What’s in a Communion Service – why?

This transcript has been automatically generated

The title is What’s in a Communion Service and Why? And I thought we’d start with Mark 14. This is an area full of confusion. There are certain parts of it where I’m still confused after all these years. It’s an area which is productive of enormous divisions, of course, in the church.

It’s a matter where it’s hard to think clearly. And to apply the principle sensibly to life today, as I will try to make clear a little later on.

My title is What’s in a Communion Service and Why? And I thought we’d start with Mark 14. This is an area full of confusion. There are certain parts of it where I’m still confused after all these years. It’s an area which is productive of enormous divisions, of course, in the church.

It’s a matter where it’s hard to think clearly and to apply the principle sensibly to life today, as I will try to make clear a little later on. And it’s hard to gain from the service personally, as Clare said. Mark 4, I’ll read 22 to 31.

As they were eating— Mark 14:22— as they were eating, Jesus took bread and Blessed, that is, He didn’t bless the bread, of course. You don’t bless inanimate things in the Bible. He blessed God, He thanked God. He blessed and broke it and gave it to them and said, Take, this is My body. And He took a cup and when He had given thanks, that is to bless, He gave it to them and they all drank of it.

And He said to them, This is My blood of the covenant which is poured out for many. Truly I say to you, I shall not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God. And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. And Jesus said to them, you will all fall away, for it is written, I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered. But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.

Peter said to Him, even though they all fall away, I will not. And Jesus said to him, truly I say to you, this very night before the cock crows twice, you will deny Me 3 times. But he said vehemently, if I must die with You, I will not deny You. And they all said the same.

Now we’re going to go absolutely back to first principles in this talk this morning because I find it necessary in my own thinking to do that if I’m going to clear myself up. So I’m going to look at— I’m going to take the 5 basic elements that seem to me to be in the idea of a Lord’s Supper, a communion service. And the first one, which is perhaps the most important— I’m not sure of that entirely— a look back. A look back.

This, do in remembrance of me, is the obvious command, isn’t it?

Now we do it in remembrance of Christ because our faith is a historic faith and our salvation depends upon what God did through Christ once for all on the cross. It is very hard for us to get that clear today because we live in an existentialist age and all the emphasis today is on Pentecost and on the Holy Spirit. And therefore people think their salvation depends upon Christ in us and not upon Christ for us. Now the distinction between those two is critically important. We owe our salvation to Christ for us, not Christ in us.

If he works for us on the cross, he will work in us by his Holy Spirit, but your salvation does not depend upon Christ working in you. But you will know that today, unless people feel they have an experience of Christ today, they get all worried. And their sense of being a Christian depends on what’s happening here in me. Now that is because we have shifted the centre of our doctrine of salvation from Calvary to Pentecost.

Our faith is a historic faith. It can’t be repeated. It’s all outside of us. You see, it’s a terrific relief, isn’t it? None of us can go back 2,000 years and change it.

It’s happened. It can’t be altered. That’s why Christianity can’t be altered.

So we have to go back to the historic faith to remind ourselves that we are saved by Christ on the cross and not by the fact that at the moment we are living a satisfactory Christian life. Christ for me is my only hope. However, having said that, remembrance in the Bible, as I think I may have said before but it’s comparatively new to me, is a very dynamic concept. Turn back if you will to Isaiah 51, that is page 647.

Now a lot of people, Roman Catholics for example, but a lot of people also in the more Protestant churches, are very critical this idea of a memorial.

I think I would be criticised as what they call a mere memorialist. They say all you do is you go to the Lord’s Table to remember something in the past. I’ll come on later to what people feel is inadequate in that. But I think what they often reveal by saying that is that they don’t understand the dynamic concept of remembrance in the Bible. Let me read from verse 12 of Isaiah 51: I, I am he who comforts you.

Who are you that you are afraid of man who dies and the son of man who’s made like grass? In other words, why are you frightened of men?

And have forgotten the Lord your Maker who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth?

Now if Isaiah had gone to the Jews to whom he is speaking here and said, you have forgotten that God is your Creator, they would have said, poppycock! We can’t ever forget that God is our Creator. It is the distinctive thing of being a Jew to believe in God the Creator. Indeed, at Sabbath school next Saturday we’re going to teach it to our children. The 110th time.

You see, you couldn’t forget that if you’re a Jew. Nevertheless, the prophet says you have forgotten it.

Now what does he mean by that? Well, he says if you, facing men, are frightened of them, then in all practical— to all practical purposes, you’ve forgotten God. Because once you have a relationship to God, you ought not to feel are men. You see the connection? So it’s no good saying, I remember that God created the heavens and the earth.

I believe in a great God because he’s the Creator, if when you face men you tremble. Now do you see that dynamic concept of remembrance?

