One of the most difficult things about dealing with our current pandemic is the separation from one another. Many parents, grandparents, children and friends are keeping apart in order to maintain a measure of safety. One of the things I miss most is going to church. Gathering with our brothers and sisters in Christ and that is especially true on days that we celebrate communion.

Most churches set aside the first Sunday of each month to celebrate communion. Generally, Sundays are a day that we have set aside in our busy lives to gather and worship God. As this past Sunday was the first Sunday of the month, I thought I would share a few moments about the place and meaning of the Lord’s Supper in worship. Although participating in it is never called “worship” in the New Testament, the gathering of believers, of the church, called worship, the act itself is just that.

The point of stressing this is to break us of the habit of equating worship mainly with what happens on Sunday morning. To clarify, we should perhaps call it “congregational worship” or “corporate worship.” Because if we fall into the habit of equating this with the worship of the church, we will miss the new and radical point of the New Testament: namely, that worship is driven into the heart as a matter of spirit and truth, and out from the heart, worship flows in all of life, not just in “worship services.”

The essence of worship is the inner experience of treasuring the true beauty and worth of God. And the outward forms of worship are the acts that show how much we treasure the beauty and worth of God. God created all of life as worship because He told us in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” Simply put, do everything you do in a way that expresses how you treasure God.

Now in the corporate life of the church, one of the things we do to treasure Christ is to participate in the Lord’s Supper. You can see this in 1 Corinthians 11:18, 20: “For, in the first place, when you come together as a church… Therefore when you meet together, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper…” Paul goes on to criticize the way they are making a mockery of the Lord’s Supper by gorging themselves and even getting drunk on their own food at the church gathering. So he tells them in verse 22 to eat at home.

The implication is that “when you come together as a church” the spirit and demeanour of the gathering should focus on the Lord and be sensitive to the needs of others, not careless eating and drinking. This is one of the reasons that the way we do the Lord’s Supper is so simple. Paul distinguished it from the eating and drinking we do for our ordinary needs. Verse 22 says, “What! Do you not have houses in which to eat and drink?”

So we learn that the “Lord’s Supper” is something that is to happen in the gathered church, within the congregational life of the church. And it is something different from other meals that we eat at home to meet our physical needs.

So the question for us is: If the Lord’s Supper is worship, how does it express our inner treasuring of Christ’s beauty and worth? Let me mention three things from what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11. We express the value of Christ by “remembering,” by “proclaiming,” and by “nourishing.”

First, the Lord’s Supper expresses the value of Christ by reminding us of Him. Notice the word “remembrance” twice. Once in relation to the bread in verse 24 and once in relation to the cup in verse 25. Begin reading in verse 23 where Paul gives the words of the Lord on the institution of the Supper:

“For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”

In other words, Christ gave us this simple “Lord’s Supper” to help us keep Him in our memory, especially His blood and body given up in death. This is worship if in the doing of it there is an authentic heart experience which says: “We must remember Him because he is the most valuable Person in the universe. We must remember His death because it is the most important death in history.” Setting out this tangible reminder of Christ time after time in the life of the church will be worship if our hearts feel the preciousness of remembering Christ and tremble at the prospect of forgetting him.

Second, the Lord’s Supper expresses the value of Christ by proclaiming His death. Verse 26: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” If “remembering” means calling to mind what Christ did by his death, then “proclaiming” means calling to each other what Christ did by his death.

When we remember the preciousness of Christ in worship, then we are moved to proclaim the worth of what we remember. If you really value something that is relevant for others as well as yourself – if it moves you and delights you – you will proclaim it. You will declare it. So the Lord’s Supper is worship if in doing it there is an authentic heart experience which says: this death and all it achieved is so valuable that it must not only be remembered; it must be proclaimed.”

These two meanings of the Lord’s Supper support each other. Remembering enables us to proclaim since you can’t proclaim what you don’t remember. And proclaiming helps us to remember because not everyone remembers at the same time and with the same intensity, and we need His death to be proclaimed with the Word and bread and cup or we might forget or tale for granted the preciousness of His death.

Finally, the Lord’s Supper expresses the value of Christ by nourishing our life in Christ. If we come to Christ over and over and say as verse 16 states, “By this, O Christ, I feed on you. By this, O Jesus Christ, I nourish my life in you. By this I share in all the grace you bought for me with your own blood and body” – if we come to Christ over and over with this longing and this conviction in our heart: that here He nourishes us by faith, then the Lord’s Supper will be a deep and wonderful act of worship. Nothing shows the worth and preciousness of Christ so much as when we come to Him to feed our hungry souls.

Where do we see this in the text? We see it in the fact that the Lord’s Supper is a supper. We are eating and drinking. Why are we eating and drinking? Eating and drinking are for nourishing and sustaining life. And here Jesus tells us that the bread we are eating is His body, and the cup we are drinking is the new covenant in His blood. So the eating and drinking are no ordinary eating and drinking. The nourishment that is in the Lord’s Supper does not come from bread and wine. Paul already said in verse 22 that we should take care of our bodily needs by eating at home before we come. This supper is not about physical nourishment. It is about spiritual nourishment.

How does this work? Roman Catholics speak of transubstantiation and teach that, at the consecration by the priest, the bread and wine are actually and miraculously transformed into the literal body and blood of Jesus. Eating this transubstantiated bread and drinking this transubstantiated wine brings saving grace to the soul.

Lutherans speak of consubstantiation and teach that the bread and wine don’t cease to be bread and wine, but that the real, literal presence of the physical body and blood of Christ is present along with the natural elements when they are consecrated in worship.

Most Baptists see communion as purely symbolic. The bread and cup are merely symbols of Christ’s body and blood. There is really no spiritual blessing in partaking in communion other than this time as being a memorial of what Christ has done.

My view, the Reformed view, is that the bread and wine are emblems or symbols of the real, literal body of Christ that was crucified in history and today is in heaven at the Father’s right hand. But I believe that there is a real feeding on Christ spiritually by faith – not on His physical body, but on His real, spiritual presence. And even though a believer can nourish himself any time and anywhere on the presence of Christ in His Word, there is a special nourishing offered in eating the Lord’s Supper and hearing the preaching of God’s Word.

One last pointer to this way of seeing the Lord’s Supper. In 1 Corinthians 11:25 Paul said, “He took the cup also after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood.'” I am not aware of anyone who says that the cup is literally the covenant. Nor is the wine in the cup the covenant. The new covenant is God’s commitment to saving anyone who puts their trust in Jesus. The cup of wine represents this covenant because the blood of Christ bought the covenant for us. It doesn’t become this covenant.

Participation in Communion is to nourish our souls by faith in the spiritual presence of Christ. When we remember and proclaim His death, He manifests Himself to us as infinitely precious. He then becomes our Treasure. He shows us all that God promises to be for us in Christ. This is the food of our souls. With this, we are nourished and find the strength to live as Christians.

The Lord’s Supper is worship because it expresses the infinite worth of Christ. No one is more worthy to be remembered. No one is more worthy to be proclaimed. And no one can nourish our souls with eternal life but Christ. So as you participate in this act of worship, may the Lord’s presence bless you with all that He has for you through His Son Jesus.