The Counterculture Church, Part Three

"...to the breaking of bread..." (Acts 2:46)

This breaking of bread referred to in Acts 2 was not merely the sharing of a meal, but was an intentional remembrance of the Lord's Supper which Jesus instituted at His last Passover meal prior to the prayer in Gethsemane, the arrest, trial, crucifixion, burial, resurrection, and ascension.

As the community shares communion, we are reminded of what Jesus has done for us. To quote Pastor Sam, "we look back, we look in, we look forward". We contemplate our corporate and individual need for the grace of God. We rejoice in knowing that He made the way for our sins to be forgiven, and we anticipate the return of the Christ: as was often said during our Revelation series, we recognize that the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.

Communion comes with a warning label. Paul exhorts us: "A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgement on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep." (First Corinthians 11:28-30)

Let's break this down. Paul is saying that there is a direct, positive correlation between a wrong approach to God and a person's physical ailments. Paul is saying that if you take communion in "an unworthy manner" (First Corinthians 11:27) it is sin.

I have a friend who was a minister of music in a particular church, and prior to my visiting his church he informed me that I would not be served communion because his pastor conducted "closed communion": that is, although I was a Christian, the pastor did not know me and therefore would not serve me because he could not know where I stood with Christ. The pastor was not willing to take the risk of people eating and drinking in an unworthy manner, so his solution was to only serve the people he knew were in right relationship with Christ. That's pretty easy to do when your church only has three hundred people. But what about the pastors who are responsible before God for thousands of people? I believe that is why the First Corinthian passage exhorts the believers and places the responsibilty for examination on the believer, not the pastor or the apostle.

Paul had a few controversies with the first-century church, and perhaps these same controversies plague us, concerning our corporate approach to the table of the Lord:

Selfishness- "you go ahead without waiting for anybody else" (11:21)
Inequity- "one remains hungry, another gets drunk" (11:21)
Disdain- "you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing" (11:22)

In today's church it's not likely that a person would get drunk during communion, because the elements served are quite small. But does it make a difference whether our observance of communion is a tiny wafer and a teaspoon of juice, or whether it is a re-enactment of a Seder (passover meal) complete with four glasses of wine? Our actions are merely a snapshot of the thoughts and intents of our hearts. The spirits of selfishness, inequity, and disdain are not bound solely in the process of eating and drinking. They infiltrate every area of life. Our crisis is that we dare to take communion with these spirits resident in our hearts, and we open ourselves to the just judgement of God who will not tolerate duplicity in His children.

The King James version uses the term "discernment" (11:29), and that is a great word for us to reflect on in this matter of the breaking of bread. We must discern and understand what we are doing, why we are doing it, and above all we must reverence the One we remember- in our thoughts, and in the way we live.