A call to restore the Lord’s Table to our weekly worship
(This article will hopefully be published (a much shorter version) in the Clarion, the magazine associated with the Canadian Reformed Churches). I write to my federation, but all faithful churches should hear the call to restore to the communion table to its proper place in the life of the congregation.)
The churches ought to receive the nourishment of Christ at the Lord’s Table at least weekly. Calvin wrote, later in life, of the practice of celebrating the Lord’s Supper four times a year, “I have taken care to record publicly that our custom is defective so that those who come after me may correct it the more freely and easily.” In my experience, though Scripture is clear on this question, the correction of this defect has not been as free and easy as one would hope.
As Canadian Reformed Churches, we have an opportunity to correct this oversight on the part of our fathers. Within our tradition, we have, from the past, the voice of Van Rongen who has called us to consider restoring the practice of frequent communion.
I am arguing that the church ought to celebrate communion at least weekly. At least: there is room to do it more often. Preaching was never limited to Sundays in the history of the church. Neither should communion. We may celebrate the Lord’s Supper at any assembly of the saints.
In the same way, that we desire to preach at least once a week, so we ought to want communion at least once a week. The word and sacrament belong together. Weekly preaching without the supper should be as inconceivable to us as a weekly celebration of the supper with monthly preaching.
I do not intend to make an argument from the history of weekly communion. There are many excellent resources out there that demonstrate the respectability of this practice. A simple google search of “Michael Horton, weekly communion,” will bring you to an excellent article on the history of it, which he wrote for the Mid-America Reformed Journal. Robert Godfrey has also done excellent work on the history of weekly communion. I can also recommend Paul Aasman and Theo Lodder’s works. Each of those men wrote a short series of articles for the Clarion. Paul Aasman in 1997 and Theo Lodder in 2008-9. These also form a good historical and theological background for what I will argue in this series.
I would like to focus on the argument from Scripture. I will give seven arguments: “an argument from precedent, an argument from meaning, an argument from presence, an argument from order, an argument from the week, an argument from Holy War, and an argument from the call of the gospel. In my first article, I take up the first argument.
The argument from precedent
The New Testament church practiced weekly communion. We can note three places in the New Testament, where we see this practice implied. We see it most clearly in Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11. 1 Corinthians 11-14 contains Paul’s warnings about how the Corinthians meet with each other for worship. In 1 Corinthians 11: 20, Paul assumes that the Corinthians celebrate communion whenever they come together. If the pattern of weekly gatherings holds, they also had weekly communion.
We see weekly communion in Acts 2:42, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and the prayers.” The breaking of bread here is a reference to the Lord’s Supper. In his article, defending more frequent communion, Paul Aasman (Clarion, March 7, 1997) argues that this is not a sound argument for weekly communion because of the regular use of the phrase “breaking of bread” for a fellowship meal. He fails to fully see how the whole story of Luke-Acts presents the development of the fellowship meal into a sacramental meal. The connection of the breaking of bread to the worship of the church in Acts 2:42 underscores that point.
This is the way things develop in Scripture. Common phrases take on new meaning in light of new events. The Lord’s Table is closely tied with and is a transformation of the fellowship meals that Christ has with his disciples in the gospel. Now the kingdom has come and the Promised Spirit, which allows the disciples to eat with Christ. What better way to do that than through the way of the breaking of bread. This breaking of bread, the pattern Christ established on the day of his death.
In verse 46 of the same chapter, we see a daily breaking of bread, which I understand again as a reference to communion. God tells us this to demonstrate the devotion of the early Christians. They are excited about the new kingdom that God has established and wish to celebrate it daily. We can also gather from this that the Lord’s Supper is certainly not limited to Sunday celebration.
As time went on for the New Testament church, it seems that communion was more closely tied to the first day of the week. In Acts 20:7, we see this beginning to take shape: “On the first day of the week, we came together to break bread.” We see an implication that the practice of gathering together had become a weekly practice. There was a natural connection between coming together and breaking bread.
Like the practice of infant baptism, the frequency of communion is implied rather than directly commanded. We infer infant baptism from the continuity between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. It is the same with weekly communion. This is not surprising when we consider Old Testament worship. Eating was part of one’s worship before God in the temple. We can particularly think of something like the peace offering, where worshippers would partake of the animal that they had offered to God. To worship God was to participate in the festival of God.
To early believers, the gathering of believers is temple worship. We can think of Christ’s conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 4. Christ says that a day is coming where all men will worship in Spirit and Truth. Through the Holy Spirit, God now permits sacramental worship wherever one lives. We see this in Hebrews 11, where the people of God approach Mt. Zion to hear the word of Christ. In Deuteronomy 16:16, Moses tells the Israelites that when they come to worship God in the temple, they should not come empty-handed. Neither should we. Now that churches can have temple worship wherever they worship God, eating becomes a part of that worship. Weekly communion naturally flows from the new order that Christ has established.
Now we may respond by noting that we do not have a direct command in the New Testament to practice communion weekly. We only have the phrase “as often as you do it.” We need to be careful with such an argument. As we know well from our Baptist brothers, there is no direct command to baptize babies either. We imply that.
We can also note that the New Testament does not directly command the weekly preaching of the word. It does not give commands regarding the frequency of either the Lord’s Supper or the Preaching of the Word, other than the call do it regularly. Strictly speaking, even the call to meet together in Hebrews 10 is not a warning against neglect of preaching and the Lord’s Supper, but the neglect of meeting together. I do not agree with this interpretation. I merely note that we should be consistent in the way we follow God’s teaching for worship.
In terms of worship, the church has always worked from the assumption that the pattern laid down in Scripture is there for our benefit. We should have an excellent reason to depart from that pattern. And there are exceptions to every rule. The recent lockdown is a good example. It kept the church from gathering together to worship God, which is never ideal. Apart from these exceptions, there is no good reason to depart from the pattern of weekly communion.
Besides, these are the means of grace. These are the primary ways in which our Lord has ordained to show his love to us, to comfort us, and to assure us in our faith. When we, in our pride, make excuse after excuse, and so allow ourselves to depart from the pattern laid down for us, we are undermining God’s self-revelation to us.
In the matter of proclaiming the gospel, we rightly follow the example that the Spirit laid down for us in the New Testament. We are suspicious of those who try to minimize the importance of this example. Whether they argue for one service a week, sermons that do not find their primary source in Scripture, or those who promote the ten-minute sermon.
Why do we question the presented patterns of communion? If we bring this kind of suspicion to the text of Scripture, we may lose the strength of the argument for a weekly half-hour sermon, much less two half-hour sermons. To argue that the frequency of communion is an example we can take or leave is a self-defeating argument. We should approach the scriptures with a desire for maximal obedience, not minimal obedience.
