LORD’s SUPPER (κυριακὸ̀ν δεῖπνον). This expression is found only once in the NT (1 Cor 11:20), where it refers not only to the special Christian rite of breaking the bread and drinking the cup, but also to the love feast which accompanied it.
The expression “breaking of bread,” which occurs frequently in Acts, may be another way the NT had of referring to the Lord’s Supper. (See below.) Certainly it became so in subsequent years of the Church’s history. But later names for the supper such as “Communion” and “Eucharist,” are not used in the NT in any technical sense. The former, however, is derived from 1 Corinthians 10:16 where Paul spoke of the “communion” (κοινωνία, G3126) of the body and blood of Christ; the latter from Jesus’ act of thanksgiving before He offered the cup to His disciples (εὐχαριστήσας, Mark 14:23).
Outline
I. The Last Supper
The Lord’s Supper, by whatever name it was called, began, nevertheless, with that Last Supper Jesus had with His friends before His death. The principal texts dealing with this subject are: Matthew 26:26-29; Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:14-20 and 1 Corinthians 11:23-26.
A. Was the Last Supper a Passover meal?The Lord’s Supper has been a subject of much recent scholarly debate, with the center of this debate being the relation of the Supper to the Passover meal. No consensus has been forthcoming. The problem arises from the differences existing between the synoptic gospels’ account of the Last Supper and John’s dating of Christ’s crucifixion, on the one hand, and from the description of the Supper itself and of the events surrounding it by the first three evangelists, on the other.
Seemingly the synoptic gospels claim that Jesus celebrated the Passover with His disciples and that the Last Supper grew out of the Passover meal (Matt 26:17-29; Mark 14:12-25; Luke 22:7-20). John, however, has been understood to say that the Last Supper took place “before the feast of the Passover” (John 13:1, 2, 21-30), and that Jesus, therefore, did not eat the Passover with His disciples, but was Himself the supreme paschal sacrifice, put to death simultaneously with the slaughter of the Passover lambs (cf. John 18:28; 19:12-14).
Some scholars assume the correctness of the Johannine account and explain the Last Supper of the synoptic narratives as an ordinary meal, or as a special meal such as those commonly shared by members of a religious association (ḥaburah), but not a Passover. They assume that the synoptic gospels mistakenly linked it with the Passover because of the paschal nature of the supper. These scholars understand the words of Jesus, “I have earnestly desired to eat this passover with you” (Luke 22:15) to be an expression of intense desire on His part but not the satisfaction of a realized experience. They note that the synoptic gospels never use the technical term for unleavened bread when they describe the Last Supper. Nor do the synoptics mention the lamb, or the bitter herbs. The gospels speak of a common cup shared by all the disciples, when, allegedly, only individual cups were used at the Passover. They refer to one or two cups of wine only when the Passover ritual included four. It is also pointed out that Paul, although he writes about the Last Supper, does not describe it as a Passover in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, and that the Early Church celebrated the Lord’s Supper once a week, or oftener, rather than once a year only as might be expected had the Last Supper originated as the annual Passover meal (see below). Other objections to the Last Supper being a Passover meal have to do with events in the gospel narrative which seemingly could not have taken place on the festival day, Nisan 15, such as the session of the Sanhedrin and condemnation of Jesus on the same night that the Passover meal was to be eaten. (A. H. McNeile, The Gospel According to St. Matthew [1915], pp. 377ff.; G. Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy [1945], p. 50-52.)
Other scholars, however, side with the synoptics and assert that the fourth gospel is theologically motivated rather than historically accurate. John wished to present Jesus as the Passover lamb par excellence put to death coincidentally with the other Passover lambs. Certainly the synoptic writers intended to say that the Last Supper was a Passover meal. This is most clearly presented in Luke, where the preparations for the supper are located precisely on the day on which the Passover lamb (τὸ̀ πάσχα) had to be sacrificed (Luke 22:7). These evangelists also note that the Last Supper took place in the evening (Mark 14:17), that Jesus and His disciples reclined at dinner (Matt 26:20) in a day when Jewish people regularly sat at table for ordinary meals, that there was a dipping ceremony (Matt 26:23), and that the Supper concluded with the singing of a hymn (Mark 14:26)—all of which are important characteristics of the Passover ritual (see below and J. Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, pp. 14-60, who gives detailed and convincing evidence for the Last Supper being a Passover meal).
