The vernard Eller Collection

Could the Church Have It all Wrong? (continued)

by Vernard Eller

V. The Covenant of the Body Broken

Here starts our focused and detailed treatment of the Lord’s Supper. The method will be different from what we just used with baptism. There we located all the NT references we could find–and then tried to group and arrange them into logical order. Here we begin with a theory regarding the Lord’s Supper–and then will adduce scriptural support point by point.

Our primordial premise, of course, has been developed at length in earlier chapters: The Lord’s Supper belongs solidly within the OT worship tradition of “historical recital” and not at all within the priestly temple tradition of “sacramental mystery.” The Supper’s eucharistic bread and cup are meant as reminder-signs of the New Covenant much the same as the rainbow, Sabbath observance, circumcision, and salt had been reminder-signs of the Old. Most specifically, the Lord’s Supper is the new covenant’s version of the Passover meal that so fundamentally epitomizes the OT understanding of historical recital. The new covenant’s initialization through the bloodshedding rite of human-life and divine-life flowing together to form one body–this happened through the bloodshedding of Jesus on the Good-Friday cross.

Although the logistics of the historical situation dictated that the original two events happen in the reverse of proper order, every Lord’s Supper since Easter has had it right. Just as surely as Passover is an occasion for the Jewish people of God to remember themselves back into the covenant-making superintended by Moses, just so is the Lord’s Supper the occasion for the Christian people of God to remember themselves back into the covenant-making not merely superintended but actually performed by Jesus. This we have spent the better part of our book getting ready to say. Now we are going to say it–through the mouthpiece of NT texts.

A. If the Supper Is Historical Recital, it Can’t also be Sacramental Mystery

The first implication to be noted is that things can’t be both ways at once. If the Lord’s Supper is what we suggest it is, it cannot at the same time be what the church has regularly taken it to be. The mouth of God which is Scripture does not have a forked tongue that speaks two ways at once. We will not find Scripture supporting the sacramental view that the Supper accomplishes some sort of self-operative transaction between God’s divine sphere and our human sphere through the vehicle of consecrated, divinized elements or objects. No such “mystical transformations” are involved.

Neither is there involved a “presence of Christ” that is any different in kind from his personal presence as we experience it at other tables, in other companies, on other occasions. No, we remember him there by the same operations of memory used in remembering him (or remembering others) in all kinds of situations. The communion service is designed simply to make us more aware of and sensitive to that unmediated presence of Jesus which is available any time and any place without the office of either priest or element.

Above all, the biblical texts will not support the idea that, with the Supper, it has been given into human control to turn God on or off at our discretion, to make him more present or less so, to channel his blessing to this person or that. Whatever sacramental claims we might make for ourselves, God is the ruler yet. Blessed be the name of the Lord.< p>We are making another basic assumption, one closely related to this disavowal of sacramentalism: Surely Jesus intended the Lord’s Supper for the likes of Peter, his colleagues, and the rest of the early Christians. (That insight is so obvious that it is incredible to me how regularly we ignore it and take for granted that biblical ideas can be understood only by professional theologians.) Yet this means that if the explanation of the Supper must be so complicated that a Peter would throw up his hands in frustration–then that explanation simply can’t be the correct one. Yet read most books on sacramental theology and see how far you (let alone an uneducated fisherman) can get. However, if the case were that Jesus was talking “Passover,” Peter would be as on top of things as anybody. This Peter Principle is so much more simple than anything else that has gone under the name that our tendency must be simply to overlook it. Yet I consider it entirely basic and profound. My goal for this book’s explanation of the Supper is that Peter would be able to read it (if he could read English, of course).

B. The Supper’s Relation to the Passover

Our opening and most critical question must be: Was Jesus’ last supper with his disciples intended to be an equivalent of the Jewish Passover recital? If the answer is “yes,” then we have been given a leg up. We have been given, a key, a frame of reference and model, for interpreting the supper–have been as much as told that it belongs to the tradition of historical recital rather than to that of sacramental mystery.

However, we are unnecessarily complicating the matter when we try to make it hinge upon a detail of dating–as to whether Jesus’ Thursday evening meal did in fact coincide with that year’s regular date for the Jewish Passover meal. The problem of chronological calculation comes about in this wise: All three of the synoptic Gospels have Jesus talking with his disciples about preparing the upper room for “Passover.” Luke goes a step further and also has Jesus, in the room, at the supper, call it a “Passover.” However, the Fourth Gospel has things a bit different in saying that the supper occurred “before Passover “–so that the death of Jesus coincided with the slaughtering of the lambs (which would be eaten, presumably, on the Passover occasion of what would have to be Friday evening). Paul’s account is of no help in that his only dating of the supper is “on the night he was betrayed.” Nevertheless, Paul does say: “Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival.” And with this, he does put Jesus and his death directly into a Passover context.

Consider, then:

1. It obviously was not the date of Passover that was determinative for the timing of the supper. That supper had to be held while Jesus was still available. Even if the Fourth Gospel is correct that the Passover meal did not come until Friday evening, that would have made it too late for Jesus to attend; by that time he was dead.
2. The last supper came at Passover-time, whether or not it came on Passover-time. If, because of the exigencies of scheduling, Jesus had to hold his Passover celebration a bit earlier than the prescribed calendar date, that surely doesn’t preclude it from being a true Passover. Jesus showed freedom in adapting the Passover liturgy to suit his own purposes; he could have been just as free in adapting its dating to fit his own schedule.
3. Therefore, the matter of dating is altogether a non-issue. There is only one issue before us–and it is an entirely decisive one: Is there sufficient evidence to indicate that Jesus deliberately chose Passover language and liturgy as the best possible means of interpreting to his disciples (and preparing them for) the events of his death and resurrection that lay immediately ahead?

Put this way, the question can have no answer other than “yes”–with this “yes” being a superlative confessing that there is no evidence pointing anywhere other than to this one answer. Thus, all the language which actually calls the last supper a Passover is to the point. Even more compelling is that all the accounts (except the Fourth Gospel) center on a cup-word that speaks of “covenant”–and not simply covenant but “blood-initialized covenant,” “in my blood covenant.” (And Luke, we will see, gets even more covenant sayings into his account.)

All the accounts (including the Fourth Gospel this time) are strong regarding “table fellowship”–another Passover connection. The “do this in remembrance” line marks still another Passover connection. For Jesus to be identified as the sacrificed “paschal lamb” represents him as a covenant-reminder sign. Bread certainly figures in the Passover meal; and the tie of “bread” to “body” may even depend upon the covenantal idea of shared life, of the two becoming one body. (At least, Paul strongly reads the communion loaf this way; and he undoubtedly felt that he was following Jesus’ lead in the matter.)

Finally, the last supper notes of eschatological anticipation1 of kingdom talk (of “covenanting a kingdom,” even)–these all come out of Israel’s tradition of historical recital as that is exemplified in Passover. There is no way of explaining the last supper other than as Jesus’ deliberate choice of this Passover tradition as his means for interpreting to his followers the critical events of the next three days.

And note well, if Jesus chose this tradition, it means that he deliberately did not choose as his model any of the sacramental, priestly temple-rites that were familiar to him. Therefore, if our Lord’s Suppers now more closely conform to the sacrament model than to the Passover one, that has to have been the church’s own decision (for which it must bear full responsibility) in that it can adduce nothing of Jesus’ support or blessing at all.

Yet notice that, if we stick with the Passover model, the Supper pulls in another major strain of Jesus’ ministry as well. Automatically and inevitably the Jewish Passover meal is strong on “table fellowship”–even “family dinner-table fellowship.” For their part, all the Gospel accounts make it clear that Jesus himself was very strong on “family dinner-table fellowship”; it was one of his major methods of operation. And what was unique about his was that he insisted on inviting people who the disciples and others had a hard time accepting as “family.” Jesus wouldn’t show any sense of discrimination in the matter at all.

Obviously, there is no way the supper on the night when he was betrayed could be called “the first supper”; no, church tradition has it right in calling it “the last supper.” Even so, the precious memory of all the earlier suppers with Jesus would have made the “last one” a particularly memorable occasion–even without the enhancement of its being a Passover meal. And tell me this one: Is it credible that the early Christians could have thought to honor and extend the “Supper Tradition of Jesus” by practicing it with a closed table? This, when the very mark of the table that was truly the Lord’s was its “come one, come all” openness? It strikes me that the clearest evidence that ours is actually a Lord’s table would be that we take pains to have people there who would not normally be considered “family.” As with Jesus’ own example, this could be the best first step toward their becoming family. In fact, there is a regard in which Jesus’ “last supper” would qualify as the most open table ever. With full knowledge of what Judas was about, Jesus nevertheless wanted him present. Judas, of course, was a former family member who had turned traitor and was now the prime threat to the transpiring table fellowship. Yet Jesus apparently felt that, if anything could dissuade Judas from his treachery, it would be the invitation that he was wanted and included in spite of all. Yet, rather plainly, if the disciples had known what was going on–and if they had been given a vote in the matter–Judas would undoubtedly have found himself rejected and banished. And thus it happens that the church has been closing Jesus’ open table ever since.

C. The Supper as Table Fellowship

A final consideration is this: There is no way a bread-and-cup communion in a church sanctuary can pass itself off as “table fellowship.” What it can, without difficulty, pass itself off as is a bit of priestly temple ritual. Under that model, of course, it makes no difference whether the participants (better: recipients) know one another–or even want to know one another. But how we can claim to be commemorating and perpetuating the table fellowship of Jesus (calling it “the Lord’s Supper”), when our practice retains not so much as one point of likeness with his?

There is one apparent difference between Passover and the Lord’s Supper we ought to address: Passover is celebrated annually; the Lord’s Supper with much greater frequency. How can the one be called an equivalent of the other? Easy. Particularly in light of the Deuteronomic command to teach the story of the Lord to your children diligently, when you sit, when you rise, etc.–in light of this command it seems clear that every instance of Jewish family-table fellowship is meant to be a miniature Passover. The annual, big Feast of Passover is simply the climactic prototype of what was supposed to be transpiring year-round.

