When we attend the Breaking of Bread, we do so out of habit. It’s only one reason we do it, of course. It’s a good habit, one of those good habits that must be cultivated in our lives. Our lives can easily fall prey to not-so-good habits, leading to nothing but grief and hardship, both for ourselves and for those around us.
In our attendance we see a custom of life, part of a cycle and rhythm that we have cultivated. But as has been well observed, to attend merely out of habit, though necessary, is not in and of itself sufficient.
Higher reasons
Why else, then, do we come to the Breaking of Bread?
- We come to worship, to direct our thoughts and to sing Godward.
- We come to reflect on things that are read and spoken.
- We come to reinforce one another.
We are here out of conscience, also. Our attendance is the answer of our conscience to an illuminating goad or prompt. The illuminated conscience tells us that we have a reason for gratitude, a reason to feel indebted, particularly for the great and dreadful price of our salvation. And so we come out of a sense of obligation, what we may call the sense of “ought”. I am here because I “ought” to be here; I owe it.
We come here also because we want our existence to mean something. The thought of a life with no meaning, no purpose beyond itself, and no prospect of continuance beyond the grave… we rebel against that at a deep level. And so we grasp for meaning, for a sense of purpose. We stretch after eternity. We come here because we know, and we want to remember, that life is not pointless.
We are here because our affections are captive. We love. We love God; we love the Truth that He has taught us. We are attached to, and have affection and love for, one another.
But there is still more, and it’s an essential more.
Summoned to community
We are here because being here expresses what we are communally. What we will do this morning after the exhortation is called the communion, the “common union’. We do not merely occupy the same place, standing and sitting in unison as the presider directs us. We also put our hands to the same plate that carries the bread among us, and we drink of the wine that has come from one source. In the Gospel record of the meal in the upper room, the instruction was: “Drink ye all of it.’ The meaning was not ‘Consume it to the last drop,’ but ‘Partake, all of you.’ The instruction underlined the ‘common union’.
I once heard a brother make the penetrating observation: “Christianity is not the religion of lone wolves, but of a flock.’ The Lord taught his disciples the parable of the Good Shepherd, the wolves, and the counterfeit shepherds who abandon the flock (John 10). The flock recognizes and responds to the voice of the authentic Shepherd. A community that has recognized and responded to the divine summons is before us also in the well-known passage on the need for assembly:
“And having an high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering. For he is faithful that promised.
And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and good works” (Heb 10:21-24).
The picture is drawn from the Mosaic system of worship, in which the people obeyed the call to come to a central meeting place, present an offering, and be instructed. On the Day of Atonement especially, the people would stand en masse and watch the high priest, maintaining their gaze as he entered the Holy Place and then penetrated even deeper, behind the veil to the Holy of Holies. They would then wait until he reappeared. When that happened, they would greet him with great acclaim.
The willful sin
In Hebrews’ exposition of the Day of Atonement, there is an exhortation and restatement of the summons to come together: “Let us draw near with a true heart.’ And other words aptly follow: “Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering… let us consider one another to provoke unto love and good works.’ Just as aptly, they lead to what is said next:
“Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching” (v 25).
In extraordinary contrast to that picture of coming together to worship, the very next words speak of willful sin:
“For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. He that despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses: Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (vv 26-31).
Immediately after the appeal to come together, the contrary picture is drawn of willful sin — some conscious, deliberate choice of conduct that effectively treats with contempt the offering of the Son of God, with all the grace that made it possible.
The passage has always caused concern. What is this “willful sin”? Is it a distinct misdeed that I commit after an uneasy inward argument between impulse (‘Just do it!’) and conscience (‘Don’t!’)? I’ve done things that answer that description; is this passage talking about me? Have I forfeited all by some abject failure?
Well, perhaps I have. But I don’t think that is what Hebrews 10:26 is about. In Romans 7, Paul describes that kind of inner dialogue, that contest that is lost as a powerful law of nature asserts itself over what we know to be right. It’s the everyday dialogue of the disciple’s enlightened mind. But the “willful sin” of Hebrews 10, in the immediate context, seems to be something else. What, precisely? The willful abandonment of the community’s life, walking away from it, “forsaking the assembly”, which was “the manner of some” (v 25).
