The Lord’s Supper: What Unifies Us? | Kyle

Lesson Transcript

Looking all over, there's over 45,000 different types, sects, of Christianity. Is there really something that should be the cause of our unity? This is just water. O Lord, restore your ancient way, and make your people new. What unifies us? I think everyone here would say that it is the historic faith that unifies us as Christians, but today I want to look broader. What is it that unifies Christians worldwide?

Some may say that it's Jesus Christ, and I would agree, but in practicality, what is the thing that has been a call to unify the Church? And you're left to wonder, is there really anything? Looking all over, there's over 45,000 different types, sects, of Christianity. Is there really something that should be the cause of our unity? And today I'd like to call us back to an ancient practice: the Lord's Supper. That is what should unify the Bride of Christ.

However, when I look around at churches today, I see it just doing the opposite. Churches are using it to actively rip the Bride of Christ apart, when Jesus intended it to build it, to give it power, and for it to live. To bring her together and to give her life and to cure over sin, it is now pulling her apart, and I believe we are all suffering from that.

So often, the driving point for division is dissension or arguments, and the final breaking point is we can no longer take communion with you because we can't agree, we don't commune with that group over there, or we don't allow anyone who doesn't fit this specific model to partake of our communion. But then, way on the other side, there are churches who allow anyone to partake.

They set it out, and they come in and grab as they please, or they plaster the plate around, and whether they're baptized or not, there is no discernment on who is partaking. In the end, the Lord's Supper is maybe one of the most accepted ways that Christians either rip the body of Christ and form disunity, or swing all the way to the other side and give something sacred as common. To use the words of Jesus, they cast their pearls to swines, and they give what is holy to dogs. Where it should be the opposite.

Communion should be what unifies us, what empowers us. It should be a witness to the world, and the very meal that sustains us in the wilderness. Communion should be the way that we partake of God. And so today I'm going to ask the question, or the topic: is it common food, or is it a heavenly substance? And as we unpack this, how communion is viewed through the lens of early Christianity, I'd like to challenge you that this, as it did for me, changed the way that I viewed the Eucharist.

And so before we begin, I'd like to really just specify that this all hinges on faith. That without faith being the predecessor of all things, everything that I'm about to say about communion, what it does to an individual, how it changes, how Christ is present, is nothing without the faith of the believer. And so we are going to see that the simple command of Jesus, the night before his death, to eat and to drink, has given Christians the opportunity to partake of God throughout history.

And so in doing this, I'm going to ask three questions. What am I eating? What is it doing? And what did they believe? And so my first point is: is this really Jesus's body and blood, or was he just using symbolism to make a metaphor? And to look at that, I would like for us to turn to John 6:47 through 59. If you don't have a Bible, it will be on the screen. And so I will read John 6:47 through 59. Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in me has everlasting life. I am the bread of life.

Your fathers, who ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.

The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" Then Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whosoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.

As the Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven, not as your fathers ate manna and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever." These things he said in the synagogue as he taught in Capernaum. So we can see that Jesus is going straight back to the Exodus journey. His opposers brought up the sign of manna, and he's using it to help us to better grasp communion.

He's paralleling it to this Exodus journey that God used the manna in the wilderness to sustain his people. Not just bread, but a miracle. See, in Numbers 11:6 and Deuteronomy 8:3, it makes it to seem that this is primarily what they ate: just manna. There was times where God had given them quail, and yes, they did have livestock, but these two verses would make it seem like this is the food that God was giving them in the wilderness.

Which means for 40 years, the main thing that the Israelites were eating going through the wilderness was bread. God was nourishing them, strengthening them, giving them provision with bread. And I'm not a big person on diets, but I don't know of any diet that says to just eat bread. I would love that diet. I really like bread. But it's a miracle. Jesus then turns to those who were with him and says that he is that bread.

His flesh is the bread that sustains life in the wilderness, and his blood is the water that flows from the rock and is drink indeed. His flesh is truly food, and his blood is truly drink. Now, what's crazy is Jesus does not give a way to do this right then. He leaves it in the air. He tells his followers that they must eat of his flesh and drink of his blood in order to gain life, and that's it. Until the Last Supper.

In Matthew 26:26 through 30, I'll read that really quick, Jesus explains how to eat his flesh and drink his blood. And so if you would like to turn there, it's Matthew 26:26 through 30. And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, "Take, eat. This is my body." Then he took the cup and gave thanks and gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you. For this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until the day when I drink it new in my Father's kingdom." And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. In verse 27 and 28, Jesus is doing something amazing. He's calling his hearers, the disciples, to look back at Exodus chapter 24 in the ratification of the Mosaic law. He's using communion as the way to ratify, to bring about, to institute the new covenant. And there are tons of parallels that we can pull from this.

