Last week we celebrated Holy Communion at Cherry Tree Court for the first time and, as we usually do on the second Sunday evening of the month, at Market Street. We can become very familiar with this sacrament, but it’s good to look at why we do this and at the purpose this serves.
Dave spoke from Matt 26:17-30 at the evening service. The Passover celebration, during which Jesus ate the Last Supper with His disciples and inaugurated the first Communion service, was very familiar to Jews, commemorating God’s deliverance of His people from Egypt. During this familiar meal, Jesus began to speak. But Matthew does not record the normal words of the Seder, the traditional Jewish ceremony. Jesus changes the Passover into the Lord’s Supper.
First came the accusation: “One of you will betray Me.” Then the identification with the broken bread: “Take and eat, this is My body.” And finally the third cup, the cup of redemption was identified as His blood: “Drink from it, all of you. This is My blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
Self-examination is an important part of this ceremony. We may not have betrayed Jesus like Judas did, but we sin in thought and deed every day and need, as Bach expressed it in St Matthew’s Passion, to acknowledge this: “Ich bin’s, ich sollte bussen” (I’m the one, I should repent).Charles Hadley Spurgeon said that “our tendency is to decry the particular form of sin that we find in others. We hold up our hands as if we were quite shocked. Better to look in the mirror than look out the window. Looking out of the window, you see one for whom you are not responsible. But looking in the mirror, you see one for whom you must give account to God.” One of the most important responsibilities of the church is self-examination before Communion. For it is not a ceremony for the self-satisfied. The only thing which makes us worthy to come is in knowing our unworthiness.
We must receive Christ’s brokenness. The breaking of the bread is not just to share out the loaf, but shows us most clearly how God comes to us – broken. Christ’s brokenness for us, Christ’s suffering for us, is the means by which we are saved. Our main understanding of God should not be through majesty and glory, but through the Cross. In the broken bread we are confronted with a God who chose to be broken for us, rather than breaking us as we deserve.
During the Passover meal there were four cups of wine that were to be drunk. These four cups were meant to correspond to the fourfold promise of Exodus 6:6-7.
First Cup: I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.
Second Cup: I will free you from being slaves to them.
Third Cup: I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.
The fourth Cup: “’you will be my own people and I will be your God.’”
It is the third cup, the cup of redemption, which explains why the bread is broken. The bread points us to the Cross; the cup points us to the benefits we receive from the Cross: the benefits of the forgiveness of sins, the benefits of God’s ongoing provision for us and the promise of that great marriage feast to come.