Equivalently then, it seems clear that, regarding the earliest Christians, as often as any number of them gathered for the honest purpose of eating together because they were hungry–this common meal was in fact also a Lord’s Supper. It was supposed to be a conscious extension of his table fellowship and a bread-and-cup remembering of his story. Both Passover and the Lord’s Supper are meant to be integral strands in the religious fabric of everyday family life.

If it showed no other traditional influences at all, the Lord’s Supper would still stand as a remembrance, a recital, of the table fellowship practiced by the Lord Jesus. But, of course, there are connections that make it much more than that. The prime one of these is, of course, Jewish Passover. And it is under that influence, in the heading of this chapter, I have chosen to describe the Supper as “the covenant of the body broken.” Yet if you can remember that broken bodies routinely bleed (and if you will give me liberty to sneak in some auxiliary terms) I think we can pretty well expound the NT understanding of the Supper through the key words: covenant, body, broken. Let’s see how far they will take us.

VI. This Is My Body

The phrase, “This is my body,” would seem about as simple and direct as a phrase could be. Yet, simple and direct as it seems, the church has regularly taken it for a saying of most complex and heavy import. Ordinary bread must in some way come to operate as a transformative, incarnational vehicle of the spiritual/mystical body of Jesus Christ (whatever that may be). The phrase is simplicity itself; its intention is anything but. However, the correlation between simple phrase and simple meaning could be preserved–simply by sticking to the Passover model. The pattern there is that, in the course of the meal, as different items (different reminder-signs) are brought into play, the children of the family are cued to ask, “What is that? What’s it for? why are you doing what you’re doing with that whatever-it-is?”

Following this model, Jesus’ statement would then be the proper wording for the father’s (Passover presider’s) answer: “This is a so-and-so meant to remind us of such-and-such.” (And in Jewish Passover, the “so-and-so” would at one point in actuality be a matzo, a portion of unleavened bread.) (See Markus Barth, op. Cit., pp. 13-14.] Yet even when understood as Passover haggadah (liturgy), Jesus’ simple “This is my body” still presents big difficulties. The accounts’ Greek word for the pronoun “this” is not what would normally be used for the referent “bread”–and so leaves open other possibilities. Also, in that Jesus was likely speaking either Aramaic or Hebrew, his sentence would have included no word the equivalent of the “is” in “This is my body.” Again, there is room for other possibilities [Barth, p. 16].

Fortunately, there seems to be no difficulty with the word “my”–so let’s initiate our study by going to the operative noun, “body.” We need to note first that Jesus’ biblical/Hebrew understanding of that word would not be the equivalent of what we normally mean by “body.” For us, “body” speaks of “constituent substance,” the “stuff” of which something is composed. “Body” is that of our makeup which is “weighable” (unfortunately, most often weighing out as “too fat”), “the carcass of the critter” (to put it most bluntly). The usage of Jesus and the Bible would be much more holistic and inclusive. For him, “this is my body” would be much closer to saying, “This is my person; this is my self.” “Body” would include the totality of constituent stuff, mind, feeling, and even behavior-pattern–anything and everything that goes into making me “me.”

I once met a portrait painter who explained that his method was to study his subjects–not merely to ponder their appearance but to watch them in action–this to the point that he could identify those special quirks or mannerisms that made them “them” and differentiated each from any of their fellows. It might have been a way of smiling, of lifting an eyebrow, of tilting the head, of crooking a finger. The artist then built his whole portrait around the one feature. Reading “body” this way, it would seem highly unlikely for Jesus to say that a mere piece of bread (any piece of bread) might well serve for all time as a reminder-sign of who he was in the totality of his work and person, a reminder-sign of his “body,” a reminder-sign that would “body him forth” to the minds and experiences of his followers. It would make much better sense if he had in mind–not simply the bread in itself–but the total group in its total action of a table fellowship culminating in his breaking bread with them. It is this action-pattern in its fullness that will well serve as a Passover reminder-sign of who Jesus was in the fullness of his body.

It makes much better sense to read Jesus so than to take him as saying that a bit of consecrated bread can in some way be made to transform into a spiritual equivalent of his substantial body tissues. Being aware that this was an actual Passover meal, one of the disciples might well have taken the cue and asked, “What does this communal breaking of bread mean, of what is it supposed to remind us?”

Came the haggadah answer: “This is my body. The communal breaking of bread is a reminder-sign of myself. After tomorrow, once you have witnessed my actual giving of my body to be broken for you–after that, you will well understand the appropriateness of the sign and will never again be able to participate in the table fellowship of this broken bread except in remembrance (stark and immediate remembrance) of me.”

We later will return for another angle on the word “body”; but let us first pick up the terms we just glossed over. We have seen that Jesus’ “this” (in “This is my body”) more likely referred broadly to the total event of Jesus’ breaking bread in table fellowship with his disciples–to this rather than narrowly to the substance of the bread in and of itself. Yet even insistence upon the narrower interpretation does not at all prohibit the Passover-reading of the bread’s being a reminder-sign. After all, Jewish Passover does use bread precisely as such a sign–although a reminder-sign of the escape from Egypt rather than of a person who gave himself bodily to be broken on a cross. However, there is no reading of “this” that will amount to support for taking the bread to be sacramental mystery.

Our Greek NT texts do have an “is” word in “This is my body.” Yet Markus Barth points out that Jesus’ original Aramaic saying in the upper room would not have followed that construction. Barth then comes up with a quite convincing method for our discovering what word Jesus would have intended. We will soon get to that; but it should first be observed that even going with the word “is” hardly mandates that the sentence must read: “This bread is identical in substance with the stuff of my physical constitution.”

Not at all; our use of the word “is” is flexible enough that, within the proper context, we could say, “This bread is my body,” and have confidence that hearers would understand that to mean “This bread is the symbolic equivalent of my body; is a representation of my body; is a metaphor of my body; is a reminder-sign of my body.” In effect, neither with the “is” word in or out is the sentence forced to mean that this bread is identical in substance with the stuff of my physical constitution. We certainly do not recognize any such dictate when it is the case of Jesus saying, “I am the door.”

However, Barth’s approach is much more relevant and constructive than any argument over the word “is” will ever be. Barth goes to Paul’s account of the Supper in 1 Cor. 10: 16-17 [Barth, pp. 33-42]. Paul makes the statement a question–yet, turned around to be a version of Jesus’ bread-word, Paul’s would read: “The bread is communion with the body of Christ.” Now, with this being the NT’s earliest written account of the Supper, certainly Paul must be granted at least as good an understanding of what transpired there as that coming from any of the later Gospel writers. And surely Paul wanted this solemn report taken as his best effort at clarifying what Jesus meant by his upper-room bread teaching.

There where our English word is “communion” (or “participation”) Paul’s Greek word is “koinonia”–and koinonia more usually is translated “fellowship” than “communion.” Earlier, of course, without even having Paul’s “communion/koinonia” in mind, we were explaining the last supper in terms of Jesus’ “table-fellowship/koinonia.” Now, to learn that Jesus’ bread-word was probably talking about “communion/fellowship”–well, that gets everything into one package and all as it should be.

Barth is strong on the point that koinonia always designates a quality of intrapersonal fellowship between and among personal beings. It is never used to identify impersonal or inanimate vehicles in their role of bridging the gap between personal beings. Thus communion/koinonia” is something much more alive, dynamic, personal, and two-way than is the “communication” accomplished by means of letters, TV sets, or priestly-consecrated bits of sacramental bread. Surely, the bread of the upper room had reference to what was then and there going on between Jesus and his disciples–rather than to mystical practices by which human religion might later exercise itself. In this regard, then, we must note a seemingly insignificant change in language between Jesus’ initiating the Supper and Paul’s reporting of it. Most frequently, I suppose, the switch is understood as Paul’s bringing new ideas and insights into the gospel. Yet the case can just as easily be made (and this is my preference) that Paul had a very keen understanding of the Supper–and so saw himself to be expounding Jesus rather than introducing inventions of his own. And who is qualified to say that Paul was wrong?

Jesus said, “This is my body.” Paul has it, “This is (communion/koinonia in) the body of Christ.” Most often, I would guess, we take “my body” as an individual reference to that one total person we know as Jesus of Nazareth. His “body” is solely his own and no one else’s. Just as often we probably take “the body of Christ” as denoting that corporation (the plural constituency) of those who have joined themselves to Christ. We take the “my body” idea as being Jesus’ expression in the upper room and “the body of Christ” idea as being Paul’s invention some time later.

Yet it could have been Paul’s personal understanding that Jesus (who was explicit that his is the body that was “given for you”)–that he saw the “individual” and the “group” connotations as being so closely and necessarily related that he wanted the term “body” to speak both ways at once (which idea Paul may have been the first person sharp enough to see).

After all, Jesus’ personal “body” had hardly shown its worth or achieved its destiny until it had been “given for you”–in such way as to create “the body of Christ.” And there was no way that there could ever be a “body of Christ” apart from Jesus’ giving “my body” in the creation of it. Neither meaning of “body” can go very far on its own; the two are very much meant to be paired. And it could be that Paul is reading Jesus just exactly right when Paul connects this pairing with the Lord’s Supper.

This, Paul most decidedly does–and not so much with the Supper as a whole, but quite specifically with the bread (which just happens to be the topic presently under consideration). We have already examined 1 Cor. 10:16 with its “The bread that we break, is it not a sharing (koinonia) in the body of Christ?” Well, which body is referred to? Most clearly, the koinonia-body which is the faith community. Yet certainly the personal “my body” of Jesus is not absent. No, it is the two of them together that are identified with the bread of the Lord’s Supper.

Reading on, Paul’s next verse strengthens our interpretation: “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” The “one bread,” is of course the “my body” of which Jesus spoke. Yet it is through this singular “my body” that “we who are many” find the koinonia that makes us the plural “one body” of the “one bread.” There is no way of making a hard and fast distinction between the singular body of Jesus and the plural body of Christ; both are represented in the one dominical word: “This (bread, or the breaking of bread with you) is my body.”

Paul’s saying here also contains the seed of a crucial idea which perhaps first is made explicit in the eucharistic prayer found in the Didache (perhaps the earliest Christian liturgy preserved outside the NT): “As this bread was scattered on the mountains [in the form of growing grain, of course] and yet was gathered and made one, so too may thy church be gathered together from the corners of the world into thy kingdom.” Paul’s “we who are many are one body” surely implies the Didache’s idea of gathering together the scattered many in the process of making them one. (Note, too, the eschatological reference of Lord’s Supper bread-making being a work of the on-coming kingdom.)