Now the Roman Catholic view is that remembrance is not enough, even that dynamic remembrance, See, that means that when I’m feeling depressed and wondering if God really has accepted me, I need to remember that Christ has died for me. That must be a living fact.

Now the Roman view and the Anglo-Catholic view is that the Mass is the means by which God brings the power of the cross into the present. And of course that’s very necessary, isn’t it? It’s not enough to remember it. I’ve got to bring the power of it into the present. Well, how do we Protestants believe God brings the power of it into the present?

Well, the answer to that is very simple in the New Testament. It’s 1 Corinthians 1:18.

1 Corinthians 1:18, page 156.

Terrifically important verse.

Let’s read it together. Verse 18 of 1 Corinthians 1: For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. Now you see, that’s an extraordinary statement because the power of the cross was actually 2,000 years ago when it— when Christ by his death removed God’s anger from us so that we might be forgiven. But you see, he says that the preaching of the cross, that’s what he means by the word, is, not was, the power of God. So what he’s saying is that the actual power of the atonement becomes present today when this cross is preached.

So there is the great divide between the Reformed and the unreformed churches. The Reformed churches, the 16th century have recovered the apostolic teaching that the cross becomes a power for us when it is proclaimed. The unreformed churches believe it becomes a power for us when a priest, of which the New Testament knows nothing, reoffers the sacrifice on the altar. And you’ve got to make your choice. There isn’t any meeting place between those two.

In the end, you’ve got to make your choice because there are two different ways of thinking that we approach God.

See, the priestly way imagines that we have not yet approached God sufficiently. The Protestant way is saying, yes, it’s all finished, the work is finished, we’ve got to proclaim it to people. And the communion service is meant to be a proclamation.

So that’s what we’re doing. We’re remembering, we’re looking back dynamically, praying that we may understand that that work for us is finished. See, I, I would like to stand out— I wouldn’t, I mean, I wouldn’t do this because it would be cheek, wouldn’t it? It wouldn’t get anywhere. But I mean, I’d like to stand outside Westminster Cathedral, you see, and when the man comes out from taking the Mass, I’d say, what have you been doing?

We said, we’ve been remembering Christ’s sacrifice. I said, but you, you’ve forgotten it. We said, don’t be impertinent, of course I haven’t forgotten it, we remember it every morning in this cathedral. Well, now I say you’ve forgotten it. And I’m right, because if they remembered the meaning of it, they wouldn’t have to go on reoffering the Mass, you see, because the message is once for all forgiven.

That’s a dynamic message, isn’t it?

The language, incidentally, of the Supper has caused an enormous amount of misunderstanding too. It should never have done so. This language, this is my body. It’s not difficult if we take into account the Passover when the elder son, I think it is, asks father the meaning at the Jewish Passover still in Hampstead or wherever. And as you know, they have on the table unleavened bread and all the various things, and the father goes through the whole storey of the Exodus.

And when he comes to the unleavened bread, he says these remarkable words. He says, this is the bread of affliction which our fathers did eat in the land of Egypt, and he passes it around. You see, they, they enact the whole storey. Now, at this moment in the supper, instead of saying, this is the bread of affliction which our fathers did eat in the land of Egypt, Jesus said, this is my body which is given for you. It’s a fairly dramatic change, isn’t it?

But of course the father in Hampstead doesn’t mean that the piece of unleavened bread that his wife has cooked that morning is actually identical with the bread of affliction of 10,000 years ago in Egypt.

I learned this morning— it’s nice to have a bit of one-upmanship, isn’t it? I learned this morning it’s called the exegetical significate. It’s a wonderful piece of one-upmanship, isn’t it? I never heard that before. Let me show you the exegetical significate.

Genesis 41:26.

So when your teenagers ask you to give a talk at the sixth form, you say you can blind them with science by starting with the exegetical significate.

Genesis 41:26, I’ll start at verse 25: Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, the dream of Pharaoh is one. God has revealed to Pharaoh what he’s about to do. The 7 good cows are 7 years, and the 7 good ears are 7 years. You see, these are It’s simply a pictorial way of saying, your picture is this. He doesn’t mean literally it is this.

Let me give you another. The Bible is full of them, of course, because the Eastern peoples use a great deal more pictorial language than perhaps we do. Luke chapter 8, verse 11. Don’t bother to turn it up. Because you know this one.

Now the parable is this, says Jesus, the seed is the Word of God. Of course, he doesn’t mean that the seed, which he may have been holding in his hand, is the Word of God, does he? But it’s a way of talking which is perfectly legitimate, and no one would think of questioning it, would they? You remember Paul saying that Hagar is Mount Sinai, I think it was, isn’t it? Or some extraordinary analogy that he uses in the letter to the Galatians.

And if you have boys at home who are going explaining the latest match of Manchester United versus Liverpool— poor Manchester— they will, you know, take the pepper pot and say, this is Brearley, or this is Rush taking the salt cellar. Now that kind of language You take for granted, don’t you? You don’t think the salt cellar is actually a rush.