Serious attempts have been made to harmonize the synoptic accounts with that of John so as to allow each to preserve its particular theological emphasis, and at the same time to be historically accurate. One of the more fruitful attempts is that based on recent information concerning Jewish calendars (see J. van Goudoever, Biblical Calendar [1959]). Apparently in Jesus’ day there were two dates for celebrating the Passover. The people of Qumran as well as other groups followed an unofficial calendar according to which killing of the lambs and the Passover supper regularly fell on a Tuesday afternoon-evening (Nisan, 14, 15), a time deliberately different from the date of the Passover according to the official calendar (also Nisan, 14, 15). If this is so, then it is possible that the high priest and the people ate the paschal lamb on the evening of the day of Christ’s death, a Friday (παρασκευή, G4187, as the Johannine account has it), whereas Jesus and His disciples had already eaten it on the Tuesday before (as the synoptic gospels relate: Mark 14:12; Luke 22:7), in each case on the 14th-15th of Nisan (Exod 12:6; Lev 23:5). Jesus’ reason for celebrating the Passover in this way, apart from the possibility that He may have opposed the establishment at Jerusalem, may have been His desire to observe this ancient ritual of the Passover on a legal day before bringing it to an end by His death on the day of the official Passover. This explanation of the Passover provides additional time (which the synoptic writers telescope) between the Supper and the crucifixion—a factor which helps resolve some of the difficulties of the passion narrative, such as how the death of Jesus could take place on the same day as that of His trial, when Jewish law forbade this from happening. (See A. Jaubert, The Date of the Last Supper [1965], 102, 121.)
B. The words of institution. Assuming that Jesus’ Last Supper was a Passover meal, His words, then, instituting the new Christian Supper, were spoken in a context of the Passover ritual and should be interpreted accordingly. The liturgy of the Passover began with the presiding person pronouncing a blessing (the kiddush) over the first cup of wine, which at the Passover meal was always red. This then was drunk by him and the others present, and was followed by bitter herbs dipped into haroseth, a fruit sauce, and eaten. Next came the explanation of the feast when the food for the main meal was brought in. The son first asked his father why this night differed from other nights, and he replied by saying that the Passover lamb is eaten because God passed over the house of our fathers in Egypt (Exod 12:26, 27), the unleavened bread, because our fathers were redeemed from Egypt (12:39), and the bitter herbs, because the Egyptians embittered the lives of our fathers in Egypt (1:14). After this the family or group sang the first part of the Hallel (Ps 113 or Pss 113 and 114). Then came the drinking of a second cup followed by the president taking unleavened bread and blessing God with these words: “Blessed art Thou who bringest forth bread from the earth.” He then broke it and handed it to the guests. Then came the meal proper, followed by another prayer from the president, a prayer of thanksgiving for the meal pronounced over a third cup of wine, “the cup of blessing” (cf. 1 Cor 10:16). After supper the second part of the Hallel was sung which ended with Psalm 118. Finally, a fourth cup of wine was taken to celebrate God’s kingdom, and this concluded the liturgy. (See A. J. B. Higgins, The Lord’s Supper in the New Testament, for this summary. See also Mishnah, Pesaḥim 10.5; SBK, I, 988-990; IV, 41-76, and D. Daube, The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism [1956], p. 331.)
1. The form of the words of institution. It is not possible to know exactly what our Lord said when He selected out the bread and the cup of wine after supper from the Passover ceremony for special consideration and reinterpretation. The principal texts relating these words do not agree in every detail (see the texts above). But the bread-saying takes the following form when all of the sources are woven together: “Take (Matt, Mark), eat (Matt), this is my body (Matt, Mark, Luke, Paul), which is given for you. Do this for my remembrance” (Luke’s longer text, Paul). The saying over the cup also is recorded variously by the different writers: “All of you drink from it, for (Matt) this (Matt, Mark, Luke, Paul) cup (Luke, Paul) is my blood of the covenant (Matt, Mark; ‘is the new covenant in my blood,’ Luke, Paul), which is poured out (Matt, Mark, Luke) for many (Matt, Mark; ‘for you,’ Luke), ‘for the remission of sins’ (Matt). Do this as often as you drink it for my remembrance” (Paul). These cup-words are then immediately followed in Matthew and Mark by Jesus’ promise never again to drink of the fruit of the vine until He drinks it new with His disciples in the kingdom of God. The same eschatological hope is found also in Paul, though worded differently, and he too places it after the cup-saying. Luke, on the other hand, couples the promise not to drink of the fruit of the vine with another similar promise not to eat again of the Passover until its real meaning is fulfilled in the kingdom, and places both of them before the sayings spoken over the bread and the cup.
