Frequency of Supper in NT
A reader has some questions about the Lord’s Supper. In particular he asks if the NT teaches that Christians engaged in Holy Communion (Lord’s Supper, Eucharist) every Sunday and was wondering if there was clear textual support for the view that they did.
I won’t rehearse all my reasons for saying I believe the apostolic age church broke bread every Sunday but that’s the conclusion I’ve drawn. This conclusion is based not on explicit texts that are indisputable but on texts that are taken together and the witness of immediate post-apostolic writers that in Christian assemblies, "The Lord’s Supper was a constant feature of the Sunday service." (On the witness of early writers see church historian Everett Ferguson’s Early Christians Speak, page 96 and elsewhere.)
Some questions aren't settled by an explicitly worded biblical text. We haven't been given an exhaustive blueprint. No text, for example, tells us we should 66 books in our Bible and no text tells us which 66 we should have if we have 66. No text deals explicitly with stem cell research or whether I should take a job in Pittsburgh or Belfast, whether Harold should marry Joan or Wilma (assuming either wants him), if the Coles should buy their house or live in rented accommodation or what exactly "modest clothing" means for us today. You hear quite a bit about the "qualifications" of church leaders but you don’t hear any debate about whether there should be church leaders. Because that’s true you don’t find texts written to prove we should have them.
Part of the reason some early practices are not addressed so as to put the matter beyond reasonable dispute is that some practices are taken for granted. You read of debates about Christ being the Messiah (in Acts, for example) but you don't hear debates about whether people should be baptized to become Christians. In part that's because one came under fire and the other was the universal practice. (Arguments about the mode and purpose of baptism were rife in the 19th century days of Joseph Smith the Mormon leader so his Book of Mormon covers the matter in great detail, intending to put it beyond reasonable argument. This is in sharp contrast to the NT and speaks volumes about the origin of the Book of Mormon.)
I don’t think the lack of "indisputable proof" that they broke bread every first day of the week is because they didn't do it. Church history rehearses the weekly practice and in light of the piecing together of several texts and their context--Acts 20:7 and 1 Corinthians 16:2 (with chapters 10—14 as background) for example. The church history makes sense and in light of the woven testimony of texts the history seems natural. I think it was a universal practice that was taken for granted.
So many truths are taken for granted, so to go on a hunting expedition for indisputable proof for every position we hold tends to look at scripture as an exhaustive blueprint given via "proof texts," which it isn't.
I've heard people say that a weekly observance made the Supper a ho-hum thing for them and so they argued for a bimonthly or yearly observance. Weekly communion doesn't do that with me, or a host of people I know. Besides, God's ordinance is bigger than "what it does for me". This is a proclamation as well as a covenant renewal and unity meal. How I feel while engaging in it isn't the bottom line though it can be important. At the Supper we are fed by the presence of the risen Christ through the Spirit as we commune with him and one another through communing with him as one body. It is a unity meal where we gladly confess our oneness as we drink of one cup and eat of one loaf. 1 Corinthians 10 and 11 works with these concepts.
It isn't frequency that reduces Holy Communion (the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist) in power and meaning. Jews could have made the same argument about the yearly observance of major feasts or Yom Kippur but in those cases God explicitly called for them. If these had been made once in a lifetime or once every decade they would no doubt have felt different. If God allowed us only to pray to him once a year can you imagine how we'd feel on that day? But if we had a richer understanding of what we were doing at the Supper we'd be less inclined ever to think it ho-hum. But suppose we had it only once every decade, imagine how we'd feel if on that day we had a severe migraine headache.
As to the time of day when the Supper was eaten, we have to reflect on that too. The first Christian were Jewish and no doubt they retained their evening-morning custom and it's possible that they broke bread on Saturday evening, but this doesn't help us much. The day was divided into two. 6pm to 6am was the "night time part of the day" and 6am to 6pm the "day time part of the day". It was usual for them to engage in their daily affairs in the day time part of the day (compare John 11:9-10 and notice that the women waited until dawn before going to the tomb even though the first day of the week was already 12 hours old--Luke 24:1).
In any case, since the first day of the week doesn't occur at the same time for everyone in the world even if you worked from evening to morning so the issue doesn't truly affect anything. Well, unless someone should insist that all believers in the world should work out an arrangement to eat at the same moment. But then in Australia it would be....and in London it would be....
It might be the case that this latter question arises more out of curiosity than any real need. If (and where) this is true perhaps we should spend only enough time on it that curiosity warrants and move on.
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