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Lord S Supper Quotes

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Lord S Supper Quotes

“We should pray that God would enrich his ordinance with his presence; that he would make the sacrament effectual to all those holy ends and purposes for which he hath appointed it; that it may be the feast of our graces, and the funeral of our corruptions; that it may not only be a sign to represent, but an instrument to convey, Christ to us, and a seal to assure us of our heavenly jointure [union].”

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Author:Thomas Watson
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“Remembering​ ​is​ ​something​ ​God​ ​asks​ ​us​ ​to​ ​do​ ​over​ ​and​ ​over​ ​in​ ​the​ ​Bible:​ ​“Remember the​ ​Sabbath​ ​day​ ​by​ ​keeping​ ​it​ ​holy”​ ​(Exod.​ ​20:8).​ ​​ ​“Remember​ ​your​ ​Creator”​ ​(Eccles.​ ​12:1).​ ​​ ​The Israelites​ ​were​ ​experts​ ​at​ ​remembering,​ ​building​ ​altars​ ​of​ ​thanks​ ​and​ ​celebrating​ ​festivals​ ​to​ ​be mindful​ ​of​ ​God’s​ ​mighty​ ​acts​ ​of​ ​provision.​ ​​ ​They​ ​had​ ​much​ ​to​ ​celebrate:​ ​​ ​the​ ​parting​ ​of​ ​the​ ​Red Sea,​ ​the​ ​supply​ ​of​ ​manna​ ​in​ ​the​ ​desert,​ ​the​ ​cloud​ ​by​ ​day​ ​and​ ​the​ ​pillar​ ​of​ ​fire​ ​by​ ​night.​ ​​ ​In remembering,​ ​they​ ​knew​ ​God​ ​was​ ​faithful,​ ​and​ ​it​ ​fortified​ ​their​ ​faith​ ​for​ ​the​ ​next​ ​battle​ ​ahead. All​ ​of​ ​us​ ​who​ ​are​ ​Christians​ ​are​ ​asked​ ​to​ ​remember​ ​too.​ ​​ ​The​ ​violence​ ​of​ ​the​ ​cross​ ​is​ ​in front​ ​of​ ​us​ ​each​ ​time​ ​we​ ​take​ ​communion--”Do​ ​this​ ​in​ ​remembrance​ ​of​ ​Me”​ ​(Luke​ ​22:19). Though​ ​it​ ​isn’t​ ​easy​ ​to​ ​face,​ ​we​ ​are​ ​asked​ ​to​ ​remember​ ​the​ ​blood​ ​He​ ​spilled​ ​out​ ​for​ ​us.​ ​​ ​When​ ​I embrace​ ​His​ ​suffering​ ​for​ ​me,​ ​it​ ​gives​ ​meaning​ ​to​ ​my​ ​own.​ ​​ ​I​ ​know​ ​it​ ​also​ ​forces​ ​me​ ​to remember​ ​the​ ​pain​ ​of​ ​others.​ ​​ ​And​ ​God​ ​doesn’t​ ​want​ ​me​ ​to​ ​forget​ ​the​ ​innocent​ ​blood​ ​that​ ​was shed​ ​over​ ​the​ ​hills​ ​of​ ​Rwanda.​ ​​ ​The​ ​act​ ​of​ ​remembering​ ​holds​ ​something​ ​very​ ​sacred--it​ ​makes us​ ​more​ ​grateful.​ ​​ ​We​ ​have​ ​to​ ​be​ ​willing​ ​to​ ​remember​ ​our​ ​pain​ ​so​ ​we​ ​can​ ​comfort​ ​and​ ​offer​ ​a place​ ​of​ ​healing​ ​for​ ​others.​ ​(pp.​ ​152-153)”

RememberSufferingHealingComfortCommunionRememberingRwandaLord S SupperRwanda Genocide
Book:My Father, Maker of the Trees: How I Survived the Rwandan Genocide
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“We have seen some gatekeeping or fencing-the-table language already beginning to rear its head in this context. One needed to be baptized to take the meal; one needed to repent to take the meal; one needed a bishop or his subordinate to serve the meal. This was to become especially problematic when the church began to suggest that grace was primarily, if not exclusively, available through the hands of the priest and by means of the sacrament. One wonders what Jesus, dining with sinners and tax collectors and then eating his modified Passover meal with disciples whom he knew were going to deny, desert, and betray him, would say about all this. There needs to be a balance between proper teaching so the sacrament is partaken of in a worthy manner and overly zealous policing of the table or clerical control of it.”

JesusPriestsRepentanceCommunionBaptismEucharistSinnersLord S SupperClericalism
Book:Making a Meal of It: Rethinking the Theology of the Lord's Supper
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“Beginning in 1519 and continuing until the end of his life, Luther expounded a theme that the Sacrament brings and means a fellowship of love and mercy: "This fellowship consists in this, that all the spiritual possessions of Christ and his saints are shared with and become the common property of him who receives this sacrament. Again all sufferings and sins also become common property; and thus love engenders love in return and [mutual love] unites . . . It is like a city where every citizen shares with all the others the city's name, honor, freedom, trade, customs, usages, help, support, protection, and the like, while at the same time he shares all the dangers of fire and flood, enemies and death, losses taxes and the like. For he who would share in the profits must also share in the costs, and ever recompense love with love . . ." For Luther, unity with respect to the Sacrament meant both doctrinal agreement and love. When the prerequisite to church fellowship is defined merely (however important!) in terms of doctrinal fellowship, it can end in a Platonic pursuit of a frigid and rigid mental ideal. Doctrinal unity, true unity in Christ's body and blood, is also a unity of deep love and mercy. If I will not lay down my burden on Christ and the community, or take up the burdens of others who come to the Table, then I should not go to the Sacrament. Close(d) Communion is also a fellowship of love and mercy with my brother and sister in Christ as Luther taught in the previous citation.”

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Book:Christ Have Mercy: How to Put Your Faith in Action
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“When one gets to Clement or Hippolytus, we are clearly a long way from what we find in Paul and the Gospels, where the influence of the Passover is still strongly present and the meal is seen as a family meal, taken in the home, a memorial meal to remember Jesus’ death until his return...Here then is a cautionary reminder — the less Jewish the approach one takes to the Lord’s Supper, the more likely one is to be wrong about one’s assessment of what is the case about the elements.”

CommunionEucharistPaulClementGospelsLord S SupperPassoverHippolytus
Book:Making a Meal of It: Rethinking the Theology of the Lord's Supper
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“Surely we can only come to understand each other's beliefs by means of direct encounter and open, honest discussion. In the meantime, many free churches invite all believers in Jesus Christ to the Table for the sake of true spiritual unity that transcends intellectual differences of interpretation. Withholding sacramental sharing on the basis of disagreement about the nature of the Lord's Supper seems odd to us. What two people think exactly alike about the act? We are not offended by Catholics' closed Communion, but we find it odd and exclusive. It places intellectual understanding above fellowship among disciples of Jesus Christ.”

JesusCommunionProtestantsEucharistThe ChurchLord S SupperCatholicsSacramentEcumenismTransubstantiationReal PresenceLord S Table
Author:Roger E. Olson
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“The Purpose of the Eucharist lies not in the change of the bread and wine, but in the partaking of Christ, who has become our food, our life, the manifestation of the Church as the body of Christ. This is why the gifts themselves never became in the Orthodox East an object of special reverence, contemplation, and adoration, and likewise an object of special theological 'problematics': how, when, in what manner their change is accomplished.”

JesusWorshipCommunionSacramentsEucharistEucharistic AdorationLord S Supper
Book:The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom
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“At the heart of Galatians 2 is not an abstract individualized salvation, but a common meal. Paul does not want the Galatians to wait until they have agreed on all doctrinal arguments before they can sit down and eat together. Not to eat together is already to get the answer wrong. The whole point of his argument is that all those who belong to Christ belong at the same table with one another. The relevance of this today should be obvious. The differences between us, as twentieth-century Christians, all too often reflect cultural, philosophical and tribal divides, rather than anything that should keep us apart from full and glad eucharistic fellowship. I believe the church should recognize, as a matter of biblical and Christian obedience, that it is time to put the horse back before the cart, and that we are far, far more likely to reach doctrinal agreement between our different churches if we do so within the context of that common meal which belongs equally to us all because it is the meal of the Lord whom we all worship. Intercommunion, in other words, is not something we should regard as the prize to be gained at the end of the ecumenical road; it is the very paving of the road itself. If we wonder why we haven't been travelling very fast down the road of late, maybe it's because, without the proper paving, we've got stuck in the mud.”

