The Lord's Supper

For me, teaching the subject of the Lord's Supper and participating in this gift of Christ to His church is more than just theology and obedience; it is personal.  During some stretches of Beth's treatment and recovery from bone marrow transplant, I was with her and unable to be in church.  I remember just desiring to connect with God and sense His presence in a more tangible way than prayer and Bible study.  This literal 'hunger' pushed me to learn more about the Lord's Supper and want to observe it.  Christ gave us this gift because He knew we needed it, and He gave it special symbolic and spiritual significance to indeed help satisfy our hunger for Him.  I believe He did this for several reasons:

1) He knew we tend to be forgetful. Over and over again we are warned not to forgot God or His faithfulness, and yet over and over again we do.  The Lord's Supper is a visible reminder to us that God is faithful (He gave us His Son), God is sovereign (even over death!), and that God is for us ("This is My body, which is for you ...").

2) God uses our 5 senses to strengthen the "6th sense" of faith. Just as food and drink nourish our bodies so does Christ nourish our souls.  We truly do not live on bread alone (Matthew 4:4)!  Just as we receive physical benefits from eating and drinking, we receive spiritual benefits from feeding on Christ through faith. We receive forgiveness, grace, mercy, strength, peace that passes all understanding, and hope that does not disappoint.  Through proper observance of the Lord's Supper, Christ does in fact become more "alive" and real to us.

3) God creates anticipation of His future grace in the form of His promises. Christ has promised to come again ("... whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes."). Christ has promised us more grace than what we now have.  This future grace helps fuel our present day obedience and keep us joyfully focused on what is sometimes the difficult and narrow way of walking with Christ.  The Lord's Supper calls us again and again to live by faith in God who keeps His promises of love to His children.

4) The Lord Supper prompts examination and thus exercises preventative discipline and if necessary, corrective discipline in our lives. The Lord's Supper includes a process of examination that should prompt repentance and feasting on God's amazing grace.  And let's be honest, we often wait to change until we experience pain and consequences.  By bringing us close to Christ's painful death, the Lord's Supper can serve to awaken in us the desire to change, to repent, to confess and therefore, be filled anew with God's presence.

The goal of the Lord's Supper is not just to do it as a task to complete. Paul warned the church at Corinth by saying, "...it is not the Lord's Supper that you eat ...". We take communion in order to facilitate closer communion with Christ.  We do not merely observe the Lord's Supper but experience the Lord of the Supper.  And any encounter with the Risen Christ, will strengthen our faith and deepen our joy.