There seem, then, to be essentially two accounts which are independent of each other, (a) that represented by Mark, and (b) that by Paul. Which is the older is difficult to know and perhaps unnecessary, for there are “primitive” elements in both. And in spite of all the minor differences between the accounts, they are nevertheless in substantial agreement with one another. It is sufficient to say that each inspired writer was free to select and arrange the same traditional material so as to present adequately the theological significance of the Last Supper as he was led to understand it.
2. The meaning of the Last Supper. The Supper, composed of bread and wine, is a symbol of our Lord’s body and blood, a symbol of his death: “This is my body given,” He said, “This is my blood poured out.” One is not compelled by the present context nor usage elsewhere to give to the verb ἐστίν (“is”) the meaning of “is equivalent to.” Often it conveys merely the idea of “represents,” or “means” (as in the interpretation of the parables, Matt 13:38; cf. also John 10:9, 14). Besides, it would have been almost impossible for Jesus to have equated the bread with His body and the wine with His blood and then to have asked His Jewish disciples to eat and drink. It is much more likely that His disciples saw Him in the tradition of the OT prophets, and interpreted His words and actions accordingly. As those ancient prophets predicted future events by symbolic dramatic deeds (1 Kings 21:11; Jer 19:1-11; Ezek 4:3), so Jesus broke the bread and took the cup as an acted parable to denote His coming death and point out its meaning.
Around this basic idea of the Supper as a symbol of the death of Christ there cluster several ideas. (a) First the Lord interpreted His death as a substitutionary, vicarious self-giving event, universal in its scope: “This is my body given for you”; “this is my blood poured out for many” (note: “many” is not to be understood as a limiting expression meaning, “some, but not all.” It is a Sem. way of contrasting the many with the one resulting in the meaning, “all” [cf. Matt 10:28 with 1 Tim 2:6, and Rom 5:18 with 5:19]).
(b) He further interprets His death as the means of ratifying the new covenant spoken of by Jeremiah (31:31-34). This is observed in His words, “My blood of the covenant” (Mark 14:24), which are almost identical with those of Exodus 24:8 where the ratification of the old covenant with Israel is recorded. But the addition of the pronoun “my” indicates that Jesus placed His blood in counterposition to that of the covenant-inaugurating animal of the OT, and that He viewed His death as bringing the old covenant to an end by fulfillment, and as the supreme sacrifice needed to introduce the new and give it permanent validity.
(c) There are also elements in this Supper account which indicate that Jesus interpreted His death as the consummate act of the Servant of the Lord described by Isaiah. This is particularly clear in Matthew who adds the words, “for the forgiveness of sins,” to the saying about Jesus’ blood poured out (Matt 26:28; cf. Isa 53:12: “He poured out his soul to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors”).
(d) Perhaps the most obvious meanings attached to the Last Supper are those associated with the Passover, since apparently the Last Supper originated with a Passover. The Passover in Jesus’ day was in reality a celebration of two events: (1) it looked back in commemoration of Israel’s deliverance from the oppression of Egypt (Exod 12:14, 17 Mishnah, Pesaḥim 10.5), and (2) it looked forward in anticipation of the coming messianic kingdom (Mishnah, Pesaḥim 10.6; cf. Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah, Mekhilta, Exod 12:42; Rabbah, Exod 15:1; see Higgins, p. 47). These two themes are prominent in the narrative of the Last Supper. Selecting only two elements from the liturgy of the Passover—the unleavened bread and the cup after supper—Jesus seemed to say, “As Israel was spared from death at the hand of the destroying angel, and delivered from servitude to Pharaoh by the death of the passover lamb and the sprinkling of its blood, so you are spared from eternal death and freed from slavery to sin by my body broken and my blood poured forth.” Hence, the original meaning of the Passover had now been superseded. Christ is the true paschal Lamb (1 Cor 5:7), and by His death becomes the author of a new Exodus, the Redeemer of an enslaved people. Such, at least, was the understanding of the Early Church, an understanding most beautifully expressed in a recently discovered sermon of Melito, Bishop of Sardis (d. c. a.d. 190):
For this one,
who was led away as a lamb,
and who was sacrificed as a sheep,
by himself delivered us from servitude to the world
as from the land of Egypt,
and released us from bondage to the devil
and from the hand of Pharaoh,
and sealed our souls by his own spirit,
and the members of our bodies by his own blood.
