What does communion mean?

Question 09063.

The meaning of communion is not one thing but several, and I suspect that is why so many believers take the bread and cup each month without being able to say what they are doing. We know it matters. We know it has to do with the cross. Beyond that most of us are working on instinct.

So let me try to lay it out. The New Testament points the meaning of communion in five directions at once, and holding all five together is what keeps the table from becoming either a gloomy ritual or a rushed formality.

Looking Back: a Memorial

Do this in remembrance of me. The Greek is anamnesis, a calling to mind, and it sits at the centre of the meaning of communion. We are remembering a historical event: a real body broken and real blood shed on a specific afternoon outside Jerusalem.

Remembrance in Scripture is more active than the word suggests in English. When Israel kept Passover, each generation was to speak of it as what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt. The participant was not recalling somebody else’s history; he was placing himself inside it.

That is what the bread and cup ask of you. Not a general sense of gratitude, but a specific act of memory: He died, and He died for me. The elements are chosen to make that unavoidable, because bread must be broken and wine must be poured.

Looking Up: Communion With the Lord

1 Corinthians 10:16 asks, the cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The word is koinonia, sharing, fellowship, having in common. That is where our English word communion comes from.

I hold that the elements remain bread and wine and that there is no physical or mystical presence in them. But that is not the same as saying nothing happens. The meaning of communion includes a real fellowship with the living Jesus at His table, by faith and by the Spirit, and a believer who comes expecting to meet with Him is not being fanciful.

The difference between the two claims matters. The bread does not carry Him. He meets His people as they eat it, which is what He does whenever they gather around His word and His promises.

Looking In: Self-Examination

Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. Paul writes that to a church where the table had become a disgrace, with the wealthy eating well while the poor went hungry.

Notice what he asks for. He asks for examination, not for worthiness. Nobody comes to the table worthy; if that were the requirement the table would stand empty forever. What is required is honest self-inspection, and where sin is found, confession rather than absence.

This has been badly handled in church history, and I have met believers who stayed away for years because they had absorbed the idea that they were not good enough. That is the meaning of communion turned exactly on its head. The table is for sinners who have come to the end of themselves, which is the only kind of person Jesus ever invited.

Looking Around: One Loaf, One Body

Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. The horizontal dimension is easy to miss when the elements arrive on individual trays and we each take our own in silence.

Paul’s rebuke to the Corinthians was almost entirely about this. Their divisions were showing at the table, and he says that when they ate in that manner it was not the Lord’s Supper they were eating at all. The gathering had the right elements and the wrong body.

So the meaning of communion includes a statement about the people beside you. Taking the bread with them is a declaration that you belong to one another. Which is why unresolved bitterness towards a fellow member ought to be dealt with before the tray comes round, and not afterwards.

Looking Forward: Until He Comes

As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. The table has a horizon. It is not a permanent institution but a temporary one, given for the interval between two comings.

Jesus said it Himself in the upper room: I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom. There is a meal at the end of the story, and this one is its foretaste.

That gives the table a note of anticipation that we rarely sound. Communion is properly solemn, and it is not properly gloomy. Every time we take it we are saying that the Lord who died is coming back, and that this modest arrangement of bread and cup will one day be unnecessary.

Looking Out: a Proclamation

You proclaim the Lord’s death. The verb is the ordinary word for announcing or preaching, and it means the table itself is an act of witness. A congregation taking communion is making a public statement about what it believes.

That is worth remembering when unbelievers are present, as they often are. Nothing in a service preaches the exclusivity of the cross more plainly than a table where the elements are received by those who trust Jesus and passed over by those who do not.

It is also worth remembering when we explain it. A few sentences at the table, spoken clearly, may do more evangelistic work than the sermon, because everyone is watching something and wondering what it means.

Holding the Five Together

Most churches emphasise one or two of these and let the others fade. Where remembrance stands alone, communion becomes a sad little exercise in nostalgia. Where fellowship with the Lord stands alone, it drifts towards mysticism. Where self-examination stands alone, it becomes morbid, and people stay away.

Where the horizontal dimension stands alone, it becomes a fellowship meal that could as easily be a shared lunch. And where anticipation stands alone, the cross recedes and we are left with a celebration missing its ground.

The meaning of communion is all five at once, which is why a table properly served takes a few minutes of explanation rather than none. If you want the case for the memorial understanding set out against the alternatives, my article on whether communion is just symbolic works through it.

Recovering the Meaning of Communion in Practice

Knowing what the table means changes how it should be served, and this is where most of us have work to do. If the meaning of communion runs in five directions, then a minister who says the same forty words every time is teaching his congregation one direction and letting the rest go quiet.

So vary the emphasis. One month read the institution narrative and dwell on remembrance. Another month read 1 Corinthians 10 and speak about the one loaf and the one body, and give people a moment to look around the room. Another month read the promise about drinking it new in the kingdom and let the table look forward. The meaning of communion is not exhausted by any single service, and a congregation fed on all five directions across a year understands the table in a way that repetition never achieves.

Give it time, too. Silence in a service is uncomfortable for the person leading and valuable for everyone else. Self-examination cannot be done in the eight seconds between the announcement and the trays. If the meaning of communion includes an inward look, then the order of service has to make room for one to actually happen. See 1 Corinthians 11:28 and ask whether your church’s practice allows for what it asks.

Who Should Come to the Table

A word on the practical question that follows from all this. I hold an open table. Any believer in a right relationship with God and, so far as it lies with them, with others, is welcome, without requirement of baptism, membership or denomination. What Scripture requires is self-examination rather than credentials.

That position follows from the meaning of communion itself. If the table proclaims a finished work received by faith, then faith is the qualification. A church that adds requirements is saying something about the table that the New Testament does not say, and it puts believers in the position of assessing one another at the very moment they are declaring that they are one body.

What I would not do is invite the unconverted. That is not unkindness but honesty, since the table would be saying something about them that is not yet true. My article on who can take communion works through the pastoral cases, including children and visitors.

So, now what?

Before the next time you come to the table, take ten minutes with 1 Corinthians 11:23-34 and ask which of the five directions you habitually neglect. Most of us have a default. Mine, for years, was the horizontal one, and I did not notice until somebody pointed it out.

Then come and take it slowly. Do not let the tray set the pace of your thinking. The bread is in your hand for a few seconds and there is no rule that says your mind must move on when it does. Who died, and for whom?

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?

1 Corinthians 10:16 (ESV)