So what Jesus does at the Supper is He replays the Passover. He says the old Exodus is at an end, the new Exodus is beginning. This is my body, this is my blood, showing them that the price now to free us from sin is His death. And incidentally, it’s always bread and wine separated. I was brought up in high church circles where the bread was popped into the wine and you took just the bread with the wine in it.

I mean, that is to destroy the whole picture. Bread and wine are separate because bread and wine separate speak of violent death. When you’re going along in the car and you see a great pool of blood on the ground and a body 10 yards away, as I did a little recently on the motorway, you drive a lot more carefully for the next 2 hours, don’t you? And it turns your stomach up.

The point of bread and wine being separate is not a cosy idea, it’s a violent idea. This is violent death, sacrificial death, which is the cost of our redemption.

And we’re to remember that, the price that was paid.

Well, I can’t go on with that, but I mean, you know, there’s endless ramifications for that. If you have something precious at home, you say to your children, that wonderful, wonderful piece of china there was brought by your great-grandfather in China for 175,000 rubles, or whatever it was. They don’t have rubles in China. So don’t you dare go near it. Its price is its value.

So the moment we go to the Lord’s table, we’re remembering the price. But it’s a dynamic remembrance, you see. It’s saying, am I living today in a way that is suitable for what was done yesterday.

So that look back is one of the fundamental looks of the Lord’s Supper. Secondly, much more quickly this time, sorry to take such a long time on that.

Secondly, a look around, a look around as well as a look back.

It’s a family meal, it’s intended to be a family meal, and our verse here is Acts 2:42.

Acts 2:42, they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers. Now the question is, what does that mean? And I suppose the real answer is that nobody knows. What the breaking of bread means there. I mean, it is quite clear, isn’t it, that the breaking of bread in its initial meaning simply meant having a meal together.

You broke bread together, just as we break our fast by saying, come to breakfast. I don’t suppose you do invite people to breakfast, but if you do, you’re breaking your fast and you break bread. And if you turn over to Acts 27:35, Acts 27:35, Have I got the right verse?

Yes, this is after the shipwreck. When he had said this, he took bread and gave thanks to God in the presence of all. He broke it and they began to eat. Now that’s simply a meal. It’s not a service, that.

It’s a meal in Acts 27.

So you see, you’re set with a problem. What was this early service that the church had? The frank answer is that nobody is absolutely sure, but it seems that they began by remembering the Lord’s death at ordinary meals in the very, very earliest years.

But immediately there became this problem which you find in 1 Corinthians 11:20, page 163.

1 Corinthians 11:20: When you meet together, it is not the Lord’s Supper that you eat, for in eating each one goes ahead with his own meal, and one is hungry and another is drunk. What, do you not have houses to eat and drinking, or do you despise the, the church of God? By which he means the people of God. Humiliate those who have nothing.

Incidentally, it’s very important, I think, to remember the social conditions of the early church. There wasn’t a middle class, so you were either rich or poor. Whether you like it or not, you’re all rich. You may think you’re poor. I’m sorry, whether you like it or not, you’re in between.

You’re not really rich, most of us, and we’re not really poor in the New Testament sense. Sense. That’s one of the reasons you get this very sharp teaching in the Bible about rich and poor, which doesn’t just immediately apply to us because the vast number of people in our country fall in between what the New Testament would call the rich and the poor. Because in a, if you like, pre-feudal society, everybody is poor and just a few are rich. And what seems to have happened is in the very earliest suppers, the rich people as rich people will, showed off.

You know, they brought their own wine and they tucked in, and the poor people had very little. At any rate, no one knows exactly what happened to what’s called the Agape, that is the love feast. It seems very likely that in the very earliest days, as a matter of discipline, this early feast was discontinued as satisfying one’s normal hunger, and the Lord’s Supper was separated as a special thing on its own.

But as the New Testament has so little to say about the Lord’s Supper, it may be that’s a warning to us not to be too dogmatic. What is quite clear is that it is a communion service, which means a fellowship service, not just with the Lord but with one another. The Therefore I’m always asking the question, is the Lord’s Supper a real time of fellowship? And the answer to that very often is not.

Isn’t it? Now when I was a curate at Sevenoaks, I can remember it was very respectable. It was an evangelical church but a very respectable country town parish church. And at 8 o’clock the people came to communion who didn’t really like the rector’s sermons. It was mostly the respectable people and they walked in, took the bread and wine and walked out again without looking to right or left.

Is that a fellowship meal? I rather doubt it.

I think in some ways our fellowship groups are, and indeed the meal you will have together today, are in essence fellowship meals, aren’t they? The hospitality we give as Christians.

These are fellowship meals. This is the ideal that ought to be before us. When we had V.J.’s 60th birthday, party just 10 days ago. One or two of you were there, I know. There was an African fellow from Nairobi who’s here on a course.