This is the one who covered death with shame
and who plunged the devil into mourning
as Moses did Pharaoh.
This is
the one who smote lawlessness,
and deprived injustice of its offspring
as Moses deprived Egypt.
This is
the one who delivered us
from slavery into freedom,
from darkness into light,
from death into life,
from tyranny into an eternal kingdom,
and who made us a new priesthood
and a special people forever.
This one is the passover of our salvation.
(Homily, 67, 68)
The other theme of eschatological expectancy is also here. It is found in Jesus’ promise not to eat the Passover or drink the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God shall have arrived. This promise is not a word of despair but a note of joy. Jesus sees beyond the darkness of Calvary to that time when He would share with His disciples the messianic banquet and enjoy with them the life of the age to come (cf. Isa 25:6-8).
“Thus Jesus offered his disciples in the Supper a full participation in the atoning benefits of his own self-offering on the cross—deliverance from the bondage of this world, remission of sins, incorporation in the new people of God, an inner obedience of the heart to the will of God, and the joy and benediction of his presence and fellowship in the age to come” (Massey H. Shepherd).
C. The problem of the Lukan text. There are questions concerning the correctness of the Gr. text in all accounts of the Last Supper. (For complete information concerning these variants see the chapter on textual data by Kenyon and Legg in R. Dunkerley [ed.], The Ministry and the Sacraments [1937], pp. 272-286.) But the most difficult textual problem in these accounts is that posed by the chief witness of the Western text, Codex D, supported also by a few Old Lat. and Syr. MSS, which omits Luke 22:19b-20 (note: other early trs. rearrange the order of Luke 22:17-20 so that the sequence is 19, 17, 18). The case for the shorter text is best set forth by Westcott and Hort (The New Testament in the Original Greek: Introduction and Appendix [1882], appendix 63, 64): (1) Since the chief characteristic of the Western text is to interpolate, i.e. include everything that looks authentic whether it is or not, the shorter text of Luke, therefore, must be very early, most likely original, for it is not found in the chief witnesses of this kind of text. (2) It is almost impossible to believe that these verses should be stricken from the Lukan text at a later date. (3) It is conceivable, however, that they could be interpolated into Luke at a later time from 1 Corinthians 11:23, 24 and Mark 14:23, 24 to eliminate the cup-bread order which exists when these verses are omitted.
There are some modern scholars who follow Westcott and Hort in rejecting the genuineness of the longer reading (see H. Chadwick, HTR, 50 [1957], 257, 258; R. Bultmann, The History of the Gospel Tradition [1963], 286 n), and two modern trs. which remove these verses from the text and give them a place in the margin (RSV and NEB). But the majority of scholars consider that the shorter text is secondary. It is difficult to believe that a later interpolation could find its way into all Gr. MSS with the exception of Codex D. One notes too that the longer reading is cited by the Church Fathers as early as a.d. 150 (Justin, I Apology, 66). The omission of vss. 19b, 20 can be explained as due to a mechanical error on the part of a copyist, or to a desire to keep secret the inner meaning of Christian worship (although this is hard to believe since there is no evidence for the omission of 19a), or to avoid the inconsistency of having a second cup (see E. Schweizer, The Lord’s Supper According to the New Testament [1967], 18-20, and H. Schürmann, Biblica, 32 [1957], 364-392, 522-541, who gives the most detailed textual analysis of this passage and concludes that the longer text is definitely original).
The interpretation of the Last Supper according to the shorter text of Luke would be quite different from that of the other synoptic writers and from that of Paul, omitting the cup-saying, preserving only the idea that the Last Supper was a foretaste of the coming eschatological banquet, and raising the question about whether the Lord’s Supper always had been observed by the Christian Church from the beginning in just the same way as it is presented by Mark and Paul (see below).
II. The Lord’s Supper
A. The scarcity of materials. Apart from Paul and the synoptic gospels, the rest of the NT is virtually silent on the subject of the Lord’s Supper. There is no teaching on it anywhere else, although there are possible allusions to the Supper in John (6:22-59), Acts (2:46; 20:7, 11), Hebrews (6:4; 13:10), 2 Peter (2:13) and Jude (12). This paucity of material raises questions: Did the Early Church feel a need for liturgical secrecy? Was indeed the Lord’s Supper central to the worship-life of the Early Church? Was there really general agreement in the apostolic age about the relation of the Last Supper to the death of Christ? These questions are not easy to answer, but suffice it to point out that if there had not been problems at Corinth, one of which was disorders at the Lord’s Supper, Paul himself might never have mentioned the subject. In other words one should be careful about reading too much into silence. In this case the silence could mean that the Lord’s Supper was so well-known, and so central that mention of it was totally unnecessary except where disorders called for clarification.
B. When was the Lord’s Supper observed?One might expect that if the Lord’s Supper grew out of a passover meal, it would be celebrated only once a year, on the 14th-15th of Nisan. A study of Early Church history seems to support this speculation. Epiphanius, for example, observed that the Ebionites, an early Jewish-Christian sect, celebrated the Eucharist as an annual feast, like the Passover, in memory of Christ’s death (Haereses 30. 16.1). And Christians in Asia Minor in the 2nd cent. held a special Eucharist as a parallel to the Passover and at the same time as the Jewish Passover (see Higgins, p. 56, n. 1).
The statement of the early chapters of Acts about the disciples “breaking bread” every day (Acts 2:42, 46), need not refute this idea. For it has been pointed out that the meals in Acts are very much like religious meals found elsewhere in Judaism (K. Stendahl, ed., The Scrolls and the NT [1957], pp. 84-86), and their emphasis is quite different from that of the Last Supper as recorded in the gospels. Whereas that Supper was a remembrance of Christ’s death, these daily meals were joyful fellowships which celebrated His resurrection and continued presence in the Church, and which also anticipated the eschatological kingdom. They, thus, may not have originated in or been connected with the Last Supper, but may have had their source and meaning in the post-resurrection meals that Jesus had with His disciples (Luke 24:30-43; John 21:1-14; Acts 1:4; 10:41. See O. Cullmann, Early Christian Worship [1953], pp. 14-16).
Hence, in the early Jerusalem Church it is probable that there were originally two kinds of fellowship meals: (1) the “Breaking of Bread” which occurred daily, and (2) the Passover which occurred annually, each with its own peculiar emphasis. Only the latter “was directly related to the Last Supper, and only in it was the meal a specific remembrance of Messiah’s death” (E. E. Ellis, The Gospel of Luke [1966], p. 250). Eventually, however, these two meals were combined into one new feast when the Church moved outside of Jerusalem and the Jewish influence ceased to play a dominant role in the development of Christian worship. The joyful fellowship meal of Acts 2 became the agape-element of the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 11:20, 21), and the annual passover meal became the Eucharist-element (1 Cor 11:23-26; Ellis, ibid.). By this time the new Supper was celebrated neither daily nor annually, but weekly—on the first day of the week, the day of resurrection, possibly at night, pointing back to the passover meal which was partaken of in the evening (Acts 20:7; cf. 1 Cor 16:2; Rev 1:10; Did. 14.1).
C. How was the Lord’s Supper observed?This question, too, is difficult to answer, for little is said about it in the NT. But from 1 Corinthians 11:20-34 it is possible to reconstruct the following order: (1) there was a full-blown dinner or love-feast to which each participant brought his own food, and at which it was possible for him to be hungry or drunk (vss. 20-22). This practice was probably a carry-over from the Last Supper when a complete meal took place between the bread and cup sayings. (2) Then came a period of self-examination (v. 28). The form this examination took is nowhere stated in the NT. It may have been strictly personal, or it may have involved individual public confession in the church, or corporate confession as part of a liturgical prayer (cf. Did. 6.14; 14.1). (3) Finally, there was the Lord’s Supper proper, involving only the bread and wine, which recalled the death of the Lord Jesus (vss. 24-26). Acts 20:7-11 indicates that a sermon may have preceded the action outlined above and formed part of the liturgy of the Supper, but there is no indication what that sermon was about. There are no traces in the NT of Eucharistic prayers as are found in the later lit. of the Early Church (Did. 9-10), nor is there evidence here for foot washing forming a part of the ceremony of the Lord’s Supper.