ChristianityCatholicOrthodoxCommunionEucharistThe ChurchLord S SupperEcumenismProtestant
Book:For All God's Worth: True Worship and the Calling of the Church
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“One of the things that happened when the church moved from meetings in homes to having purpose-built buildings beginning before, but accelerated during, the Constantinian era, is that while the church itself was becoming less Jewish in character, it began to apply a more and more Old Testament hermeneutic to its discussions about church, ministry, and sacraments. The church began to be seen as a temple or basilica, the Lord’s Supper began to be seen as a sacrifice, and naturally enough the ones offering the sacrifices, just as in Leviticus, were seen to be priests. There was the further move in this direction when Sunday began to be seen as the Sabbath, another example of this same sort of hermeneutic. There were considerable problems with this whole hermeneutic from the start, since nowhere in the New Testament is there set up a class of priests or clerics to administer any sacraments. Indeed, nowhere was there a clear separation between life in the home and life in church. What has often been missed in the discussions of the effects of all this is that it ruled women out of ministry in the larger church and indeed ruled them out of celebrating the Lord’s Supper as well, since in the Old Testament only males were priests and only priests could offer sacrifices.”

Old TestamentPriesthoodHermeneuticsLord S SupperEarly Church
Book:Making a Meal of It: Rethinking the Theology of the Lord's Supper
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“Luther and Calvin believed that both the Roman church on the right and the Zwinglian and Anabaptist churches on the left made the Lord's Supper too much a place WHERE BELIEVERS DID THINGS FOR GOD - either by offering Christ to God (Rome) or by offering their deep devotion to God (the Radical Protestants). The main direction of the Supper, in both of these views, was up.”

JesusMassCommunionEucharistLord S SupperRoman CatholicismSacramentZwingliAnabaptists
Book:Matthew: The Churchbook Matthew 13-28
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“This insistence on a degree of faith in the communicant is also illustrative of Wesley's belief in the necessity for the co-operation of an active faith in man with the gift of God's grace to make the sacrament effective, which is congruent with his whole theology of salvation, with it's blending of the objective and the subjective.”

FaithChristianityCommunionEucharistLord S SupperSacramentJohn Wesley
Book:John Wesley's Doctrine of the Sacraments
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“The reference in 1 Corinthians 11:27 is to Christ’s actual body, which was crucified, as the reference to blood makes evident. Anaziõs has been translated 'in an unworthy manner,' and sometimes incorrectly thought to modify not the way of partaking but the character of the persons partaking. But Paul refers to those who are partaking in an unworthy manner, not those who in themselves are unworthy, which presumably Paul would see as including any and all believers. No one is worthy of partaking of the Lord’s Supper; it’s not a matter of personal worth. Paul is rather concerned with the abuse in the actions of the participants, or at least some of them. Paul says that those who partake in an unworthy manner, abusing the privilege, are liable or guilty in some sense of the body and blood of Jesus. They are, in addition, partaking without discerning or distinguishing 'the body.”

CommunionSacramentsEucharistLord S Supper
Book:Making a Meal of It: Rethinking the Theology of the Lord's Supper
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“Sometimes silences are pregnant and sometimes not. It is hard to know what to make of the silence of much of the New Testament about the Lord’s Supper. Perhaps it is simply an accident of time and circumstance. There was not a felt need to address the matter. What we should not likely conclude is that it was not seen as an important matter in the latter part of the first century A.D. What we can observe is that the Lord’s Supper continued to be an in-home ceremony taken in the context of a fellowship meal. We also now know it was important in both Gentile and Jewish contexts in the church in the second half of the first century, and beyond. We see no evidence anywhere in this material that clerics of any kind are in charge of the meal and its distribution. Even in the Didache, prophets, who were mouthpieces for God, are only allowed to say the thanksgiving prayer as often as they like. The low ecclesiology, coupled with the ever-present eschatology, suggest that the Didache does indeed go back to the end of the first century A.D. But one precedent in the Didache does stand out: the Lord’s Supper is for baptized Christians, and in particular for those who repent of their sins. We are on the way to the church of the Middle Ages in some respects, but we have not begun to localize or confine grace to the elements of the Lord’s Supper itself and then have it controlled by clerics.”

