What About the Lord's Supper?

Most Baptists believe something to the effect that "The Lord's Supper is a symbolic act of obedience whereby members of the church, through partaking of the bread and the fruit of the vine, memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming" (Southern Baptist "Faith and Message," June 14, 2000).

That is, for Baptists, the bread and grape juice (!) of the Lord's Supper are, in the final analysis, symbols of the Lord's death and the local church's obedience. Is this symbolizing view, in fact, Biblical?

The fullness of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ must address these two passages: "For where two or three meet in my name, I am there among them" (Mat. 18:20), and "Lo, I am with you always, yes, to the end of time" (Matt. 28:20). Was Jesus misleading us in these passages? Of course not!

So, then, how is Jesus present to His Church? If you answer that He is present in Spirit, then are you not confounding the Second Person of the Trinity with the Third? Are you not blurring the distinction between the Son and the Spirit?

Jesus Christ is not a spirit, but is rather quite corporeal and real! Did He not invite the doubting disciples to touch and feel His risen body for themselves, and hence believe that He is not a mere spirit (Luke 24:37-39)? Did He not bodily ascend into heaven and take up His seat at the right hand of the Father? Will He not bodily return to earth to catch up the saints, and judge the living and the dead? If the answer to these questions is affirmative, then surely when He is present to His Church, He is present in body! Can Jesus Christ be anything but what He is?

The New Testament Church believed that Jesus Christ was present in its assemblies, precisely because the New Testament Church believed in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist!

Was it not in the breaking of the Eucharistic bread that the disciples might catch a fleeting, nearly mystical, glimpse of the Risen Lord (Luke 24:30-31)?

Was Paul lying when he told us that when we partake of the Eucharist, we are partaking of the substantial and quite material presence of Christ Himself: "The blessing-cup, which we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ; and the loaf of bread which we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ" (1 Cor. 10:16)? Does Paul say anything about the Eucharist being a mere symbolic act? Or does he use stark and clearly simple language that suggests a sharing in the material body and blood of Christ?

Do not Paul and the three Synoptic Gospels use equally clear and simple language when they record the words of consecration, "this IS my body"? Is not the simplest, clearest interpretation of the Bible usually the best?

Was Paul misleading us when he severely warned that, "anyone who eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily is answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone is to examine himself and only then eat of the bread or drink from the cup, because a person who eats or drinks without recognizing the body is eating and drinking his own condemnation" (1 Cor. 11:27-29)? Does Paul say that we are profaning a symbol, or are we are actually profaning the body of Christ? Does Paul not go on to say that partaking of the Lord's Supper without recognizing that body, upon self-examination, is itself to eat and drink condemnation unto oneself?

Was it not in the eating of the Body and drinking of the Blood of Christ that New Testament Christians hoped to share in the resurrection and eternal life of their Redeemer (Jo. 6:53-54)? Are we not made a Priestly People (1 Pe. 2:5, 9; Rev. 1:6, 5:10) precisely because "through the blood of Jesus" we may enter the eschatological Tabernacle of Heaven, since a "new and living way, which is His flesh" ('estin tes sarkos autou'), has been rent through the veil (He. 10:19-20). Jesus too reminds us that "I am the Way" (Jo. 14:6); He also reminds us that "I am the Bread of Life … whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life " (Jo. 6:48, 54). The Letter to the Hebrews thus affirms that it is in His Eucharistic Flesh that Jesus continues to offer us the Way to eternal life with God.

Jesus also reminds us quite pointedly that "whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him" (Jo. 6:56). Indeed, is not the Church herself the Body of Christ? Paul proclaims, "Now Christ's body is yourselves, each of you with a part to play in the whole" (1 Cor. 12:27). Does not the Eucharist itself, a sharing in the Body of Christ, thus serve to knit us all together into the Body of Christ? For Paul tells us: "As there is one loaf, so we, although there are many of us, are one single body, for we all share in the one loaf" (1 Cor. 10:16).

Perhaps one might object that the sacrifice of Calvary was once and for all, and now Jesus is Risen! Certainly, but is it not our sacred and Biblical duty to proclaim the DEATH of our Lord, especially in the Eucharist, even until He comes again in glory (1 Cor. 11:26)? The sacrifice of Calvary was once and for all, but let us not forget that the sacrificial Victim is both pre-existent (Jo. 1:1) and perduring. Is not the Revelation very clear that the Lamb has been slain, at least in a mystical sense, since the very foundation of the world (13:8: 'tou arniou tou esphagmenou apo kataboles kosmou')? And is not that same Lamb still as slain, again in a mystical sense, in the heavenly court (Rev. 5:8)? Is it any surprise that the Victim of Calvary is perduring when we read the beautiful exclamation in Hebrews that "Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever" (He. 13:8)? Does not Malachi prophesy exactly this everlasting, Pure and Universal Sacrifice (1:11)?

The message of the Bible is clear, and repeated over and over in numerous passages by numerous authors: the Eucharistic bread and wine are the real body and blood of Jesus Christ. We may not understand this, and we may in fact be scandalized by such a notion. But let us not be like those disciples who left the faith, and stopped following the Living Christ, because they found his teachings on the Eucharist too hard (Jo. 6:60).