D. Paul’s understanding of the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper has been celebrated continuously by the Church from the time of Jesus to the present day. Yet Paul’s account of it is the earliest in the NT by several years. He says of it that he “received it from the Lord” (1 Cor 11:23). This may mean that Paul learned of the events of the Last Supper and its real meaning in the same way he had earlier received the content of the Gospel: not from man, nor by human teaching, but through revelation of Jesus Christ (Gal 1:12).
Hans Lietzmann made use of this interpretation to set up his antithesis between the Eucharist as celebrated in Jerusalem and the Eucharist as celebrated in the Pauline churches. The Jerusalem-type, he said, was a breaking of bread with no wine used. It was a continuation of the fellowship meals which the historical Jesus had shared with His disciples. It had no connection with the Last Supper, and was marked not by any remembrance of Christ’s death, but by a joyous ecstasy over His spiritual presence, and an expectancy of His return shortly. The idea of sacrifice was absent. The other type of celebration Lietzmann saw as coming from the Last Supper and from a special revelation to Paul in which he received new insight into the real meaning of the Supper—a memorial of the sacrificial death of the Lord. By this revelation the original meaning of the Eucharist was radically transformed (Mass and Lord’s Supper [1958], 204-208).
But Lietzmann’s thesis is open to the following objections: (1) The “breaking of bread” meals in Acts, though certainly Christian, may not have been Eucharistic in character (see above). (2) Paul’s statement, “I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you,” can also be interpreted to mean that he understood himself to be a person handing on in unaltered fashion that which had come to him as unaltered church tradition. The words he uses here for “receive” (παρέλαβον) and “deliver to” (παρέδωκα) are equivalents of rabbinic terms for the normal course of reception of tradition and its transmission (Higgins, pp. 25, 26). Paul may have meant, then, that he received the story of the Last Supper and its meaning from the Lord through the apostolic witness. For the Lord was not simply a remembered historical figure but a living Presence in the Church guiding the community into all truth (John 16:13), and seeing to it that this truth was transmitted accurately to each succeeding generation. If this is what Paul meant, he cannot be charged with changing the meaning of the early Eucharist. He was authoritatively handing on that which had been practiced in the Church from its inception. (3) Eduard Schweizer has pointed out that from the start of Eucharistic celebration the two elements of eschatological joy coupled with a sense of Christ’s presence at the table and a hope for His return, and of the proclamation of His death as the means of salvation, belonged together (Schweizer, The Lord’s Supper According to the NT, p. 25). Paul combines both of these ideas in a single sentence: “You proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26).
Paul’s understanding of the Lord’s Supper, therefore, is in essence identical with the traditional understanding of it, and what was said earlier about the meaning of the Last Supper will also apply here. But the disorders at the Lord’s table in Corinth have given the apostle opportunity to provide teaching on the subject which appears nowhere else in the NT.
1. The Lord’s Supper as a memorial feast. There is one word of the Lord in Paul (and Luke) which does not appear in Mark (and Matt). It is, “Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Cor 11:24, 25). Paul therefore understands that the purpose of the Lord’s Supper is to commemorate the death of the Lord Jesus, and that this purpose originated with the Lord Himself. (Note: J. Jeremias understands this saying differently and interprets it as meaning “that God may remember me” by bringing in the kingdom at the Parousia. But he has not succeeded in securing many followers and has been convincingly answered by H. Kosmala, Novum Testamentum, IV [1960], 81-94.) Here again is seen a parallel between this new feast and the feast of the Passover. As the Passover was basically a remembrance celebration calling to mind the mercy and greatness of God in delivering His people from Egypt (Exod 12:14; 13:8-10), so the Lord’s Supper is designed to constantly remind the Christian of God’s greatest act, that of deliverance from sin through the death (not the teachings) of the Lord Jesus.
