Simon Vibert

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A Biblical Theology of Holy Communion

Luke 22:7-20 and others

Luke 22:1-22

I am quite struck by the fact that the two visual aids that we recognise in the Protestant Church (more commonly known as sacraments) are actually both quite earthy and everyday pictures.

One picture is of something that most of us do most days - washing - and probably more than once a day, unless you’re a 7 year old boy when it is much less! This is the picture of Baptism.

The other picture is of eating and drinking which is something you do several times a day, unless you’re a teenager in which case you do it several times an hour, whilst many adults spend their time trying to eat less. However I recently learnt some encouraging news for those of you who are trying to lose weight.

• If no-one sees you eat it then it has no calories, so that’s OK.

• If you drink diet coke and eat chocolate then they cancel each other out.

• When eating with someone else calories don’t count so long as the other person eats the same or more than you.

• Food used for medicinal purposes never counts. Such medicinal food includes brandy, chocolate, cheesecake.

• If you fatten up everyone else around you, you of course look thinner.

• Food you eat whilst watching a film (such as popcorn) doesn’t count because they’re merely part of the entertainment.

More seriously, taking this very earthy illustration of eating was natural for Jesus. There is nothing particularly mystical about it, although of course we need to understand the Passover context surrounding Luke 22. But even then the killing of a lamb and eating it, whilst later very pregnant with meaning, at the time was a fairly normal culinary pass-time.

With this in mind I want to ask the question ‘What happens at Holy Communion’? There are a number of words we use within Anglicanism to describe it. Most usually use the word ‘Holy Communion’ which has the idea of Fellowship or Koinonia; associated with the Fellowship Meal or Love Feast celebrated in the New Testament. Perhaps you have come across the more formal word ‘Eucharist’, which is not a word I like very much because it has other connotations, but really it just means a thanksgiving, a celebration. I think the best word actually is ‘The Lord’s Supper’. This is the more biblical word and perhaps the most appropriate one and if you look at the Book of Common Prayer which states ‘Holy Communion otherwise known as "The Lord’s Supper"’.

The background to The Lord’s Supper is very important and I want to spend a few moments looking at Exodus 12, the first celebration of the Passover Meal. The context in which the meal was eaten is very important. Of course the meal is in preparation for the last of act of judgement upon Pharaoh and the people of Egypt for not letting Moses people go to worship God. Through this means of judgement God liberates His people. The last judgement is far worse than the locusts and everything else that’s gone before. It is the judgement on the first born, the heir of the family.

God will come done in judgement, but this will also mean salvation for God’s elect. Notice a couple of things in the text of Exodus 12:

1 The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt,
2 "This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year.
3 Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household.
4 If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbour, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat.
5 The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats.
6 Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight.
7 Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the door-frames of the houses where they eat the lambs.
8 That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast.
9 Do not eat the meat raw or cooked in water, but roast it over the fire-- head, legs and inner parts.
10 Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it.
11 This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the LORD's Passover.
12 "On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn-- both men and animals-- and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD.
13 The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.
14 "This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD-- a lasting ordinance.
15 For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day until the seventh must be cut off from Israel.
16 On the first day hold a sacred assembly, and another one on the seventh day. Do no work at all on these days, except to prepare food for everyone to eat-- that is all you may do. (NIV)

1) First, comes the process of selecting and finding the lamb, then killing it and pasting the blood of the lamb on the doorposts. By doing this God’s chosen people are identify, set apart from everybody else.

2) Secondly, the lamb that died would act as a substitute for the firstborn, and when God saw the blood he would ‘pass over’ the house, which is all the word ‘Passover’ means.

3) Thirdly, notice verse 30 which says "Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night and there was loud wailing in Egypt for there was not a house without someone dead." This was true for the people of Israel - there wasn’t a house without someone dead - because in the houses of the Israelites there was a dead lamb instead of the first born. By offering the blood of the lamb in their place, the first born was spared.

What a wonderful picture of the atonement. Sin was punished. Death still happened, but in their household a substitute took the place. The result of this was not only that they were passed over in judgement, but they were actually released from slavery. As they celebrated the Passover in those gruesome circumstances they thereby escaped from the tyranny of Egypt and from slavery.