And so in light of that, I'm just going to read Exodus 24:6 through 13, and then we can look at some of those parallels. And Moses took half the blood and put it in basins, and half the blood he sprinkled on the altar.

And he took the book of the covenant and read in the hearing of the people, and they said, "All that the Lord has said we will do, and be obedient." And Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on the people, and said, "This is the blood of the covenant, which the Lord has made with you according to these words." Then Moses went up, also Aaron, Nadab, and Abiyu, and 70 of the elders of Israel. And they saw the God of Israel, and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone.

And it was like the very heavens in its clarity. But on the nobles of the children of Israel he did not lay a hand. So they saw God, and they ate and drank. Then the Lord said to Moses, "Come up to me on the mountain and be there, and I will give you tablets of stone, and the law and the commandments which I have written, that you may teach them." So Moses arose with his assistant, Joshua, and Moses went up to the mountain of God.

And so I just want to list a couple of these parallels that I see Jesus and Moses doing here. And so the first one is that both Jesus Jesus goes up into the upper room with his apostles. Moses goes up into the mountain with his elders and leaders. And then we see that they both use blood. Jesus uses his own blood as he institutes in the cup, and Moses uses the blood of bulls and goats to institute the new covenant. We see that Jesus goes further than Moses.

Jesus, by using his own blood, and not just sprinkles it among the people, but commands that we drink it. Not so it cleanses the outer man, but that it cleanses the inward man. Jesus eats with his disciples and went up onto the mountain, not to a throne of glory like Mount Sinai, but to a tree. Not to give stone tablets with his laws written on them, but to break stone hearts to write his laws on flesh. Not to reveal sin, but to defeat sin.

Jesus then is raised and invites his followers to continue this new covenant sacrifice of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, not just as a symbol, but as a real mystery to partake of him. This is how Paul can say in 1 Corinthians 10:16 that we have participation in the blood of Christ. It's not a reminder of the blood. It's a fellowshipping, a communion, a sharing in the blood of Jesus. This is very similar to how the sacrifices of the Old Testament were to be viewed.

They didn't just go and slaughter an animal and offer the sacrifice, and everything was okay. They were actively participating in the sacrifice. God gave them this privilege to participate with spiritual and heavenly things. The people didn't just do this as a memorial. I believe God was allowing his covenant people to interact with glimpses of heavenly things, things that would only become clear when the Father sent his Son to fulfill the whole law.

This means that the blood that has been used in the Old Testament has been superseded by the blood of the new covenant. The blood that was poured out on the altar and sprinkled onto the people is now poured not into, not on, but into us. We are to drink it. Those sacrifices that only the priest got to eat are no longer bulls and goats, but the perfect sacrifice of the Son of God. And what's interesting is that this is nothing new.

God, all throughout scripture, has been making himself present in many different physical things. He is present in the burning bush in Exodus. He is present in the pillar of cloud and fire leading his people through the wilderness. He's present in the ark of the covenant. His glory fills the tabernacle and the temple. And so we can see throughout scripture this reoccurring theme of God living with his people.

And so when Jesus, being present in the bread and the cup, is not something strange or new, this is the way that God has always cared and given grace to his chosen people by being right there with them, leading, guiding, protecting, sanctifying, and cleansing them. So when Jesus holds up the loaf and says, "This is my body," and he holds up the cup and he says, "This is my blood," we should see this as a continuation of God leading his people by his presence. A quick announcement. No more paywall.

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If we say that it is really Jesus's flesh and blood, how does this change the way that I view communion? I'm going to read this quote from Ignatius. He says, "Come together both collectively and individually through grace, in one faith of God the Father and of Jesus Christ, his holy begotten Son.

And the firstborn of every creature, but of the seed of David according to the flesh, being under the guidance of the Comforter, in obedience to the bishop and to the presbytery, with an undivided mind, breaking one and the same bread, which is the medicine of immortality and the antidote which prevents us from dying, but a cleansing remedy driving away evil, resulting in us living God, resulting in us living in God through Jesus Christ." We see this idea through the early church that communion is a way of God's

grace being poured into us.

He is giving us this grace, a medicine that we now have to partake in immortality. And it doesn't stop with Ignatius. This continues on through themes of the early church.

And Clement of Alexandria puts it very one sentence, like in the Instructor, Book 2, Chapter 2, he says, "And to drink the blood of Jesus is to become partaker in the Lord's immortality." And so both of these hold to a thought that by us partaking in communion, we are not just eating and drinking Christ, but it is transforming us and shaping us to be like God. By us partaking of Jesus, we ourselves are receiving divine grace to help us.

And this was the message since the time of the fall, that one was going to come who was going to heal the wounds of the nations. Prophecy after prophecy point to this, point to Jesus, who by binding the strong man, by defeating death, offers us life. And Jesus is binding up the wounds of sin and healing them so that we may continue eradicating the disease of sin from our lives. The way that he does this is through his medicine of communion. It is through this that Jesus offers his life and power continually.

