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We have deliberately chosen to give these lessons the title of The
Eucharist rather than the term The Lord’s Supper, which term is favored
among Churches of Christ in the
USA,
or among Churches of Christ falling in the heritage of the American
Restoration Movement.
The Eucharist was Referred to by Several Names
in the New Testament:
Acts
2:42 ,
“the breaking of bread”
Acts 20:7, “to break bread”
1 Cor 10:21, “the table of the Lord”
1 Cor 11:20, “the Lord’s supper”
Jude 12, “love feast”
Very
Early on in the Life of the 1st and 2nd
Century
Churches this Celebration was Identified as:
“The Eucharist”, by
Ignatius (ca 110 AD).
“The Eucharist”, in The
Didache (ca 115 AD).
“The bread, the water,
and the wine”, by Justin (ca 150 AD).
The Term Eucharist
derives from the Greek eucharistia found in Matt 26:27; Mk 14:23,
Lk 22:19; “he took the bread, and
when he had given thanks…” the term means
thanksgiving or to give thanks.
Professor Everett Ferguson writes, “The Lord’s Supper
was the church’s great moment of thanksgiving… But
preeminently the eucharist
was centered on the spiritual blessings which came through Jesus Christ.”
(Early Christians
Speak, p. 94).
The Eucharist In the Broader Christian World is
variously described as:
The Holy Mass
– Roman Catholic and Episcopalian churches.
The Mass
– Lutheran, Eastern Orthodox.
Communion
– Baptist, Methodist, and Free Churches.
The Lord’s Supper
– Churches of the American Restoration Movement.
The Eucharist
– Eastern Orthodox Churches, Anglican Churches.
The Title of My Three Lessons Described as the Eucharist:
As mentioned above, I
have intentionally chosen to speak of the Eucharist in an attempt to shift
our attention from the
traditional practice and liturgy of Churches of Christ
and revision or conceive our theological understanding of the Lord’s
Supper on what I perceive to be the original focus of
the New Testament churches, namely, the Eucharist or celebration
of thanksgiving.
John Mark Hicks in his work Come to the Table
has appropriately introduced the concept of “Revisioning
the Lord’s
Supper”, which I have adopted in this study.
We might speak also of rethinking our understanding or
liturgy (terminology and focus) relating to the Lord’s Supper
as commonly practiced among Churches of Christ.
It is our opinion that we in Churches of Christ do not celebrate
the “Lord’s Supper” as was the practice of the early
church, but in the tradition of our Protestant heritage
we react to what we believe are the errors of Roman Catholicism,
and possible even to the Reformed and Lutheran
traditions out of which we sprang in the early 1800s on the American
Western Front.
For many the Lord’s Supper is merely one of the necessary acts of worship
commanded or practiced in Scripture (by
Jesus, Paul, and Luke) that make worship scripturally
right .
We do believe that the Lord’s Supper is taught
in Scripture as required for faithful worship, but we believe that it goes
much deeper and further than a commanded act of
worship.
Unfortunately we too often confuse the correct form of worship for the
correct meaning of worship, and it is our intention
in this study to press behind the form to the correct
or appropriate theological meaning of this deeply spiritual act of
Christian worship.
Indicative of the shallowness of this act of worship in many churches is
the restrictive time given to the Lord’s Supper,
and the limited vocabulary adopted at the Table,
seemingly learned and repeated by rote memory in great brevity.
It is our
understanding that it was the Eucharist that functioned as the focus
purpose of the weekly assembly in New
Testament churches, and that the other acts of worship,
such as singing, preaching, and giving, albeit important,
centered around the
celebration of the Eucharist.
The Overall Eucharistic Theological Understanding
Among Christian Denominations:
Different
Denominational Churches define the Eucharist in a variety of ways:
-
The Roman Catholic
Tradition –
Transubstantiation in which the Bread becomes the body of Christ,
and the wine the blood of Christ
-
The Lutheran Tradition
–
Consubstantiation in which the bread remains bread but the presence
of Jesus and his power is with the bread.
-
The Reformed
(Calvinistic) Tradition
– Impanation in which the bread remains the bread, Jesus remains
in heaven, but his Holy Sprit is real in the presence of the bread.