4) Fourthly, this event was so significant for Israel, that it became a permanent memorial of the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

Next, I would like you to notice how the Passover theme is developed in the New Testament. At the cross two things happened. The lamb of God was judged by God, dying in our place and taking the judgement we deserve. He is ‘the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world’ (John1:29). But, continuing the parallel, the cross was also the new Exodus, the very means of salvation. God found a way to perfectly execute justice in judging sin by judging his son in our place. Yet at the time He could be merciful towards us and offer us salvation. That’s just an amazing picture that God could judge His Son and thereby save the sinner. And God could be both ‘just and justifier’ (Romans 3:21ff..)

The celebration of Passover in Jewish history looked back to God’s great redemption. Every time they celebrated it they would recall that momentous liberating event. But there was also a looking forward as well to a day when there would be a lamb that would take away sins for ever, hence John’s exclamation ‘behold the lamb of God at last’ a lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world - here at last was God’s Passover lamb (1 Cor 5:7). He would not just spare us from judgement in Egypt but actually spare us from the wrath of God ultimately.

Just as the Passover looked back to an historic, momentous, once for all act of salvation so similarly the same picture language is used with the Lord’s Supper. This looks backwards to the once for all momentous event of salvation. In fact, both of the sacraments - Baptism and The Lord’s Supper - point backwards to the cross. They are visual aids of what Jesus did there in our place.

One passing thought struck me being interesting here. Notice in Exodus 12 the balance between denial and celebration, feasting and fasting. They would eat unleavened bread; they would eat it in haste, but yet they were also to consume and enjoy this lamb. It was a balance maintained through their history involving periods of sacrifice abstention from food or eating unleavened bread, but ending the time with these festivals of great celebration. And, actually that should be a balance in the Christian life as well. We go through periods of denial and disciplining ourselves - of pummelling our bodies, as Paul puts it - in order to bring ourselves into line, and that’s appropriate and right. But that’s not the end of it because there should be the feasting at the end of the fasting culminating in celebration and joy as well. The balanced Christian life is a combination of those two which I think is given us in picture form in the Lord’s Supper.

So why was it that Christ took the Passover and gave us a renewed meal here in Luke 22? I want to look at the passage, but I also want to think theologically about the Lord’s Supper and its significance for today.

Christ gave us this renewed meal firstly because it reminds us that there is only one sacrifice. The one sacrifice for sins was made by the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Indeed, He who in just a few hours would offer himself on the altar of the cross gave a visual anticipation of it in the meal the night before.

The events leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion match uncannily with the preparation for the Passover. I agree with most of the commentators that the disciples celebrated the Passover the day before everybody else in Jerusalem and the Passover proper was in fact being prepared as Jesus died on the cross. Notice, for example they only had bread and wine, they didn’t have the lamb present there for their meal.

The following day the Passover lambs were to be slaughtered. In accordance with Exodus 12 the High Priest would go through dozens of checks over the animal to ensure that it was perfect, before being slaughtered. It was at this point that Jesus was examined by Pilot, who concluded ‘I find no fault in this man’. Jesus died on the cross as the lambs were being slain in the temple. John 19:36 observes ‘These things happened so that the Scripture would be fulfilled "not one of his bones will be broken"’. That quote from Exodus 12:46 refers to the treatment of the Passover lamb that not one of his bones will be broken. Isn’t is striking that John applies these words to Jesus’ death? Anxious because Passover is approaching they plan to break the victims legs but they find that Jesus is already dead, and then John quotes Exodus 12:46.

Paul tells us: ‘Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed’ (1 Cor 5:7). Similarly in Heb 9:28 we read: ‘Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people’.

Consequently, let us pause to consider what the New Testament writers tell us about Jesus’ intention in instituting the Lord’s Supper. With all of the Passover background in mind, it becomes clear that it was never intended that the meal that Jesus celebrated with his disciples recorded in Luke 12 would be a sacrifice.

1. One Sacrifice

Jesus was not talking about some future perpetual act of sacrifice going on down the history of the church. He was talking about one sacrifice, the sacrifice he is about to make on the cross.

1) One practical consequence of this is that it is important that we use appropriate church language when we gather to break bread and drink wine. First, I don’t think we should use the word ‘Priest’ for that is an inappropriate word for my job. Admittedly the Book of Common Prayer does use Priest but it also explains that the Priest is a presbyter - the link with the Latin root of the word. In other words they assumed this to be an Elder, a teaching elder.