Leviticus will tell us that the life of the flesh is in the blood. And that is why God, from the time of creation, has forbade his forbade people to eat blood, because life is in it. And I think we can see here that God is saying we should get our life from no other creature other than himself. And so when he institutes the communion, that we are receiving the life of Jesus into us. His life is entering into our bodies and giving us the ability to conquer sin and Satan.

It is by him filling us with his soul, his life, that we are able to endure the wilderness of the world, that we may no longer just live as strangers, but we can sojourn with confidence, continually being filled with new life. This is just water. I think we should also look at the idea that communion brings us together. And to do that, I'd like to look at 1 Corinthians 10:16 through 17, where it says, "The bread which we break is not the communion. Is it not the communion of the body of Christ?

For we, though many, are one bread and one body, for we partake of that one bread." This is a powerful scripture and a powerful thought that communion should be this heavenly foretaste of unity and fellowship with Christ and each other, that when we gather around the altar to partake together, something bigger is happening.

We are not just reaching to the table to grab stuff with our own congregation and brothers and sisters, but we are reaching around a heavenly table and partaking with brothers and sisters from across the world, from every tribe and nation who choose to give up their allegiance to this world and to be baptized into the kingdom of God. And not just that they gave up the world, but that they put on Christ.

All of those who are living in accordance with Jesus and the apostles' doctrines and the faith that has been once delivered are partaking of that same Eucharist. So the Didicae, when they pray for the bread, this is the prayer that it would have. And it says, "Even as this broken bread was scattered over the hills and was gathered together and became one, so let thy church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into thy kingdom.

For thine is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ forever." And I want you to think about that the next time you sit for communion and you break the bread. The bread is broken in front of you. And I want that picture to just go through your mind, that when that bread is being broken, it was scattered and it is brought together to be made into one loaf. And just like that, the church is doing the same thing. The church is coming together.

It's being gathered together from the very ends of the earth and forming the kingdom of God in little pockets throughout the world. It's uniting a nation all across time and space. Ignatius puts it this way, "Take ye heed then to have but one Eucharist, for there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and one cup to show forth the unity of his blood, one altar as there is one bishop along with the presbytery and deacons.

My fellow servants, that so whatsoever you do, you may do it in accordance to the will of God." And Ignatius is saying that the church should be laboring to hold this in common. And instead of trying to find the differences of each individual church, we should turn our hearts to have in common our Lord. This should shape our mind to unite, not split. And there's a really beautiful example of this that happens in the early church.

And so I'm going to butcher the name, the Corto Desimin controversy, which happened within the years 150 to 190. And so this is the issue came up about when to celebrate Easter. On one side, the churches in Rome and the West said that Easter should be celebrated on a Sunday, the day of the Lord's Resurrection.

While the other churches of the East and Asia Minor had said that it should actually be celebrated on the actual day of Passover, the 14th of Nisan, which would put it on a different week every year based on the lunar calendar. And it got so bad that the churches of the West were ready to excommunicate the others. I mean, that's a pretty big deal, the date of Easter. Irenaeus and some other bishops appealed that this was the tradition that they received from John. And so they went to the churches of Rome.

And this is what Eusebius records in his church history. And he declared that Irenaeus declared that no bishop should separate those churches from communion for such a reason, since they were united in faith and fellowship, even though their practice of the feast or Easter differed. That is pretty amazing. And it worked. The churches kept their own practices, each honoring each other, and they went away still in common. They labored hard to keep one Eucharist.

And we can see that Irenaeus understood the reality of what it meant to break communion with one another, that it was something reserved for people that left the faith or churches that went way off the deep end, not just something small or a qualm. And so this is going to bring me to my third point, and that is that this sounds a lot like what the Catholics would say, Kyle. And so there are two major things of reasons of thought that occur when people talk about communion, the Eucharist, or the Lord's Supper.

And the first thing that pops into everyone's mind when you talk about the body and blood of Christ is the Catholic view of transubstantiation. And the other one is memorialism or that it is just a memorial. But today I want to look at a third way. And so for those of you who do not know what transubstantiation is, I'm going to do my best I can to explain it without getting into all of the excesses. And so it was a doctrine that the Roman Catholic Church would have first instituted in the year 1215.

And it would teach that when the bread and cup are consecrated, there's words that are said by an ordained high priest, and he would say some words over the bread and the elements, and the whole substance would be changed into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus, and that the only thing that's left is just the they use the term accidents or the smell and taste, appearance, and the feel. And so what happened is throughout history, this led to some really odd practices.

They would get the bread and the wine, and they would consecrate it, and then they would march it around towns, and everybody would get out and bow down to it as if it was yeah, literally Jesus was walking around the towns. And yet clear on the other side is a view of memorialism. And this is a view that would say that communion is simply a memorial. It's something that we do to remember Jesus's death and salvation, that the bread and cup are just ways that we remember that. And it's just a symbol.

