My local church has a “communion service” once a month. The person officiating the segment will often say something like, “This isn’t just a religious ritual for us.” The words betray our true feelings; they are an attempt to convince ourselves that it is not the way it feels. The reality is that if people repeat any ritual act enough times, it is difficult for them not to lose the sense of its significance, the sense of awe that makes worship impactful. We experience the law of diminishing returns even in acts of worship when they are repetitive.

This begs the question: Why would the Lord institute a memorial, knowing how easily it could lose its lustre through repetition? The practical purpose was to keep worship services Christ-centred.

The memorial’s meaning

The scene unfolds during Jesus’s final Passover meal with His disciples (Matt. 26:17–30; Mark 14:12–26; Luke 22:7–22; John 13:1–30). The most famous account of it comes from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. We know it well, don’t we?

23 For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when He was betrayed, took bread; 24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” 25 In the same way He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. (1 Cor. 11:23–26, NASB)

First, the Lord broke a loaf of bread. He announced, “This is My body, which is for you.” The bread was to remind believers of His body, which God prepared for Him so that he could come and do God’s will (Heb. 10:6–7). Later, the Lord took the cup and declared, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood.” Just hours later, He would inaugurate the long-promised new covenant through His blood shed on the cross.

The two elements point to His incarnation and crucifixion, the beginning and end of His earthly life and ministry. They form a kind of merism—alluding to the first and last events to include the totality of His life. This is why Jesus twice repeated the command: “do this in remembrance of Me” (v. 24) and “do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me” (v. 25). The memorial reminds believers to focus on Jesus Christ, His entire life and work, but with special emphasis on His incarnation and crucifixion.

Paul concludes with his own interpretation of the significance of the celebration: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes” (v. 26). The Greek verbs picture “you” in the act of eating (esthiēte) and drinking (pinēte). While “you” are doing it, you are symbolically proclaiming the Lord’s death. His wording puts the emphasis on “the Lord’s death,” rather than on the act of proclamation—what we are proclaiming is more important than that we are proclaiming.

If the church celebrates the Lord’s Supper each time it gathers, it is proclaiming the Lord’s death (and the new covenant that His death inaugurated) each time it gathers. This keeps Jesus’s person and work front and centre in every church meeting, with special focus on His death. In contract bridge, we call this “majoring on the majors.”

The practical purpose

So, why did the Lord instruct His people to celebrate this memorial often? The pragmatic function of the memorial celebration was to keep the person of Jesus Christ—especially his death that inaugurated the new covenant—central to the worship life of the church. The eating and drinking were not an end in themselves, but a practical way of helping ordinary Christians with no formal biblical and theological training to keep the main thing the main thing.

By making it a central element in worship services, we anchor each service to a proper focus on the person and work of Jesus Christ. Its main purpose is to ensure that Jesus—His incarnation and crucifixion—are the central proclamation of Christian worship. It reminds the church that what we proclaim is Him, especially His death. We have no other message to preach, as Paul modelled when he said, “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2).

This should serve as simple corrective to having services that neglect the central focus of New Testament worship. It minimises the risk of having a 12-week teaching series on DIY Christianity. If well grasped, it wars against preaching a prosperity gospel each Sunday or making healing and miracles the focal point of the service. Jesus, and Jesus alone, should be the fulcrum around which it all turns. The Lord’s Supper can serve as a kind of rubric for measuring the extent to which Jesus is central to all we do.

Concluding Thoughts

In practice, my local church does well to keep the worship and preaching Christ-centred. Our pastors are intentional about it. We remember Him in almost every song and sermon. We proclaim His life, from incarnation to crucifixion and return, week in and week out.

We are still not quite sure what to do with the ordinance itself. Despite all our protestations to the contrary, our eating and drinking feels painfully like “a religious ritual.” Yet we seem to have internalised the real value of the ordinance—keeping Jesus Christ and His saving work central to all our worship.

Disclaimer: The views presented in this blog are those of the speaker and do not necessarily represent the views of SATS.