2) Secondly I don’t think that we should use the word ‘Altar’, because the table at the top is not a place where a sacrifice is being made, rather it is a place where a meal is being prepared. One of the reasons I want to bring the table down to the platform amongst the people is because we share a communal meal. There is no sacrifice going on. The whole point of the sacrament is that it is to be visible and among the people.

3) Thirdly, recognise the appropriate place of the sacrificial language at communion. When we say those words ‘Yours Lord is the greatness, the power, the glory, the splendour and the majesty’ I only hold up the money as an offering. I’m not offering bread and wine to God as some sort of sacrifice to him, I’m just laying the table for a meal together. The only prayer of sacrifice is made at the end of the service when we offer our souls and bodies as living sacrifices (see Romans 12:1f.).

4) A fourth point has to do with the layout of the Church for this meal. Many churches in the Church of England are laid out in a pattern that is more in line with an Old Testament Temple than it is with a New Testament Church. The ‘High Altar’ language mirrors the Holy of Holies in the temple. When we did have a chance to play around a little with the Architecture at my last church we did at least go in a half circle so that we could face one another rather than just face forward. Little things like that actually speak volumes about what we understand is going on here, and we wanted to communicate that the central point of the Lord’s Supper was eating and drinking in the presence of the fellowship of believers.

There is only one sacrifice and the meal that God has given us to eat is an active visual aid to help us to appreciate this. I am not trying to make light of communion because it is a wonderful celebration meal if you understand it in that context. But its purpose is to help us understand what that one sacrifice was for us. And Christ is ‘really present’ in the hearts of believers who eat and drink of His spiritual body and blood given once for all for your sins.

2. One Memorial

There is one memorial, an act of remembrance. When Jesus said ‘do this in remembrance of me’ (v19) He is calling them and us to remember, not now the Passover, but the new Passover, Calvary. Passover was so named because God passed over every house that had the lambs’ blood smeared on the doorframe. The blood indicated that judgement in that house had already taken place because the lamb had died as a substitute. God had judged the lamb in their place. Similarly God passed over judging us and instead shed the blood of His Son, our substitute.

If you were asked the question "When are we saved?" how would you go about answering that? Are we saved the moment we believed? Are we saved on the last day? Or were we saved the moment Christ died? Well I guess the answer to all three of those questions is "yes". We were saved at the moment when Jesus Christ paid the ransom price for our sins. We were saved at the point when we came to appropriate that for ourselves, when God arrested us and called us to repent of our sins and to trust in Jesus.

But ultimately we are not saved until Judgement Day when God will call every person to account before Him. On that day we will plead the blood of Jesus given on our behalf, and the moment in history when we came to trust that for ourselves. The New Testament talks in terms of the verdict judgement day being read back into the present.

Salvation is based upon these three realities and there is a sense in which the Lord’s Supper involves that 3-way focus. It involves looking back to what Christ has done once for all on my behalf. It involves looking around to the community of believers amongst whom we share this meal. And it involves looking forward to the day when we will drink anew in the Kingdom.

Notice what Jesus says, ‘I’ve eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer for I tell you I will not eat it again until it finds fulfilment in the Kingdom of God’ (v15b-16). I’ve always interpreted this to mean: ‘I won’t eat this again until I get to heaven and be with my Father’, which at one level is right. But, it is interesting to notice that the final great celebratory meal, the wedding supper of the lamb recorded in Revelation 19, only happens when Christ gathers in all the elect from all nations. His mission purpose is finally accomplished and people from every language, tongue and tribe will worship Him.

I think that is it this event that Jesus is anticipating in Luke 22. In effect He says: ‘that’s when we’ll celebrate, we’ll have a great party in heaven because that’s when I’ll eat again, when the work is finally accomplished’. What he’s signifying that night at the meal table and accomplishing the following day on the cross, will one day be fulfilled in the Kingdom. Then he adds this ‘I’m not going to eat it until that day comes, you eat it to remember me and keep your hope strong and empower yourselves for mission, but I’m going to wait until I can eat it anew with you and with all the ransomed that I will gather from every tongue and tribe and people and nation’.