Actually, the whole line of thought will trace back directly to the upper room. Even if nothing else, that last supper indubitably (because of its timing) was a unique instance of Jesus’ “table-fellowship.” Yet that quality of fellowship is just what Paul intends with his word “koinonia/communion.” And, he proceeds, the bread of that night’s table-fellowship signalizes Jesus’ giving of his “personal body” to be broken for us–precisely that we might be drawn into that koinonia/communion which is the table-fellowship Jesus knows as his “corporate body.” Finally, for the fact that that bread of “communion in Christ’s body” was broken for and offered even to Judas, this “opening of the table” certainly envisions an ingathering of “we who are many [various and scattered]” yet on the way to becoming “one body, for we all partake of one bread.”

My point is that everything Paul has to say can be shown as deriving from Jesus’ last supper on the night when he was betrayed. Thus, Paul can be accepted for what he presents himself as being–namely, an expositor of Jesus rather than an innovator using the Supper to introduce his own theological ideas. In his other eucharistic passage of 1 Cor. 11:17-34, Paul pretty much confirms what he already has said. His version of the bread-word (1 Cor. 11:24) is in good agreement with his own report of the previous chapter and with what all three of the synoptic Gospels give us. Perhaps the one new contribution here is 1 Cor 11:29, where Paul opines that the one most critical element in celebrating the Lord’s Supper is that we “discern the body.” Now what the total Pauline context simply will not allow is that we take “discern the body” to mean “perceive that what had started out as plain bread, at the priest’s word of consecration, had actually been transformed into something quite other, namely, the body of Jesus Christ.” Paul nowhere says one word suggesting that such is what he had in mind as “discerning the body.”

No, if he was being at all self-consistent, what he would have to mean is that “discerning the body” entails your realizing that you, in your very own self, are part of that body of Christ–right along with all these brothers and sisters with whom you must be dealing both now during the Supper and at other times. You also have to know and remember how it was you came into the status of “body of Christ”–know how little you merited it and how much Jesus wanted you to have it even so, wanted you to have it no matter what the cost to himself. Finally, you need to know what it means truly to act conformably to your status of “body of Christ.” So, in the earlier part of the passage, where Paul is chewing out the Corinthians for the atrocious way they behave in their observance of the Supper, he could have put the matter precisely in these terms: “You show absolutely no discernment of the body.” In a churchly, sacramental setting, “taking communion in the body of Christ” carries with it no ethical or behavioral demands at all. However, when the demand is that of “discerning the body” while engaged in “the koinonia/communion of the body of Christ,” the case is altogether different.

Perhaps a word should be said about how “bodies” (of the “body of Christ” sort) are constituted and how they are supposed to perform. Such a “body” consists of a group of followers gathered around a leader who is their “head.” The intent, then, is that the “body” in its corporate life show forth the same character, the same pattern of behavior, that the “head” has demonstrated in his individual life. This way, by looking at the “body” in its performance, bystanders should be able to get a quite reliable picture of the “head.” And what Paul said about “discerning the body” gets to the very heart of the matter. In fact, “body” and “head” should not even be thought of as separable. The head is not truly “head” until it acquires a “body” through which to work; and of course, a body without a head cannot truly be called a “body” at all. So, a happenstance visitor should be able to stumble into a church and, with a little keeping open of his eyes, come to the conclusion that he was witnessing the body language of a body whose head was Jesus Christ. In some churches, of course, the reaching of that conclusion might take a while.

Paul in effect says that the very best place for seeing the church’s “head” is at the spot where it is doing its best job of being “body”–that spot being, of course, the Lord’s Supper in which kononia/communion in the body of Christ is the whole point of the meeting. Yet obviously the church members themselves must first discern that they are the body before visitors will have any chance of discerning the head who is revealed in that body.

Indeed, my guess is that when Paul talks about our eating the bread and drinking the cup in such way as to proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes (1 Cor. ll:26)–my guess is that he is not even thinking primarily of verbal proclamation. Rather, “Be so discerning of the body that the body’s actions (both at the table and apart from it) become a proclamation more powerful and more convincing than any proclamation of mere words.”

Consider that, if “discern the body” means “contemplate the communion bread,” there is not much anyone could ever learn from doing so. If, however, it means “be body in a form of table fellowship that awakens the discernment of visitor-participants,” then there is a great deal to be learned by everyone involved. Consider, too, that according to the churchly understanding, the Supper provides a religious rite by which the Priest can make Christ present (what is called “the Real Presence”) in a form that can then be communicated to an individual church member by an actual transfer of substance. The rite, of course, can be done for as many individuals as is wanted; yet in and of itself the transaction requires but three:

1. the Priest;
2. the Real Christ he makes present in the bread; and>
3. the Communicant.

I suppose if one were careful to read no further than Jesus’ word, “This is my body,” it is possible to call this churchly interpretation “biblical.” Yet if Paul be allowed to get hold of that word “body” (with its koinonia/communion), the churchly understanding surely doesn’t rate as much of a “discernment” of it.

In the churchly mode, the Priest has priority as the one who invokes the real presence of Christ, then to transmit it to the Communicant. In what we are making so bold as to call “the biblical mode,” Christ is prior as the One really present long before any of the rest of us even thought of getting there, the One who ij present and can make himself really present just however and whenever it suits him–no priestly help wanted. It is this Christ then who invokes us (rather than our invoking him)–who invokes and invites all sorts of people from here, there, and everywhere. He invokes, invites, and ingathers people to his table-fellowship, his koinonia/communion. And it is here, in this setting, we are able for the first time to do full justice to the bread-word, “This is my body.” Without at all denying the essentiality of Jesus’ giving his personal body, we can use that very act for the explaining of this new and truly full-bodied “body of Christ.”

Which way do you think it was when the Master gathered his disciples and said, “How I have longed to eat this Passover with you before I suffer”? My guess is that Paul comes on to read Jesus just as he would want to be read. We have yet to deal with what I call “the silent thread of the bread/body theme.” I grant that, out loud, the idea of “covenant” is related only to Jesus’ cup-word. In fact, what we just wrote as “bread/body” in this other case would be written as “cup/covenant.” Yet I am convinced that “covenant” belongs just as truly to the “bread” as it does to the “cup.”

We have throughout this book been toying with a scriptural “body” tradition which we have not to this point made explicit–but should do so now. I am not offering to trace it in detail all the way through the Bible; but here we go with a hop, skip, and jump.

The line begins with Gen. 2:24–“Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one body” (translators of the OT use the English “body” about as often as “flesh” to represent that key Hebrew term; the one is just as correct as the other). The idea we are after is “body” in the rather uncommon sense of “that community which is produced by separate individuals (the two, the several, the many) gathering into a corporation that functions as a single entity. It will not be necessary to ferret out all the OT does with this idea–though I will suggest that, where our study of “covenant” found a strong interest in “peoplehood” (in Israel’s being “a people”), there we were at least right next door to this concept of “body.”

Then comes Jesus, on an occasion of intense table-fellowship among a tight-knit company of disciples, saying, “This bread (or perhaps, this communal action involving bread) is my body.” We already have seen at least Paul (if no one else) understanding Jesus to have intended this concept of “body.” Consequently Paul proceeds to call the bread “a koinonia/communion in the body of Christ” and then say that “we who are many are one body, for we all partake of one bread.” And finally (as already seen) the early-church liturgy preserved in the Didache makes the idea most specific: “As this bread was scattered on the mountains and yet gathered and made one [body], so too may thy church be gathered together.

The social concept of “the several” (the individual plural) transcending their individualism (but not “individuality”) to be formed into “the one body” (the community of a corporation singular)–this idea is consistent throughout. And regularly “bread” stands as the metaphor of this bodybuilding process.

So now I ask you: What does Scripture identify as the essential bonding action that keeps the ingredients all hanging together as one loaf–the individuals hanging together as one body? Surely, from Gen. 2:24 onward the answer is covenant. “Covenant”: what else could it be? What I am suggesting (yes, a bit more than “suggesting”) is that the eucharistic bread has just as good a “covenant genealogy” as does the eucharistic cup. The only difference is that, in the biblical texts, the actual word “covenant” is associated only with the cup and not with the bread. Yet the “covenant idea” is pervasive in any case.

Now we ought not fail to admit that, in our immediately preceding chapter, we found Paul being just as eager to relate this idea of “covenantal union,” of our becoming “one in Christ”–just as eager there to relate it to the water of baptism as he is here to the bread of the Supper. “So which is to be, Paul? Where do you mean to come down–with the water or with the bread?” My own feeling is that Paul is not as easy to corner as one might think. His answer can quite consistently be: “Both. The two are not as completely redundant as you take them to be. For those being baptized, their baptism signalizes the initialization of their union with Christ and his body–while, for those partaking of the bread, the Supper signalizes the on-going life of the body.

“You might notice (Paul could continue) that my baptismal emphasis is more upon the individual’s experience of union with Christ (of which the inevitable next step is corporate union in his body)–while my Supper emphasis is upon the discerning of that corporation body (which could come into being, and can continue in being, only as individuals individually come into union with Christ). Both emphases are there because I wanted both there.” Yet the bread on the one hand and the cup on the other are not redundant, either. No, each speaks to a different aspect of covenantal theology, and thus can our understanding be all the richer for pondering both. But the cup (as we shall soon see) speaks of how it was the New Covenant came to be initialized and set in motion. The bread (as we now have seen) speaks of how that same New Covenant, through table-fellowship, on a continuing basis works at the building up of the body of Christ.

And of course, all this holds together only within the framework of that traditional Jewish Passover which was a covenant meal of dedicated “remembering.” Everything we have discovered thus far “fits”–and I don’t think there is to be found any other frame of reference into which everything would fit. It is becoming more and more apparent that the Lord’s Supper (along with baptism) does in fact represent Jesus’ own best and most deliberate exposition of his gospel.

VII. Broken for You

It is through the Lord’s Supper that we celebrate and actually become formed into the body of Christ. In Chapter 5 we gave attention to the matter of the “covenant,” and in Chapter 6 our interest turned to what the Bible means by “body” in the covenantal context. Now we give attention to the nature of that body which is “of Christ.”