Think about it. What behavior could be more lethal to the disciple, and the community of which he should be a part, than the chronic failure to show up? All kinds of less-than-admirable behavior could be replicated across an ecclesia’s membership, and you would still have a community that could function and fight the good fight, at least on some level. Wrong behavior, unhelpful behavior, disorderly behavior, all kinds of behavior. But the members may still come together. The collective organism would still exist; there would be a corporate life. Someone would still open the doors, turn on the lights, and adjust the thermostat, having confidence that others would soon arrive. But not showing up is one behavior that, when replicated across the entire community, kills it instantly. If I were to think hard, I might be able to come up with something else, but it’s not easy to imagine anything as immediately lethal to the ecclesia as all of the members “forsaking the assembly”.
When ecclesias die, it is more often a slow death, in stages. It does not come through the “willful” abandonment of everyone at once. Instead, it’s a slow work, of one, who then becomes a few, and then a few more, until… well, you get the picture.
If I forsake the assembly, I deliver a great blow not only against myself, but against the resolve of others who remain. I am their discouragement and their vexation. They do not benefit from what I could bring; and they trouble themselves over the best way to coax me to change direction, sometimes going through the most excruciating and paralyzing exercises in the dissection of reasons and excuses, straining, even haggling over what may or may not be the perfectly-mixed stimulant from the spiritual pharmacy. Moreover, abandonment is an evil exhortation-by-example to others. It’s a toxic statement to the young who may not have decided yet to take up the good fight. When we really think about it, its obvious devaluation of holy things, and its consequent destructiveness, become clear. We should never underestimate the gravity of “forsaking the assembly” (not showing up, to put it more colloquially) — not only for the individual, but for the community as a whole.
We eat and we drink
What, then, does it mean to come here? Why do we do it?
Well, the centerpiece of what we do on a Sunday morning is eating something and drinking something. Nothing is more elementary to life than eating and drinking; our lives depend on it. But in the Breaking of Bread we don’t eat or drink enough to sustain the natural life of the body. Obviously, in this simple rite, we feed something else, so as to sustain a different type of life. And that manner of life is brought to mind by the quiet remembrance of one solitary life — one life that was given, one life that was sacrificed. In the strange and difficult words of Jesus, we eat, not natural bread, but bread from heaven; and we sustain, not natural life, but a kind of eternal life (John 6:47-58)!
That’s why we’re here. That’s why we come: to remind ourselves of him, and to proclaim together that the food of immortality comes from Jesus. Some professing Christians, and others who direct hostile comment toward Christ, have imprisoned their understanding within a superstitious and silly literalism, failing to appreciate the figures of speech Jesus uses in John 6. But we grasp, even if imperfectly, the spiritual significance of the bread and wine to which he refers.
The apostolic custom
Why do we keep this communion meal each week? Because the New Testament has recorded that it was the apostolic custom:
“Upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them…” (Acts 20:7).
This was the custom of that early ecclesia in Troas. Not once in a year, not once in a month, but every week. In some other religious assemblies, the communion or “eucharist” is not observed on a weekly basis; in others it is scarcely observed at all. As surely as baptism by immersion fell out of favor as the centuries passed, so also did the weekly participation of the whole community in the bread and the wine. It came to be restricted to the priests, and to be something that the common worshipers, or laity, would engage in only very occasionally.
So it is upon the first day of the week that we do this. And the Book of Acts isn’t the only witness:
“Upon the first day of the week, let everyone of you lay by in him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come” (1Co 16:2).
Here Paul refers to the weekly assembly that was the custom in Corinth, as it later became in Troas.
I think we all recognize the way that the mind and heart work: if we were to be apart any longer than a week, we would have serious trouble maintaining any community life, any personal attachment to one another, and any experience (having a pulse) of the faith.
So the One who made the mind and heart knows how often people should be called together. He knows how often we need this, and His summons is to a cycle of life that He understands better than we. We follow the apostolic, Scriptural custom.
Thinking about the bread and the wine
In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul takes up the subject of the communion, appealing to the discernment of people who ‘get it’:
“I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?” (vv 15,16a).
It’s the common union in, participation in, fellowship in the sacrifice of Christ. In this sacrifice his soul, the lifeblood, was poured out (not spilled, please) unto death:
“The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” (v 16b).
Again, we are parts of a whole; we participate in the whole; we proclaim our shared identification with the whole. We have assembled together with this purpose: to bless the wine and the bread, and to partake of them, collectively.
One exclusive loaf, and one exclusive cup
There is another interesting thought:
“For we being many are one bread” (1Co 10:17a).
