Although for well-nigh nineteen centuries, the people of God have been assembled to commemorate the Lord's supper, how wonderfully touching still are the thoughts that gather about it and what precious moments do those spend who weekly assemble to carry out our Lord's injunction "This do in remembrance of Me." To such one scarcely need apologize for treating of this theme and the search for the better comprehension of its veiled glories, and even should the search be unproductive of new discovery, it may prove an incentive to further effort.
Those, who spiritualize the memorial, miss one of its first, and a very salutary and blessed, lesson. The commemoration has to do with the "material;" it is not merely a memorial, but as being material, it becomes a reminder. It is a voice to those who are in the flesh, who are creatures of the dust and need as such a divinely given ordinance to remind them of Him, who instituted it and who was figured forth therein. It teaches us to be humble. O brethren, what a sweet, sad thought is here! We need reminder of Him. We stand in need of continual reminder of what He has done, of what He is. It is a sad thought. The " material" must speak to that which is still subject to the influence of the "material." It is a sweet thought. One thinks of the words of a little child, who when asked what was one of the sweetest things replied, " Repentance; it is so sweet to lie humbled before our God." Brother, do you feel thus, when you partake of that bread and wine? Do you recognize that it thus speaks?
But it is a simple memorial. Rome surrounds it with great pageant and forgets two things. Its simplicity is well adapted to commemorate the One who was despised and rejected. It is not so much the Son of God as the Man Christ Jesus, who is set forth therein. But she forgets also that frailty of which we have just been speaking. God ordained it to be simple. The "material" is needed to speak to our frailty but we are so frail that should we surround it with pageant, it would obscure Him, the material would become all. The simple ordinances of Christianity have been chosen with wonderful wisdom, but as with everything else, man has added his foolish adjuncts, and turned a help to a hindrance.
From Corinthians we find that the supper was instituted on the same night in which our Lord was betrayed, and from the Gospels that it was at the feast of the Passover. God's works are all wrought in "due time" and the proximity of the "delivering up" and the "feast" make an impressive combination.
The Passover was a commemoration of Israel's deliverance from judgment and is now associated with our Lord's "delivering up " to judgment. They who had just been celebrating their own deliverance, the deliverance of the first-born, set in judgment upon and condemn the "First-born" of God. Man's enmity and God's love are drawing nigh to that "crisis" of the ages wherein they meet, in the cross of Christ. What a wonderful juxtaposition. What awful hatred, what divine compassion! and as in Adam all die, how much more, in Christ shall all be made alive. Here is bread and wine; true sustenance for life.
But now please consider a fragmentary clause from Luke. "And gave unto them, saying" etc. I want you to notice that participation was a memorial of Him, though He was still with them. He does not say, " In the future this shall be done for remembrance of Me" but "this do in remembrance of Me." It was, if one may so call it, an anticipative retrospect. They were with Him and yet were called upon to remember Him. Him, not His death; Him! We show the Lord's death in partaking of the bread and wine, but in the act in which each too has part, though it be performed by one, we act in remembrance of Him. Oh that we might remember, that even though to-day He be present in our midst, and faith's vision may often behold Him, that it is still Him whom we have to call to remembrance, (strange word!) by His life given up. Not merely what He has done, brethren, but Him in what He has done. How sad when we think only of what He has done as a reminder of what we have got. " This do in remembrance of Me."
He distributes bread and wine to the group around. It is a domestic scene. It speaks in its character of home, the home where we shall be with Him. This He, in His death, has brought about. In such a scene He shone pre-eminently. He had such a way of breaking bread and inviting to a feast that upon two occasions after His resurrection, the disciples are overwhelmingly convinced that "it is the Lord."
No wonder then that the apostle in Corinthians remembers that we keep it until He come. "He will make them sit down and come forth and serve them."
"And He took bread and gave thanks and brake it." There are here several thoughts worthy of consideration. Let us notice first that He gives thanks before He breaks, while it is over the cup, wine already out-poured, that He gives thanks again. Here is divine order, and one may read easily the simple lesson. That time of agony would indeed be bitter to Him. He came for affection and found hatred; He came for a kingdom and found a cross; He came bringing in His own person, life, eternal life, and found death; and yet that Body, that holy Temple which they should destroy was gladly offered. He gave thanks that He had still an offering to bring. Of old had Abraham the father of the faithful found a ram caught in a thicket by its horns, but here is one not caught, only held. He gave thanks. Often may we find one who gives" thanks when he has already endured, but not often that he has means wherewith to endure. Surely, herein is love made manifest.
The bread speaks of the Person, His body given, the breaking, of His dying; while I think the cup speaks of life already outpoured, and thus it is wine that we find therein, that which gives joy to God and man. He gives thanks after its outpouring. It is the cup of blessing. How appropriate the symbol. It is wine-joy. How appropriate the time of thanksgiving; death past, judgment gone! Rememberer, enter now into the joy of your Lord. We have the fruit of the Vine, the result obtained.
" Now He praises in the assembly
Now the sorrow all is past;
His the earnest of our portion,
We must reach the goal at last."
He breaks the bread. " No man taketh it from me; I lay it down . . . and I take it again." The breaking of the bread is, as we have said, His dying, and so we get no pouring out of the wine, for the breaking of the bread is that, and there before us is the Cup.
Oh may the Lord grant us as we gather from week to week and year- to year and as the rolling years pass on "until He come," fresher, deeper, more real participation in a memorial which as divinely instituted, should so present Him as to make us cry yearningly, "Come Lord Jesus," and more and more may we, as images grow brighter unto the shining of the real, ourselves be merged into His image, until "these broken lights of Him " be swallowed up in His glory, who is "more than they." F. C. G.