Friday, August 31, 2018
Remembering often
1 Corinthians 11:26
For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.
A few weeks when my friends for life gathered at my home for prayer and fellowship I missed the opportunity for us to have the Lord’s Supper together after the prayer time. The emblems were in my refrigerator where they are kept for our church located a few minutes away. We hadn’t been together for more than a year though our friendship and fellowship are kept together by our shared faith and dependence on Jesus.
Over the last five years, we had started sharing the Lord’s Supper among our leaders before meetings of the church board. We only stopped because those meetings are now held on the first Sunday every month right after the service in which we share the Supper.
I decided recently, that in the future, whenever a group of Christians visit my home for dinner I am going to include the Lord’s Supper at the end of our meal together before we get up from the table. Like I said, the emblems are always in my refrigerator.
The idea that the Lord’s Supper is confined to a big church service on the morning of the first Sunday of the month has absolutely no basis in scripture. Nevertheless, the arguments, debates, and discussions have surrounded the frequency with which it should be observed, every service (like the Anglicans, Roman Catholics and some other do), or weekly (like some churches we know), or monthly (like most evangelical and Pentecostal churches do). In my denomination and others with which I am closely associate there is a monthly first Sunday tradition.
I am writing this, my final devotional for August 2018, from a hotel in Boa Vista, Brazil. I will be here on Sunday, which is the first Sunday of September and won’t be able to serve the Lord’s Supper at the two churches where I would usually serve. I rescheduled ours for the following Sunday, and the other church I am supporting decided to do the same. I am confident that no spiritual damage would be done to any individual members of the church as a whole because we are having it on a different Sunday.
(Just a side note, this devotional ends one year since I started them on September 1, 2017. That first one was written mostly from my friend’s house in Baden, Ontario, Canada; this last one for the 12-month period is being written from a hotel in Centro, Roraima, Brazil. Let’s see where I am at the end of August 2019. Please pray for me as I keep doing this and many thanks to those who send feedback from time to time.) But back to the matter at hand.
Remembering often should not be reduced to a matter of the calendar and scheduling. It should be an organic matter of the nature and texture of the fellowship that is shared and enjoyed by believers in Jesus who assemble from time to time. It is true, that for larger assemblies we need to plan and organise to have enough supplies for the expected number of persons, and we have to determine a system for distribution and clean up and the like, that removes the opportunity for spontaneity. However, I believe we could get that back in fellowship.
One of the beautiful things about the early church is that they met in homes for a meal and for teaching and in the midst of this they shared the Lord’s Supper. In our highly organised version of Christianity, the matter is, of course, more complex. “Therefore when you come together in one place, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper.” 1 Corinthians 11:20.
Not only do we have to address the matter of frequency, we also have to determine authority, who is qualified to “administer” the Lord’s Supper. Once that is decided, the qualifications of the waiters is another matter since it must be the elders or deacons. I will never forget how as a teen at the Central Baptist Church in Guyana I was so impressed by the deacons who got to serve the Supper. You could just imagine my delight when I was finally rostered to serve. It took me some time to properly focus on significance and symbolism and not on the role and function.
It is easy for me, as a credentialed minister in the Church of God, to say that I will serve the Lord’s Supper at my home whenever a group of Christians gather there. But that raises questions about what is possible in other households. It is my personal, very personal, view that there is nothing wrong with someone in their household sharing the Lord’s Supper with their family if all are believers, or with friends, again if all are believers, when they gather to share time and meals together.
As I mentioned, a lot is discussed, debated, and argued about the frequency of the Lord’s Supper in church, you could google and read about that. However, I am suggesting that a lot of the discourse is misplaced. We should be a lot more organic in our sharing, participation and proclamation of the death of Jesus, until he comes.
More remembrance and testimony should not necessarily mean more frequency in big services with a lot of administration and ritual. More remembrance will bring more focus to the Lord’s work at Calvary for us and bring us into greater fellowship with each other. The very things that the Lord’s Supper was intended to do.
Think on these things:
- Do you live in circumstances where it would be possible to share the Lord’s Supper at home with family or visiting believers?
- Would you be comfortable participating in the Lord’s Supper at someone’s home if the person is not a recognised church Minister, Elder or Deacon?
- Would your church support the idea of members participating in the Lord’s Supper outside of the formal church structure and schedule?
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today that we find ways to remember often the way Jesus intended.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex