The Last Supper: "This do in remembrance of me."

A Holy Meal: The Lord's Supper in the Life of the Church
By Gordon T. Smith
Baker Academic, 2005
(303 pages, $14.95, paperback)

reviewed by S.N.D.

Last year I attended, for the first time, a popular Easter pageant presented for the past twenty years by a local Baptist church. This year's drama contained a very touching scene that haunts me still. After the Last Supper, happy from the evening's meal and fellowship and the rite he has just begun, Jesus stands at the door and shakes hands with the disciples leaving the upper room ahead of him. Before leaving himself, he lingers for a moment and looks sadly back at the empty table. Then he exits into the darkness.

The scene brought tears to my eyes. For it vividly portrayed how much the Lord cherished meals with his followers and potential followers, especially this last momentous meal with his closest friends. “With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer,” he told the disciples (Luke 22:15). The gospel of John almost achingly recalls the Lord's emotion at this meal: “Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them to the end.” (John 13:1)

In the first chapter of his brief but beautiful, irenic study, A Holy Meal: The Last Supper in the Life of the Church, Gordon T. Smith summarizes the central place of table fellowship in Jesus' life and ministry:

In his second chapter, in which he outlines what I take to be a moderate sacramentalism, Smith describes the difference between signs, symbols, and sacraments. “Signs…point to something beyond themselves—a meaning that matters but a connection that is arbitrary.” But a symbol has more than an arbitrary connection to the signified: “A symbol is an external, visible, and tangible object or action that represents an internal, intangible reality.” A sacrament is a symbol, but: “Sacraments are never just symbols. They are the very means by which we participate in the intangible and spiritual realities without which there is no life.”

Smith ends his second chapter by explaining the purpose of his study. He wants to probe the meaning of the “symbolic sacrament” of the Lord's Supper by reflecting on the familiar passages of Scripture that pertain to it and by highlighting the diverse perspectives that have developed in the Church around those texts. He feels that attending respectfully to our diverse understandings and practices of the Lord's Supper will enrich our reading of the relevant Scriptures, help us discover truths we may have missed, and deepen, not undermine, our appreciation of our own tradition.

In the second and central part of A Holy Meal, Smith reflects upon seven aspects of the Lord's Supper, revealed in seven New Testament passages, and described with seven words: remembrance, communion, forgiveness, covenant, nourishment, anticipation, and eucharist (thanksgiving). I would not even begin to try to summarize the richness and beauty to be found in these chapters. These chapters may not sound the depths of any sacramental tradition, but I think orthodox believers from any branch of the Faith should consider themselves edified by reading them.

Smith concludes his final chapter by reminding us of the real presence of the Lord Jesus (however we understand it) and the sovereign ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Lord's Supper: “It is not the elements or the community that effect the presence of Christ but the Spirit. . .The efficacy of this event, therefore, rests not on our work or even on our faith but on the gracious work of the Spirit.”

While Smith's primary emphasis is to foster “an understanding of this holy meal that enables us to meet and know Christ,” he makes very clear his secondary ecumenical purpose:

The Lord's Supper, Holy Communion, the Eucharist—by whatever name—lies at the center of our worship and our common life. We need to make sense of it for ourselves, our children, and new Christians who join our communities of faith. We need to make sense of it so as to fellowship with Christians of other denominations and backgrounds. This celebration can be a source of worthwhile fellowship and unity rather than a cause of confusion, perplexity, or division.

Can it be? Can the Lord's Supper in the 21st century, at long last, be a source of unity rather than division within the Body of Christ? Reading A Holy Meal should make any Christian long for the greater communion Smith envisions. Our Savior himself seemed to long for it. According to the gospel of John, a short while after he bequeathed this precious rite to his followers, Jesus prayed for our unity. Did he, who knew the human heart so well, foresee the terrible divisions that would ensue even over his simple, holy meal? And did that foresight, I shudder to ask, add to his agony that night?

I was blessed recently to listen to recorded lectures from a conference sponsored in 2001 by Touchstone magazine, the theme of which was “Christian Unity & The Divisions We Must Sustain.” It was indeed encouraging to hear rigorously orthodox Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox leaders (including a couple of Baptists) speak with honesty, caution, and optimism about the possibilities and problems of achieving greater unity within the Faith. This conference exhibited the best kind of ecumenism: stalwart about essential doctrines, kind-hearted, hard-headed.