He’s, I think, the director of prosecutions, and he’s here doing some legal course. He’s not a Christian, and he was so impressed with the love of the white and coloured people together, he just couldn’t get over it, and he became a Christian the Sunday after.

Now that birthday party was a genuine fellowship meal, wasn’t it? I don’t see how you can call it anything else. Strictly speaking, it’s not the Lord’s Supper, but it’s a fellowship meal.

I was converted because as a schoolboy I went to camps in the holidays where I met people who obviously loved one another and were concerned for one another. The students were concerned for the boys and who came, and so on. It is that fellowship which is so attractive, isn’t it? You get that real fellowship in some of the youth movements, don’t you? But very often the church loses it.

All I want to say is that that element ought to be in every Lord’s Supper. And you see, the revisers of the Alternative Service Book have put in the kiss of peace, and other Protestant churches have a handshake. It’s an attempt, a slightly pathetic attempt in my view, get this sense of fellowship right. Because I don’t think going around giving people a hearty handshake is really a substitute for real friendship, do you? I mean, it’s better than nothing.

It’s better than coming in and going out.

But I think the question we’ve got to solve in any local church is how do we have this sense of eating and drinking together? And probably the only answer is in our own homes, in our fellowship groups. In times like the Wires Meeting, especially in a big church like this. It’s almost impossible to turn the Lord’s Supper into a sufficient time of fellowship. But there is no doubt at all, if you go right back to the beginning, that it was a time of fellowship.

You broke bread together.

Very difficult to do that and not talk to one another, isn’t it?

So you can see how far the— what I would call the liturgical mess or the Communion in our High Church— how far it has gone from its origins. We shouldn’t be afraid to say so, that there should be something here that is real.

I just want to warn you, I think sometimes in small gathered churches it is a warm fellowship, but It’s exclusive. People coming in would not feel at home in it.

I once went to an Exclusive Brethren meeting. I’ve also been to the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the Highlands in the holidays, and you’re not welcome, you see. The little group is such an in-group that nobody talks to you. So breaking bread like that isn’t the genuine article, is it?

I’m still confused as to how we ought to do this better, but I do understand the principle. First, a look back. Secondly, a look around.

Thirdly, a look forward. 1 Corinthians 11:26: For as oft as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. The Passover is the word Haggadah, which means proclamation. So the Jew, when he has his Passover feast, imagines that he is not playing games, but he is proclaiming to people the great history of his race. The Christian ought to be proclaiming at the Lord’s Supper and proclaiming the coming of the Lord as well as His death, the future.

So at the Passover, still today in a Jewish Passover you will find that an empty place is often kept. It depends how Orthodox the Jews are, but the Orthodox Jew will keep an empty place, so I’m told.

So there is this element that we are eating until he comes. And you notice this strange verse in Mark 14 that he won’t eat and drink until the coming of the kingdom. So we’re very conscious that the Lord has left us. And that we won’t sit down with Him until that great day. I was brought up in High Church circles where there’s a great emphasis on the real presence of Christ.

Perhaps it’s a little perverse of me, but I believe the real absence of Christ is a real element in the Lord’s Supper. Bodily He is not with us.

He’s in heaven. He’s coming back.

And so I want to clear my mind and I want to clear your mind about the language that is used about the body of Christ. See, in here there is a real difference, isn’t there, between again the Reformed and the more modern unreformed viewpoint. When we’re talking about the body of Christ, that body was on the cross and is now at the right hand of God glorified. Okay?

That body is not the bread.

Now let me give you the words of administration as they are in the 1662 service and then tell you how that has been shortened so that if I go to St. Paul’s at an ordination how I’m expected to take the bread and wine round.

In the words— somebody wanted— right, fine. In the words of administration I’m sorry I haven’t put the books around, but I hope that I can get it right. There are 2 parts to it that the Reformers wrote down. The first is a prayer: The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for you, preserve your body and soul unto everlasting life. That is a prayer.

I always keep my eyes open when I say it, especially if I go to a church where people come to the rail. I don’t I want them to understand that that is a prayer that the body of Christ sacrificed for them on the cross, of which the bread is a symbol, is the means of their salvation. I then say, take and eat this— very emphatic— this, this bread, not Christ’s body, this bread, in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on him in your heart, not your stomach, but faith, not by mastication, with thanksgiving. Sorry to be so crude, but the Reformers wanted to understand that we were not believing that the bread was the body.

Now the Roman will simply say to you as he comes round, the body of Christ. Seems to me immensely misleading. That’s the modern ASB at the cathedral here too. So I won’t do it. Which of course holds the lineup if we’ve got a confirmation, because the rector of St. Helen’s is going at half the pace of everybody else, because I go through the prayer book words, because I don’t want to give them an impression that what is in my hand, their hands, is the body of Christ.