But the Biblical idea of “remembering” is more profound than our modern conception of it. It meant for the Biblical writer more than simply having an “idea” about something that happened in the past. It also involved action, a physical response to the psychological process of recollection. For when the dying thief asked the Savior to “remember” him he meant more than have an idea of me in your mind; he meant, “Act toward me in mercy. Save me!” There was, then, this closeness of relation between thought and act. Thus when the Jew celebrated the Passover, he did more than just think about what happened to his forefathers. He in a sense reenacted that event and himself participated in the Exodus. He was at one with his past (see B. S. Childs, Memory and Tradition in Israel [1962]).
There may also be this dimension to the word “remembrance” as used in 1 Corinthians 11. When the Christian partakes of the Lord’s Supper he not only has an idea in his mind about a past event, but in a sense he “recalls” that event and in such a way that it can no longer be regarded wholly as a thing “absent” or past, but present, and powerfully present. In the Lord’s Supper, then, and uniquely in the Lord’s Supper, the death of Christ is made so vivid that it is as if the Christian were standing beneath the cross.
2. The Lord’s Supper a sacrifice?Did Paul regard the Lord’s Supper as a sacrifice? Some interpreters answer this question in the affirmative, proposing to give to the words, “Do this,” the meaning, “Offer this sacrifice.” It is true that soon Christian writers began to call the Eucharist a sacrifice (θυσία, G2602, see Did 14.1, and cf. Ign. Phil 4.1), and the Church a place of sacrifice, an altar (θυσιαστήριον, G2603, Ign. Eph. 5.2).
But Paul did not so understand the Lord’s Supper, nor can his words “Do this,” be so construed: (a) the ordinary meaning of the verb “do” (ποιεῖν) in the NT, the LXX, and Gr. lit. generally is opposed to such a tr. (b) The Gr. Fathers, some of whom may have thought of the Eucharist as a sacrifice, never understood these words to mean “offer a sacrifice.” (c) Finally, the witness of the LXX is also against this interpretation, for it never trs. any of the many OT words for sacrifice in their frequent occurrence by the verb ποιεῖν; only by προσφέρειν and ἀναφέρειν, and the like (see A. Plummer, The Gospel According to Luke, 5th ed. [1922], pp. 497, 498). The words simply mean “Perform this function.” They are a command to remember.
3. The Lord’s Supper as a proclamation. Paul also understood the Last Supper to be a proclamation: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death” (1 Cor 11:26). The verb “proclaim” found here (καταγγέλλειν) is used elsewhere in the NT of heralding the Gospel (1 Cor 9:14), and of making known one’s faith (Rom 1:8). Hence, it would seem that its action is directed manward rather than Godward. In performing the rite the celebrant proclaims to all the Lord’s death as victory. The Supper therefore becomes the Gospel, a visible verbum, as Augustine put it.
This idea of the Lord’s Supper being Gospel is helpful in understanding the Lord’s presence in the Supper. In the NT, proclamation has the character of event. As Schweizer puts it, the word is never “merely” something spiritual intended for the intellect. Christ Himself comes in the word: “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me” (Luke 10:16). In a similar way He comes in the Supper. Christ’s presence is brought about not “magically by a liturgically correct administration of the sacrament....It comes to pass where the Lord’s Supper is understood as gospel, whether this gospel is believed or rejected....This means, therefore, that the real presence in the Lord’s Supper is exactly the same as His presence in the word—nothing more, nothing less. It is an event, not an object; an encounter, not a phenomenon of nature; it is Christ’s encounter with His Church, not the distribution of a substance” (Schweizer, pp. 37, 38).
4. The Lord’s Supper as communion. The words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:16 are not easy to tr., esp. the expressions “communion of the blood of Christ,” and “communion of the body of Christ” (KJV). The word tr. “communion” (κοινωνία, G3126), may also be tr. “fellowship,” meaning a group of people bound together in a “communion” or “fellowship” by what they have in common with each other. And the preposition “of” does not exist in the Gr., but is an interpretation of the genitive case. It may also be interpreted to mean “brought about by” or “based upon.” Translated in this way Paul is saying, “The cup of blessing which we bless is it not (does it not represent) the fellowship which is brought about by the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the fellowship brought about by the body of Christ?” The Lord’s Supper, then, is understood to witness to the fact that Christians belong to a special family which includes the Son and the Father (cf. 1 John 1:3) and is marked by unity and love. It is a communion which required the death of Christ to create, and which is so close that it is as though believers were one body: “For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread” (1 Cor 10:17 KJV).