However, something said in these lectures gave me pause. More than one speaker mentioned “eating at different tables.” And one said something to the effect that even today it would be premature for Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox believers to join in a common celebration of the Lord's Supper before greater doctrinal agreement was achieved. To do so now, he said, would be a “sin against the truth.” But would it be, really?

I think I have a vague but fair, layman's appreciation of the momentous ecclesiological and soteriological issues with which our diverse understandings and practices of the Lord's Supper have become entwined. But is it really necessary for Christians to resolve these issues, even partially, before we can find some way of sitting at the Lord's table together? Is it right, in these times, to hold His table hostage to our (undeniably essential) systematic theologies? Do we really need a completely common understanding of the Lord's Supper before we can have some kind of common celebration of it? Frankly, I don't find this prerequisite in Holy Scripture.

Jesus simply said “This is my body…this is my blood…this do in remembrance of me.” He didn't say “debate this.” He certainly didn't say “argue and war over this.” Though we must, as Smith tells us, reflect deeply about its meaning, Jesus didn't even say “understand this.” He simply said, no, He clearly commanded “do this.” And, to use a notorious but perhaps telling phrase, I don't find the least hint in the New Testament that the disciples at that first holy meal, or at later ones, had the temerity to quibble about “what the meaning of ‘is' is.”

I admire profoundly the gallant ecumenical efforts of the staff of Touchstone, the speakers at their conference, and others like them. If greater unity among orthodox Christians is to be achieved, it will be through efforts like theirs, led and blessed by the Holy Spirit. But if I could, I would plead with all leaders of orthodox ecumenism that they get together and design some form of the Lord's Supper that conceivably could be celebrated by all Christians and that they then solicit their respective communions to allow their members to participate in it, as a gift to the Savior, the Church, and the world.

What might such a common celebration be like? First, it should be advertised and conducted with clear written and spoken disclaimers that this ceremony is not intended to replace or undermine or favor the sacramental doctrines and practices of any tradition; it does not pretend to be a more primitive, a fuller or more pure, or a more correct celebration than any other; it seeks only to be a minimal, common celebration that it is hoped will be acceptable to the Lord.

To remain non-competitive, it should occur infrequently, perhaps only once a year on some neutral day of our liturgical calendars. It probably should take place on neutral ground, e.g. a civic or school auditorium. The ceremony might require a new, neutral name; even “The Lord's Supper” might seem too tendentious to some. There is no need to devise a liturgy. A more than adequate one has been provided, in the passages of Holy Scripture that Smith reflects on. Ancient, widely honored creeds should be recited. The celebrants should be diverse.

There should be a non-dogmatic homily. For a model, I would recommend highly a simple but profound exposition of 1 Corinthians 11:17-33 entitled “The Breaking of the Bread” preached by Canon Michael Green on November 20, 2005 at Holy Trinity Church , Raleigh , N.C.

There should be no explicit or implied claims about what does or does not happen when the communicants partake of the bread and cup. (We do not actually believe that even our most studied sacramental or non-sacramental views in any way compel or constrain the Holy Spirit, do we?) There should be prayers, one asking the Savior's forgiveness if we or our tradition have been too lax or fastidious about His table. Then there should be long, penitent silence.

Is such a common celebration feasible? Would it undermine the doctrinal foundations of any church? Would it breach divisions that indeed, for the time being, we must sustain? Would it be a sin against the truth? I don't know. These are only the musings of a perhaps naïve, overly sentimental, borderline Baptist with vague liturgical affections. I know that I must submit to the judgment of the wiser heads and more devout hearts whom God has called to shepherd and teach in the Church. If they say that even such occasional sharing in some minimal semblance of the Lord's Supper must wait for greater doctrinal concord, I must accept it. And if so, it seems likely to me that we must wait for the Consummation.

Still I wonder. In that dreadful, glorious day, when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess; when the Lord gathers the redeemed from every tribe and nation, and from every branch of the True Vine; when we lay down our sacramental and ecclesiological doctrines, worthy but wielded too often as weapons, all now, in some way, perhaps fulfilled but certainly amended and superseded; and when we are assembled in some vast, unimaginable hall and sit humbly at His table, silent and one at last beneath the unspeakable beauty and the patient, all-loving, imperious gaze of Truth Himself; will not some of the tears that are wiped forgivingly from our eyes be bitter tears of deep regret for not having so assembled long and often before?

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!