See, so when we talk about being cleansed by his precious blood, I hope you understand that it means cleansed by his death on the cross, of which the blood is a vivid symbol.

Oh dear, where were we? A look forward. His body will not be seen until that great day. What a great day it’s going to be, isn’t it? When Christ bodily returns to this earth as He left it and as the New Testament says, and I hope this makes your mind boggle, The saints will raise— rise, you see, in their resurrected bodies.

We shall see John chapter 21 all over the universe, the resurrected body. At St. Peter’s, as some of you will know, Nancy won’t look, but if you look, you’ll see the trenches which are being built for the floor of St. Peter’s, and in these trenches alas, we’ve had to dig out a great deal of bodies— I mean, not bodies, bones and skeletons and so on. And there’s a very cheerful customer from Fuller’s who does it with considerable panache.

So Mike said to him the other day from Ezekiel— I’ve forgotten what his name is, John or whatever it is— John, can these bones live?

Now, you know, when you’re looking down into the trench and you see it full of bones and Charles, that question of Ezekiel’s is a very powerful one, isn’t it? Because there’s nothing deader than bones. Of course, John the workman over there just thought he was pulling his leg. It’s a terrific question, isn’t it? Can these bones live?

At this point, there is a short gap of just a few seconds in the original recording.

Now the meaning of the resurrection is, yes, one day we’re going to have resurrection bodies by a miracle-working power of God and we shall see him in his glorified body and we shall be in our glorified bodies but not until then. Until then we look forward to his return.

Fourthly, a look within. 1 Corinthians 5:6. I’d like you to turn this one up if you’ve still got energy. Marvellously little noise coming from the basement, so take heart.

Verse 6: Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven or yeast leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

The Passover feast was called the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the housewife before the Passover, as you will well know, had to get her dustpan and brush and and cast out of her home every little speck of bread that had yeast in it. And she then baked unleavened bread. And the Bible uses leaven and yeast as a picture of evil within that’s got to be cast out before we go to the feast. It’s a very vivid picture, isn’t it? I don’t know if it’s carrying it too far, but it’s always meant a lot to me that the Passover feast was A feast where before you came there was some self-examination.

And it seems to me the Lord’s Table is the one place where self-examination and discipline is in order.

I’m against navel-gazing, as I’m sure you are. People are far too subjective today. We’re worried about ourselves too much. We should look at Christ for every 10 times we look at ourselves. But from time to time we do need to look at ourselves, don’t we, and cheque up.

And the Lord’s Table is the time for that. That’s why I personally, and this could come up in the questions, am not keen on too frequent communions. You know, the fashion very much today is to have it every Lord’s Day morning, but I personally find that too many times because I think it’s a very serious service where you examine yourself and where the church ought to examine people, and alas we don’t as we ought, who come. Now it does happen actually, and it isn’t as rare as all that, that discipline goes on at the Lord’s Table. I’ve seen it happen.

I’ve been at the Lord’s Table when the man leading it has put a little bit of paper into the hand of one person who came which just simply said, you know, go and get right with so-and-so, because this quarrel had been disturbing the whole church. And the person left the communion service and got right with the person. That’s discipline, isn’t it?

Old Hugh Romm, who was the minister at St. Catherine Cree, he’s a dear man and far too willing, I think, often to help out. He helped out at the communion service at St. Bartolomew’s, which is the headquarters of the gay liberation movement, and he was in the middle of the communion service at the rail when a young man came up to the rail, knelt down with an enormous badge which said on it, I love boys.

Well, Hugh felt, and I think he was right, that that was an affront at that service. And he simply said to him quietly, I’m not prepared to give you the bread and wine. We must talk afterwards. That’s discipline, isn’t it? That’s right, surely.

That’s the right place for it.

It’s a difficult subject, discipline, isn’t it, in the congregation? And as the Holy Spirit is at work in a congregation, discipline can become a tyranny and it can become, of course, a source of endless trouble and gossip and taking sides. But there is a place for it at the Lord’s table, I think. I think we come to a point at the Lord’s table where the notorious, the person who is saying quite gratuitously, I’m going to stick to this wrongdoing, ought to be barred from the Lord’s table.

A look within. And then last of all, a look up.

Mark 14. This to me is the most precious really of all the looks. The look back, the look around, the look forward, the look within, and lastly the look up. Mark 14.

Now there was one word there which is really, I suppose, the most important word in the whole of this institution paragraph where he says, verse 24, this is my blood of the covenant. The covenant. The Lord’s Supper is the covenant meal of the Christians. Now a covenant amongst human beings is always an agreement from both sides. You swear on your part, the other party swears on their part, and until both parties have agreed, then there is no covenant.