We take the bread, and of course we think of the body of Christ, the body yielded in obedience to his Father throughout his life, and finally in the consummating act of being nailed to the wood. But we should do more: we should think of his “body” as the whole community of believers, of which he is the head. We could do worse than remember the motto, “E pluribus unum”: “In many, one.” It’s not only that we partake of the sacrificed body of the Savior, but that we also recognize and declare that we ourselves are “one bread,” one loaf, one body.
This thought leads to the next:
“We are all partakers of that one bread. Behold Israel after the flesh: are not they which eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar?” (vv 17b,18).
The Israelites were fellowshipers of the LORD’s altar; they “partook” of it.
Returning to the subject of idolatry that he had raised earlier, the apostle says: “What say I then? That the idol is any thing, or that which is offered to idols is any thing? But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with demons” (vv 19,20).
If you partake of any other altar, he says, then you have fellowship with it, and with that “demon”, or idol, it purports to serve. You make yourself one with it and with your fellow worshipers. Paul goes on to say that one can’t drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; one can’t partake of the Lord’s table and the table of demons (v 21). Because of what it means to do it, it must not be done.
Thus he establishes that the Breaking of Bread is “closed”; what we do is exclusive. When seen from one angle, it is inclusive, in the sense of drawing many together in one. When seen from another, it is necessarily exclusive, precisely because it is at once a shared affirmation of the Truth and a shared repudiation of all that is not Truth. We do not worship both the living God and lifeless counterfeits. If we attempt it, the One God will have none of it. Duality of fellowship is antithetical to Him.
Sometimes we may hear it said, ‘When I partake of the bread or the wine, it’s between me and God; it has nothing to do with the person beside me.’ The notion is that it’s a vertical thing only, without horizontal or lateral dimension. The Bible says otherwise, as we see in 1 Corinthians 10. We’re in this together.
Examining ourselves
But doesn’t 1 Corinthians 11 say, “Let a man examine himself” (v 28)?
It does. When we assert that communion is not only vertical but also horizontal, we’re not seeking a pretext to look at the person next to us. I can’t see past the log lodged in my eye, in any case. The obligation is this: “Let a man examine himself” so that… what? So that he can eat worthily and not to his condemnation (v 29). And upon what would his condemnation turn? Just this: the failure to discern or recognize the Lord’s body. There it is again — “the Lord’s body” — the very phrase that makes us think simultaneously of the Lord’s offering of himself and of the community created out of that sacrifice. It is not only an individual thing, but a communal thing that we do, not only vertical, but also horizontal.
The will to be at the Breaking of Bread
Being here is an act of will, of “oughtness” and hope. It arises from a sense of what is fit, what is right, what is necessary. It is our answer to God, and our answer to one another. It expresses our sense of mutual obligation, to be discharged in the sight of God. We are obligated to one another as part of our obligation to Him and to His Son. If we lack a robust sense of mutuality, we have a problem, a problem that is hand-in-glove with “forsaking the assembly”.
“That which I delivered unto you”
1 Corinthians 11 is the passage we cite again and again at the Breaking of Bread. We must concentrate and really listen to the familiar words for this reason: their reading may come perilously close, sometimes, to a robotic recitation. If we listen carefully enough, we learn, or remind ourselves, that communion was so important as to be a matter of precise revelation to the apostle Paul:
“For I have received of the Lord, that which also I delivered unto you” (v 23).
He describes with care what those assembled in the upper room in Jerusalem did with care. Why? Because it is to be the faithfully repeated practice of those who would remember and proclaim the obedient Life that nourishes their own lives.
“For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come” (v 26).
“To shew” has the force of ‘to proclaim with thoroughness’. The Lord’s sacrifice must be proclaimed with great power and sufficiency, right up to the Second Coming. Such a proclamation necessarily takes the reflective soul through the Lord’s resurrection, his ascension, and his mediation at the right hand of God, “till he come”. All of these thoughts are prompted here as we take a little piece of bread and a little sip of wine.
The KJV “shew” of 1 Corinthians 11:26 recalls the Old Testament “shewbread”, set out before the LORD God in the holy place of tabernacle and then temple. Evidently, the old English word may be traced to Martin Luther’s choice of the German “shaubrot”, as he tried to capture the sense of the Hebrew, “lechem panim” (bread of faces, i.e., presences). How apt that the bread of God, of which we partake, is the bread of presence, not the bread of absence! We partake of it, whenever possible, not just in the presence of God but also in the presence (“before the faces”) of one another.
We must continue in this act of communal worship, as often as possible. In doing so, we “shew” the Lord’s death “until he come”.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One