Editorial: Sharing the body and blood of Jesus
There is a sad irony in fighting over the Lord’s Supper.
“On the night he was betrayed,” Paul reminded the church in Corinth, “Jesus took bread … took the cup” (1 Corinthians 11:23-25). At that first communion, Jesus told his disciples the bread was his body “broken for you,” and the cup was the “new covenant in my blood.” Sharing the bread and cup with his disciples, he asked them to “do this in remembrance of me” (11:25).
If you grew up in church, your earliest memories likely include those words, etched into a wooden table. Each Sunday, familiar faces gathered to pray for the bread and the cup before passing them through the auditorium.
The table has played a central part in who we are even as we’ve wrestled questions of what it looks like. As churches began meeting outside of houses and more people gathered, communion adapted. Trays and plastic cups became common. Even pandemics influenced our practice at times. In our post-COVID world, “passing the trays” gave way to the convenience and sanitary use of “rip and sip” in many places.
While the table has been central to who we are, it has also triggered countless conflicts. We have divided over who can serve, who can take, when we take, how often we take, how many loaves and how many cups. Some of these differences are principled, and some of them are practical.
When The Christian Chronicle recently posted the story of a Virginia church rethinking how they share communion, lively conversation ensued. We take the table seriously!
Everett Hinton serves communion on a recent Sunday morning at the Hastings Church of Christ in Nebraska.
Had the church in Corinth not butchered the Lord’s Supper so badly, our New Testament might not have one of the most familiar discussions of communion. But the Corinthian church lost sight of the purpose behind the meal, shifting it from the church’s moment with Jesus to their own personal moment of indulgence.
Communion was not just a common meal — they had homes for that. Nor was the communion table supposed to look like other cultural tables, segregating the rich from the poor in both seating and service.
Rather, the Lord’s Supper is a call to “examine yourself” (11:28). A vital part of that self-examination includes “discerning the Lord’s body” (11:29). When read in context, Paul seems to mean both the physical body of Jesus and the church as his body today. Communion is not simply about me!
Communion is more than a brief moment of self-reflection; it is a reminder that through his body and blood, Jesus invites us to share in the New Covenant alongside fellow believers who make up his body today.
Together, the church is Christ’s presence in the world today. That’s why Paul reminded Christians to wait for one another. The church in Corinth missed the point of “Christ and him crucified” (2:2). As a result, immorality and division were destroying the church. Paul believed that communion, done properly, could fix that.
We must not let that which is meant to unite us further divide us! As division continues, and immorality threatens the body of Christ, we would do well to focus intentionally on what it means to share his body and his blood, serving as his presence in the world today.
“We must not let that which is meant to unite us further divide us! As division continues, and immorality threatens the body of Christ, we would do well to focus intentionally on what it means to share his body and his blood, serving as his presence in the world today.”
JEREMIE BELLER is opinions editor for The Christian Chronicle. He is dean of Bible and director of church relations for Oklahoma Christian University. He serves as the congregational minister for the Wilshire Church of Christ in Oklahoma City.
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