Perhaps, then, this was the great disorder in Corinth which prompted what little teaching there is on the Lord’s Supper. The Corinthians’ sin was in not “discerning the body” (1 Cor 11:29), that is, in failing to understand the oneness of the body of which each person was a part.
In Paul’s day a fellowship meal preceded the breaking of bread and drinking of the cup. It was not an unimportant part of the Lord’s Supper, and Paul had no desire to abolish it. What he was concerned to do, however, was to correct its abuses. For instead of symbolizing the unity its name intended, the fellowship meal at Corinth was the occasion for manifesting the opposite. The freemen despised the slave class, going ahead with the meal before the latter had opportunity to arrive (1 Cor 11:21). The wealthy scorned the poor, feasting to the point of gluttony while the latter went hungry (1 Cor 11:21, 22). Thus “eating and drinking unworthily” (1 Cor 11:27) may have meant for Paul partaking of the Lord’s Supper while holding each other in contempt and neither party striving to live up to the unity which took the Lord’s death to bring about.
The word “communion” has still another meaning. It means also “participation in.” Hence, 1 Corinthians 10:16 may be tr. as the RSV does: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?” If this is so, then perhaps Paul understood the cup and bread to symbolize the Christian’s participation in the death of Christ. Perhaps by borrowing his vocabulary from the mystery religions he showed that the Redeemer and the redeemed are so intimately bound up with each other that what happened to the Redeemer happened also to the redeemed. Thus when Christ died, the Christian died also, and partaking of the Lord’s Supper symbolizes this participation in the body and blood of the Savior. Such a description of the Supper is Paul’s way of stating what Christ already had said: “I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live forever....Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:51, 53).
The Lord’s Supper, though of great importance to Paul, is not all-important. There are no magical qualities to it. It has no more power to communicate life and maintain it than did the spiritual food and drink provided Israel in the wilderness (1 Cor 10:1-13). It cannot in and of itself debilitate or bring about death in spite of the fact that Paul says that many who eat and drink unworthily are weak and ill and some have died (1 Cor 11:30). Such sickness and death result from the judgment of the Lord (1 Cor 11:32), not from any magical power of the Supper. The importance of the Supper exists solely in the Person it points to, and whose redemptive acts it proclaims.
E. The Lord’s Supper in the fourth gospel. There is no specific reference to the Lord’s Supper in the fourth gospel. John describes a final meal Jesus had with His disciples (John 13), when He taught them the importance of humble service to others by Himself washing their feet. But there is no bread or wine here, nor words of interpretation. Many, however, see the Johannine Eucharist in John 6, the discourse on the bread of life. It is here that Jesus says, “My flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” (John 6:55, 56). If this is so, it would appear that for John the Lord’s Supper is spiritual food (cf. 6:63) which nourishes and strengthens the life of the Christian (cf. Did. 10.4).
But perhaps John’s primary aim was not to discourse on the Lord’s Supper but on the meaning of faith. Certainly this is a subject that is continually being put forward in his gospel.
What does it mean to have faith in Christ? When John 6:47, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life,” is juxtaposed with verse 54, “he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life,” it would seem that John, in searching for the way to answer this question has at last found the model he needs. To believe on Christ is analogous to eating Him. As one would take food, eat it, so that it is assimilated into the system and becomes one’s very life, so faith is a similar appropriation of Christ with the result that He is at the very center and is the energizing force of the Christian’s life. But then, this is the very thing that the Lord’s Supper is designed to remind us of in any case. See Communion.
Bibliography O. Cullmann, “La signification de la Sainte-Cène dans le Christianisme primitif,” RHPR, XVI (1936), 1-22; R. Dunkerley, ed., The Ministry and the Sacraments (1937); G. Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (1945); A. J. B. Higgins; The Lord’s Supper in the NT (1952); J. Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, Eng. tr. (1955); J. DuPont, “‘Ceci est mon corps,’ ‘Ceci est mon sang’” Nouvelle Révue Théologique, LXXX (10, 58), 1025-1041; H. Lietzmann, Mass and Lord’s Supper, Eng. Tr. (1958); H. Kosmala, “Das tut zu meinem Gedächtnis,” Novum Testamentum, IV (1960), 81-94; E. Schweizer, The Lord’s Supper According to the NT, Eng. tr. (1967).