If the body is a fellowship that shows forth the essential character of its head, what is the particular character that we are covenanting to display? In effect, this character of Christ is the content of the covenant, for, in the covenant, it is this which he is offering to give us and which we are pledging to live out in our communal life. What does the Supper say in this regard? “The Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is [broken] for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’” (1 Cor. 11:24).

This, from Paul, is our earliest attestation of the bread-word. There is some variation in the synoptic accounts, they being in different degrees less complete than the Pauline statement; but there is no actual disharmony among them. Depending upon what manuscripts one follows, the words “broken” or “given” may be either included or omitted here in Corinthians and in Luke. But whether or not these words are original, either or both of them obviously are in line with and contribute to the meaning of the original; they constitute no problem.

The word “remembrance” is not a rendering that does justice to the biblical concept. I have no other translation to suggest, but these all imply a relationship that involves too much of time gap, distance, separation, and absence. The biblical meaning would intend much more of contemporaneity and living fellowship: “Do this to celebrate me, to become incorporate with me, to get us together in living reality.”

But more important than nailing down the wording and meaning of this bread-word is noting the manner of its delivery. All of the accounts are very consistent in stressing that Jesus broke bread and said, “This is my body.” The emphasis is altogether on the breaking of the bread and not upon the eating of it. Further, with the disciples at Emmaus it was as the stranger broke bread that he was recognized as the risen Lord. And in John’s account of breakfast on the seashore, the accent is upon Jesus’ giving the disciples bread and fish. Still further, there is indication (from the book of Acts) that the earliest name by which this Christian rite was known was precisely “the breaking of bread”–this long before such terms as “the Lord’s Supper,” “the last supper,” “communion,” “eucharist,” or “mass” had even been dreamed of. Now I know that “breaking bread” can be used and was used as nothing more than a general term for “eating together,” but the weight of the total biblical evidence leads me to suggest that much more than just the general term was involved.

What then does the “breaking” signify? Stop and think: Why break bread in the first place? If one had it in mind to eat the whole portion himself, it would make sense to bite it rather than break it. Plainly, breaking bread signifies the intention to share it, to give to others. Even more, if that bread is the symbol of oneself, the breaking signifies the intention to give of oneself to the point of sacrifice, to expend oneself in the process of sharing. And this is the idea, I believe, from which the whole significance of “This is my body” takes its source.

Jesus took bread and broke it and said, in effect, “This is my body–what I am doing in this act of breaking the loaf is a portrayal of the character of my body; this is what my life and person are all about.” And it should be apparent to anyone who knows Jesus that this indeed is what his bodyhood is all about. The cup of the new covenant in my blood reinforces the motif. Calvary is the supreme expression of the body given to be broken–but it is by no means the only expression. Jesus’ whole life and ministry represent a giving of himself for the breaking; Bonhoeffer’s instinct was sharp and clear when he characterized Jesus as “the man for others.”

And although he does not use the concept of “being broken,” Paul also saw clearly that this was the character of Jesus’ bodyhood: “You know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that through his poverty you might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9). Also, Jesus

who, though he was in the form of God,
	did not regard equality with God
	as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
	taking the form of a slave,
	being born in human likeness.
and being found in human form,
	he humbled himself
	and became obedient to the point of death–
	even death on a cross. (Phil. 2:6-8).

And yet, if this is the meaning of the bread and the bread-word, consider how sadly (almost comically, but in the first place sadly) we have missed the point. In most commemorations of the Supper there is no breaking of the bread at all; it is pre-cut into bite-sized nibbles or stamped into neat little wafers-just that conveniently do we manage the ceremony of the shared loaf. And even in those instances where some breaking or sharing is done, it is handled as a matter of course, preliminary to the real business of eating. Look, next time, and see; the bread is passed or otherwise distributed with some degree of informality (or just plain humanness) but then, for the eating, watch the holiness come over people’s faces–the glazed eyes, the slow chew, the introspective swallow.

I do not mean to be making fun. Someone who was out to make fun of the church accused it of being the place where people go to play “swallow the leader.” The remark, of course, is both unkind and unfair, and yet it does have enough truth in it to make us pause and consider how far we have sold out to sacramentalism. Something tragic has taken place if Jesus intended the breaking of bread as the sign of his body and we have passed that over in favor of a sacramental eating through which, oblivious to the existential character of that body, we think to ingest its substance by quasi-physical means.

And every bit as serious as this perversion is the fact that the breaking, which clearly and definitely is a social and communal symbol of sharing, has been displaced by eating (chewing and swallowing), a very much privatized and atomized symbol of individual possession. The body of Jesus was a shared body, a body for others, and the body of Christ is a communal body, a social organism. The me-by-myself consumption of a nubbin of holy bread cannot–simply cannot-be the correct expression of what the New Testament talks about.

It would be much better to use a regular loaf of bread that is broken from person to person around a table. This separates the act of breaking from that of eating. In this method the bread is broken in a self-conscious act. If possible, each participant might simply take the broken piece and lay it on a plate, eating it later as part of a fellowship meal. When it happens as I have experienced on occasion, using loaves freshly baked by a member of the congregation, the meaning of eucharist as a thanksgiving offered up from the hands, labors, and possessions of the people comes alive, and the tearing of a warm loaf becomes a most vivid reminder of “my body broken for you.”

In the breaking of bread, Christ demonstrates to us the character of his body (the body of Jesus) which was given for us. But according to our earlier discussion regarding the nature of the corporate body, the body of Christ comes into being only as the individual constituents accept that bodyhood as their own program, pledging themselves to express it through their communal life as he has done in his person’s life. Does the Lord’s Supper give explicit attention to this aspect of the matter, to our response as well as to Christ’s approach?

The answer to that question depends entirely upon whose version of the Lord’s Supper you have in mind. It would have to be said that the customary Supper, which consists only of the bread and cup, does not give deliberate, conscious attention to our commitment and role as the body of Christ; all of the action has to do with what Christ has done for us. But the customary mode is not the only way the Supper is celebrated in Christendom.

If our practice of the Supper is to be determined in strict accordance with the action commanded in the New Testament, then hear this: “During supper, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin, and began to wash his disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel…. After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done for you? You call me Teacher and Lord–and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example, that you should also do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them’” (John 13:3-5, 12-17).

Truth to tell, the command regarding feetwashing is clearer and more decisive than the command regarding the bread and cup. I am aware, however, that there are some things to be said on the other side.

1. The foot washing is recounted only in the Gospel of John and not elsewhere;
2. the passage stands without further support.
3. More, the evidence concerning the practice of feet washing in the early church is scant indeed. There are references enough to make it plain that feetwashing was practiced; but under what circumstances and whether as part of the Lord’s Supper, it is impossible to say.

Thus, this approach to the matter leads inevitably to a toss-up: one very definite command with little consequent evidence to undergird it. So more to the point than trying to argue this question to a conclusion is to ask a different question: How well does the feet washing fit into the Lord’s Supper, and what does it add to the bread and cup? Our purpose is to show that it fits perfectly and that it adds precisely what we have seen the logic of the case demanding but the bread and cup lacking.

Jesus’ freely taking upon himself the slave task of washing the guests’ (disciples’) feet is as vivid an expression of “my body broken for you” as is the cross itself. Indeed, it is even more pointed in its “for you” aspect; the crucifixion (the event in and of itself) does not make it readily apparent that what Jesus did is “for us”; with the feet washing, the connection is unmistakable.

And in every way the feet washing is a more graphic statement than is the breaking of bread. Consider how in the course of time the significance of the breaking of bread was lost even to the Lord’s Supper; yet any reader of John 13 can immediately tell you what the feet washing signifies. The action itself is very appropriate: in order to wash another’s feet one must kneel, and to kneel is to break one’s upright posture, one’s posture of self-containment, of being for oneself. One must now break at the knee, break at the waist, break at the neck, break at the elbow. In as clear a way as could be devised, feet washing says, “My body broken for you.” The feet washing, then, harmonizes with, supports, reinforces, and even corrects the breaking of the bread. Yet it does more. Even if I am the one who breaks bread with my brother around the table, the bread-word still means “This is my [Jesus’] body broken for you.” And this is how it should be. But with the feet washing the giving of the body to be broken becomes my own act.

“I have set you an example, that you should also do as I have done to you.”

The instinct of the John author is a right one; the feet washing introduces an aspect of the Lord’s Supper which surely must have been present in the mind of Christ but to which the bread and cup alone simply do not give adequate expression. With the bread and cup alone, the service concludes with the participants as mere recipients of the body of Jesus. The feet washing makes them pledged and active members of the body of Christ.

The “body” which Jesus first showed forth in washing our feet and which we proceed to show forth in washing one another’s feet is, of course, that of humble service, of being men for others in likeness with the man for others. Here is caught up a major element of the gospel which otherwise the Supper does not express: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:40). “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor? … Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:36-37). “For those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; … The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters too” (1 John 4:19-21).

I know that for those who are not accustomed to washing feet as a part of the Lord’s Supper, the suggestion must sound strange and slightly grotesque. But be assured that the feeling is only a matter of what one is used to. After all, for anyone not used to the idea, talking about and going through the motions of eating the body and drinking the blood of Jesus must be more than slightly grotesque.

Granted, there are some people (even among the Brethren, whose Supper has always included feet washing) who demur on the grounds that the very act of baring one’s own feet or of washing another’s is distasteful and impolite. Their argument is that feet washing was an accepted custom in Jesus’ day but one that is completely foreign to us. Nevertheless, it must be recalled that Jesus chose to wash the disciples’ feet precisely because of the offense and scandal involved. It is true that the offense was not related to delicate feelings about bare feet; it came at a much deeper, a much more scandalous level, and one we hardly are in position to appreciate. Yes, feet were publicly washed in Jesus’ day–but no one but slaves were expected to do it. Jesus washed feet as a way of demonstrating that he was willing to make himself a slave out of love for his brethren. It is certain that he did not do it for the sake of any pleasurable sensations involved. And Peter’s response, “I will never let you wash my feet,” indicates something of the shock he felt. Thank God feet washing is still somewhat distasteful; otherwise we would miss the point entirely.