-
The Zwinglian
Tradition
- Named
after the Reformer Huldreich Zwingli (1484-1531) who rejected any sense
of Luther’s real presence of Jesus in the bread, and saw the bread as
representing the body of Jesus, and the service of the Lord’s Supper as
a memorial or cognitive remembering of Jesus death
on the cross.
Churches of Christ Tradition:
Due
to the reaction of Restoration thinkers like Alexander Campbell to Roman
Catholic and Presbyterian Synod
traditions, as well as to a deep heritage
in Campbell’s Baconean Lockean common sense philosophy, Churches of
Christ
have favored the more rational, cognitive, remembering,
memorial approach of Zwingli rather than the “emotional”
or
“spiritual” heritage of Calvin or Luther.
Consequently, the more emotional thanksgiving celebration or
dynamic of the Eucharist became downplayed in
Churches of Christ in favor
of the rational contemplation of Jesus’ death on the cross.
Added to this was the impact of the King James Bible inclusion of the
phrase, “which is broken for you” in Paul’s
accounting of the
tradition he received regarding the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor
11:24).
Furthermore, the biblical understanding of remembrance (Greek
anamnesis) was lost in favor of a more rational
cognitive
understanding of remember or remembrance. (More will be
said of remembrance - anamnesis at a later
stage of this three part
study.)
In
most cases, remembering at the Lord’s Supper in Churches of Christ
focuses on the agony of Jesus dying on the
cross, and worshippers are
reminded of the awful price paid by Jesus for personal salvation. The
Lord’s Supper is a
solemn occasion of personal private reflective
remembering and reflection on Jesus suffering.
John Mark Hicks,
Come to the Table,
has suggested that one problem Churches of Christ encounter is that their
image
of the Lord’s Supper is the Altar of Sacrifice, namely, the
cross of Christ rather than the Table of Celebration in which
thanksgiving
is said for the bread that symbolizes the life of Christ.
Perhaps Hicks is correct in that the liturgy or words spoken at the Lord’s
Supper are more in keeping with the Catholic
concept of Mass which focuses
on the cross, than in keeping with the concept of thanksgiving celebrated
in the
Eucharist by the early 1st and 2nd century
churches.
Furthermore, the concept of Agape or love feast celebrated by 1st
and 2nd century Christians at the Eucharist is
completely lost
in Churches of Christ!
The
meal of redemptive celebration has become the mourning
bench of repentance!
The
meal of thanksgiving and celebration has become the altar of sacrifice!
Symbolic of this tendency, most Christians
have all at some stage of their spiritual growth and shaping witnessed the
lengthy mournful reading of a doctors description of the dreadful agony of
someone dying on a cross under Roman
crucifixion!
We
do not wish in any manner to demean the suffering and agony endured by
Jesus on the cross.
His
crucifixion was certainly awful in the real sense of awful!
The
dramatization of this in Mel Gipson’s film The Passion of
The Christ amplifies this terrible act of
cruelty.
Certainly, the nature of Jesus’ death magnifies the extent of Jesus’ and
God’s love for sinful mankind!
But
it also magnifies the greatness of our redemption which the Lord’s Supper
was surely intended to celebrate (that is,
if the Passover setting has
anything to do with the institution of the Lord’s Supper, which we believe
it does, and which
we will shortly explain)!
Is
it not interesting that our New Testament writers do not dwell on the
suffering agony of Jesus on the cross (as real as
it obviously was), and
Paul in 1 Cor 15:1-4 describes the death, burial, and resurrection of
Jesus as the gospel (good
news) which saves us!
Matthew and Luke (a physician) describe the events surrounding Jesus
crucifixion in approximately 28 verses, focusing
on the event and results,
not the agony!
John does it in just 20 verses!
Our
point is that the Zwinglian “Campbellian”
Lockean rationalist cognitive remembering approach to the Lord’s Supper
(which some might argue is the Biblical approach to Scriptural
interpretation) is not in step with the interpretation given
this great
act of celebration and worship in the New Testament and in the early
church.
The Lord’s Supper
certainly was to be a Memory, but of what was the memory?
Was it to be a memory of
the agony of Jesus?
Was it to be a memory of
the rejection of Jesus?
Or was it to be a memory
of thanksgiving, a celebration of deliverance!
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