But let me read to you from the New Bible Dictionary. There is a quite remarkable thing in the New Testament, indeed in the Old. I’ll just come into the paragraph talking about the use of the word in Hebrews. Here we have the most express witness to the fact that the New Covenant is to be interpreted as a unilateral disposition and therefore totally foreign to the idea of mutual contract. The covenant is to be regarded like a will, which is a unilateral disposition.

Old Aunt Lucy says, that’s what I leave, and you just jolly well have to carry it out, don’t you? You don’t agree when the lawyer reads out the will. It’s a unilateral disposition. She wants her slippers to go to her great-nephew and she wants her 3 and twopence in the National Savings to go to her great-niece. Well, then you do it.

Now you see, what is remarkable about the covenant of the Bible is it’s a unilateral disposition. It’s not a covenant between God and you, and if you fail to keep your part, he will cut out on his part.

The foregoing summary review of the evidence shows that in Scripture God’s covenants with men are always sovereign administrations of grace and a promise. Now you’ve got this perfectly illustrated in Mark 14.

He gives them the symbols of the covenant, bread and wine. They then walk out and he announces, verse 27, you see, you will all fall away. In other words, he announces that if it was a mutual covenant, it is null and void immediately because they’re totally incapable of keeping their side.

They have grasped the idea of covenant, and of course it’s extremely humiliating to be told this, so they protest immediately, on the contrary, we have every intention of keeping our side of the bargain. To which he contradicts them immediately and says, no, you will all fall away. And only Peter is left hanging on saying, I’m going to die with you. Though it does say they all said the same to save his blushes, but he seems to have been the spokesman. Now the crucial statement in, in this paragraph is verse 28.

I think I spotted this a long, long time ago, long before we did Read Mark Learn. Verse 28 is one of the most important verses in this chapter.

After I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee. Now that’s his statement about the covenant, you see. He says, here are the signs of the covenant: you will not keep your side, but after I’m raised, uh, I’ll go before you to Galilee. Right, now turn to chapter 16. As you know, the first 8 verses are the only genuine verses in Mark 16.

Now the interesting thing is how little Mark is really interested in the resurrection as a proof of resurrection. Mark is interested in the resurrection as a proof of covenant, a proof of forgiving grace, sovereign grace. So they go to the tomb, they find it empty, and you’ll notice the message that they’re given in verse 7. You see, in all the other Gospels, or at least it’s more emphatic in the other Gospels, that the message is a message to the whole world, isn’t it? Forgiveness.

But in Mark’s Gospel, the only go and tell is this: Go and tell his disciples and Peter— notice that precious little addition— since he has been the chief sinner, that he is going before you to Galilee. Now that sentence comes straight from the Last Supper. Go and tell them that he is going to keep the covenant.

What is his side of the covenant? Unconditional grace.

That is, they’re to go to the place where they all began, you see, 3 years before in Galilee. That’s where the whole storey began, wasn’t it? That’s where they were called to be his disciples. That’s where they were given forgiveness. That’s where the whole history of the Christian church began.

And at the end of 3 years, there’s complete catastrophe. They’ve all gone. There’s one left, Christ. He’s the only faithful one.

And what is His message on the resurrection day? His message is, I intend to keep the covenant. You see, so verse 7 is glorious news. It is a unilateral disposition, as the pundits would call it. It is His will to grant to His people forgiveness notwithstanding their constant failure.

So that, it seems to me, is what really the Lord’s Supper is about. When I come to it, I look up and I remember that despite what I’ve been like during that week, he is going to hang on to me. Now I know that can be misunderstood and as though we can become careless, but it’s very precious, isn’t it, to remember it. Another insight of the Reformers, you see, in the Reformed services there is constant confession of sin. Again, I remember an Exclusive brother who came to— came out of the Brethren in the ’60s and started coming to our services.

We used the Book of Common Prayer, I think, more then. And one of the things he said is, we never used to say constantly, Lord, have mercy upon me, and have these general confessions. I think the Reformers were quite right. See, they saw it that the Christian needs to be reassured of God’s grace. See, we preach God’s grace to the unconverted, you see, and they say, oh yes, that’s wonderful, and so on.

But actually, the only people who really believe in grace are are the people who’ve been Christians for 10 years. When you’ve been a Christian for 10 years, you begin to realise that God really is a gracious God to have put up with you for so long. Who’s been a Christian for 10 years? Talia, is that right? That’s right.

You see, you only understand grace when you’ve been a Christian for some time. Because the youngsters today who come just on Sunday night, you know, they take it for granted that God’s going to forgive them because That’s what God’s for.

But the more you go on, the more wonderful it is, isn’t it, that God is patient with us? And the Lord’s Supper seems to me to be the, the sign of God’s patience with his people. He’s made a unilateral covenant, and he’s made it quite plain to us we’ll all fall away. Haven’t you at some time? Anybody here never fallen away, never backslidden?

You’ll be a very unusual Christian. If that’s so.