There are a couple of different ways of handling the feet washing. Each has its advantages; perhaps someone can find a method that will catch the advantages of both. One way is to have the foot-tub and towel right at the table, the service then being performed from one person to the next around the table. In this case, seating is segregated for the entire Supper–men at the tables on the one side of the room, women on the other. The advantage of this method is that the feet washing is an integral part qf the service, taking place right at the tables.

In the second method, at the appropriate point in the service the men (usually a small group at a time rather than all at once) retire to an adjoining room and do their feet washing there, while the women go to another room to do theirs. This tends to break up the service but has the advantage of allowing families to sit together for the bread and cup and the meal.

And while we are making so bold as to suggest that unaccustomed Christians might become interested in feet-washing, we might as well go all the way. After a man has washed his brother’s feet (or a woman her sister’s) the Brethren practice is for them to greet each other with the holy kiss (the kiss of peace). There is not only good biblical precedence for this but injunctions as plain and definite as that regarding feet washing itself. The command to “greet one another with the kiss of peace” is found in Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, 1 Thessalonians, and 1 Peter. The act obviously is appropriate; and again, it is all in what one is used to.

In the Lord’s Supper the bread represents the body of Jesus broken for us. The feet washing represents the body of Christ–namely ourselves–being broken for the brethren and for the world. But the breaking of bread has another important meaning, which goes beyond that of humble, self-giving service. There is the demanding, often arduous and painful, meaning; and there is a pleasant and enjoyable meaning. It is picked up in the fellowship meal (the love feast, the agape) which, we noted earlier, was first known as “the breaking of bread.” And this meaning of the breaking of bread is no less vital to the Christian gospel and integral to the Lord’s Supper than is the sacrificial one. A man for others–whether in the person of Jesus or that of his followers–will be “for them” not only in service but in joyous fellowship.

Whether or not one can find an explicit command in this case, it is clear that the New Testament knows nothing of a Lord’s Supper without a meal and has not even a conception that the meal and the eucharist are two different things that could be separated. That separation came later, and even then for practical rather than theological reasons. Now that the practical reasons (drunkenness and public scandal) no longer obtain, it is very difficult to justify the continued omission of the meal. And if, as we have maintained, the Supper basically is a covenant meal, the dropping of the meal does not make very good sense from any point of view. No wonder the idea of “covenant” got lost in the process; it is like a wedding ceremony in which marriage never gets mentioned.

All of our suggestions regarding the cup, the bread, and the feet washing have assumed a full-fledged meal as their setting; and it is doubtful whether they can maintain their meaning outside that setting. A covenant cup, as does the pledging of a toast, naturally belongs to a meal. Although the partaking of a sacramental tidbit can stand by itself, the breaking of a loaf around a table would seem quite artificial without some other food to go with it. The feet washing, of course, is part and parcel of the mealtime–even banquet–tradition. And although it would seem to be stretching the language rather far, even the one-bite-and-one-swallow practitioners still call theirs the Lord’s Supper!

In a covenant and its commemorative meal, the participants pledge themselves not only to belong to and to serve one another but also to enjoy one another. Indeed, in the meal they not only pledge to enjoy one another but go about doing it. And it should be said that the “one another” includes Christ, the covenant head, as well as the followers who constitute his body. The New Testament tradition is clear that the Supper is to be understood as a meal with Christ, not one in honor of the dear departed.

It is in the meal, then, that the fish (which we discussed earlier) takes over as the central symbol and that the emphasis shifts from the crucifixion to the resurrection. It is, of course, the resurrection that makes it possible for men today to have table fellowship with the living Lord. Most assuredly, we should be careful not to forget that it took an outpouring of his blood and a breaking of his body to win this new covenant, this joy and victory of a living Lord united with his followers as a close-knit body; but in the meal, the darkness of Good Friday is overtopped by the light of Easter.

Without the meal, the Lord’s Supper tends to stop short of the resurrection; and consequently the mood usually is much too somber to qualify as a celebration of the Christian gospel. Of course, what Paul says in 1 Cor. 11:26 is true: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death….” But we must recall that he was writing in an effort to correct people who were misusing the good time aspects of the meal. Nevertheless, the Supper deserves and requires something of the flavor it gains in the account of the breakfast on the seashore in Jn. 21:7-8: “That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord!’ When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea. But the other disciples came in the boat….”

There has been a resurrection; the Lord is present at his table; that table does bear a fish, and it is right that those around the table enjoy their fellowship with him and their fellowship with one another in him. It is properly named “the love feast” and the church is much the poorer for having dropped it.

Regarding practical matters, my own church, the Church of the Brethren, has always had the meal but has usually eaten it in sober and holy silence. Consequently it has come across as a funeral supper. This, I am convinced, is wrong. Although, of course, the conversation ought not become trivial and careless, the meal should display the sort of true sociality that requires conversation, smiles, and even the proper kind of laughter.

As to menu, why should it not be a true meal rather than simply a symbolic one? Fish has been suggested as the main dish–and as a central symbol–but a prescribed menu of foods of particular holiness would miss the point. Most times in my experience a few people have prepared the dinner at the church; but I have also participated in love feasts which come even closer to the early church model and take on an added theological significance as well. They were potluck suppers in which the people brought dishes prepared at home. I am aware that the ritual of high church includes the “offering,” in which the “host” is carried from the rear of the sanctuary, through the congregation, and up to the altar, as a sign of the people making a freewill gift (a eucharist) of the food of the Supper. But it seems to me that real people bringing real food to a real supper says it much better.

Whether we are thinking now of the body of Jesus broken for us (the breaking of the loaf), the body of Christ broken in humble service (the feet washing), or the body of Christ celebrating koinonia (the love feast), the fact that it is “the body” has the effect of bringing the people close to one another, knitting them together, uniting them in love and mutual concern. The Supper is a celebration of the church and the church, it must be said, not as a commissary but as a caravan of people whose very coming together and going together upon a common way constitutes it as church.

It is Paul, of course, who introduces the term “the body of Christ” to describe this quality of covenant fellowship; and he sees that the Supper is its sign and demonstration: “When we break the bread, is it not a means of sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, many as we are, are one body; for it is one loaf of which we all partake” (1 Cor. 10:16-17). His second sentence makes it plain that in his first sentence he does truly mean “the body of Christ” and not simply what we have been calling “the body of Jesus.” Whenever, as is customary in most observances of the Supper, we allow the implication to stand that “when we break bread” (notice he does not say “eat bread”) we are sharing simply on an individual, one-to-one basis along the axis between the person of each individual believer and the person of Jesus Christ, we inevitably have impoverished Paul’s understanding of the Supper.

The Didache, which is perhaps the oldest Christian document preserved outside the New Testament, gives us an example of a Lord’s Supper liturgy that dates very close to New Testament times themselves. There we find a prayer used at the moment of the breaking of bread. It may be based directly upon Paul’s thought; in any case it carries his idea just one step farther: “As this bread that is broken was scattered upon the mountains and gathered together, and became one, so let thy church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into thy kingdom.” In this prayer we have not only the “one loaf” of which Paul speaks, but the recognition that that loaf has to become one, as scattered grains of wheat give themselves to a common life and a common way. Although it is not often heard among us, this way of thinking is integral to the Supper. “Blest be the tie that binds… (In passing, note also in this Didache prayer the esehatological, future-pointing theme which is to be the major thrust of our last chapter.)

The idea of “one body–one loaf” is impressive; but perhaps even more impressive–going beyond metaphor–is an actual description of the thing in itself. It is taken from Acts 2: “They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”

And that is what the Lord’s Supper is all about (better, that is one of the things the Supper is all about). How sad it is that people can attend our observances of the Supper and never discover it!

VIII. In My Blood

It is through a pledging of covenant between the prototype head and those who would become his people that a body is formed. Covenant is the bond that holds individuals together into a body. Or perhaps more accurately put, covenant is the form taken by the love that cements individuals into a body.

Now the very concept of “covenant” assumes a prior event, a foundation, a prerequisite, before the covenant itself is even possible. This is the calling out. Out of his own graciously offered love and goodwill, the head first must act to release the people so that they are free to make a covenant. Were it not for the theological encrustations that hide its true beauty, the best word to describe this step would be “redemption,” that is, the buying off of the present owner in order to set a slave free. Clearly, before there is any chance of a new body coming into formation, the constituents must be freed from all past alliances, disentangled from the mass, called out to become a separate people.

My thesis is that the Lord’s Supper is essentially a fellowship meal celebrating the new covenant. And quite obviously the old covenant is the model for the new. Regarding the old covenant, the initiatory act of redemption was the escape from Egypt, a literal coming out of slavery. For the new covenant (and thus for the Supper) it is regarded that Jesus the leader-lord has brought his people out of the slavery of the old age and into the freedom of the age to come. To put it in a way that the New Testament does not make explicit but certainly assumes: Baptism precedes the Supper. The Supper is celebrated by those who already, through baptism, have experienced the forgiveness, the endowment with the Holy Spirit, the death and resurrection that spell freedom from the slaveries of the past. Christians come to the Lord’s table as free men, as men who have been freed to no other purpose than that, voluntarily and in freedom, they might gather to covenant themselves into the new body of Christ.

In one sense this experience of redemption stands prior to the Supper; but because it is so absolutely prerequisite, it would seem appropriate that the Supper include a recollection and celebration of that previous event as well. By design, every occurrence of the Supper should include a reminder that the people come to it as baptized Christians and thus as redeemed slaves, as free men.

However, redemption does not stand as an end in itself, as an independent good; it needs covenant as its guarantee and completion. It is as essential that redemption and covenant go together as that a spoon have both a handle and a bowl. Unless slaves are first redeemed there is no possibility of their covenanting into a body. But also, unless they use their newly found freedom to form a covenant body, they will be fair game for the next slave hunter that comes along.

In the first place, covenant is the leader-lord graciously inviting men into the relationship of bodyhood with himself and describing to them the character that this body will need to take. In the second place, covenant is the people responding to this invitation, pledging themselves to the leader-lord and his terms and to one another within those terms.

The old covenant opens in Ex. 20:1 with the reminder, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery,” which is to say, “I redeemed you and made you the free men you are today.” Then Yahweh invites, “You shall be my people,” and the people respond, “You are our God.” The new covenant opens with the reminders, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” and “… must consider yourselves as dead to sin and alive to God …” (Gal. 3:27 and Rom. 6:11). Then Jesus invites, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood…. This is my body-for you.” And his followers respond, “My Lord and my God!” The wording is different; the economy is the same.

