When Jesus said, “This is my body and blood, do this in remembrance of me” (Mt 26:26-28; Mk 14:22-24; Lk 22:19-20; 1 Cor 11:24-25) the church took him at his word and believed, in faith, that the bread and wine was the body and blood of Jesus. They believed that when they came to the table, they were coming into the actual presence of Jesus Christ. They took this on faith and believed it to be part of the mystery of God. The gathering of the church is sacred because when we gather around the Lord’s Table, Christ is there as host. Keep this imagery in mind as you read these passages.
1 Corinthians 3:16-17
16 Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.
1 Corinthians 10:14-17
14 Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. 15 I speak to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. 16 Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf.
Ephesians 2:13-22
13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
When we gather together in the presence of Christ, the church becomes one in Christ. The imagery is an assembly of God’s Temple where God’s presence is known in Christ. When we receive the bread and cup, we participate in Christ and are continually transformed into his dwelling place. In keeping with the church being the new Temple where God dwells, I imagine the Lord’s Table as the Holy of Holies where we receive God’s presence to make us his Temple on the move.
When Paul wants to describe the structure of the church, he dismantles the old Temple imagery to make an important shift in how we understand one another in the church. In the old Temple, there were dividing walls that kept certain groups segregated. There was a court of priests, then of Israelite men, then Israelite women, followed by gentile men, and finally gentile women. Each of these groups had a wall to divide them. Imagine being a gentile, and especially a gentile woman, trying to join in the celebration and worship that was taking place. You literally have walls keeping you from seeing and even hearing the praise being lifted in the presence of God. When Paul describes the church, he says the walls of division come down and we become the very thing that contains the presence of God, the Temple.
The gathered church is the dwelling place of God through the Spirit. This is the vision proclaimed at Pentecost from the Prophet Joel (Acts 2:17-12), that God’s Spirit is poured out on all people. It is through the Spirit that men and women, sons and daughters, will have visions, dream dreams, and prophesy. This is poetic language to show the breadth of outpouring of the Spirit and how God will speak through his people. Later in the book of Acts we see Paul having visions (Acts 16:9), Agabus prophesying a famine (Acts 11:28), Cornelius the Gentile sees a vision of Peter coming to visit (Acts 10:2) and his family then receives the Holy Spirit (10:45), and Philip’s daughters being prophets (Acts 21:8-9). The Pentecost proclamation of the outpouring of the Spirit on all people sets the tone for what is seen throughout the spreading of the church through the rest of Acts. This list is far from exhaustive but the point I’m making is that the church in Acts is one on the move through the Holy Spirit as each person receives messages from God and then builds up the church and shares the message of God with others.
There have been times in the past when the church has kept dividing walls in place while celebrating the meal that breaks down walls. There’s a church here in North Carolina I read about in my research on Communion practices that used to have a section for slaves to worship. They then allowed the slaves to join their masters for the receiving of the Lord’s Supper to symbolize equality at the Table. What happens to the church when equality is merely symbolic at the table and not lived out in the rest of life? I know it is easy to be critical of people in the past so please hear me in what I intend in sharing this. The Lord’s Table should be a continual place of transformation where we evaluate our lives and relationships compared to what we are called to in Christ. I look back at these moments to reflect on where I fall short today and how we need to move forward better together.
Questions for reflection:
How would the Lord’s Supper be different if you focused on communal transformation rather than your individual transformation?
How would Sundays be different if we believed Christ was hosting our gathering?
What makes you resistant to the belief that Christ is present at the Table?