another aspect of that momentous evening; that of Jesus washing the feet of His disciples.  John 13:4-5 tells the tale: Jesus…got up from supper, and laid aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself.  Then He poured water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.  Try to picture if you can the astonishment and probably dismay on the faces of the twelve men with Jesus.  Here was their Lord and master, their rabbi, whom they had followed zealously for three years.  Here was the man they believed to be the Messiah and the Son of God.  Here was the one worthy in their minds of all worship and praise.  And what was He doing?  He was performing a menial task that one of the servants would typically have done.  He was doing something that clearly none of them were willing to do for each other, judging by the fact that their feet were still dirty even after supper had begun.  This was the guilt trip of all guilt trips, done almost without a word.

And the question begs answering.  Why would John the Apostle take such a hugely different direction in recounting this meal than any of his contemporaries had done?  What was the point he was trying to emphasize here?  Consider the following.  First, John states in chapter 20 verses 30 and 31 the reason his gospel was written: Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.  This tells us that every element of the work of Christ that John records for us was selected for the express purpose of demonstrating the deity of Jesus.  At each segment of the life of Christ that John put onto paper he contemplated how that particular incident or teaching or miracle could best demonstrate the Messiahship of Jesus.  Secondly, understand that the Gospel of John was written after all the others had been completed.  Some scholars suggest 30 to 40 years afterward, although it may have been as little as 10 years; we really don’t know for sure.  But what we do know is that John put his thoughts on paper while the other three gospels were already in circulation.

What does this mean?  I think it means the following.  When it came time for John to write down what happened the night of Jesus’s betrayal, I think he looked at what had already been written.  I think the Holy Spirit through him desired to shed light on a different aspect of that night.  I think there was a component of the evening meal that was still left to be revealed.  And I think John wrote his account in such a drastically different fashion to fulfill that goal.  What was the goal, or the point, that was being made?  Jesus Himself tells us starting in verse 12 of John chapter 13: So when He had washed their feet, and taken His garments and reclined at the table again, He said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you?  You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am.  If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.  For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you.  Truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.  The point of John’s version of the last supper was to demonstrate the work of Christ in a vivid and tangible way, just as he probably remembered it.  Further, he wanted it to spur us to attempt to emulate that example of our Lord just as He had commanded the twelve that very evening.

This is a principle that includes communion and then propagates itself out to every corner of our Christian lives.  As believers we are called to an active rather than a passive remembrance.  We are to be doers of the Word and not merely hearers, as James says in James 1:22-24.  It is completely insufficient for our remembrance of Jesus to be an intellectual activity confined to the insides of our heads.  James goes on to say that if this type of “hearing only” behavior is what defines you then you are like someone who looks at their face in a mirror, turns around, and immediately forgets what they look like.  I’m going to be blunt.  James is saying that if you hear but don’t do then you are an imbecile or an idiot.

Consider a husband on his wedding anniversary.  Do you suppose his wife would be satisfied if he goes all day long without saying or doing anything about what should be one of the best days of his life, and then as they are getting ready for bed he tells her that he thought all day long about their wedding and remembered it in great detail?  Of course she wouldn’t be satisfied.  It is not enough to talk about remembrance in the context of a wedding anniversary.  There must be an act to qualify and authenticate the remembrance.

Going back to James and the topic of Christian living, he says in chapter 2 verses 14 to 17: What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him?  If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.  What I am suggesting is that this observance of communion is designed to encourage us to solemnly think about the sacrifice of Christ and the blood He shed for us.  But the purpose of this thoughtfulness is to drive us to actively do that which will serve to give evidence of our remembrance of Him.

So the question I am laying before you is this.  What are you prepared to do?  What are you prepared to do to demonstrate your faith in the Lord Jesus?  What are you prepared to do to proclaim His greatness to a watching and dying world?  What you are prepared to do to prove your remembrance of His broken body and spilt blood?

Recently I was one of the people blessed with the opportunity to help pack up the belongings of a missionary couple that our church is sending to the mission field.  For over three years I have known what they were planning to do.  I have known intellectually that they were going to be leaving the United States and everything they had known, traveling to a foreign country, and beginning a new life there in full time ministry for the sake of the Gospel.  But as I stood there slinging boxes and lifting furniture, watching as an entire lifetimes worth of memories disappeared inside a 40 foot shipping container, the reality of what they were doing crashed in on me in a way that it hadn’t before.  They are giving up everything they’re familiar with, separating themselves from friends and family, limiting their opportunities to visit their grand-children, and venturing off into the unknown, all for the purpose of bringing glory to Christ.  The enormity of this decision landed on me with a tremendous impact.  And it forced me to ask of myself the same question that I am now asking you.  Again, what are you prepared to do for the sake of Christ and the remembrance of His sacrifice on your behalf?

Part of me wants to end with that question, because I am convinced it is a terribly important issue to resolve for each of us.  But I feel I would be remiss if I left this topic without presenting the dire warning given in Scripture for those who are to take part in communion, either in the immediate future or a bit further off.  This is what I am calling the “how” of communion, or “how are we as individuals to approach the Lord’s Table?”  Allow me to bring this full circle and go back to our original passage in 1^st Corinthians, starting now in verse 27: Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly.  Before you approach a communion table and partake of bread and drink be sure you are blameless before God.  I do not mean perfect and sinless.  It means that the sin you are guilty of has been confessed and turned from in a demonstration of genuine repentance.  This is a very grave matter.  Paul says that if you fail to take this issue of repentance seriously and then partake of communion you are not only guilty of the body and blood of the Lord but you eat and drink judgment to yourself.  Do not trifle with God.

But this admonition does not mean we are excused from participating in communion either.  Notice the instruction for a man to “examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat.”  Honestly this dove tails perfectly with what has already been said about the active rather than passive mode of behavior expected of a Christian.  It is not ok to hang back and stay seated, or skip a communion service altogether because of an acknowledgement of unrepentant sin.  Rather, what is commanded is to purge the sin from one’s life and then proceed to observe communion without hesitation.  We are to be doers of the Word, not merely hearers.  So I will ask the question one last time; what are you prepared to do?