In passing, there is an important implication to be noted. Covenant is a profoundly religionless concept, and to understand the Supper as a covenant meal has the effect of preserving its religionlessness as well. Covenant contains not a hint that the things of God have passed into the control of man, that man now has some sort of claim upon God or a means of channeling his grace. Covenant is initiated by the leader-lord and cannot be initiated in any other way; its terms are his terms. All that the people can do or need do is to respond–either accept or reject. And the Lord’s Supper does not enable us to make Jesus more present or less present; it is our opportunity to respond to the covenant invitation which, in his abiding presence, he offers to us.

And let it not be thought that I am injecting all this covenant emphasis into the Lord’s Supper. All four of the bread-and-cup accounts (the three synoptics and Paul) report the cup-word as a reference to the new covenant; the preferred wording is, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor. 1:25). Just as impressive is an additional verse from Luke’s account, a verse the full significance of which is usually lost in translation. Literally, Luke 22:29 reads: “I am covenanting a covenant with you, according as my Father covenanted a kingdom to me.”

In this regard, even if John should be correct in dating the last supper the evening before Passover, the synoptic writers are theologically correct in their desire to make of it a Passover meal. Of course, technically speaking, Passover is the celebration only of the redemption from Egyptian slavery and not the making of the covenant at Sinai. However, all the evidence (which we shall examine in due course) indicates that the Jews did not do too good a job of keeping the events compartmentalized. (God bless them; it goes to prove our contention that redemption and covenant ultimately are the bowl and handle of the same spoon.) In the first century, Jews, Jesus, and Christians would have understood Passover as a covenant meal as well as a celebration of the escape from Egypt.

(For that matter, the theme of covenant is not entirely absent from the account of the escape. Many scholars are convinced that the blood used to mark the door posts of Hebrew homes so that the angel of death would “pass over” is to be understood as covenant blood. Thus, in the escape itself there is an antetype of Sinai. The connection is a valid one.)

At this point, leaving Passover for the moment so that we may circle back upon it, we must consider that the Old Testament presents two different rites celebrating two different aspects of covenant.

1. The first marks the inauguration, the original pledging and sealing of the relationship. It takes the form of a pouring out of blood.
2. The second is the repeated occasion which recalls, reaffirms, renews, furthers, and deepens the covenant which had been inaugurated earlier. It takes the form of a fellowship meal.

Rather clearly, the New Testament understands Calvary as being the spot at which its covenant was founded and the Lord’s Supper as its regular celebration. However, the very nature of the case made necessary a chronological inconsistency: the commemorative meal was established before the sealing of the covenant took place. We shall find evidence that the New Testament writers themselves saw the problem and understood that the Supper rightfully needs to be transposed from the precrucifixion situation of the last supper into the post-resurrection situation of the church. It follows that for us the Supper ought not to be an attempt to return to the upper room perspective; a full awareness of Jesus’ death and resurrection forms the proper background for the Supper. In some respects, the experience in the upper room was a foreshadowing rather than a full portrayal of what the Lord’s Supper is all about.

But we need now to attend to the act of inaugurating the covenant. Whether we are dealing with covenant stories concerning Abraham, the escape from Egypt, Sinai, or the cross, blood (blood that has been shed) figures strongly in the account. In biblical thought, blood is the symbol of life; blood is liquid life. And shed blood is a symbol of life given or shared. It is not, in the first place, a symbol of death, of life lost or taken. It represents the act of love and grace in which one voluntarily devotes his life to another. The blood shed and the body broken say pretty much the same thing; and it is apparent that the Supper tradition prefers the latter metaphor to the former.

The blood ceremony which is most revealing is that recounted in the Sinai story of Exodus 24. Moses builds an altar that, of course, is symbolic of God. Animal sacrifices are made and the blood is collected and then divided into two basins. The blood from the one basin is splashed against the altar. After the people declare their desire to make the covenant, the second basin is sprinkled over them. Clearly the symbolism is intended to portray a sharing and self-giving between God and the people which is so complete that an intermingling of blood (life) is the only proper expression for it.

It should be plain that the new covenant’s counterpart of this occasion is not the Lord’s Supper but Calvary, there where the blood of the Lamb was spilt. In himself, Christ represented both God and man. There was no need for sacrificial animals; Christ’s act went beyond the mediatory symbols of the cult to be the thing in itself, a pouring out of life which covenanted man and God together into a relationship deeper and more intimate than anything even imagined before. “Through him God was pleased to reconcile himself to all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood on his cross,” as Col. 1:20 puts it.

This act is the equivalent (better, the fulfillment) of the Sinai blood ceremony. And obviously it is as little necessary or appropriate to repeat Calvary as Sinai. Those events–according to the very nature of covenant sealing, if on no other grounds–are once for all and essentially unrepeatable. The cup of the Lord’s Supper certainly is not intended as a covenant-making that displaces Calvary; but neither is there evidence to suggest that the Supper in any sense marks a re-presentation, a replication, a reprise of Calvary. That act was complete and entire in itself; there is nothing that we can add to it. The Christian gospel has no need or any place for another blood ceremony; that matter was well cared for a long time ago. The significance of the eucharistic cup must be sought elsewhere.

This brings us to the second sort of covenant ceremony, the fellowship meal. There is no competition between it and the blood ceremony. In no sense does the meal represent the inaugurating of a covenant. Quite the contrary, the meal must assume the prior occurrence of the blood sealing if it is to fulfill its function at all. The meal is an occasion of recollection, celebration, reaffirmation, and rededication-but all of this within the context of the relationship which God has already established and definitely not as an attempt to re-do or improve upon anything done earlier.

The Sinai model makes the relationship plain. Following the account of the blood ceremony, Ex. 24:9ff. reads: “Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel…. also they beheld God, and they ate and drank” In due course we shall see how extensively the concept of a covenant meal pervades the Old Testament and how it ties across to the Lord’s Supper; but for the moment, let us follow up our consideration of blood.

The eucharistic cup, we maintain, belongs in the tradition of the fellowship meal of covenant celebration rather than in the tradition of blood poured out in covenant inauguration. If that be so, then the actual presence of Jesus’ blood in the Supper is not called for–no more than there is any suggestion that the elders of Israel carried sacrificial blood up Sinai and drank it; no more than covenant blood is involved in the descriptions of other covenant meals. What we do when we drink the cup of the Lord’s Supper is make a pledge to God, to Christ, to one another; the symbolism is not entirely different from that of drinking a toast. For this, the presence of the covenant blood is neither necessary nor appropriate.

Undeniably, the contents of the eucharistic cup are meant to remind us that the covenant we celebrate (the covenant sealed at Calvary) was sealed in the blood of Jesus. This fact is precious and all-important to the meaning of the Supper. But this is not to say that the contents of the cup must in any sense be the blood of Jesus. No blood ceremony is involved in the Supper itself. The blood (the poured-out life) of Jesus is crucial to the New Testament understanding of Calvary and the covenant sealed there. But to attempt to bring that blood over into the Supper only confuses things and actually detracts from the once-for-all sufficiency of what God did through Christ on the cross.

Admittedly, the biblical testimony is not unanimous in support of my point. Paul’s account in 1 Cor. 11 (our earliest reference to the Supper) reports the cup-word as “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” Luke (in the passage that does not appear in all the early manuscripts of that Gospel) agrees. Contrariwise, Mark and Matthew report the cup-word as “This is my blood of the covenant.” Only the recalcitrant passage of Jn. 6:53 goes so far as to speak of drinking blood. Paul’s statement in 1 Cor. 10:16, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ?”, is ambiguous. It could intend a drinking or assimilating of the blood of Christ. It could just as well mean a sharing in the benefits, the new relationship, made possible in the blood of Christ. My impression is that most New Testament scholars accept the Pauline “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” as more likely the original. The Mark and Matthew revision probably represents an effort to get the cup-word into parallel with the bread-word, “This is my body.”

There is another consideration that bears upon our point. Recall that any drinking of blood was forbidden–completely and unquestionably forbidden–by Jewish law. A good Jew would no more have thought of drinking blood than he would of defecating in the holy of holies of the temple. If, then, in the upper room, out of a clear blue sky the good Jew Jesus had said to his good Jewish disciples, “Drink this cup of blood,” there would have been trouble. I doubt whether psychologically these men could have brought themselves to do it. And even more to the point, if, in the earliest church, Jewish converts had to disregard one of their most deeply ingrained taboos in order to be Christian, surely some echo of this trauma would have gotten into the record–as the trauma of accepting Gentiles into the people of God most plainly did.

Thus, although we must admit that there are some texts that point in another direction, the Old Testament parallels, the best textual notices themselves, the Jewish prohibition against drinking blood, and the generally antisacramentalist bent of both Judaism and early Christianity–all would suggest rather strongly that the Lord’s Supper was not intended to be a blood ceremony requiring either the actual or symbolic presence of blood. At Calvary was shed the blood that inaugurated and sealed the covenant (and this is the only blood that needs to be involved); the eucharistic cup is part of the subsequent covenant celebration by which Christians pledge themselves anew to the covenant already sealed and remind themselves that it was through the giving of his blood that the covenant was made possible.

The preceding argument assumes, of course, that the Lord’s Supper is in essence a covenant meal. We need to establish that identification somewhat more solidly. The connection is the Passover. As has been noted, strictly speaking the Passover is a celebration only of the escape from Egypt. On the other hand, biblical tradition regarding the covenant meal is rooted, as we have seen, at Sinai as the elders ascended to eat and drink before Yahweh. The practice of such fellowship meals is mentioned time and again throughout the Old Testament, often within the context of purely secular, man-to-man covenants. An interesting detail is that in a number of these accounts salt is mentioned as having ritual significance. Similarly, in some documents of the early church salt is again mentioned as being used in the Lord’s Supper. Yet, although the Passover tradition and the covenant-meal tradition have no necessary and inherent connection, there is good evidence that they tended to merge. Some scholars believe that the unleavened bread ceremonial of Passover actually came into that service by way of a ceremony of covenant renewal held at Shechem following the occupation of Canaan.

