by Dr Greg Elsdon
October 2009
Celebrating the Lord’s Supper as remembrance and commitment
The regular celebration of the Lord’s Supper has been central to the Church’s practice and self-understanding from the very beginning. Every time we gather around the table of the risen Lord that we are confronted once again with the love of God and the responsibility we have as Jesus’ followers to give ourselves in service to the world God loves so deeply. Jesus’ words, “do this in remembrance of me” identify the Lord’s Supper as the place where we recommit ourselves, time and again, to the risen Christ, to each other, and to the mission of God in the world.
It would not be altogether misleading to suggest that Churches of Christ came into being as a movement in order to proclaim an open Lord’s Table around which all could be united in worship and celebration. The founding fathers and mothers of our movement had become impatient with the formal religion of their day. They experienced it as oppressive and lifeless. One expression of this was the highly discriminatory and legalistic regulation of who was permitted to attend the Lord’s Table – and who was not! All too often the male clerical class had used the Lord’s Supper as a very efficient, but abusive form of discipline, social control and manipulation. Early pioneers such as Thomas and Alexander Campbell and Barton Warren Stone had a vision for a Church free from such life-sapping practices. And this vision, not for a new Church, but for the restoration of the original, expressed itself powerfully in the reformation of the understanding and practice of the Lord’s Supper – free from the autocratic control of the increasingly secularized clergy.
When, as Jesus’ followers, we gather around his table, at his invitation, we are called to remember him. It is around this sacred table that we discover who we are and experience the nourishment we need for the many tasks and challenges of life. It is here that we experience as nowhere else the deep, and ancient, and life-transforming hospitality of Yahweh and his messiah, Jesus.
Remembering, or re-activating the memory of Jesus is foundational to how we understand ourselves and how we are live our life in the world. This is not a call to reconstruct the past as it was, but a call to build the present and shape the future guided and directed by our remembrance of the one in whose life, death and resurrection we catch a glimpse of the Kingdom of God – the Reign of God yet to come – but already with us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
God’s ancient people Israel were often challenged by their prophets and their wise ones to remember where they had come from, to re-count their stories of deliverance and salvation, to re-member … and in doing so, be nurtured once again by their recollection of God’s faithfulness and unswerving commitment to his people. Remembrance is no less important for the church.
In these dawning years of the 3rd millennium all Christian traditions, denominations and movements are being forced to rethink their identity and mission. What does it mean for us to be Christian? What does it mean for us to be Churches of Christ? I believe that if we are to have any future worth hoping for we must move into that future inspired, guided, empowered, and nurtured by our courageous re-activation of the memory of the Jesus. And surely it is as we gather around the Lord’s Table that this ‘re-membering’ begins.
Re-membering is not just about recollection – it’s about re-connecting, it’s about being re-membered; re-connecting with the people, events, ideas and values which have made us who we are as a people. ‘Re-membering’ is about overcoming the fragmentation and alienation which so often characterizes our life together because we have forgotten who we are and why we are – and most importantly, we have forgotten to whom we belong.
What happens when we remember Jesus? Anything at all? Just vague thoughts or fuzzy feelings? Or does our re-membering of Jesus stir within us thoughts and feelings and hopes that inspire and call us to give our lives in service to the world?
The remembrance of Jesus experienced around the Lord’s Table is often a very selective remembrance. Re-activation of the memory of Jesus will call us to review the way we think, the way we live our lives together, and the way we share this planet with the many others who view life so differently to us.
“Jesus’ invitation to remember him with bread and wine was no sentimental request for personal reasons. His request for remembrance was that his followers should always keep in mind all that he stood for, all that he was, all that he taught, not for his sake but for theirs.” (Gordon Stirling)
Do our practice and experience of the Lord’s Supper foster the remembrance of Jesus in a way that actually gives shape and texture to our life together. Or have we, for whatever reason, contented ourselves with cheaper, safer ‘memories’ which leave us unchallenged, unchanged and distinctly dis-connected from the vital, living memory of Jesus.
There is a trend in some Churches of Christ to omit the Lord’s Supper from church services because it is not ‘seeker sensitive’. Now please don’t misunderstand me, I’m all for ‘seeker sensitive services’ – it’s just that I can’t think of anything more sensitive to the needs of people searching for something more in life than to invite to share freely in this celebration of God’s inclusive, life transforming hospitality. Sensitivity to the needs of ‘seekers’ does not require the abandonment of the Lord’s Supper – but I suspect it will require a reformation in the way we understand, practice and experience it.
The Lord’s Table is also a place of corporate commitment. As we eat the bread we declare that together we are recipients of God’s grace and together we will share it with others. As we drink the wine we declare that together we will allow the memory of Jesus – the way he lived, the values he embodied, the grace he demonstrated – the memory of Jesus – to shape our life together in the world.
And so in a very real sense the Lord’s Supper is a missional meal – a table set for those who understand that they are called to share freely with others what they experience in the presence of the risen Christ. Surely it’s unacceptable for us to celebrate the Lord’s Supper as God’s provision for our most fundamental needs, without at the same time being moved by those whose lives at so profoundly needy?
“How can I be comfortable participating in a sacrament that so powerfully symbolizes the fair, even and inclusive distribution of resources, material or otherwise, when I participate in a social structure that is increasingly failing in the same area? How can I be comfortable proclaiming, through my participation in the Lord’s Supper, a belief in the Gospel principle of justice whilst at the same time staying silent as the gap between the haves and the have-nots grows ever wider around me? How can I be comfortable acting out a drama that remembers the justice-making ministry of Jesus to all people, when my own actions exclude justice from those I fear or those whose ideology and beliefs differ too radically from mine?” (Mark Butler)
It seems to me that our celebration of the Lord’s Supper is profoundly inadequate and dis-empowering if it does not include regularly an opportunity for people to declare their commitment to work together as a congregation in the service of the world.
Few people would deny that the church is need of reformation – re-formation. May I suggest that the reformation the church is desperately in need of will not be sparked merely by energetic attempts to be ‘contemporary’, or slick programs promoting the church as ‘relevant’ — but by faithful and thankful celebration of God’s gracious hospitality experienced around the Lord’s Table.
And there is no reason whatsoever why this rediscovery of a lost treasure should not be characterized by energy, imagination and creativity. I’m certainly not advocating a regurgitation of outmoded, time-trapped, irrelevant forms of worship that will never connect meaningfully with the experience of contemporary Australians. On the contrary, as Gordon Stirling reminds us, “If we have used our God-given imagination to create dynamic, contemporary services, surely we can use that same imagination to ensure that the Lord’s Supper is still given the same significant place in the life of the church that it has held now for twenty centuries.”