This sense of impetus and missionary zeal should be borne in mind as we prepare for communion. First we confess our sin and renew our faith in God’s justifying death for ourselves. But then, secondly, we ask God to give us the heart of Christ for the coming of his Kingdom and for the completion of his cause; we are caught up as we celebrate this meal in an expectation that one day we will eat it with a multitude of people from every language, tongue, tribe and nation who have been brought into the Kingdom of God.

This one memorial gives us a 3-fold focus, a backward look, a look around and a looking forward.

Both Baptism and the Lord’s Supper enliven our understanding of what Christ did for us in His death on the cross, and how we may be partakers spiritually of that event. We sometimes use the phrase ‘the sacraments being outward signs of inward realities’.

John Calvin described the sacraments as being ‘The Visible Words’. The rubric in the Book of Common Prayer won’t recognise celebrating Holy Communion without a sermon. The visible words are to be accompanied by the spoken words and the visible and verbal give eloquent testimony to each other.

Jesus said: ‘Do this in remembrance of ... not your past deliverance from Egypt ... do it in remembrance of me’. They are audacious words - if you think about it. Imagine that you were with the disciples celebrating that Passover with Jesus. He calls attention to His body, not the lambs body. And whilst he makes a close connection between the representation made with the bread and wine and his body and blood, they wouldn’t have taken the bread and said we are going to be eating your flesh literally and drinking your blood literally.

Two implications from the Apostle Paul

Turn briefly to 1 Cor 11:26 - 34.

1) Notice that three times Paul uses the word bread. He doesn’t say we eat the body of Jesus, he says that we eat bread. This is the official doctrine of the Church of England.

There is no change in the substance of the bread or the wine. The bread remains bread; the wine remains wine. Article 28 states that the sacraments do not operate apart from faith. The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not by Christ’s ordinance reserve, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.

2) The second significant thing is to say that you can eat to your damnation v.27. If the sacraments operated apart from faith that would not be possible. There is something going on in the heart of the believer that makes the sacrament effectual.

Let me illustrate. People sometimes draw the analogy between taking medicine and receiving Holy Communion. I am sin-sick and I come to take God’s prescription for my spiritual health. However, I think the analogy is imperfect. If I take medicine, whether I believe it works or not (leaving aside psychosomatic or placebo effect for now!) it does the job. If have a headache and I take paracetomol it generally relieves it irrespective of whether I believe it works or not.

However the Lord’s Supper is not like that. If I eat unworthily then it actually does me harm. Consequently I must examine myself before I eat the bread and drink of the cup. The preparation in the Book of Common Prayer takes the 1 Corinthians warnings very seriously and charges the would-be communicant to prepare carefully.

The official doctrine of the Church of England is that Christ is really present in the Lord’s Supper, namely, in the hearts of believers those who eat and drink by faith, not in the bread, but in Christ. Arguably the greatest Anglican theologian was Richard Hooker. He said: "The real presence of Christ’s most blessed body and blood is not to be sought for in the sacrament but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament".

Coming to Holy Communion will do you no good if your heart is not right with God. That is why I use the phrase of invitation: ‘You are welcome to the Lord’s table if you know and love the Lord and if you are living in peace and harmony with your neighbour’. If you don’t know and love the Lord and if you are not living in peace and harmony with your neighbour this actually will not do you any good and it could do you worse according to 1 Cor 11 because you are going to start putting your hope in something that is not actually true for its purpose.

But, when we receive bread and wine with our hearts right before the Lord and with our minds conscious both of one another and with a remembrance of what He did on our behalf in the past and with an anticipation of the day when we will all eat it together in heaven, then Christ is really present amongst his people because they are enlivened by the act of eating and drinking and thereby feeding spiritually upon Jesus and all his benefits! So we should come with great expectations at communion because if our hearts are prepared and we eat ‘acknowledging the body’, (the body of Christ, that is the physical body of gathered people) then this is a wonderful corporate experience that we should celebrate together.

Questions for Discussion

1. What kind of teaching by way of preparation should we be giving for Holy Communion?

2. What implications does this teaching have for children in Communion?

3. How may we ensure that we are prepared for Communion and avoid ‘eating to our own damnation’?!

4. What implications does this teaching have for how the morning Holy Communion service is structured and the relationship with what is happening in Junior Church?