Then, several hundred years later, comes the story of King Josiah. The accounts in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles are in essential agreement, but Chronicles is a little more pointed to our purposes. According to that account, the lost book of the covenant is discovered in the temple, presented to the king, and validated by him. “Then the king sent word and gathered all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. The king went up to the house of the LORD; with all the people of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests and the Levites, all the people both great and small; he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that had been found in the house of the LORD; The king stood in his place and made a covenant before the LORD, to follow the LORD, keeping his commandments, his decrees, and his statutes, with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant written in this book. Then he made all who were present in Jerusalem and in Benjamin pledge themselves to it” (2 Chron. 34:29-32).

Rather plainly, Josiah saw this as the renewal of a covenant which God and Israel had previously sealed; there is no hint of a blood ceremony performed on this occasion. But just one verse later, the text continues:

“Josiah kept a Passover to the LORD in Jerusalem; they slaughtered the passover lamb on the fourteenth day of the first month. He appointed priests to their offices and encouraged them in the service of the house of the LORD…. The people of Israel who were present kept the passover at that time, and the festival of Unleavened Bread for seven days. No passover like it had been kept in Israel since the days of the prophet Samuel; none of the kings of Israel had ever kept such a passover as was kept by Josiah” (2 Chron. 35:1 and 17-18). Passover is understood as the appropriate means for affirming and celebrating the covenant; the relationship is assumed as logical and natural.

When, then, we discover covenant language in the Lord’s Supper accounts (the word “covenant” in each and every version of the cup-word, plus the additional reference in Luke) and the tendency to associate the Supper with Passover (whether by the actual identification as per the synoptics or the previous evening as per John), the intended relationship seems clear: The Supper is a table fellowship in which a covenant is pledged, renewed, and celebrated–as Passover itself largely had come to be understood.

If the Supper is a covenant meal, a further consideration must be raised concerning the nature of the covenant that is celebrated. To whom and with whom is this covenant pledged? Is Christ one of the covenanting parties, or is he simply the mediator of a covenant between God and man, himself the sacrifice whose blood is used to seal the covenant but whose role ends with that? Obviously, the first alternative is the correct one; but some aspects of the upper room experience tend to point toward the second. By virtue of its place in the sequence of events, the upper room is oriented strongly (almost exclusively) toward Christ’s crucifixion, the sealing of the covenant. With this, it is very nearly implied that in Christ’s death the covenant is complete and that it would be largely incidental whether he were then resurrected or not.

Clearly such an implication lies far from the New Testament intention. This covenant creates the body of Christ and not simply the people of God. And Christ’s relationship to his body is qualitatively different from that of, say, Abraham to Israel: Christ is present as living Lord and active leader of the caravan. The new covenant in Christ wants and requires the resurrection which was not needed in earlier covenants. The very nature of the gospel, then, would suggest that a resurrection emphasis needs to be included if the Lord’s Supper is to speak the full truth about its covenant. Nevertheless–although understandably so–the upper room hints of the resurrection only very obliquely if at all. There is evidence that the early Christians sensed the difficulty; and that is why we suggested earlier that in some ways post-Easter celebrations of the Supper give it a fuller and more accurate expression than did the upper room itself.

How the resurrection theme comes to be incorporated into the Supper forms a very interesting study. Think back and you will realize that although the Gospels give us a very limited amount of material regarding the post-resurrection appearances of Christ, mealtime occasions figure very prominently. Matthew relates a bare minimum of post-resurrection stories. Mark gives us next to nothing–although, depending upon which manuscript of Mark one follows and how much of the damaged ending one accepts, there is a reference to the risen Christ appearing to his disciples at mealtime. Luke has Jesus breaking bread with the two disciples he accompanied on the road to Emmaus and then joining the gathered disciples at mealtime and eating fish with them.

John presents the risen Lord appearing to the fishermen-disciples on the seashore and preparing and serving them breakfast. “Jesus now came and took the bread, and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish” (Jn. 21:13). And if the feeding of the five thousand is taken as a picture of the Lord’s Supper (which John at least most surely intends), and if, as many scholars believe, it is to be understood as a type or back-reading of a resurrection appearance, then here is another meal of the risen Jesus with his followers in which the menu is loaves and fish. And finally, in Acts 10:40-41, while speaking to Cornelius and his friends, Peter says: “God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people, but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.”

Now all of this emphasis on post-resurrection meals (of bread and fish) cannot be sheer coincidence. What the writers seem to be feeling toward is a Lord’s Supper (better, a continuation of the Lord’s Supper), with a focus upon the celebration of the resurrection. The idea gains plausibility when we discover that with impressive consistency the early Christian artistic depictions of the upper room or subsequent Lord’s Suppers give prominence to a table setting of loaves and fish. The capstone, then, comes with the realization that a fish was the symbol of Jesus Christ in the usage of the early church.

The customary explanation of the fish symbol is that the letters of the Greek word “fish” form an anagram of the Greek words “Jesus Christ God’s Son Savior.” My own opinion is that this explanation is too sophisticated to account for the symbol’s rising to dominance in a folk culture; such clever devices are very often inventions after the fact. Rather, the evidence suggests to me that fish was the main dish in the Lord’s Supper of the early church. (Clearly these Christians did not feel that the connection between the Supper and Passover was such as to require the continuance of lamb and unleavened bread; the Supper is not understood as a new Passover in that literal a sense.)

In the course of time, then, this fish which graced the Lord’s table became the symbol of the Lord himself. And notice that this symbol–unlike the cross, which points back to an event of the past–peaks specifically of the one who is present with his people as they gather to commune with him and celebrate the covenant which binds them into a living relationship with him. The fish is the symbol of the resurrected, living, present Christ. And it is this fish, recall, that will evolve into the dolphin, the resurrection fish that always comes up. (In the pictorial glossary of the early church, water came to represent baptism; the fish came, out of the context of the Lord’s Supper, to represent the living Lord; and the fish in water forms a beautiful combination–which itself emphasizes the joy, the exaltation, the victory, the praise, the thanksgiving that attends the resurrection.)

In the early church the Lord’s Supper did not take the form, as it so largely does with us, of a commemorative funeral for Jesus. Of course, we do not want to forget that the covenant which we celebrate was sealed in his blood and that that blood does represent a pouring out of himself unto death; but the Supper has built-in features to prevent that sort of forgetfulness.

I do not know how many Christians will choose to use fish in the Lord’s Supper. It can be done in various ways besides serving fish dishes, perhaps by using the motif in table decorations. But in whatever way it is done (and always with appropriate explanation and interpretation, of course), the presence of the fish can help restore to the Supper the note of joy it so desperately needs. And, note well, this does not represent “celebration” injected simply for the sake of celebration. The fish knows what is the object and ground of its celebration–nothing less than festive fellowship with the Resurrected One who gives us the victory over death, sin, and the world.

IX. Until He Comes

The Lord’s Supper is a meal celebrating a covenant. However, a covenant is not a point event but a continuing process. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is a relationship among those who are on the way; and that way has a starting, a going, and an arrival. The covenant, then, includes phases of the past, the present, and the future.

A covenant is not a wedding but a marriage–and those are two quite different concepts. A wedding is a point event; it happens and is over and done with. My wedding took place on July 9, 1955. But don’t ask me when my marriage took place; it is too early to say. It is on the way. Three children and many other things have given it considerable promise; but if it should end in separation (which I have no intention that it shall), then in a very real sense this does not indicate simply that a good marriage came to a sad end but that the marriage itself failed to come off.

Now the wedding was a very important event. It put the marriage into motion, set the nature of the relationship, and defined to whom I was married and to whom not. Marriages need weddings–preferably of a deliberate, public sort–but a wedding and a marriage are not the same thing.

Just so, what happened at Sinai was not, in and of itself, God’s covenant with Israel; and what happened in the death of Christ was not, in and of itself, the new covenant in his blood. Of course, throughout their way together, covenant partners will want continually to recall the event of sealing that set them upon that way–just as husband and wife need to support and invigorate their marriage by recalling their wedding vows.

We have seen that the Lord’s Supper includes a good deal of symbolism pointing us back to the event that inaugurated the covenant of the body of Christ. In fact, our study makes it apparent that, under the erosions of church history, while the Supper was being distorted and truncated, it was these backward-pointing elements that remained strong–to the point that the Supper has become little more than a commemoration of an event of the past. But because that past is intended to connect with the living present, it ought never be forgotten that the resurrection is as essential a part of the new covenant inaugural as is the crucifixion. Without the resurrection, the cross would have marked the end as well as the beginning of the covenant–the groom murdered on his wedding day. The original celebrations of the Supper recognized the importance of the resurrection; it is not as clear that our modern celebrations do.

The Supper does point back; but, properly performed, it is just as essentially a celebration, an attestation, and a demonstration of the covenant operational in the present reality of the body of Christ. The love feast, we have seen, shows forth the life of the body and the body alive. The feet washing shows it on the job, active in mission. This contemporary, alive, actual, with us and for us, here-and-now aspect of the covenant is basic to the gospel and originally was basic to the Supper. Whether or not any group chooses to adopt the meal and the feet washing, the church needs to work mightily at reclaiming the emphasis. My own opinion is that it cannot be done in any solid and lasting way without the help of those rites (although it certainly does not follow that possession of the rites guarantees the emphasis); but that is just one man&rsquouo;s opinion.

Yet, even if the celebration of “the body present” were regained, this would not make the Supper an adequate statement of what it was intended to state. It would still lack an essential dimension, that of the future. And it may well be that this is the most basic of the three. The covenant exists for those who are on the way; it is what brings and holds them together for the going on the way; it is the map that charts the way. And that way has an end, a goal, a destination. The covenant itself is end-state oriented; that is to say, it has in mind a particular consummation, it is interested in bringing its “body” into optimum arrangement, into the state of affairs which is conceived as its goal. Covenant is commitment; and commitment is itself future-directed, a promise to stick with it, to hang in there, until the designated end is accomplished. The idea of covenant and the metaphor of a caravan fit together very nicely.

With a covenant (as with a caravan) the future dimension, the end-state vision, is actually determinative for both the setting out (the past dimension) and the “How are we doing now?” (the present dimension). Thus the sealing of the new covenant was done with its end already in view, was set up in such a way as to point it toward its end. And thus the New Testament presents the Jesus in whose blood the covenant was sealed as being also the Jesus whose coming again will accomplish that end-state which is the kingdom of God; and his first function is the means to the second.

Just so, in answering the “How are we doing?” question, the covenant meal which is the Lord’s Supper is not so much concerned about whether people are having a good time as about the progress they are making toward the kingdom. Yes, certainly the Supper is a celebration of the fact that we are the body of Christ and that in him we even now are enjoying some precious accomplishments in that regard. Nevertheless, the overall achievement is still very partial at best.

Consider, if you will, whatever group from whatever church gathered around whatever table in whatever way, it is yet plainly true that this group is not fully committed to being the body of Christ–indeed, no one person there is fully committed. And although the feet washing is a pledge of service, neither the group nor anyone in it is fully practicing the life for others. And although the meal is a convivium (feast) of Christian koinonia, the partakers still bring with them alienation, disharmony, and brokenness.

The strongest evidence that what we celebrate is, to this point, only the partial and imperfect body of Christ is the fact that the celebration includes only some people and not all. That it includes only some in the sense that some celebrations are closed to Christians who do not qualify according to the standards of the celebrators–this is a scandal. That it includes only some in the sense that many men have not yet chosen to be part of the body of Christ–this is the tragedy of the race.

The body of Christ is not fully the body of Christ until it incorporates not only that body which is the church but that body which is mankind. The body of Christ is not fully the body of Christ until mankind as such has attained to “mature manhood measured by nothing less than the full stature of Christ.” The body of Christ is fully the body of Christ only in the kingdom of God.

What we celebrate in the Supper, then, is true progress upon the way–and we dare not deny it. There is a body of Christ; we can be part of it; and we and the world are different because of it. But the celebration cannot stop there. What we are is significant only in the light of what we are in the way of becoming. What we celebrate is the presentiment of our humanity, the beginning to be now what we and all men shall be then. And thus our celebration is not simply the enjoyment of what we, as Christians, have been given in Christ, but is, as it were, an actual step toward the life God has in store for all men. Yes, in the Supper we do recall the death and resurrection that has put us upon this way. Yes, in the Supper we do enjoy and give thanks for the present privilege of caravaning in his train. But even more, in the Supper we portray for ourselves the likeness of that body which is our destination-and thus, in the portrayal, advance the journey itself.

The above may sound suspiciously like the theology of hope. Let me allay such suspicions: This is the theology of hope. However, it is not my own theological predilection that injects it into the Supper; the New Testament authors (and undoubtedly Jesus himself) were there first. If you are surprised to learn of the centrality of this motif, it only goes to show how completely we have managed to pervert the Supper; it is written into the New Testament passages as plain as day. In each particular account, at least something of an eschatological perspective gets imparted. Along with the cup-word, Mark has Jesus say, “Very truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God” (Mk. 14:25). Matthew enlarges the saying a bit: “… until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Mt. 26:29). Paul catches up the emphasis in a little different way with his comment: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor. 11:26). However, it is Luke who–in what is probably accurate tradition–portrays the theme in its full scope: “When the hour came, he took his place at table, and the apostles with him. He said to them, ‘I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.’ Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he said, ‘Take this and divide it among yourselves; for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes…. You are those who have stood by me in my trials; and [as per the literal translation we proposed earlier] I am covenanting a covenant with you according as my Father covenanted a kingdom to me; you shall eat and drink at my table in my kingdom’ “(Lk. 22:14-18, 28-29).

Very clearly, the concept here is that the Supper is a preliminary, a presentiment of a greater feast to come. The present supper will be interrupted; Jesus’ death and his going to the Father must intervene. Nevertheless, the meal itself is a promise and guarantee that it will be resumed and consummated in the kingdom. The covenant of the body of Christ is God’s promise that the Lord’s Supper shall continue until it becomes the great banquet of the kingdom. From far back within Old Testament tradition, the age to come, the consummation of the kingly rule of God, had been pictured as a great feast enjoyed together by God and his people. Indeed, it may well be that the Revelator has in mind a projection of the Lord’s Supper when he speaks of “the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev. 19:9). In any case, it is certain that the Lord’s Supper is to be seen as something open-ended, a pointer toward something greater yet to come, a presentiment that the way of the covenant leads to a destination.

There can be no doubt that an eschatological perspective is strongly engrained in the New Testament accounts of the Supper; but is there any element of the Supper which in and of itself is an eschatological symbol? Of course, the Supper as a whole, being a presentiment of the banquet of the kingdom, is an eschatological symbol; and this significance could be picked up in the way we explain the Supper and in the liturgy which accompanies its observance. But we do seem to have run through all the actions of the Supper without discovering one that is specifically and inescapably forward-pointing in its effect. Yet there is a consideration which merits attention.

In the account of the Last Supper, the early manuscripts of the Gospel of Luke present several variant readings and different arrangements that make recovery of the original confusing indeed. However, the evidence indicates that the confusion should not be attributed to Luke but to later editors who assumed that he was confused and so took steps to straighten him out–thus compounding the confusion.

Mark and Matthew have Jesus, “during supper,” first break bread and then take the cup and speak the words regarding the new covenant in his blood. Luke, on the other hand, has Jesus begin with a cup and a saying which does not mention either the new covenant or his blood but speaks of the supper’s eschatological completion, and then break bread, and finally (in the long version of the passage) “after supper” take a cup and speak of the new covenant in his blood. The best explanation of the Lukan variant is that Luke or his sources had knowledge of two cups used in the Lord’s Supper. The short version of the passage, then, represents later editors’ efforts to prune back the text to make it conform to the one-cup tradition of Mark and Matthew.

However, there is a consideration which would suggest that although he may have the two cups in the wrong order, Luke came closer to the truth than did Mark and Matthew. The consideration has to do with Jewish Passover custom. During the Passover meal a number of cups were passed, but two were of particular significance. The cup which opened the meal could be called the “theme” cup; it was the occasion for recollecting what Passover is all about. The second significant cup was the final one; it was the cue for the recitation of the line from Psalm 118:26, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD.” This use indicates clearly that Jewish tradition understood the saying in a messianic, future-pointing, eschatological sense. It is not quoted in the New Testament Supper accounts, but it is quoted elsewhere in the New Testament (Mt. 21:9, and Mt. 23:39, and parallels). It is abundantly evident that the early church applied the words to Jesus and to his expected coming at the end of the age. Indeed, Paul’s remark about proclaiming “the death of the Lord, until he comes” could be a reminiscence of the Psalm 118 text.

In any case, once we are aware of how much eschatological notice is in the Supper accounts themselves, the more likely it seems that the Lukan hint is correct–the primitive Supper (as the Jewish Passover) included a final cup designed to conclude the service (better, break off the service) in a way that left it open-ended, incomplete, forward-looking, and eschatologically expectant. Indeed, under this assumption, the cup-word of Matthew and Mark (“This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom”) in its two sentences very plausibly could be seen as the conflation of an opening theme cup and a closing eschatological cup into a single, dual-saying cup.

In order to preserve and enhance the two ideas which are clearly inherent within the Supper, whether they were celebrated by one cup or two, our order of worship will go with Luke and use two cups. The final cup–which makes explicit the “presentiment” aspect of the Supper as a whole–could focus upon Jesus’ words, “until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” It could focus upon the Psalm 118 line: “Blessed is the one who comes.” It could focus upon the Pauline “until he comes” (1 Cor. 11:26). And it could-and there is evidence that it did-focus upon one other phrase.

The phrase is an Aramaic prayer, Marana tha, meaning “Our Lord, come!” That it is in Aramaic indicates its primitiveness; it must date back to the earliest years, to the time before the church had moved out into a Greek-speaking milieu. That Paul (1 Cor. 16:22) quotes it in Aramaic even though he is writing in Greek and to a Greek-speaking congregation is an indication of the sanctity and high regard in which Christians held and transmitted this prayer. The Didache (that earliest Christian writing outside the New Testament) indicates that at the time of that writing the Marana tha prayer was used in the Lord’s Supper; and some scholars believe that even the Pauline 1 Corinthians occurrence shows signs of having come from a eucharistic liturgy. The prayer is encountered once again (this time in Greek rather than in Aramaic) at the conclusion of the book of Revelation. The setting is not the Supper; but, as in 1 Corinthians, it is an envoi, an “until then”–which, we suggest, is also its proper setting in the Supper.

In some ways, Marana tha is, for the final cup, a focus superior to any of the other phrases we suggested; it can encompass more meaning. Although it seems not to have been the primary interpretation of the words, they could be taken to mean, “Our Lord has come! He has been here, has lived among us, has given his life on our behalf.” And it is this “having come” that makes possible and is one focus of our Supper celebration.

More directly the words render the meaning, “Our Lord, come now! Be present as the leader-lord who, at this very moment, in this very convivium, is active and powerful in our midst.”

Finally, in their most direct and essential significance, the words say, “Our Lord, come! Bring us from these presentiments into the full reality of the kingdom: hasten the day when our faith shall be made sight. O come, O come, Immanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear.”

With the Marana tha cup, then, the entire Supper opens out into the three-dimensional glory which rightly belongs to it. To close (no, break off) the service with this cup gives it the open end, the momentum, the impulse toward the future which is the distinctive feature of the Christian faith and the caravan church’s raison d’être. And to include this cup makes the Supper a celebration truly worth celebrating.

Celebrate “life”? “Our humanity”? “The infinite possibilities of human existence”? Poppycock! Look about you at those things and look with the eyes of all people of all stations and conditions. What is there to celebrate? Or look to see what those things show any real prospect of becoming. What is there to celebrate?

So what is there to celebrate? There is to celebrate the fact that through Jesus Christ God has offered to men a covenant by which they can become incorporate as the body of Christ and thus be put upon the way to achieving the humanity (the social humanity) for which they were created. There is to celebrate the fact that as the body of Christ we even now–and particularly in the celebration itself–are experiencing presentiments of this humanity. And above all, there is to celebrate the fact that this covenant and these presentiments constitute God’s guarantee that he will bring mankind through to its intended completion. The word “celebration” came into the language for express use with the Supper; what other experience is there within the life of man that offers better cause?