For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
1 Corinthians 11:26 NIVUK
My wife's village has a fiesta for their patron saint every year. It's a tradition they absorbed from the Spanish and adapted with lots of Americanisms. Quite what discos, hot dogs, candy floss and basketball have to do with patron saints I will never figure out.
The party runs for at least a week. Parts of it are good fun, if you ignore the rampant pagan idolatry. But it has to come to an end. It has to finish. People have to go back to work to earn money once more. The party has to stop.
The Lord's Supper is not a permanent fixture. It is time-bound. One day it will be no more. And this fact points to the glorious future of the church.
It is, you see, the only ritual carried out by the church that actually looks forwards to its own obsolescence.
The Lord's Supper was necessary because it is a reminder for the church. It symbolises the Godliness of God, in that He loves us but also expresses His wrath towards our sin. It expresses the sinfulness of sin - that it is so absolutely obscene that it requires such an awful sacrifice. It also reminds us of the human-ness of humans - that we should even need to be reminded of these things again and again.
Yet when the Lord Jesus comes again, we will need no such reminder:
Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the centre of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.
Revelation 5:6 NIVUK
Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they were saying: ‘Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and praise!’ Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying: ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honour and glory and power, for ever and ever!’ The four living creatures said, ‘Amen’, and the elders fell down and worshipped.
Revelation 5:11-14 NIVUK
Jesus Himself will be our reminder.
The Lord's Supper helps us to realise our fundamental equality in the only measure that truly matters. The fact that the Lamb that looks as if it was slain stands at the centre of the throne reminds us of our failure, but also of God's mercy in redeeming us from it.
There will be no sin when Jesus Christ returns. Sin itself will be done away with.
The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendour into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honour of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
Revelation 21:23-27 NIVUK
The inequalities and divisions that have poisoned the Body of Christ will be gone forever. The church, that was once described as "A broken body, its joints at war", and that in the past has brought shame to her Lord by taking poor decisions and acting in contrary to His laws and ways will be completely transformed:
I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling-place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death” or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’
Revelation 21:2-4 NIVUK
When we come to the table for the Lord's Supper, yes we see the horrors of our own sin reflected in the bread and wine. Yes, we see our own salvation. Yes, we confess our fundamental equality and bear witness to our unity. But equally as important, the Lord's Supper is a symbol of hope. Not vain optimism. Deeper than a sense of "every little thing's gonna be alright".
This is absolute assurance, on the basis of the cross and Jesus' resurrection from the dead, that He will keep His promises, that He will return, that He will restore and redeem all things. And nothing can stop it. It is inevitable.
That is what we see when we come to the Lord's Supper. That is what we partake in.
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