So the Lord’s Supper is a very wonderful sign of covenant grace. So there are my 5 looks. I’ve finished. I’ve been a little longer than I meant to be, but let’s have some questions. Claire suggested that we do actually have 7 minutes for questions before the children erupt from the basement.

An hour is as much as they can manage. Henry is complaining a lot about having to go down there, and he’s going to erupt in 7 minutes. Is that right, Liz?

Yes, it’s in 1 Corinthians again. It’s all in 1 Corinthians, isn’t it? It’s strange. Seems that there are lots of problems there.

Yes, 1 Corinthians 11:27 onwards. That’s right.

I really got to the heart of this when I expounded this chapter to Tommy’s crowd last spring in America, and I’ve since forgotten what I said, so I won’t— I think you’ll have to give me notice on that question. It’s a very tricky passage, isn’t it?

As to what the body we discern in verse 29 is, which is probably the body of Christians.

I think it’s just saying how very— that this undiscipline had become so great in the Corinthian church that people were sinning and coming to the Lord’s table, sinning with a high hand. Because you see, the pagan feasts— I did a certain amount of work on this when I was out with Tommy, and it was fairly new to me. I got some dictionary, I think, and the pagan feasts all around them in Corinth, you see, linked together ritual and immorality. The ritual of the pagan feasts in Corinth would have linked prostitution with them. So you see, people had come out of a background where there really wasn’t any reason why if you became religious you shouldn’t go on being sinful.

And you’ve always got to remember that in the Corinthian letters. This idea, you see, that being— finding God means the end of sin is quite new. It is only in the Bible and in Judaism and in Christianity, you see. In the ethnic religions of the world, you can talk a lot about God and be a complete scoundrel. So that’s why he’s the holy man in India, you see.

He’s a thief, horrible, dirty, but he’s a holy man. It’s only in the New Testament. So what he’s saying here in Corinthians is, if you want to live an unholy life, you do not dare to come to the Lord’s table, or you will bring down judgement on yourself. And it seems as though in those early days— I can’t say that I see it today— that God did bring physical sickness to Christians who behaved like that. You remember the man who was excommunicated that he might perish in the flesh but be saved in the day of the Lord.

So it does seem as though when they left the community of Christians, they were regarded as being in great danger from satanic attack. So they were told, when you come into the Lord’s presence, mind that you’re living the life that pleases him, or we may have to discipline and send you outside that fellowship where Satan rules.

There seems to have been a very much clearer distinction, doesn’t there, in those very early days between the Christian community and outside. Outside was paganism. Inside you were safe.

But if you were inside, don’t contaminate the body. You get that in Africa still, don’t you? And the newly converted people That’s safety in Christ, you see. Everybody comes within, so to speak. Outside Satan reigns.

We live in a culture where the gospel has been preached and Satan has been driven underground, so the distinction is not so clear to us.

Taking part in community service in that way was just the way that I was brought up. And of course it is really horrific. It’s because people haven’t been taught how serious a thing it is that they’re doing.

But don’t you think that’s an almost universal problem today, is that we take these sacred things on our lips? I had the headmaster’s letter from my own school yesterday, the day before, in the post, and The secretary of the Old Boys Society had died of cancer, and the headmaster, who was a churchman but not a converted Christian, said, well, he said, I am happy to say in my letter that his death was swallowed up in victory— quotes, he knew he was quoting the Bible— because his dream of an all-weather outdoor hockey pitch has been fulfilled.

Successful, intelligent man, you see. But I mean, that is next door to blasphemy, isn’t it? That this man’s death was worth it and fulfilled and was swallowed up in victory because his dream of an outdoor all-weather hockey pitch had come to pass through his efforts.

I just think that that kind of free and easy use of biblical language is really parallel to this free and easy use of the Lord’s Supper.

And yet it’s no good just growling at everybody, is it? You know, it does seem as though people were admitted to baptism very quickly, and they were brought into the Christian community very quickly. They were told how serious it was, but there wasn’t this tremendous fencing of it that there is in some ultra-Reformed circles. In the Highlands, for example, there are people in some of these Reformed churches who’ve never been to the Lord’s table because they don’t know if they’re elect or not. You know, godly Christian people.

That— there’s a fencing there that’s gone on too far, hasn’t it? We should be a welcoming church but making it quite plain what kind of a community this is. I think personally the same is true of baptism. I don’t think baptism should be indefinitely postponed because people aren’t good enough. It’s a sign of God’s welcome, isn’t it, as long as we tell people what it means to be a baptised Christian.

Do people agree with that or not? People have gotten experiences of that in churches where baptism is indefinitely postponed or the table is fenced too much.

Yes, that’s— that of course is pathetic, as a high church who’s going to receive a Methodist. Yes, it’s the Lord’s table, isn’t it?