And this is largely attributed to Zwingli during the Protestant Reformation in the 1520s, who brought this out against the model that the Catholics had presented. And so there are these two ditches that we get. On one side, Christians are bowing down and I would argue borderline worshiping the elements of communion as if it was physically, literally Jesus. And the other is probably what many of us are used to or heard, this view of memorialism. It is prominent in evangelical and Protestant churches alike.

And what's interesting is that view creates two more pocket ditches. So there's a ditch, there's two ditches, and then in this ditch, there's two more ditches. It strips communion of the spiritual, and it throws it out the window. And so in one prevalent in one prevalent in evangelical churches, it allows anyone to partake of communion. It doesn't have a spiritual weightiness.

It's either set at the door and people just walk past the altar and pick up their cracker and their cup of juice, and sometimes they conveniently put it into one little thing with the cracker on top that tastes like a piece of Styrofoam. And you pick it up and you walk into church and you sit down and they have this time of silence and then you eat and drink and then, yeah, you go about the service.

Or that they pass the plate around and you get to take off of that and eat the cracker from the middle and try and balance the yeah. But what it creates is this thing of anybody can partake. We have no oversight. We have no guarding of the table. It's just whether you're baptized or not, serious about your faith or not, you can come in and partake.

And so the other pocket ditch is that by turning communion into purely a memorial, but still trying to uphold the weightiness of it that is seen through scripture, because of its memorialism, it's tended to be it's tended to be taken less frequently than others. And yet it puts a hyperfocus on communion, a focus to evaluate your whole life from the previous communion that you had and really dig deep and look and search your life. And it turns into a strictly into a spiritual examination. And that's it.

And oftentimes it brings out extreme emotions on struggles and doubts. And yes, we are called to examine ourselves before communion. But in this third way, we'll see that when we come to communion and examine ourselves, communion is the grace that we have. It's the power that God gives us to then overcome those struggles. And unfortunately, the memorialist view in this second pocket has tendencies to offer a spiritual examining, but lacks the gift of God's grace we receive when we partake it.

And so the third way is this. Justin Martyr in his first apology writes this, "This food is called among us the Eucharist or the Thanksgiving. And only those who believe that our teachings are true and have been washed with the washing for the remission of sins and renewal and live as Christ instructed are allowed to partake.

We do not receive these as common bread and drink, but in the same way that Jesus Christ, our Savior, became flesh by the word of God and had flesh and blood for our salvation, we have been taught that the food blessed by his word and prayer, which nourishes our blood and flesh through transformation, is the flesh and blood of Jesus who became flesh." And then also Irenaeus, "For we offer to him his own, announcing consistently the fellowship and union of the flesh and the spirit.

For as the bread which is produced from the earth when it receives the invocation of God is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly. So also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity." Both of these Christians are writing before the year 200.

And we can see something very important developed or is taught, that the early church didn't believe that it was no longer bread and wine once consecrated or prayed over. There is no hierarchical system. There is no high priest that has to proceed over the Eucharist. It's a prayer. And yet neither did they believe it to be simply a memorial. We can see that there is a middle way, that when blessed, something happens that Jesus Christ is really present.

Yet what you'll notice is that the early church does not try to explain how this change from common food to the body and blood of Jesus takes place. The early church left it a mystery. They took it at face value that it is Jesus's flesh and blood, but also they are still bread and wine, that they consist of these two realities, heavenly and earthly. It was a common substance. It was bread that was gathered, and now it has a heavenly substance living inside.

Later, this view would be known as maybe more popular, the real presence. But for the early church, it was known as the divine mystery of the Eucharist. And so to recap, we can see that the early church really did believe that we are partaking of Jesus Christ when we partake in communion. They saw this as the medicine that helps us to overcome sin and evil. And as the manna sustained Israel in the wilderness, the Eucharist sustains Christians in the world.

We saw that it is a unifying act that brings the whole church together as a nation, a bride, solidifying the union of brothers and sisters to each other and their king. And we saw that the early church saw Jesus present in the Eucharist, going against the prominent view of memorialism today, but not as far as transubstantiation in a way that is miraculous in a divine mystery.

And so to conclude, this, I believe, is the testament of Jesus during the Last Supper when he said, "This is my body." It is the testament of the church in Acts which turned the world upside down. And the early church, which walked faithfully as Jesus's bride, unified and powerful. This is the testament of the historic faith that continues throughout time.

If we let the body and blood of our Lord unify us, the witness we saw in the early church can be present among us by allowing Jesus to be truly present in the bread and cup. We get this amazing continual life-giving grace from God that gives us the power to walk in the paths of our king. Thank you. Lord, restore your ancient way and make your people new.