BaptismEucharistClergyLord S SupperSacramentEarly ChurchDidache
Book:Making a Meal of It: Rethinking the Theology of the Lord's Supper
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“When exactly did this all change, and what were the social and theological factors that led to the change? The answer seems to be in the second century and: (1) because of the consolidation of ecclesial power in the hands of monarchial bishops and others; (2) in response to the rise of heretical movements such as the Gnostics; (3) in regard to the social context of the Lord’s Supper, namely, the agape, or thanksgiving, meal, due to the rise to prominence of asceticism in the church; and (4) because the increasingly Gentile majority in the church was to change how second-century Christian thinkers would reflect on the meal. Thus, issues of power and purity and even ethnicity were to change the views of the Lord’s Supper and the way it would be practiced.”

ChristianityCommunionEucharistPriesthoodLord S SupperSacramentClericalism
Book:Making a Meal of It: Rethinking the Theology of the Lord's Supper
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“Who should serve the Lord’s Supper? Well in the early church, considering Acts 2 and 1 Corinthians 11, the host of the home presumably was the host of the meal, and as I have said, really, the Lord is the host at his own table, not any of us. We are all just participants, we are all celebrants. I don’t think there is any biblical warrant for the serving of the Lord’s Supper to be confined to ministers, but I do think that anyone who undertakes such a sacred task should be trained to do it in a respectful manner.”

CommunionSacramentsEucharistPriesthoodLord S SupperAdministration Of The Sacraments
Book:Making a Meal of It: Rethinking the Theology of the Lord's Supper
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“Despite the differences in detail and in emphasis in Wesley's exposition of the two sacraments, there is an underlying unity in his sacramental theology. He regarded both sacraments as means whereby God could confer grace according to His promise, but yet insisted, that in order to prevent the means from being mistaken as ends, it was necessary for there to be an appropriation of the grace held out by the faith of the believer. Grace was not conferred IN SPITE OF MAN, but only with his co-operation. So human response was necessary for the efficacy of the sacraments, although man's actions were never thought of as meritorious works.”

GodChristianityGraceCommunionSacramentsEucharistLord S SupperJohn Wesley
Book:John Wesley's Doctrine of the Sacraments
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“Has Christ provided such a blessed banquet for us? He does not nurse us abroad—but feeds us with His own breast—nay, with His own blood! Let us, then, study to respond to this great love of Christ. It is true, we can never parallel His love. Yet let us show ourselves thankful. We can do nothing satisfactory—but we may do something out of gratitude. Christ gave Himself as a sin-offering for us. Let us give ourselves as a thank-offering for Him. If a man redeems another out of debt—will he not be grateful? How deeply do we stand obliged to Christ—who has redeemed us from hell!”

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Book:The Lord's Supper
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“For if we see that the sun, in sending forth its rays upon the earth, to generate, cherish, and invigorate its offspring, in a manner transfuses its substance into it, why should the radiance of the Spirit be less in conveying to us the communion of his flesh and blood? Wherefore the Scripture, when it speaks of our participation with Christ, refers its whole efficacy to the Spirit. Instead of many, one passage will suffice. Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans (Rom. 8:9-11), shows that the only way in which Christ dwells in us is by his Spirit. By this, however, he does not take away that communion of flesh and blood of which we now speak, but shows that it is owing to the Spirit alone that we possess Christ wholly, and have him abiding in us.”

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Book:Institutes of the Christian Religion
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“If there should be but one at his Table mourning for sin, loving his salvation, & unfeignedly desirous to promote his praise, He will appreciate such sincerity amid abounding dissimulation & be known to that communicant in the breaking of Bread. The Secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will show 'them His covenant.' Christ loved me and gave himself for me! From the abasement of Christ, faith rises to His Exaltation. The eye that looks up to the cross of Christ, looks up to the Heavens, and sees, in these heavens, the glory of God & Jesus standing at the right hand of God. -- David King, 'The Lord's Supper”

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Author:David King
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