No, I know, of course there’s an intense and praiseworthy desire for the purity of the church there, which is the opposite of the impurity of the church where everybody’s welcome. And we seem to oscillate between anybody being welcome and But it’s one of the reasons that we, Hugh and I, have felt that we need to cut down the communions at 11. We want the morning service here to be an open welcoming service, and so we feel it’s unsuitable to have endless communion services at our open morning service. We haven’t yet solved where to have it, but I think it’s very important for us not to get— there’s a very fine chap down along the Shaftesbury Avenue, young strict Baptist minister who’s really brought that Baptist church in Gower Street alive. Not Gower Street, what’s the street by the Shaftesbury Avenue cinema there?

And if you look at his notices outside, he’s obviously a first-class young man, but that’s the same thing. You’re not really welcome. Well, that means that you become a group, doesn’t it, a holy huddle who won’t get conversions. And And you get that so much in extreme Reformed churches. They just don’t get conversions.

Yes.

Would you want it to be every Sunday? Yes, I do too. I was brought up with it immediately afterwards. I prefer it in the service, but would you want it every Sunday morning?

We do need more instruction, that’s perfectly right.

Yes, the New Testament seems to me to assume that there’ll be many people baptised who are not real Christians. You know, I don’t think the New Testament takes the sacraments as seriously as the Catholic does, in the sense that the New Testament is well aware of the fact that the people of God in the Old Testament had their forms of circumcision and the Passover and were largely unfaithful to them. The New Testament is always emphasising faith and love and hope, isn’t it, and saying that’s what’s important.

Yes, Sue says her mother and mother-in-law are used to it. Yes, and Sheila? Feel the service is lacking something about it.

Yes, yes, yes, I’m sure that’s wrong. I don’t pretend to have all the answers to that. Yes, this movement of the Lord’s Supper service with the Lord’s people on the Lord’s Day is a very strong movement today. My experience practically is it nearly always drives out a serious teaching of the Word of God. See, the crisis in front of us is not primarily a crisis about sacraments.

It’s a crisis about ignorance, isn’t it? The crisis before us is how do we manage to teach people enough to ground them? And You will know that here if we have a communion service we’re always under pressure with the teaching element in the service.

It’s very interesting that we sent a letter round about this new training course that we’re starting at St. Peter’s next year to all the principals of the colleges and I have to say my heart was going a little bit pitter-pat when I picked up my post this last few mornings lest I should get some rather grumbly letters from some of my friends who are principals. I had a lovely letter from the principal of Trinity, Bristol. He said, I wouldn’t have agreed with you a year or two back, but I’ve now totally changed my perspective about the preaching ministry. I see it as absolutely essential because all the students coming to this college are so ignorant biblically. Isn’t that interesting?

Now that means they come from churches where the teaching content is so small. We have only Sunday. I mean, the people we teach the most, the students, have what, 35 minutes on Sunday night and an hour weekdays. It’s not an awful lot, is it? Keep saying this to people.

So I think Hugh and I have felt that we can’t get it absolutely perfect. We’ve got to fit into the situation we’ve got. We’ve got a situation where a vast number of young couples, young people are coming who must have this Christian teaching. And so that must have the priority. We’re not claiming we always get the balance right, but we are sure what the priority is.

Nikki?

No, I’d quite like to see the fellowship groups in a sense having the Lord’s Supper. There is problems, and that is that you’ll always get one or two who spoil it by an undisciplined method of doing it, but there’s no reason why not if you want to do that in your fellowship group. Then tell me and just do it.

Well, what does the Scripture say? The bread that we break I don’t mind who does it. In a church, it will naturally be a matter of order that the leaders will do it. But in a person’s house, I don’t mind who breaks the bread. I take it that the husband will normally preside at a meal like that, but I can’t see that there is any legalism in the New Testament.

No, the whole high church business that women can’t officiate at the communion service is of course absurd, but it depends on a view of priesthood which the New Testament knows nothing about. Yes, there are only male priests in the Old Testament, but there are no New Testament ministers who are priests.

Dear me, we’ve got our wires crossed up so much, haven’t we? It’s difficult to have any of these arguments without going right back to the beginning again and saying, what do we mean by ministry? One last question. I think really I’ve talked enough. The explosion will happen soon.

Ruth.

Yes, thank you for that. Yes, the Church Missions to Jews used to do that. I got them to come to our youth fellowship at Sevenoaks to do it. A man called Mr. Metcalfe did it for me, and then we had it at my theological college. And actually, once you’ve seen the Passover done you will never be able to espouse these false Catholic ideas of the Lord’s Supper, in my view.

We might do that, and I think we actually, if we do bring the Lord’s Supper into Sunday night, which we are thinking about but we’re very unsure about, we might start by getting one of the missions to Jews people to do a Passover. It’s a lovely thing to see. Thank you, Ruth. And this matter about this is the bread of affliction is so luminous. You see how the whole thing started.

It’s quite impossible to misunderstand it. Thank you, Ruth.